Nori Bento or Nori Ben is a Bento lunch box filled with Steamed Rice, Nori roasted seaweed, fried fish, and other side dishes. It’s been one of the most widely known and loved Bento for a long time in Japan. Nori Bento is nothing complicated or fancy, but it’s just a comforting kind of Bento any time.
Melon Pan Toast tastes just like Melon Pan, but it’s so much easier to make it with only 5 simple ingredients. Melon Pan (メロンパン) is a popular Japanese sweet bread, and it’s found everywhere in Japan from bakeries to convenience stores. Soft white Japanese milk bread is covered with a thin cookie crust on top, and the signature grid lines on the surface resembles a melon even though the flavor is nothing like melon. Homemade melon pan is very tasty of course, but it’s quite time consuming to make it from scratch. If you have a sudden craving for a melonpan, try this much simpler version! You will have a scrumptious melonpan-like toast ready in 10 minutes!
Today’s miso soup is made with Napa Cabbage, Onion, and Tenkasu Tempura Bits. Thinly sliced nappa cabbage and onion are cooked till soft in the dashi broth and seasoned with the miso paste. Simple vegetable miso soup tastes good as is, but with home-made Tenkasu tempura bits, it becomes hearty and even more delicious. Crunchy tempura bits soak up the tasty broth and adds nice texture.
Tenkasu can be purchased in a bag at Japanese supermarkets, but making it at home is quite easy. You can collect bits of Tempura crust floated in the oil when making Tempura, or you can follow our simple Tenkasu recipe.
Deep-Fried Cod is fish coated with flour, egg, and Panko bread crumbs and deep-fried. It’s a very simple dish by itself but extra delicious with homemade tartar sauce. It doesn’t sound very Japanese, but this is another Japanese food which is eaten all the time in Japan.
Teriyaki Tofu Bowl is pan-fried Tofu in Teriyaki sauce over rice. This is such an easy dish to make for busy weekday nights. All the ingredients are found locally in most places even outside Japan, and the steps are also very simple. It’s flavored with sweet and salty Teriyaki sauce that everyone loves, so it will please the pickiest eaters too. Too much work to mix seasonings for Teriyaki sauce? No problem. You can use a prepared bottled sauce to shortcut even further. Teriyaki Tofu Bowl is healthy (vegetarian friendly), yummy, and also easy on the budget. So what are you waiting for? Try this tonight!
Today’s miso soup is made with rolled oats. It tastes like porridge with a Miso flavor. This easy and tasty oatmeal soup is great for anybody but especially for people who want to lose some weight. Oatmeal has a lot of fiber, and spinach is full of nutrition. Miso Soup with Oatmeal could be part of a meal, or it can stand strong by itself. It’s filling and satisfying, and oh so healthy. Hope you like it!
In our mini-series of Japanese Cooking 101 in Kyoto, we are going to different stores from traditional to trendy, and show you a glimpse of the culinary scene of Kyoto in 2023. After we tasted delicious food at stores, we tried to recreate those dishes, not exactly but more in our own way, at home in Kyoto. We hope you enjoy our Japanese Cooking 101 food in a little different setting from our regular videos.
Our final episode is Yakitori Restaurant Yakitori. Yakitori (焼き鳥) is skewered and grilled chicken, as many of you may already know. Sometimes they’re dipped in a Teriyaki-type Yakitori sauce, or simply seasoned with salt at other times. Our original Yakitori recipe calls for chicken thighs because we think it’s the most flavorful part of the chicken for normal Yakitori. But there are also many different chicken parts that are used at Yakitori speciality restaurants in Japan. A few of the most popular parts are chicken skins, hearts, gizzards, and cartilage. Well, that may be beyond what many of us want to deal with at Yakitori shops. But if you are being adventurous, please go ahead and try something new. They are really good, with interesting textures, and that’s why people in Japan love those parts in Yakitori too.
Pan Fried Onion with Butter and Soy Sauce is a simple and delicious side dish you can make with a few ingredients. Onion, preferably a sweet onion, is sliced into medallions, pan fried with olive oil, and seasoned with butter and soy sauce.
Today’s miso soup is made with pan fried eggplant and green onions. Japanese eggplant is cut into thick sticks and pan fried with oil before added to the broth. Softly cooked eggplant soaks up savory dashi and miso flavor.
Instant dashi packet is used in this recipe, but you can certainly use any types of dashi. Please check Back to Basics: How to Make Dashi to learn more about different types of dashi.
In our mini-series of Japanese Cooking 101 in Kyoto, we are going to different stores from traditional to trendy, and show you a glimpse of the culinary scene of Kyoto in 2023. After we tasted delicious food at stores, we tried to recreate those dishes, not exactly but more in our own way, at home in Kyoto. We hope you enjoy our Japanese Cooking 101 food in a little different setting from our regular videos.
This episode is Salmon Sushi. Raw salmon has become more popular than ever today in Japan. But Salmon was not supposed to be eaten raw there only a couple of decades ago because of concerns over parasites. As technology has moved forward and appropriate kinds of imported salmon are now available, raw salmon has become a popular ingredient in the Sushi industry, especially at revolving Sushi shops. Now salmon Sushi is everyone’s favorite, and ours!