Cooking Japanese food

I've been cooking lots (usually twice a day), but haven't had time to blog about my food. Anyway, yesterday I cooked a Japanese meal. I'd bought some marinated herring at school (caught, dried and prepared by some of the students), and one of my JTEs (Jap Teacher of English) recommended panfrying or grilling without oil. I'm glad that one of my JTEs share my passion of cooking and has been giving me all sorts of advice and suggestions on how to prepare Japanese dishes.

I also prepared hijiki (a type of seaweed) by boiling it in dashi (Japanese-style soup stock, which is simple and quick to make), mirin (sweet cooking sake), sugar and shoyu (soy sauce). Apparently seaweed is really healthy (a rich source of calcium and other minerals) so I would like us to eat more of it. Vegetables was the usual yasai itame (Japanese for sauteed vegetables - this time the mix consisted of daikon, brocolli and cabbage stirfried with chopped onions, garlic, ginger, chilli, oyster sauce, shoyu and lots of pepper). Serve these with rice, and voila - a complete meal with lots of nutrition.


Photo: Everything crammed into one bowl with the rice hidden beneath it all (okay, so it's not nicely presented typically Japanese-style where all the food are served in multiple small plates and bowls, but we saved on washing too many dirty dishes! Besides, the food all ends up in the tummy right?):