in japan, we celebrate new years day just like christmas in the west. families get together, eat the new year’s feast called “おせち (osechi)”, preserved type of food such as beans, egg cakes, fish cakes, vegetable pickles, etc. which are prepared a few days in advance and nicely decorated in layered boxes. we also eat this soup called “お雑煮 (ozouni)”, which in the area where i’m from is usually bonito fish based soup with chicken, raddish and carrots, always served with “お餅 (omochi)”, sticky rice cake.

this year we were in japan over the new year’s period, so we had my parents over at our place and had the new year’s feast with them. to my dismay however, due to all the preparation & excitement for the new year’s day, i totally forgot to take photos of this great feast – dah!!!

so here i present what we eat 7 days after the new year’s day (so 7th of january), which is called “七草がゆ (rice porridge with 7 different kinds of herbs)”.

traditionally we eat this porridge to let your stomach rest after the continuous big feasts over the new year’s holiday. it’s completely vegetarian (vegan actually) with natural ingredients and the taste so soft for your stomach (just used salt to taste). it is good for digestion as well.

after a bowl, the taste gets a bit blunt, so we can put some topping over it, and this time i had raddish pickles with yuzu citrus, bonito fish flakes with soy sauce, and some mitsuba (trefoil) leaves.

ingredients (for 2 – 3 people)

1 cup of rice
7 japanese herbs – chopped (3/4 cup or so)
(which can be replaced with raddish, raddish leaves, turnip, turnip leaves, italian parsley, etc.)
4+ cups of water
salt to taste

in a big deep pot (preferably earthen pot), pour the rice and rinse it a few times with cold water. after draining, put 4 cups of water in the pot, put the lid on, and bring it to boil in medium heat. when the water starts to boil, lower the heat to the tiny heat and let it cook for 30 minutes or so until the water is almost absorbed into the rice. remember to gently stir the rice from time to time so that the rice would not stick into the bottom of the pot.

while the rice is being cooked, boil the water in another pot, sprinkle a pinch of salt and quickly boil the chopped herbs (a minute is enough).

add the chopped herb to the rice when the rice is almost ready. cook them jointly for 5 minutes or so, add 2 – 3 pinches of salt to taste.

i didn’t have a good day at work. nothing serious, but it still made me down and took my energy away. the cool air outside with the smell of crisp brownish yellow leaves somehow reminded me of home, my parents home in the outskirts of tokyo where you can still find small vegetable fields beside a train track. all of a sudden i missed it so much. how comforting it was, despite occasional quarrels, disagreements and interferences, i was always protected, accepted and cared for.

i craved for something my mum had always cooked for us when we were little, my sister and i. once in a while from autumn to winter, she cooked a gigantic pot of 豚汁 (“tonjiru”, miso soup with pork), with a lot of vegetables and some pork meat. my mum grew up in the country side, in a mountain village, with 5 other siblings. the soup was perfect for a big family like that – it is very nutritious and easy to prepare, and most of all it tastes really good, containing the juicy essences from the vegetables inside. it’s basically an upgraded version of miso (soybean paste) soup, with lots and lots of root vegetables, tofu and thinly sliced pork pieces.

i actually never learned how to make it from my mum, nor have i got a recipe from her. after all it’s a very simple dish and how to make it is quite self-explanatory if you know how to make other miso soup, so i never bothered to ask her before. the funny thing is though, that the taste comes out to be exactly like hers.

豚汁 “tonjiru” (for 2)

1/6 of japanese radish (daikon) – “icho-giri”, triangle slices
1/3 of carrot – “icho-giri”, triangle slices
1/2 of gobo (burdock root) – “sasagaki”, thinly shaven
1 “naganegi” (leek), roughly sliced diagonally
1/2 of momen tofu (cotton tofu), broken into a mouthful size by hand
100g pork slices, cut into small pieces
1/2 tea spoon of dashi powder
1 liter of water
miso paste to taste (3 table spoons)

in a deep pot, put the water, the root vegetables and bring the water to boil. put naganegi and tofu, pork slices and dashi powder into the pot, again bring to boil. lower the heat, gently remove the layer of residue floating on the surface with a ladle, and simmer for 20 minutes or so. once the root vegetables become soft, put the miso paste in and have it melt by stirring, and simmer for another 5 – 10 minutes. adjust the amount of miso paste to your preference.

a bowl of tonjiru gave me an amazing level of security. it’s just miso soup but i felt at ease. i felt the warmth of home, deep inside my stomach.

one saturday evening, we had a special couple over for dinner at our home. they are the reason why i met the love of my life, and i hope he feels the same way, and both of us are never be able to thank them enough.

it feels so special that we are all in tokyo, at this phase of our lives, all with quite different background, let alone our nationalities, but something always puts us together – and at one point i realised that it was food. the 4 of us have an incredible appreciation towards food. the couple are from portugal, and i remember their telling us once that whenever they go on a holiday back home, they always come back with a suitcase full of food – salted cod fish, cheese, hams, port… i used to do exactly the same when i lived abroad. coming back to tokyo with 2 – 3 bottles of good olive oil, or leaving tokyo with a few packs of udon noodles and natto paste…

cooking my comfort food for them was a tremendous pleasure for me – i reckon that it is quite rare for them to be invited to a japanese house (well, mixed, but close enough), and thought it might be a good idea to go totally local. the dishes i cooked for this special evening were very ordinary japanese home cooked meals.

as starter dishes, i made

冷や奴 (hiyayakko, “cold tofu”) – fresh tofu with sliced veggies such as leak, cucumber, myoga, etc. with soy sauce
いんげんのごま和え (ingen no goma-ae, “green beans in sesame paste”) – boiled green beans, ground sesame, sugar & soy sauce
あさりの酒蒸し (asari no saka mushi, “steamed crams in sake”) – crams, salt & sake

the main course was しいたけの肉詰め甘酢あんかけ (shiitake no niku zume amazu an-kake, “shiitake mushroom and meat stuffings with sweet sour sauce”). this time i used minced chicken with chopped ginger, leek and stalk of the mushrooms. the sauce is made with vinegar, soysauce, “mirin” sauce and katakuri powder (starch) to give it a thickness.

and in any japanese course menu, there is always a 〆の一品 (shime no hitoshina “a dish to top it off”) with some carbohydrates. for this occasion i made 刺身タルタル丼 (sashimi tartar don), with ikura (salmon egg roe which look like orange pearls), to make the dish more luxurious than usual.

for a dessert, we had M’s famous chocolate mousse – she does the best chocolate mousse in the whole world – that they brought especially for this occasion (my husband dies for this chocolate mousse).

no 3-star restaurant can beat a home cooked dinner with friends & family like this one tonight, and our thanks go to M & G.

close-up photos provided by M (proudly taken on her new iPhone G4 😉 )

this is japanese curry & rice. in fact, the majority of japanese people love this dish. it is one of the dishes in japan, in my opinion, that you would think about cooking for your boyfriend for the first time.

we don’t make curry paste from scratch actually, but use curry blocks instead which melts into the broth. you can get the blocks in any grocery store, and there are at least 10 different brands, each of them offers “sweet”, “medium spicy” and “spicy” tastes, lying next to each other on a big shelf. i know it’s a bit like cheating, but that’s how our mums & grandmas have traditionally made the dish all along (i don’t think it goes back to my great-grandmother’s generation though). it’s so handy that people make curry all the time, which is probably very different from what non-japanese people would imagine what we would make at home. we vary what to put in the broth, for example this time i used chicken, onion, zucchini and celery.

the red stuff i am putting on the dish is called 福神漬け, fukujin-zuke pickles. the taste is sweet & sour, goes very well with slightly spicy curry sauce. it is always, always served with the japanese style curry & rice: the-curry-wouldn’t-be-the-same-without-it, kind of thing. this one too, we don’t really make at home, but buy ready-made one at a grocery shop. the colour is dreadful, but picturesque (no?).