KIMCHI FRIED RICE

A while ago I wrote about kimchi cheese bread, and I mentioned that I love kimchi fried rice. Here's a photo of my kimchi fried rice just before I turn down the heat and put the lid on to cook the egg and melt the cheese. I usually use thinly sliced pork, and clean out whatever vegetables are lying around in the fridge. But I think beansprouts, shitake mushrooms, carrot matchsticks, and wakame seaweed are especially good in this dish. 

By the way, a lot of people tell me they don't like kimchi because it's too spicy. That was my impression of kimchi too, but actually there are hundreds of different kinds of kimchi, using many different vegetables, and the kimchi I usually buy in Japan is not so spicy (probably made for Japanese tastes.) Also, I find that combining curry or kimchi with cheese seems to make it milder.

OUT OF BLUEBERRIES

My local supermarket has been out of frozen blueberries for ages, so I've been buying frozen strawberries to use with my breakfast rice instead. They're pretty good, but I prefer blueberries. Maybe it's been a bad season for blueberries.

Did you know that black pepper and balsamic vinegar are supposed to enhance the flavor of strawberries? I don't have any balsamic vinegar, but I have been sprinkling black pepper on my rice. I think it's definitely a better match than cinnamon.

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• Breakfasts (cathysfoodadventures.blogspot.com)

BREAKFASTS

I never skip breakfast. In New Zealand I always ate home-made meusli. Bought meusli is often loaded with sugar and far too sweet for my taste. Rolled oats for meusli are available in Japan, but only in expensive small bags which the miserly streak in my psyche prevents me from buying. The classic Japanese breakfast is rice, grilled fish, pickles and miso soup. It's very healthy and good... just not what I want for breakfast. Lunch maybe, but not breakfast.

So I have eggs sometimes - fried, scrambled  or maybe a cheese omelet. Sometimes I have toast (made from my delicious home-made multi-grain bread.) However the breakfast I eat most often is rice 'pudding'. Many Japanese are repulsed at the idea of sweet rice, but none of them seem to have actually tried it...

Rice with blueberries, walnuts & yoghurt

When I say rice pudding, it's not the rice pudding my mother used to make (although I love that too, and I still can't make it as well as my mother.) I use left over cooked rice. In winter I usually heat it. In summer I leave it cold. I add something sweet, like a handful of raisins or blueberries, or some raw chopped apple, or even some whole sweet beans that are used in traditional Japanese desserts and sweets. If I have walnuts I add a small handful of walnut pieces, and a sprinkle of cinnamon. I top it off with a couple of big spoonfuls of natural unsweetened yogurt. The fruit or beans add enough sweetness for me.

It's quick, healthy (even more so if I use brown or multi-grain enhanced rice), satisfying, and delicious.

FRIED RICE

Todays dinner was spicy fried rice with baby squid, and a salad of sliced cucumber and shiso leaves with bought onion dressing. (Shiso is a kind of herb.) 
Fried rice has got to be one of the easiest things to make and is great for using up left overs, or odds and ends lying around in the fridge. To make this I heated some sesame oil in the frypan, added the squid which had been shaken in flour, salt and chili powder, and fried until brown. Next I added some sliced onion and fried that briefly. Then I added cooked rice and continued cooking till it was heated through. A splash of soy sauce and a shake of black pepper finished it off. 
It was VERY delicious!

SASHIMI-DON

One of my favorite Japanese meals is donburi. 'Donburi' is a bowl of hot rice with some kind of topping... so gyu-don is beef on rice, and buta-don is pork on rice, and oyako-don is rice with chicken and egg (oya = parent and ko = child!) Donburi is easy. It's quick. It's satisfying. And for me it's also comfort food.

Lots of Japanese restaurants sell donburi. You can often buy a a donburi set which includes a generously sized bowl of rice and topping, a small dish of Japanese pickles, a cup of Japanese tea, and a small salad for under 1000 yen. It's very good value.

I absolutely adore ikura-don, which is salmon eggs on rice. I also really like any kind of sashimi-don (sashimi being raw fish.) I love sushi and sashimi, but in my opinion raw fish over hot rice is a heavenly combination! I sometimes go to one of the sashimi-don restaurants in Sanjo Teramachi where I usually order a combination of salmon eggs (ikura), sqid (ika) and prawn (ebi.) If you want you can add soy sauce, wasabi or maybe ponzu (combination of sour citrus fruit and soy sauce) but I usually eat it without any extra flavoring.

Sashimi-don is really easy to make at home. I just buy a tray of sashimi from the supermarket, cook up some plain rice, and eat! Simple, elegant and totally delicious!