Udon Recipe

Udon - Japanese Noodles

Udon are thick Japanese noodles. There are several ways to prepare Udon. This recipe shows three of them:

Kitsune Udon: Fox Udon
Tanuki Udon: Japanese racoon Udon
Tsukimi Udon: "Viewing moon" Udon (the yolk of an egg represents the moon)

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Ingredients:

• Udon*
• Noodle soup*: e.g. Ninben Tsuyu no moto
• Kitsune Udon:
  • Naruto*: Fish sausage with a pink pattern when cut
  • Atsuage*: baked tofu. You can use the triangular atsuage bags that are used for Inari Sushi; but put them first in boiling water for a moment to reduce their strong taste a little bit.
    
  • Leek or green onion
• Tanuki Udon:
  • Naruto*
  • Tenkatsu: crispy pieces that are left when deep frying tenpura. If not available, you can cut some leek, mix it with tenpura batter and deep fry it.
  • Leek or green onion
• Tsukimi Udon:
  • One egg per person
  • Naruto*
  • Leek or green onion

* This ingredient may not be available in Western supermarkets, but you should be able to find it in Japanese grocery stores that exist in most large European and American cities.

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Preparation:

Noodles

1. Boil Udon and boil some water in another pan (about 400ml per person, depends on the size of the bowl in which you will serve the noudles).

2. Cut naruto (about 7mm thin) and leek/green onion.

3. Put Udon into sieve and rinse it with hot water.
4. Add noudle sauce into prepared hot water. Consult the bottle label about the proportion.With "Ninben Tsuyu no moto" sauce the proportion sauce-water is 1:8.
5. Put the hot Sauce into a bowl and add Udon into it. (Use one bowl per person)

Kitsune Udon

6. Decorate Udon with atsuage, cut leek and naruto.

Tanuki Udon

7. Put the deep fried pieces (Rests of Tenpura deep frying), naruto and cut leek onto the noudles.

Tsukimi Udon

8. Put the york, cut leek and naruto onto the noudles.

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Serving and eating:

Noodle eating directions: Keep the distance between your mouth and the bowl quite small, and lead the noodles with the chopsticks step by step into your mouth producing sipping noises.

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General information:

Noodles (Soba, Udon, and Ramen) are very popular in Japan. Noodle restaurants can be found everywhere.

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This recipe is originally published by about.com in this link.

Gyuudon Japanese Video Recipe

Today we present a video version of the gyuudon (beef with rice) recipe. It's with the program "Cooking with dog", made by japanese hosts and available through the youtube channel cookingwithdog

Hope you enjoy it, as it is very refreshing to have the explanations done so well!!

Oyakodon Japanese Video Recipe

Here we have an easy and very home cooking japanese recipe, oyakodon. This is taken from the youtube channel cookingwithdog, hope you enjoy it!

Ingredients for Oyakodon
(serves 1)

50ml Dashi Soup (1/5 u.s. cup)
1 tbsp Soy Sauce
** 1/2 tbsp Sake
(I forgot to add Sake on the list of ingredients in the video)
1/2 tbsp Sugar
1/2 tbsp Mirin
1/2 Small Onion
85g Chicken Meat (3 oz)
2 Eggs
10 Japanese Wild Parsley (Mitsuba)
200g Rice (7 oz)

Obentou - a mistery food for us, normal life for japanese people

The obentou (in japanese 弁当) is what we would translate as packed food, but in asian cultures, and specially Japan, it has become not just part of the culture, but also has reached quite an important status.

And that's because nowadays, how's your packed lunch reflects your family/social life, and you can tell a lot just by being able to see "how good is someone's bentou". In school it may have a lot of meaning around your family status, and when you work it usually reflects your marital life.

We wouldn't, in most cases, take all this myths surrounding bentou so seriously, but it still an important point in Japan.

A bentou normally consists of:
- White rice or substitute (if not rice it may be noodles, but it will be rice 80% of the time)
- Main dish, normally fish or meat
- 2-3 side dishes
- Decoration, a lot of decoration. Most of the time decoration is also made with food, so it may be included in some of the other groups.
- Depending on how complete you want your bentou to be, you can also plan desserts.

This topic can really go really really long, so for today we'll just show some pictures. Theses ones are taken from the japanese site http://www.yoppi.ne.jp , I hope I can detail you guys some of them afterwards! :)

This first bentou is soccer-themed. As you can see, there are flags and rice balls that mimic real soccer objects. This bentou would consist of rice, mini-cheese hamburguers, a little bit of vegetables and so, and a little bit of fruit .. This is what children get from their mums from time to time :P---

This would be more like a traditional-adult type of bentou. The one that you typically would bring to work. You can clearly see the different parts, rice, meat (tonkatsu in this case), and side dishes with a little bit of fruit. Quite a normal one! :)

Ok, the last one I'm showing today is from the blog http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/kasumin_yorosiku which has a quite huge amount of bentou recipes and photos, this girl sure is great! It is quite difficult to see this kind of staff in real life, but if you have the time you can try to make something similar. Ingredients are not very difficult to find, rice, vegetables, meat balls and some colouring natural ingredients for getting your cooked rice some colour! And some weed also for the faces! Gotta try this some time, mmm....

See ya' all in next post!