(This recipe works for both donabe rice cooker and electric rice cooker)

2 cups medium grain rice plus 1/4 cup sweet rice (equals 3 cups Donabe 180 ml cup)

15 oz water

3 Tbls Sake

3 Tbls Light color soy sauce (Usukuchi shoyu)

1 package of shimeji mushrooms, 3 medium size shitake mushrooms and 1/2 package of Maitake mushrooms

Garnish options:

1 Tbls yuzu or lime rind  

Roasted sesame seeds, shichimi pepper, sansho pepper, chopped Mitsuba leaves, Cut Nori seaweed

Rinse rice and sweet and let stand in the strainer for 15 minutes.

Trim ends of mushrooms and separate them into individual pieces. If using shitake mushrooms, slice them into 1/4 inch pieces. Set aside.

Put the rinsed rice, light color soysauce and sake in the donabe or electric rice cooker. Mix the sauce and sake into the rice. Let stand for 15 minutes.

Cook donabe over medium high heat for 15-17 minutes or until the steam comes out "vigorously" from the ventilation hole. Turn off heat and let stand for 15 minutes.

Open the donabe, using pot holders so you don't burn your hands. Add the sliced mushroom and close both the inner and upper lids. Let stand for another 5 minutes.

Open the donabe and gently toss the rice with the mushrooms. You may have some toasted rice on the bottom which is good.

Garnish with yuzu rind and/or other recommended garnishes.

The rice tastes best when served right away.

You can also make the rice in a pressure or donabe rice cooker. Follow manufacturer’s instructions for cooking brown rice. The amount of water will vary depending on the cooker you use.

Okay so it's October 1.  Opening day of Sakai's art Exhibition.  Eddie, Sakai's assistant arrived at 730am to wash the last stone sculpture and stone bases for the show.  I drove out to rent-a-wreck to return the truck. Sakai has been burning the midnight oil for the last three days.  The brochures and posters have been printed.  Having an art show is exciting and nerve racking at the same time. Sakae calls from Portland to wish his Dad good luck.  I can only hope for the best turn out and response. 

Last night was fast food night and this morning is the same too. That means rice balls for most Japanese people.  You can grab it like a sandwhich and run.  The stuffing can be anything from grilled salmon such left overs from last night to seasoned ground meat or grilled tarako- cod roe.  There is a little rice left over to make one rice ball this morning so I decide to make one and stuff it with a pickled plum -umeboshi.  There is an old Japanese saying - A pickled plum a day keeps the doctor away.  

There isn't much of a recipe for making Onigiri.  You just need steamed rice.  Use short or medium grain rice.  The fresher the rice, the tastier. The rice balls I made last night were great because the rice was steaming hot and fresh. This morning I am working with day old rice but it is still good.  You will need some salt, a pickled plum and a crispy sheet of nori seaweed to wrap the rice ball. Use about 3/4 cup of rice for each rice ball.

Fresh steamed rice tastess the best but mine is the leftover from

last night.  I want to use it up.  Have also a bowl of salt water, using

about a teaspoon of salt to 3 cups of water.  This is for wetting

your hands while you make the rice ball.

First wash your hands.  Dip you hands in the bowl of salted

water to keep it a little wet so the rice doesn't stick to your

hands while molding the rice ball.  Put a dab of salt to season

the rice ball (about 1/4 tsp).  Too much water on your hands

will make the rice ball soggy so don't over do it.

I put a pickled plum in the center of the rice ball.

Make sure you remove the pit from the pickled plum.

Using both palms and fingers, hold the rice and mold it into a

triangle. You can make a round rice ball if the triangle is too

difficult. But it really isn't.  Cup the pointed corners with your fingers

and press down to make the mountain shape.  Then turn the 

rice ball and repeat until all three corners have a nice peak.

A snow covered Mt. Fuji.

This is a small Onigiri.  I used 1/4 sheet of the nori and

cut it into smaller pieces to wrap it. You can sprinkle

the Onigiri with roasted sesame seeds or Furikake, if you like.

This onigiri is too small for the sculptors. 

So I eat it.  So good!  

The only people I know who call Inari sushi Footballs are my Japanese-American friends. When I first heard it called that way,  I laughed.  I didn't understand anything about the game because I had just moved from Japan but I knew what a football looked like and I could see the resemblance.  In Japan, we call Inari zushi Oinari-san, with an honorific "o" and "san" at the beginning and end.  It's because Inari also happens to be the Japanese mythological God of fertility.  It turns out that this God has a fox servant who loves deep fried tofu.

Don't ask me how a fox acquired a taste for such food but if you visit a shrine or temple in Japan where Inari is worshipped, you will sometimes find an Inari sushi or a piece of deep fried Tofu hanging in a place as an offering to Inari and the fox. I hear Buddhist monks don't encourage this practice but worshipers do it.  Now God Inari, the Fox and the Sushi share the same name: Oinari-san. 

In the last ten years, Inari sushi has become very popular in the US.  If there is a market that sells sushi, I usually find Inari along with California and Spicy tuna rolls.  But I never buy them.  I find store made Inaris terribly sugary and the sushi rice is often dry from sitting in the refrigerated display.  I know the health department imposes certain rules but sushi should never go in the fridge.  Inaris should be eaten right away when they are plumpy and juicy.

Inaris are easy to make at home. Kids love them.  When my son Sakae was in highschool, I would make a large plate of inaris as an afternoon snack  He would bring a half a dozen of his waterpolo team mates ( big guys) over and within minutes, all the inaris would disappear along with everything else in the fridge. 

Marking an inari is like stuffing a pillow with feathers.  Same theory applies. Try to get the stuffing to reach the corners but don't over stuff.  Start by stuffing the seasoned tofu pouches with plain sushi rice. When you get comfortable making inaris, you can try mixing plain sushi rice with vegetables.  If braising vegetables like I did in this recipe is too much work, you can shred raw carrots or slice up some cucumbers, rub them with a little salt, squeeze out the excess water and put them in the sushi rice.  Be creative.

RECIPIES

FOOTBALLS WITH PLAIN SUSHI RICE - Junior Varsity

What you need to make Footballs - Inaris are two things: Seasoned Tofu Pouches and Sushi Rice. 

Serves 4

SEASONED TOFU POUCHES:

16 Deep fried tofu pieces (Four pieces in a package. See picture.) - In Japanese deep fried tofu is called Age or Abura age 

1 1/2 cups Dashi (here is the link) or Dried Maitake mushrooms dashi (here is the link for the vegan recipe)

3 1/2 Tbls Sugar

1 1/2 Tbls Mirin

3 Tbls Soy sauce

This Oagesan brand contains 4 inari pouches.

Deep fried tofu pouches are sold in either small or large pieces. The small ones are the size of one Inari pouch.  If they are large, slice them crosswise in half and you have two Inari pouches.  Blanch the pouches in hot water to remove the excess oil before seasoning them.  Drain well.

Cook the blanched tofu pouches in dashi, sugar, mirin and soy sauce over low heat until the deep fried tofu pouches absorb most of the broth.  Remove from heat.  Store in a tupperware.  

The inaris will absorb most of the seasoned broth.  You want

the inaris to have some broth left in them so they come out

moist when you eat them

SUSHI RICE:

(makes enough rice to stuff 16 inari sushi)

1 3/4 cups short or medium grain white rice

1 3/4 cups water

2 inch piece dried konbu seaweed (optional)

Vinegared dressing for Rice:

4 Tbls rice vinegar

2 1/2 Tbls sugar

2/3 tsp salt

Rinse the rice and drain.  Cook the rice with the measured water and a piece of

dried konbu seaweed in the rice cooker or in a pot.  Follow manufacturer's instructions

for steaming rice.  Discard the seaweed. 

When the rice is cooked, transfer it to a large bowl.  Add the vinegared dressing by pouring it evenly all over the rice.  Cut the vinegar into the rice with a rice paddle or wooden spatula. Toss gently.  Make sure the vinegar is incorporated into the rice evenly.  

Slit one side of the seasoned pouch.  "Gently" squeeze some of the broth and open the pouch using your fingers.  Don't squeeze too much of the broth out and be careful not to tear the pouch.  If you do, chop it up and put it into the sushi rice or eat it!  You should be able to put 1/3 cup or more sushi rice in each pouch. Close the pouch so the rice doesn't spill out. Fold one end on top of the other to seal and then the pouch over to the other side so the seal is at the bottom. That will hold the pouch together.  Makes 16 footballs.

GARNISH:

4 Tbls roasted sesame seeds

Sushi Ginger Recipe  (here is the link)

Braised Carrot and burdock 

1 medium carrot

1/2 burdock

1 Tbls vegetable oil

1 Tbls sugar

2/3 Tbls soy sauce

Peel the carrot and burdock and cut them into 1/8 inch cubes.

Heat oil in a frying pan and saute the cut vegetables over medium heat. Add sugar and soysauce and lower heat to a simmer. Cook until most of the liquid is absorbed, about 5 minutes. Set aside.

Braised Shitake mushrooms (here is the link) should be made in advance.

Slice The braised mushrooms and then chop finely.

Combine the chopped braised Shitake, Burdock and Carrots and mix them into the sushi rice. If there is too much juice in the vegetables, squeeze out excess before mixing them into the sushi rice.  

I always keep a jar of dried shitake mushrooms around.  Braised, they make a nice condiment for noodles, Inari (here is the link) and Chirashi -sushi.  You can slice them up or use whole.

RECIPE

6 Dried Shitake mushrooms, reconstituted in water

6 Tbls Shitake mushroom water (from soaking)

2 Tbls Sugar

1 1/2 Tbls Soy Suace

Reconstitute the dried shitake mushrooms in a bowl of water.  After 30 minutes, the mushrooms will hydrate and look full. They look gorgeous.   Trim stems and discard.  

In a small saucepan, combine Shitake mushrooms, shitake mushroom water, sugar, soysauce and cook until most of the liquid is absorbed.  Turn off heat.  

Keeps in the fridge for about a week. 

Finely chopped braised shitake mushrooms on the

left side of the dish.  The right side is braised burdock and

carrots.  They will be used for making inari  

or chirahsi sushi.

I missed Ana's afternoon walk yesterday. I was mailing out the announcements for Sakai's art show and my friends in Echo Park invited me over for dinner, so I had to leave early.  Ana gets two walks a day. Sakai gets up no later than 6 am (This sculptor works like a farmer.) walks Ana, eats a hearty breakfast and goes to his studio. With all the pounding that's been going on in the studio, however, by early afternoon, Ana needs a break from the sculptor's garden.  That's when she comes to me with a tennis ball in her mouth to remind me it's time to go outside and play. I still have to finish peeling the chestnuts for the rice I am making and answer a few e-mails.  Ana waits patiently in the patio.  Her ears perk up when I call her name.   

These California grown Chestnuts are one of the signs that fall is finally coming. Chestnuts are easier to peel when they are fresh. I slit a cross in the shell and briefly boil them in salt water for about 5 minutes.  After they have cooled down a bit, I peel off the hard shell, then the bark like skin and get to the bright yellow meat.  It takes me about 20 minutes to peel 15 chestnuts.  I am going to make the chestnut rice in a donabe rice cooker but first the walk.   

RECIPE

Serves 6

15 Chestnuts in their shell

1 tsp salt for soaking the chestnuts

2 cups Short grain white rice

3 Tbls Sweet rice

2 inch piece Konbu seaweed (optional)

1 Tsp salt

1 Tsp light color soy sauce 

2 1/4 cups of water 

1-2 Tbls roasted sesame seeds 

Equipment: Donabe rice cooker or Electric rice cooker.

Soak the chestnuts in warm water for about an hour. Soaking will soften the shell of the chestnut.  Cut and cross with a knife on the flat side of the chestnuts.  Peel the chestnuts.  

Put the peeled chestnuts in a bowl of warm water with the measured salt for about 30 minutes.  Drain water.  Slice the chestnuts into 1/2-inch pieces.  In a medium pot of water, put the chestnuts and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer for about 10 minutes.  Drain and set aside.  

Rinse the short grain and sweet rice together.  Put the rice in a bowl with enough water to cover the rice.  Soak for about 15 minutes.  Drain.  

Combine the rice, chestnuts, salt, soy sauce, konbu seaweed and measured water and cook in a donabe rice cooker,  electric rice cooker or regular pot as you would cook steamed rice  Gently toss the rice and serve in individual rice bowls.  Garnish with roasted sesame seeds if you like.

The black square is the konbu seaweed.

Discard the konbu.  You can eat this.  It's great fiber.

MENU SUGGESTIONS: CHESTNUT RICE, ROASTED EGGPLANT WTIH SCALLIONS AND GINGER, TUNA SASHIMI, VINEGARED OCTOPUS

Off she goes!  

Note: Chestnut Rice makes a nice accompaniment to almost any fish or meat dish. I use a konbu based vegetarian broth so this would make a nice dish for vegans. I cooked the Chestnut rice in a donabe rice cooker. I also did a story in the Los Angeles Times on Donabe Rice Cooking, which features the donabe rice cooker.

and goes into more detail about  how to use the donabe rice cooker.

My new electric rice cooker broke down a couple of weeks ago.  I have to take it down to the service shop in Gardena but the heat and perrenial traffic discourage me from driving. There is another reason why I am not in a rush to fix my fancy rice machine which looks like R2D2.  I can cook a much better rice in a donabe rice cooker. 

I did a donabe story for the Los Angeles Times (here is the link) in March. I wrote three rice recipes but the Mushroom Rice recipe did not make it into the story for limited newspaper space.  Since then, I made the mushroom dish many times and found a way to keep the fragrance of the mushrooms more in tact.  I do not add the mushrooms until the last few minutes of cooking. By doing so, I let the mushrooms cook in the steam of the rice.  This works especially well with such aromatic mushrooms as maitake, shitake and matsutake (matsutake will no be in season until the fall).  You can also do truffles but I would just shave them into the rice after the rice is fully cooked because they don't need cooking.  I like to garnish the mushroom rice with Yuzu rind, which adds a refreshing citrusy fragrance on top of the earthy mushrooms.  That's what I call food perfume.

Recipe:

(This recipe works for both donabe rice cooker and electric rice cooker)

2 1/4 cups medium grain rice (equals 3 cups Donabe 180 ml cup)

15 oz water  

3 Tbls Sake

3 Tbls Light color soy sauce (Usukuchi shoyu)

1 package of shimeji mushrooms or a combinations of 1/2 package of shimeji mushrooms and 3 medium size shitake mushrooms  or 1/2 package of Maitake

Garnish options:

1 Tbls yuzu or lime rind

Roasted sesame seeds, shichimi pepper, sansho pepper, chopped Mitsuba leaves, Cut Nori seaweed

Rinse rice and let stand in the strainer for 15 minutes.

Trim ends of mushrooms and separate them into individual pieces. If using shitake mushrooms, slice them into 1/4 inch pieces. Set aside.

Put the rinsed rice, light color soysauce and sake in the donabe or electric rice cooker. Mix the sauce and sake into the rice. Let stand for 15 minutes.

Cook donabe over medium high heat for 15-17 minutes or until the steam comes out "vigorously" from the ventilation hole. Turn off heat and let stand for 15 minutes.

Open the donabe, using pot holders so you don't burn your hands. Add the sliced mushroom and close both the inner and upper lids. Let stand for another 5 minutes.

Open the donabe and gently toss the rice with the mushrooms. You may have some toasted rice on the bottom which is good.

Garnish with yuzu rind and/or other recommended garnishes.

The rice tastes best  when served right away.

When we got back to Binah's apartment in Portland, it was past six pm. Binah and Sakae's two cats were very hungry. They were rubbing against Sakae, begging for attention. Custom1 is the fat one. Sexytime is the skinny shy one. I watch Sexytime take the cat food out of the dish and eats the nibble off the floor. Weird habit. Binah thinks it's because Custom1 eats everything in the two cat bowls. No wonder Custom1 is nearly double in size of Sexytime.

These cats were rescued together when they were kittens. They are sisters. Oregon humane societies don't allow separating the litter and don't kill. The cats both have spotty beige coloring that matches the beige color of the carpet in the apartment. Sakae's roommate Troy

finds the cats rather ugly but Binah knows Troy only half means it.

I was still feeling the wines from the wine tasting we did in Carlton but all the better to get into a cooking mood. We had the vegetables from the Portland Farmers Market and San Juan Island's farm stand to cook with- peas, baby beats, garlic, spring onions, asparagus, and fresh lettuce. They were all so fresh, we were munching them as we made salad and prepared them for the grill. I took the marinating lamb chops and pork out of the fridge. These also came from the farm stand in Lopez Island, Washington.

Sakae asked me to show him how of make grilled rice balls - Yaki onigiri. I am happy to teach him. Yakionigiri is plain rice, molded into triangles and grilled with soy sauce. I use brown or white short or medium grain rice which grains are stickier and hold together better, especially while you are grilling them on the barbecue.

While we were waiting for the rice to cook, Sakae assembled the Weber grill I bought him at Lowes earlier in the day. This grill is compact and fits perfectly in the porch. I was trying to get Sakae to buy a charcoal grill but he wanted a no fuss propane grill. What's the point of doing a barbecue if you are going propane? I argued with him at the store but I am talking to a son who is studying environmental law in Oregon of all places. "It's not good for you," he said to me and he was talking about you, me and the earth. I couldn't not argue back.

We let the rice to cool down so we could mold the rice balls with our hands. I demonstrated a few. Sakae molded them in varying sizes and shapes. It took a few tries to get them into the firm triangle shape, which is the ideal shape. They could also be oval. Binah made some too. Hers came out perfect from the first try.

I opened the bottle of Voignier I got from the wine tasting we did at Penner-Ash. It was very nice and crispy. The lamb chops came out and juicy. Plenty of fat on it. Binah loves the bacony part. She demonstraed by eating the fat. Chinese people are so daring. Troy got the shivers. The rice balls turned out good. Firm and crispy on the outside. They could have been a bit softer and fluffier in the inside. I would have browned them with a little more soy sauce too. Practice will make perfect. Troy said, it finally feels like summer. My visit to the Pacific Northwest was ending. I was a little sad to leave Sakae but that's how it is. It won't be too long before I will see him again.

GRILLED RICE BALLS - YAKIONIGIRI

Serves 4

• 3 cups fresh cooked short grain brown or rice, cooled down so you don't burn your hands.
• 1/2 cup soy sauce for basting
• Basting brush

1. Make six to eight rice balls, either in triangle or round shapes. Use a bowl of water and wet your hands before you start molding the rice. Don't press into the rice balls too much. You want them fluffy inside and firm on the outside. This takes a little practice.
2. Grill the rice balls on both sides until they are crispy and sightly toasted. Start basting the rice balls with soy sauce until they are nicely brown. Serve while piping hot.

 Kitchen note: You can stuff the Onigiri with pitted pickled plums (umeboshi).

Rice with Peas - Brown or White Rice? That is the question

I have to make a confession. For the last couple of weeks, I have been eating too much sugar.  This is what happens when a good bakery like Huckleberry opens in my neighborhood.   But thank goodness to Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Shop's closed. 

This week, I have amended my eating pattern a little, starting Tuesday with a menu that is basically Macrobiotic.  Brown Rice with Fresh Peas and a clear Spring soup with Fresh Peas, Tofu and Wakame seaweed (see recipe below). This with some pickled napa cabbage and an apple for dessert and I feel like my sins will be forgiven.  Notice I am still trying to finish up the Fresh Peas i bought from the market last week.

Brown Rice with Peas is very simple. Briefly blanch the peas in boiling saltwater and drain. You just mix the barely cooked peas into steamed brown rice.  Sprinkle salt (fleur de sel)  and roasted black or white sesame seeds for flavor.  I make the brown rice in my bulky twelve year old Panasonic electric pressure cooker SR -106 N that looks a little like R2D2. It's a very reliable pot that gives me absolutely no fear of pressure cooking. I set the timer for 30 minutes and walk away. The rice comes out chewy and nutty, which is impossible to achieve in a regular pot or electric ricecooker.  Even though this kitchen R2D2 doesn't sing like my electric rice cooker, I love it.

If you choose to make the dish with White Rice, that's fine too but it just won't be as wholesome as Brown rice.  Cook the white rice in a regular electric rice cooker or  a heavy pot and add the peas at the very end to give them a brief steam. Sprinkle salt and roasted black or white sesame seeds.   

Try to introduce more brown rice or white rice mixed with whole grains into your daily life. You will feel healthier and live longer.

I adore fresh peas but must admit, I didn't grow up eating them.  Since moving to Los Angeles inthe 70s, my mother's idea of luxury was being able to stock the GE freezer with frozen vegetables and meat.  No one we knew in Japan owned a refrigerator with a big freezer.  The norm was to shop for fresh foods everyday.  But as soon as we moved into our new surroundings, we adapted rather quickly to America.

We found going to the supermarket a real adventure.  I was in awe with the frozen foods section. Stocked with a variety of ice creams and popsicles in bright  colors of blue, yellow, greenand orange. Pizza, TV dinners, pies, fish sticks and frozen vegetables.  I helped mother load up the shopping cart.  When American people invited us to their homes, they often took us on a tour of their house; some people even showed us what was inside their freezers.  Our next door neighbor kept meat of a half a cow in their basement freezer.  She told us you could order the meat of a whole cow if you wanted.  My mother was thrilled to live the American dream.  She went all out frozen.  (she also went all out Campbelll soup but that's another story).

Frozen vegetables became mother's indispensable food item. A whole box of green-giant often went straight into the pot or wok and there it was  a lovely vegetable soup or fried rice, ready to be eaten by her five hunger children.  Flavor? They didn't taste much like real vegetables but my mother's frozen peas into the fried rice actually enhanced the dish. The fried rice was put together so quickly that the peas were never given a chance to fully defrost. Sometime I'd bite into a still frozen pea and it would sting my teeth.  As awful as this may sound, I rather enjoyed the cold sensation. Fried rice with frozen peas was my favorite after school snack. 

Of course, you cannot compare fresh peas to frozen peas. I was invited over to my friends, Russ and Kathy's for dinner the other night and they served us a bowl of beautiful fresh peas with home grown miniature carrots. I am sure they spent a good hour or more shucking the peas. They must really love us. I kept asking for another helping but soon they ran out. Wanting to replicate the fresh peas dish, I went to the farmer's market the next morning and bought several pounds of fresh peas.  I am in good shape for a week. Lots of shucking to do.