Reflections

Summer princess in the snow

2012-02-12T00:30:00.001+01:00

My cat Natsuki ( = Summer princess in Japanese ) , is going through her first winter together with me.
While she loves going outside in summer ,

I wasn't sure how she would react to sub-zero temperatures, but I shouldn't have worried.
She often goes outside during the night ( with temperatures below -5°C ) to hunt,

even though in this picture she seems to have found the perfect spot away from the cold,
on top of the central heating.

It's hard getting good pictures at night, because she runs around a lot and I can't see her in the dark ^^.

So I have taken a few last Sunday when the sun was shining ( even though it was still below 0°C ! )
( just click on any picture to open a large size slideshow)

Stalking though the snow ( my very own snow leopard ).

and hunting for things under the snow.

(

Till soon !

First Snow

2011-12-16T22:26:00.001+01:00

The weather forecast spoke of lower temperatures and rain, with snow in the higher regions of Belgium , so imagine my surprise when I looked outside only minutes ago to see the first snow of this year fall.
Within minutes , the front yard looked like this :

Only on the flash exposure below (the picture above is 1/6th second ) do the falling snowflakes show up.

My new cat , Natsuki , who joined the household in august after my first cat Kedam died earlier this year ( she'd been with me for sixteen years ), was so excited about the snow , she immediately ran outside to explore.

It'll all be gone in the morning : the temperatures are between 0 and 4 °C now. That's not low enough for a permanent snow cover, which is good, because driving a bike on snowy roads is never easy.

Hyper Japan 2011 London

2011-11-28T00:34:00.046+01:00

Visiting the Hyper Japan each year is an excellent excuse to go to London ( as if I need one ^^)
The event is getting more popular each year, so much so that it collapsed under it's own success this year.
The building was filled to capacity and to let more people in would be dangerous, so on the second day of my visit , I had to spend 3 hours in a queue waiting for people to leave , so we could get in.

Kanon Wakeshima , a popular J-Pop cellist , visited the show for a few short performances and a talkshow.

Kanon is heavily into Gothic Lolita ^^.

The show had a cosplay cafe this year , with different theme each day : the theme on Sunday was 'maid'. I visited it on Sunday for some small uebersweet pancakes and lots of free green tea with milk. The food wasn't to write home about and the less said about the service , the better :) but it was a lot of fun seeing everybody scurrying about in their outfits. No pictures allowed in the cafe itself, but they did come up on stage on Saturday in their maid costumes.

Here's the cafe's 'boss' Miyo about to explain their signature dance to everybody.

Pretty soon , the stage filled up and everybody joined in the fun : an officeworker with blue hair (?!), the plumber, a girl from the cafe, a hapless lorry driver who only came in to ask directions ( Ok I made that up : he had just made a delivery ) , 'boss' Miyo and the show presenter.

I would have joined in , but I was busy taking pictures. Too bad, a biker on stage in full gear would have really completed this lineup :)

Later that day, the dance group Hiroko Tanaka WAKAYAGI-RYU Nihon Buyo performed ( you can also see them on my Matsuri 2011 post, where the stage was so crowded I didn't get any decent pictures of the show :( , but I did get a few nice backstage shots of the fabulous kimonos they were wearing.
(I found a way to bypass the BLOG slideshow. Left-click on the pictures to see them in full size : it should open in a new window , where you can enlarge them to full size).
My apologies for the pictures where the feet are cut off : blame those horrible large speakers in the front of the stage.

As always , the dances and the music were wonderful and their kimonos were to die for ^^.
I wish I could have filmed it, but I took lots of pictures to make up for that.

This young man is performing the dance of the chrysanthemums , a flower so popular in Japan when it was introduced from China that it was made into the crest of the Japanese Emperor.

The music didn't start right away , which gave me a chance to take a few good shots of his kimono and of his very shiny obi ^^.

Another dance by the same dancer , this one with an umbrella ( and no, it wasn't "singing in the rain")

Pity : I only took two shots of this one.

The next dancer was very elegant too : I'll need to take note of what the dances are about next time..

The last dance was performed by Tanaka Hiroko herself , a contemporary dance composed by herself.

She's been dancing since she was six , for over sixty years now , and believe me, she still moves as fluently as anyone.

I hope I'll see more of this dance at the next Hyper Japan in February .

Kimono de Jack Autumn ( Den Haag - The Netherlands)

2011-10-31T01:58:00.004+01:00

Last weekend I went to the Netherlands to visit the Dutch version of Kimono de Jack,
near The Hague at the Clingendael park, after Kornelia invited me to come.
The Clingendael park is open to the public, except for the Japanese garden there, which is only open to the public twice a year for a few short weeks.

We were very lucky : lovely sunny autumn weather. The trees around the main house and in the whole park are already showing off their beautiful autumn colors.

What better place to hold a Kimono de Jack Autumn ?
It turned out to be a big success : fourteen people showed up in kimono.

On their way to the Garden : Linda , Amy and Amy's friend.

From left to right, Youandi , Ben (Kitty-chan's friend) , Stephanie and Kitty-Chan.

The Japanese garden is built around a small pavilion , complete with two red ornamental bridges, lots of Japanese lanterns, sculptures, etc.. bought in Japan and brought over by boat by one of the former owners.

The garden really looks authentic, with the two bridges , all the mossy banks of the pond, the maples and the lanterns and rock arrangements.

Too bad it's not open in the evening and at night : it'd be a nice place to hold a tsukimi (moon viewing) and drink a a chilled daiginjo or even a Sake spritzer while contemplating the garden in the moonlight.

Everyone gathered at the pavilion for a chat and some lunch.

Mei-ing , Linda and Kornelia. Lovely green. Reminds me of the one Hong made to wear at the 2010 Matsuri , but that fabric was definitely an even darker green.

Amy checking if her friend has a fever ^^.

Charissa ( the girl in the purple hakama ) joined us at the pavilion.

The group photo at the pavilion. Very nice but I prefer the one below :)

Lots of people wanted to pose by the red maple tree : here's Berber.

Kornelia and Stephanie.

Together with Youandi.

Charissa.

Kornelia opening the sliding doors in seiza pose :)

Stephanie in seiza pose too : very nice, but hey, where's the tray with my chilled sake ?

After having fun with the sliding doors , they posed at the corner of the pavilion.

Same shot, with extended sleeve.

I liked the shot above so much, I asked Anne and Berber to pose in The Corner too.

And also Kitty-Chan and Ben from Belgium.

And Mei-ing and Linda.

Kornelia , Stephanie, Anne and Berber showing their musubi.
I missed getting Riga, Tulay, Amy and Youandi for a "corner-shot" , but by that time everyone started leaving the Japanese garden.

An impressive group, considering it's just the second Dutch Kimono de Jack.

Tulay, Amy and Riga. Up till now, I thought only miko wore red hakama ^^ , but I really like how the brown and red go together in Amy's outfit. Tulay ( on the left ) made the obi with the two cats herself !

With everyone's back turned , I could get hold of another musubi-shot : Kitty-chan, Tulay, Riva, Linda and Youandi.

Amy and Charissa showing off their hakama outfits.

Stephanie and Linda in a pensive mood , ^^.

The Kimono Club's signature shot : the zori / tabi rosette.
I didn't get that shot myself, but I got a few nice little details ^^ :

Tulay's red and black zori with a lovely embroidery of a pink... thingy with a string.

Linda's embroidered neko with a bell . Kawai, desu ne ?!

Charissa's hair ornament. Hmm , a kanzashi would have been nice too.I know a Kitty in England who can come up with just the one that'll suit her.

At the Dutch garden , everybody gets ready for the group shot on the ornamental staircase.
We'll need longer staircases if the Kimono de Jack NL keeps growing.

The showing of the sleeves ( from left to right : Berber, Mei-ing, Anne, Tulay, Charissa, Stephanie,
Kornelia , Riga, Amy, Linda, Kitty-chan, Ben, Youandi. ) Lengthwise, I reckon Charissa comes out ahead with Riga and Amy a close second ^^ .

Thanks everybody for a nice day and for posing so nicely : I can't wait till the next KDJ comes around.

( to download pictures here don't save them directly , they're small from here, click on the picture , it'll open a slideshow and then on the Show Original , right-click that and save it.)
I can make HiRes jpg of every photo ( I always photograph in RAW mode ) and I've already uploaded some here in Picasa. If you want anything else in Hires, just ask.

Sushi training

2011-10-21T21:13:00.005+02:00

I learned the proper technique to make thin sushi rolls ( hosomaki ) and reverse sushi rolls ( uromaki) in London with Ikeida Atsuko quite a while ago,so I decided a few weekends ago that I'd practice my technique. I cooked about 4 cups (600 grams) of rice.
(Big mistake , I had to make so much sushi and because I also took photographs I spent more than 3 hours in the kitchen , haha ! )
( click on the pictures to see a larger version )
While the rice was cooking , I prepared strips of avocado ,cooked thin asparagus, strips of carrot, lightly cooked in a little water till they were done but still firm , strips of cucumber and strips of smoked and fresh fish ( tuna and salmon ) and surimi (aka imitation crab sticks). Too much of everything, but you can always eat what's left :)

I also used strips cut from a fillet of smoked herring , because I like the flavor.

The warm rice is put in a hangiri (wooden tub) which has been rinsed well with water so the rice doesn't stick to it. Mine is about 40 cm wide.
(I had already used half the rice, before I took a picture.)

Then I add a mixture of 2 parts rice vinegar , 1 part sugar and a little salt ( for 600 uncooked grams of rice : 8 tablespoons rice vinegar, 4 (unheaped) spoons of white sugar and a teaspoon of salt ), using a spatula to fold it through the rice , while fanning it to cool down. This makes the rice nice and shiny. At first it usually appears too soggy and I used to worry that I put too much mixture on it, but I find it always absorbs the mixture. Keep the hangiri covered with a clean cloth or dishtowel to keep the rice from drying out.

To roll the reverse rolls (uramaki) you definitely need to cover a makisu (bamboo mat) with clingfilm, to keep the rice from sticking to the bamboo.
One uramaki , just made , on the clingfilm covered makisu.

For hygiene, I wear latex gloves when making sushi ( I need XL size cause my hands are so big : I buy these from an industrial tools shop in town : most supermarkets only have S, M and L)

Traditionally hosomaki are made with one ingredient or at most two, but you can make them with three like me. These are from top left to right tuna with carrot and cucumber and three with pickled herring and cucumber.
The uromaki underneath are salmon with carrot and cucumber and roasted sesame seed on the outside.

A hosomaki ( thin roll ) and an uromaki ( which traditionally is made square ). I'm still practicing on the squareness, even though the ones I see in Japan Center aren't that perfectly square either :)
Did you know you have to let sushi rolls with nori on the outside sit for several minutes before cutting them ? The nori absorbs some of the moisture of the rice , sticks better to the rolls and make it easier to cut.

Hosomaki with crab stick carrot and avocado. I used to use my very sharp sashimi knife to cut the rolls, but I found a very sharp deba (shown underneath ) is even better. I use Japanese Suehiro waterstones of 1000 and 6000 grain that let me get a razor sharp edge. If you're not used to sharpening and honing knives , have them sharpened. It's not easy to do it properly.

Two more uramaki rolls , the top one covered in sesame seed, the bottom one in fish roe.

The important thing about uramaki is that you have to keep wetting your hands : the rice sits on the outside and is very sticky. It's easy to forget and before you know the roll comes undone.

Not all my sushi works out though. I really like the rather large and beautiful rainbow trout caviar ( I use it a lot when making sashimi ), so I made a thick roll with rainbow trout on the outside. It still looked OK when in a roll, but when I cut it ,

all the eggs fell off : they didn't stick to the rice. Nothing to do with the rice, it was sticky enough.
Also, there was a bit too much filling.

I'm sure the Japanese have had the same experience with salmon roe, so I cut strips about 1 inch wide and 8 inches long. Out of a small golf-ball sized lump of sushi rice I shaped a flat round shape .,wound a strip of nori around it , leaving a little bit of nori around the top end to hold the roe.
A small dab of wasabi on the rice , arrange a coffee-spoon of roe on top.

Voila, my very first gunkan sushi ( battleship sushi) : the perfect solution to hold my beautiful caviar.

I liked them so much I immediately made four more.

You can wash the commercial packaging of sushi you buy in the shop in the dishwasher at 50 °C ( put the transparent tops flat, or they'll deform, the bottom are much stronger ) and package your sushi to take away.

These are thick uramaki with sesame on the outside ( 2 strips carrot, 2 strips raw salmon, 2 strip cucumber). They're harder to slice , because the rice isn't held together by a nori sheet on the outside. Use a sharp knife and clean it on a wet towel between each cut.

A few more thick uramaki ( salmon, cucumber and carrot )

Needless to say, I spent that evening and the next day eating LOTS of sushi !

Japan Matsuri London 2010

2011-10-08T17:58:00.001+02:00

September 2010 , lovely day and I'm on my way across the Channel looking forward to the 2010 Matsuri in London.

It's being held in and around Old Spitalfields Market , in view of the London Gherkin Building.

I've arrived early and most people are still setting up their stalls.

Lots of food stalls as usual, which is bad news, I'm trying to lose weight.

Here's an interesting fellow : he brews a belgian-type beer that has japanese rice in it to add to the flavour and he claims he does it in Belgium. I accost him immediately with the message that I'm from Belgium, know everything about Belgian beers and have never heard of him. He's not phased at all, haha.

I like his guts : Belgium is the kingdom of beer , it's like going to Japan as a Belgian and starting your own type of sake.

After a taste , I buy a sixpack. I actually ran into him again this year, he helps out at the Japanese Nagami Superstore in Brussels. If he could just lower the price a bit, he'd have a winner.

On the other side of the Market , the practioners of Kendo are gearing up.

Facing the sensei for striking practice.

He's the smallest of the lot, but he attacks his larger opponent with just as much fervor.
Not a good strike though, you're supposed to hit with he bit between the white markers and dead center of the head. He's young, he'll learn.

I always love to hear the playing of the koto. Nothing says 'JAPAN' so much for me as that.

Lovely kimono too!

Two koto's : I'm in heaven :)

You need to be supple to reach for the lowest notes.

Lovely butterflies on that taiko musubi ( the drumlike knot at the back).

Of course, you can't beat this little girl's Hello Kitty yukata when it comes to being kawaii !

No Matsuri would be complete without the Kimono gang : April, Isla, Hong and Lyuba.

Nice to see that lovely green fabric made into a kimono (see : New Ro Kimono on her blog )

Showing off the sleeves.

Huddling together before Winter.

All that posing and shopping makes you hungry, so we go for tapas.

Very nice ensemble too, Lyuba !

That's all for 2010 . Now comes the long wait for the next one.

Japan Matsuri London 2011 - Part 2

2011-10-02T23:22:00.003+02:00

(the new blogs have a slideshow feature : click on the pictures for a view in the slideshow then click on the URL /blogspot/...etc at the bottom left to see the picture directly)

After the opening ceremony , I went to look for the Kimono Club (=Gang).
What a lovely surprise , Priscilla's in town again!

On the left : Priscilla. On the right : Hong giving me a thumbs-up. I'm just checking to see how many people I can fit in at this short a distance.

Ah! April arrives with her friend.

The newest gang-member : Kornelia (in the light blue kimono ).

Everybody's getting ready for the group picture , blissfully unaware that I'm already photographing them.

Apparently April, her friend and Kornelia want 2 copies of this picture. I'll take a note of that.

The members of the dance society were wearing really colourful kimonos with very shiny bows.

The lady on the right is their sensei (teacher). I remember seeing all of them at the Hyper Japan 2011 (I still have to post those pictures too ! )

We moved over to the other side of County Hall , right next to the Thames.

Everybody's chatting away, while smoke is wafting from a nearby stand.

A mikoshi was being carried around. There was so much security around it I couldn't get a clear shot , till somebody's shoulder gave way and they had to rearrange the bearers.

The procession continues, accompanied by shouts of "wasshoi"

One last group picture and it's goodbye Matsuri. Have fun. We'll meet again at the next one.

( to be continued : I'll publish the pics from the 2010 Matsuri and Hyper Japan next)

Japan Matsuri London 2011 - Part 1

2011-09-26T00:35:00.000+02:00

Last Sunday the Japan Matsuri 2011 was held in London : the perfect excuse for me to drive up there and spend a weekend in London.

This year the event was held at County Hall , right next to the Thames : the weather was fine, and the event was drawing a crowd , right from the start.

At the opening ceremony, the ambassador of Japan.

I can't read Japanese, but that has to be a ceremonial barrel of sake.

Everyone's having fun while getting ready for the cracking of the barrel.

Ready ? One, two , three, CRACK....

(to be continued)

Made in Asia 3

2011-03-27T14:52:00.000+02:00

A week ago, the Made in Asia event had its third edition in Brussels.

I'd never heard of it before !

It was TOTAL fun. The exposition floor was divided into several areasof Tokyo :

Akihabara for videogames

Harajuku for fashion

Shibuya for activities

Ikebukuro for magazines and fanzines

Shinjuku for all the shops
Also four small podiums and a movie viewing theatre. Heaven !

Welcome to Harajuku !

This is the Shinjuku area where the shops are !

(Why are there no hugging pillows with male characters ? )

They even had furin here ! Furin are Japanese wind chimes that are hung on the porch or near a window in summer. The summer breeze will make them chime. The ones in the picture are iron bells, they also exist in glass. I have two at home.

For Japanese people the sound of the furin's chime is forever connected to summertime.

The (french) sign says that's it's a custom to write a wish on the paper tag and every chime of the furin will remind you of that wish and encourage you to work hard to achieve it. Nice, but I think they made that up :) .

At the center of the expo , was the Japanese village, with small gardens, lots of information stands, a massage demonstration parlor, a tatami, where the martial arts were being demonstrated. The lighting was so bad, I couldn't get any decent pictures.

The Hashi shop where I got some lovely hashioki (chopstick rests).

This is the stand of Kino Junko who teaches calligraphy and furishiki-folding.

I bought these furishiki there ( Kino-san was so happy I bought them she threw in three folded cranes ).

45 minutes to go and I'm standing in line waiting for the famous mangaka Nobuhiro Watsuki and his wife Kurosakito Kaoru to arrive. He's so camera shy, we were all warned not to take any pictures because he doesn't want his ( and his wife's ) face plastered all over the Internet.
The other line to the right of me is waiting for Kanno Hiroki ( animator and character designer , who worked on FullMetal Alchemist, Rahxphon,Eureka 7 ) . I love his work too, but I haven't got anything of him to sign.

OK, fair enough. So no picture. He signed my Rurouni Kenshin Volume 1.
The "for Walter" is in silver ink pen , the signature in gold ink pen. His wife stamped it with his hanko signature seal ( the thingy in red ). You can see the same kanji ( characters ) of his name on the left page.

This is now one of my prized possessions :) and it will NOT be sold on Ebay. Not ever...

Sorry for not blogging for so long!

2010 Hyper Japan London

2010-10-05T23:13:00.187+02:00

I still have to blog about the Matsuri 2 weeks ago :) but I'm back to London for another event.
It's near where the Matsuri was , so I get to park for free again at White Rows , where the whole second floor is reserved for motorbikes only. Woohoo !

I'm meeting a couple of friends on the show : April, Lyuba, Hong and Francesco.

From left to right : Lyuba and Hong

Really lovely kimonos they've got on !

Interesting geta Hong is wearing. I wondered why she looked so much taller :)
That's a very pretty flower motif. Actually , they're not geta they're okobo.

Francesco is going to get fitted into samurai warlord gear ! I don't know if that's an obi, but April will definitely tell me what it is. It looks really pretty.

Getting ready for war is like getting ready to ride a bike. Tedious minutes of getting dressed just right because once you're riding, you can't adjust it anymore.
Don't want any arrows getting through :)

Getting the helm fitted . It's really shiny.

Ready for war ! Bring them on ! Better yet, bring my horse : we'll go get them.

Francesco-sama and Hong-hime

They look totally lovely together, don't they ?

My hero! "Must you really go off to war?"
"A man's got to do what a man's got to do, Hime-sama."

This is my favourite picture : totally natural, no posing.

(I uploaded this picture to Picasa click on the picture to get a really large version )

After the show ,we went to eat something near Japan Center.As it began to rain umbrellas came out and Hong put on a rain garment to protect her kimono. I HAD to take a few shots.

"Wat are you taking pictures of me for ? "

Lovely looking fabric , that is. I never knew such a garment existed : I learn something new every day.

Aha ! Food : glorious food ! And good company too, what more can you ask for ?

My seafood sushi : yellowtail, tuna , mackerel, salmon , salmon roe , tuna , octopus and my first ever sea urchin( the yellow bits in the middle ). It was very tasty!

Hong's deep fried "somethings".

Lyubas tempura

Francescos salmon 'carpaccio ?'

Click here for the set on Flickr ( if you need the full size version of any, mail me )

Part of the Hyper Japan dealt with modern fashion and Lolita is a big part of that. These models come from all over. There's even a few from Japan to answer everybodies questions.

Lolita overload ! All the models crowding together on the stage.

Day 2 on the Hyper Japan.

At the kimono fitting stall , I saw this young woman. That's a very nice green.

While on the other side of the world , lots of Japanese are discovering Western fastfood and takeaway (which is not so good for their health) ,
Atsuko-san (from my cooking lessons) is over here in the UK trying to win us over to Japanese healthy cooking.There's a certain irony there.

I'm going to tell you all about this wonderful japanese way of packed lunch!


I caught a fish THIS BIG yesterday ! ( OK, That's NOT what she was saying, haha :)

Compare the picture above to the previous picture . Is that commentator frozen in place :) or what ?

Can YOU spot the Pikachu in this picture ?

Behold. The mighty Bento box!

You put the rice in the bottom half.
The other goodies go in the top half.

The models from the Lolita event are joining in to have a go at bento making. Their abilities ranged from "I can cook an egg", " I only prepare spaghetty" to " I never cook" ( the Japanese girl on the right ! ). At least they were totally honest about it. The blond girl on the left is a Belgian ! We're everywhere these days :)

2010 Japan Art Festival

2010-09-26T21:04:00.038+02:00

The Japan Art Festival moved from 'faraway' Richmond to Central London, which suits me fine, because it's a lot easier to get to.

I had a go at Origami ( Paperfolding ) ( go on ! ask me what a valley fold is ! ) took a Calligraphy lesson ( I can draw the kanji for tree !) .

My favourite lesson of the day was the Bento cooking lesson though , given by Atsuko and Masami from Atsuko's Kitchen. Their lessons are always a lot of fun and you get to eat the food you prepare afterwards.

Hello everybody! We're going to make Bento !


The ingredients : steamed corn, chicken teriyaki,cooked egg, grilled broccoli, lettuce, tomatoes, edamame, ham and cheese, beans in a freshly made sesame sauce and ofcourse Japanese rice, freshly cooked.

Bento isn't just some rice and a few vegetables and meat, fish or chicken you chuck together.

For it to be a balanced meal , you should have half rice, half other ingredients : some meat or chicken or fish and vegetables.

The ingredients should be yellow, red, green , black , white, brown . They should be fresh and preferably in season , for the highest nutritional value.

A good Bento should contain a boiled, a steamed, a grilled, a fried and a marinaded ingredient to keep it interesting to eat. Some raw vegetable is good too.

Cool down the cooked foods well before closing the box : slowly cooling food will give germs plenty of time to multiply. Don't use watery or soupy dishes for the same reason.

Keeping it cooled is very important , since it's usually prepared in the morning ( to save time , you can cook some of the dishes the day before ) and you will be eating it at noon.

Because the food is cool when you eat it,the flavour will be less than when you eat it warm or hot, so slightly increase the amount of spice or herbs used.
Presentation is important too : just like us Belgians :) , Japanese eat with their eyes first and arranging the food is just as important as cooking it right.


The ingredients : steamed corn, chicken teriyaki, boiled egg, grilled broccoli, raw lettuce, tomatoes, edamame, ham and cheese, boiled beans in a freshly made sesame sauce and of course Japanese steamed rice, freshly cooked.

The right ingredients are important : Masami showing the mirin ( sweet sake ) that was used for the sesame sauce

The sauce is made like this :

1 Tablespoon of white roasted sesame seeds
1/2 Tablespoon of mirin
1/2 Tablespoon of sugar
1 teaspoon of soy sauce

If you don’t have pre-roasted sesame seeds, roast the seeds briefly in a small dry frying pan.
Then grind the seeds in a large suribachi (Japanese mortar) for five minutes till the sesame oil comes out and it turns into a paste. Add the sugar and crush some more. Add the mirin and soy sauce and mix.

Here we mixed the sauce with the cooked beans.


Bento Box 1 : the 'purple' rice has a mixture of dried red shiso mixed through it. It all looks so tasty : doesn't it make you hungry?

Bento box 2 : the little rolls are made by putting a square slice of cheese on a square slice of ham , roll them up , cut in half and keep together with a cute cocktail stick. Kawaii !

Bento box 3 : Actually one of these 3 boxes was made by me : can YOU guess which one ? :)

I had a lot of fun making my bento and even more fun eating it. In fact , I immediately signed up for another lesson on the next day :) Double fun !

Japanese vegetables

2010-07-23T23:21:00.000+02:00

After neglecting my vegetable garden for years ( well I do plant potatoes in them each year ! ), I decided to start again this year.

I bought seed for a few vegetables I never grew before , just for the fun of it.
These are the seed packages : European long white radish ( not really "daikon", but still 10 to 15 cm long ) and "negi" : Ichikura onions ( look a lot like leek, but thinner ) . I can still sow the radish, but for the onions I'm 2 months late :( Ah well, next year for sure!

These are the seed packets for Green Pak Choy ( well known in China but also used in Japan ) and Mizuna ( which I'd never seen before in any shop here ).

3 weeks ago I sowed a small row of Mizuna ( right of the picture ) and 1 week ago half a row of Pak Choy and resowed Mizuna in those spots where the first didn't show : to be honest the first seed was 2 years old , haha!

It's been terribly hot and dry the past few weeks (30 °C and more ) so I water them well once a week.


Pak Choy shoots on the left, Mizuna on the right

The 3 week old Mizuna is growing pretty well , almost 20 cm tall , although I have no clue when to harvest it , since I've never seen it before. I also need to look for recipes : only my tsukemono cookbook (pickling recipes) refers to them as Kyo-na ( Kyoto greens) used in Kyo-na Shio-zuke ( salted Kyo-na greens : a traditional winter recipe ?!) .
The smaller ones are only a week old : surprisingly unaffected by snails ( maybe they don't like Japanese ? )

The Pak Choy shoots are also unharmed ( although if it rains next week the snails may reappear )

This is New Zealand Spinach ( some species of which are native to Japan ). This is the edible species Tetragonia tetragonioides ( which I'm sure you knew already ).
It's one of my favourites , because it's actually a succulent, grows also in hot weather and the slugs and snails avoid it like the plague :)

Pick the leaves, wash all the sand off and you got a great alternative to regular spinach. It doesn't wilt in hot summer weather like regular spinach.

Secondhand Oldies

2010-07-21T08:23:00.000+02:00

I've never been really interested in cars and even less since I drive a motorbike , but every day going to work I drive past a secondhand dealership that for years and years was completely specialized in vintage Fiat 500 cars.

This is the car that put the C in compact :) And you can have it in ( almost) every colour imaginable. It sports a 500 cc engine, which is less than my motorbike's 600 cc, but still it seats 4 people.

Last week I saw a few remarkable other "cars" in the dealer's display parking lot.

If you want to take the whole family ( nephews, uncles, grandparents ) somewhere , you need no longer discuss endlessly who is going to sit in who's car, you buy this thing and then the only discussion will be who gets to sit on the top deck :)

Look at all the space inside!

'Young Bill the Second' can be yours for "only" 25000 Euros . You'll need a special permit to transport people in it , but hey : it has a 11000 cc diesel (!) so it definitely won't slow down uphill even with ALL of your family inside.

The dealer now also sells VW buses and vans these days. Very popular back then. That front look with the round lights and orange blinkers brings back a few memories :)

The agony of choice : which one to choose ? They're both black. They both have two doors. They both have four seats , even if the ones in the back aren't very comfy. You'll definitely raise a few eyebrows when you park either one in your driveway. And in today's traffic jams they go equally slow.
The one on the left is more compact. The one on the right is ... simply more of everything else.

And finally there's this monstrosity , listed in 50 worse cars ever, the shame of Ford : the Edsel. I'd heard of it , I'd seen pictures, but the real thing is still a shock.

I mean : a 6.9 LITER 8 cylinder engine ? Even the Porsche 996 ( see above) 'only' has a 3,4 liter 6 cylinder :)

Ngamantha Khayanchinthi si Piyan.

2010-02-12T22:40:00.010+01:00

This is a very easy and tasty Vietnamese dish that's a favourite of mine and that I haven't made in a long time , but now it's making a comeback. In my kitchen anyway.

You need ( for 4 small eaters or 2 rather large ones )

2 small sharks (about 600 grams)
about 2 teaspoons of salt
2-3 tablespoons of oil (I use olive oil )
4-5 cloves garlic, crushed ( the ones in the picture aren't crushed yet )

1/2 tablespoon chopped fresh coriander
6 tablespoons tomato puree ( about 2 of these small cans )

the fresh juice of one lime ( I like adding a bit more like one and a half)

1 teaspoon chili flakes or 1 knife-point of powdered chili
2- 3 tablespoons or 70-100 ml water

In the example I use half of these to cook for 2 portions : this dish can be kept in the fridge for several days. If you restrain yourself from eating it all right away, that is.

This is the shark ( in Belgium it's called a dog shark , in fact it's the smallest of the cat shark family :)

For a very long time in Belgium it was usual to sell it as 'sea eel' (which is also more expensive) but that's illegal. Of course every good cook ( like me) knew it was shark all along ( eel doesn't have those telltale two fins on the back ).

Preheat an oven to 200 degrees Celsius.

Rub (massage ) your shark firmly all over with salt.

Cut it into equal pieces , about a finger long.

Oil a deep baking dish with about 1 tablespoon of oil. The dish needs to be deep enough so 3-4 cm remain unfilled to put the sauce on top.

I always push the fish cuts in vertically till the dish is filled ,

but if using only one shark, you can just arrange them in the bottom.

Heat a tablespoon of oil in a pan over medium heat ( electric 6-7)

and fry the garlic until the tips start to turn golden (light brownish). Not any longer because they'll fry on till you add the tomato puree. (Click on the picture for a closer look )

Add coriander ( it'll wilt and turn brown immediately), keep stirring for a minute

and then add tomato puree and lime juice.

Keep stirring on a medium heat for about 5 to 6 minutes.

Soon the sauce will give off an irresistible aroma, which "will create total confidence in the cook" (quote from original recipe ).
Taste and stir in a bit more lime juice if you like.

Pour a few tablespoons of water in the dish , enough so it'll cook the fish.

Use a spoon and a spatula to arrange the sauce on top of the fish.

TIP : This is a messy sauce. Do NOT DO this wearing your finest silk blouse or kimono, you'll never get the spots out.

Sprinkle over the chili flakes or powder.

I use chili pepper I bought in Mexico, it's very hot so one (large) knife tip is enough.

Set the oven to 220 degrees Celsius and bake for 25 - 30 minutes. This smaller amount only takes 20 minutes.

The exact cooking time will depend on the size of the pieces of shark, but you can tell when the dish is ready by probing the flesh with a bamboo skewer: if it slides in easily all the way, it's done.
Done ! You can see a few brighter spots where the water has been bubbling through from below.

The meat is moist and melts in your mouth and it goes so well with the slightly spicy- slightly limy tomato sauce. Delicious ! ( click on picture for a larger view : ah! I wish you could smell it : )

I find this dish is even delicious cold straight out of the fridge ( I used to eat it between loafs of bread in the summer )

As much as I like eating shark, after seeing the horror stories of sharks having their fins cut off and left to die in the sea, I will never eat or tolerate the eating of shark fin soup for the rest of my life. If you need to kill an animal ,do it swiftly and eat all of it.

The Green, green Curry of home

2010-01-10T21:24:00.022+01:00

When I came across a picture of a green curry on Petrina's blog, I was surprised to find a recipe for it in a new cookbook of mine "Curry" by Sunil Vijayakar ( go ahead , say it quickly five times in a row :)4

The recipe is simple , even if I didn't know half of the ingredients ^_^, but that has never stopped me before from cooking and eating them.

You will need ( for 4 generous servings )

800 gram chicken breast , diced in bite sized cubes
1 ts (tablespoon ) sunflower oil
3 ts green Thai curry paste
2 green chili peppers , finely chopped
0,4 l coconut milk
0,2 l chicken stock ( or use half a cube in 0,2 l boiling water )
6 kaffir leaves
2 ts fish sauce
1 ts grated palm sugar ( or brown candy or cane sugar : you'll never taste the difference )
200 gram Thai pea aubergines
100 gram green beans ( I used sweet peas , because I like those better ), cut in half
50 - 75 grams of bambooshoot ( canned ), diced in cubes (
one large handful of Thai basil ( smaller leaves and smells sweet like aniseed : interesting )
one large handful of Thai coriander ( smaller leaves but pretty much the same taste as European coriander
all the juice from a freshly squeezed lime

From left to right and top to bottom : kaffir leaves , sweet peas, chili peppers, bamboo shoot ( about 150 grams : it's too big, but it looks so nice I HAD TO photograph it, coriander

Thai pea aubergines ( this is 100 grams : you need two packs )

Diced chicken and the curry paste bag removed from package.

The Thai fish sauce, Thai green curry paste package and a lime

The coconut milk ( also from Thailand !) and the brown candy sugar

Tip 1 : rinse and prepare the vegetables before you take out the chicken breast from your refrigerator : you need to pull the pea aubergines off their stems and open cans
,etc.. Takes about half an hour to prep.

Pull the basil leaves and coriander from their stems.
Cut the bamboo shoots in small slices ( about 1 cm thick )
Cut the sweet peas in half.

The cooking is fairly straight forward and over in 25-30 minutes

Pour the oil in your favourite wok and turn on a medium fire ( electric 7 ) which is the same setting I cook a steak on.

Before it gets too hot and starts to give off blue fumes ( unless you really LIKE getting cancer ) , take it off the fire to keep the oil from overheating, add the paste first and then the chili peppers. Put it back on the hot plate.
You'll notice the paste absorbs all the oil, so keep spreading and stirring for about 3 minutes

Turn the heat up to full heat 12 and add all the diced chicken at once.

You need that much heat to brown that large an amount of cold meat, because the bottom of a wok on an electric fire is smaller : in a flat pan or on gas I guess you'd keep it at 7 to 9. Keep stirring and turning over for about 6 to 8 minutes till the chicken is lightly browned and you can't see a single pink spot of meat anywhere.

TIP 2 : To work more quickly, add the 2 tablespoons of fish sauce ,1 tablespoon of sugar and the coconut milk to the chicken stock and stir beforehand , so you only need to pour it in in one go instead of having to start messing with the fish sauce bottle over your wok , which needs continuous stirring ! Keep the kaffir leaves and pea aubergines close by.

Add the coconut milk, fish sauce, chicken stock mix , add the 6 kaffir leaves and the pea aubergines.

Set the heat at about 11 , so you get a good bubbling in the middle. Keep stirring the mix through the middle so everything gets evenly cooked.If the middle stops bubbling while stirring , you need more heat, if it boils too much even while stirring, reduce the heat.

The times I mention here depend largely on how well you can keep the bubbling going.
After about 12 - 14 minutes, add the sweet peas and the bamboo shoots.
If you want your bamboo shoot diced larger , put the sweet peas in 2 minutes later : the're flat and cook more quickly.

Keep stirring for another 6 to 8 minutes . Taste a sweet pea and a bamboo shoot to see if it's done : the pea should be soft, but not mushy and the bamboo shoot not too crunchy ( aka slightly RAW )

Take the wok off the fire and stir in the coriander and the basil : they'll wilt , but THAT's OK : they're supposed to.

Please click on the picture for a mouth-watering large view !

So how does it taste ?

Well, the sauce looks slightly yellowish greenish and has a nice smell of lime ( must be the kaffir and lime juice).
The sauce is very tasty , the chicken is soft and moist and the coriander and basil don't overpower the taste. It is quite spicy ( I tasted the curry paste and that is already spicy ) but not very very hot. Spicy is OK, but you should still taste your food.

The pea aubergines were a surprise :) : Uncooked they're quite tough : I cut one in half and even cooked their skin is not really soft : when you bite into them their insides spurt into your mouth and tastes fairly bitter, which I didn't know.
Not bad , considering the rest of the dish is a mixture of creamy and sweet and spicy.

I found a German site , describing the pea aubergines as absolutely essential to this dish, but too bitter to eat for most people. The site's advice : just shove them aside and don't eat them. Hahaha !
My advice : don't be such a WIMP.

Serve this with a traditional perfumed Thai rice ( should go well with Basmati too ) and a good BELGIAN beer of the lager type.

IF you want to try Thai beer : Phuket Beer has recently won a Gold Medal Award in the Category of Best Lager under the selection process of the Monde Selection organisation based in Brussels, Belgium.

Tip 3 : keep a towel lying by closeby , with a wet tip, to keep cleaning the surroundings of your wok and wipe along the top rim of your wok, to make your pictures look good. There , now you all know my SECRET !
Tip 4 : in a dish that gets cooked so quickly , either learn how to shoot quickly like me or take the wok of the hot plate to make your pictures , put the camera out of harms way and shove the wok back on the hot plate.
DO NOT attempt to stir with one hand and shoot with the other, you're likely to get hot splatters all over your camera.

Christmas Spirit overflowing in London and Priscilla the musical

2009-12-30T21:59:00.010+01:00

It's THAT time of the year again.
I visited England for an Exhibition and London in the evening of the 12th and 13th of December.
Christmas decorations were up everywhere and endless swarms of people dressed up in red Christmas suits crowded the London streets.

I saw this lovely Christmas Fair on Leicester square.

The trees covered in lights make it look like a fairy land.

Flying chairs( OMG ?! is that Elvis on the middle panel ?)
Traditional old fashioned Merry go round ( do click on the pictures for the lovely detail)

We're not moving yet, but we're already having lots of fun!

While I narrowly missed meeting my friend Priscilla ( from Kimono Daisuki ) who visited London earlier in the week and had just crossed the channel to Paris,
I did have a great time having dinner with her friend Mel in Chinatown.

But London still had a surprise in stock for me : the Palace Theater is running a musical called

Priscilla Queen of the Desert

Too bad I didn't have time to go see it, but I'm sure it must be great.

Tip 1 for photographers : for nighttime pictures your auto exposure won't cope. Turn off your flash ( it's too small anyway and do more bad than good) , set ISO to 800 and exposure time on manual to 1/30. If you haven't a lens with stabilization, like me , stand with your back against a tree or a pole or anything.

You'll get blurs on moving people and rotating merry go rounds , but that is perfect : it shows the motion ( a powerful flash would simply freeze it ).
Tip2 If you want a steady picture of a merry go round to show the lovely details , wait till it's stopped, between runs :)

Climate change : no longer if, but when ?

2009-12-19T22:50:00.002+01:00

Two years ago, I told a woman that I thought modern society lacks compassion and has too much selfishness. I also told her that this is a human survival trait : when threatened , humans look out for themselves. It's a basic instinct.
I told her this was also the reason global warming and climate change was unstoppable , because no one nation has the will to commit the huge financial resources required to stop it.
Every nation will always look out for themselves. It's human nature.
Copenhagen will fail ( in fact apparently it already has ) or impose limits no one will keep.
We're doomed. And it'll probably happen within our own lifetime, too.
Climate change is happening at an exponential rate ( in laymen terms, it's speeding up all the time ) and the result will be devastating.

The way I see it, the military war for energy (oil) has already started years ago, the next ones will be for water and/or food. You can stop a single boatload of refugees, but what if a whole population packs up and moves ? It's not going to be pretty.

Look : snowflakes! Look : more snowflakes! Look even more.... Oh DAMN!

2009-12-18T07:23:00.016+01:00

When I rode to work this morning ,the roads were dry and 'some' snow was predicted for the afternoon.
The pictures say it all : more than 500 km of traffic cues on the road, innumerable accidents,
icy roads. Lots of cars and trucks gliding off the road or simply getting stuck , unable to move.

Just arrived home ( as always , click on pictures for a large version, go back to return to post)

It looks like a Christmas picture postcard in the yellow streetlights.

I got home , thanks to some epic effort, ultra slow driving through stopped traffic jams, getting off and pushing when I couldn't steer. Basically by a combination of sheer willpower and the application of an epic amount of brute force :)
You can slow this man down, but you can't stop him. ^_^

The heavy snowfall doesn't show up in the long-exposure pictures above, but you can sure see them in the next photos.

The cold harsh truth shows up when using a flash :

Front view :

The wheel rims disappear completely under the snow.

Some fifteen centimeters of snow had fallen ( and it was still snowing!) by the time I reached the smaller roads so it took me an hour for the last 3 kilometers, either by driving very slowly or getting off and pushing my bike through the thick fresh snow when the back tire got so cold it lost all grip and just skidded in place!
Shoving 250 kilograms of bike through heavy snow is a really good workout. If you can stay upright :)
I didn't fall once , but I slipped a lot.

If you look closely at the previous picture , you can see my cat sitting in the deep snow behind the front wheel, hoping to catch a yeti. Here's a cutout.

Side story : I met a young woman on my way home , getting ready to leave home with a 50 cc scooter (!) and deliberating about driving some 16 kilometers through the snow to a village in the middle of nowhere (small uncleared roads!) to go babysit for her sister.
Boy am I glad I stopped and talked her out of it , she would have gotten hopelessly stuck.

Gluhwein, Sauna and Mozart

2009-12-06T12:01:00.009+01:00

I have totally neglected to blog ( for the whole of November actually), because there wasn't anything exciting or interesting happening or being cooked to blog about.

However, this past week I flew to Munich to go by rental car to Austria for a business trip.

I stayed in Schärding at the lovely Gugerbauer family hotel,

Schärding is a well known baroque touristic town, on the border with Germany.

When I spied a statue in the river just outside the hotel it turned out Schärding has recreated the 7 Wonders of the world ( in slightly reduced sizes ) for enjoyment by the many annually visiting tourists.
What a unique idea :) I have dreamt of visiting these , except most of them are no longer around.
Since the weather was rainy I borrowed all pictures from other sites ( copyright etc..)
most of them from mr Herrolm's Flicker page ,

The Great Pyramid at Gizeh

The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus

The Hanging Gardens of Semiramis (Babylon)

The Colossus of Rhodes

The Statue of Zeus
The Lighthouse of Alexandria

The Temple of Artemis

To my total delight the Gugerbauer has a complete spa at the lower floor with
Large swimming pool
Finnish sauna (85°C)
a Sauna with Eucalyptus aroma
a Turkish steam bath with Eucalyptus aroma
an Aroma Steam bath with choice of lime, passion flower and I forgot the third one.
a Jacuzzi !
Fitness room , Tanning parlor, Relaxation Room
AND : totally free for the hotel guests :) Whee! (Note to self : must come here again)
(At only 67 Euros a night, it's a steal, really )

Since the swimming pool opened at 7 am and the wellness area closed at 9 pm, I spent every morning swimming before breakfast and every spare minute of the evening going from steam bath to sauna to jacuzzi and back. It was very relaxing.

I couldn't take pictures ( you'll have to make do with the website of the hotel.)

I didn't buy souvenirs , but I did bring a local delicacy with me. They have a core of green marzipan, covered with white and brown nougat cream and chocolate.

The official name is 'Real Salzburger Mozart Kuegeln' , but the locals very gleefully refer to them as Real Mozart's Balls.
At 2,5 cm thick they're quite a mouthful :)

Driving back from Austria to Munich I ran into a lot of fog

which left me just enough time to return the car and check in the luggage, with ten minutes to spare before checkin started.
Munich is not a large airport, so I quickly hopped outside to visit the Christmas market just in front to get a Gluhwein at this cozy little stall.

Tasting a mug of Gluhwein is serious business ! ( I never drink , I always 'taste' )

Hmmm. I feel all warm and fuzzy inside now !

A thousand year omelet ?!

2009-10-30T11:40:00.009+01:00

Recently, while stocking up on food in Sun-Wah supermarket
I found this Chinese delicacy.

These are 6 preserved duck eggs aka thousand year old or century eggs.
They're preserved by covering the egg in a mixture of clay, ash, salt, lime, and rice straw for several weeks to several months, although modern methods use a brine of salt, calcium hydroxide, and sodium carbonate which does the same but more quickly. The story about using horse's urine is a complete fable ;) It's impossible, since urine can never be alkaline enough.

The peeled egg looks black or very dark brown

When you halve it , you see the white has become solid firm and jello-like transparent brown.
The yolk has turned dark green and creamy and smells strongly of ammonia.

So what does it taste like ?
I ate the first one with a spoon ( I know NO FEAR ) : the white has little taste, but a texture like very firm aspic
the yolk is creamy , a bit salty and the fume of ammonia that evaporates in your mouth would probably turn a lot of people off.

Since I have 6 , I made a dish with tofu , ginger, spring onions and a sauce of soy sauce and sesame oil ( I'll post pics when I make this again )
and this morning I made a Chinese "Old and fresh egg omelet" for which I invented a recipe , as I can't find it on Internet.

Peel and slice a preserved egg from top to bottom. ( This one has a very large yolk)

Whip 3 fresh chicken eggs in a bowl with a dash of oil and water. (Adding a teaspoon of water to an omelet makes it fluffier as the water boils off when poured in the pan )

Have a few sprigs of fresh coriander ready for a contrasting flavor and to add colour ( fresh chopped spring onions might be OK too)

Heat a very lightly oiled non-stick pan on a medium fire, pour two thirds of the mixture in and turn the fire to low.

Arrange the sliced egg in a decorative way on the omelet.

Tear the fresh leaves of coriander up and put them on top of the eggs.

Cover with the rest of the whipped egg, put a lid on the pan and cook on a low fire for another 4 to 5 minutes
I lightly seasoned the omelet with freshly ground white and black pepper , in order not to mask the taste of the preserved egg.
Eat this with a slice of bread or steamed rice.

It looks so decorative ! ( click on the pictures for a mouth-watering large picture )
Please note my genuine Japanese Furoshiki ( wrapping cloth ) underneath ^_^ .
I used it just for the picture of course , I removed it for eating :)

This dish is enough for two persons ( I ate the whole lot myself , I was hungry this morning )

How healthy is it ? It's no different from fresh eggs.
According to this article from China it has almost the same composition as a fresh egg.
I have 1 reservation : the 3rd method in this article uses lead oxide , which is poisonous. Eggs made with that method should be avoided. The ones I have are made in Europe where lead oxide is illegal, they're OK.

Ohmygod, it's hello kitty !

2009-10-09T21:44:00.008+02:00

It had to happen sometime.
I found this advertisement on my way to work.

( click on the picture for a larger view)
IS THERE NO STOPPING THIS KAWAII ONSLAUGHT ?
I'm constantly exposed to it on my friend Kirin's blog so I'm not totally shell shocked , but still. I have to drive past this every day to work !
I can't even blame the Japanese for this , because it's a Korean brand.

What does the advert say ? Well for those of you who aren't fluent in Dutch ( that's 99.5 % of the planet ) it says in the balloon "(It's) Time to change your mobile phone"
and the horn blowing mouse announces 20 Euros per old mobile phone handed in.
The fine print explains you get 20 Euros for up to 3 phones in working order in vouchers.

Thankfully, I have a real cat at home to remind me cats aren't always white with a pink ribbon around one ear.
Meet my very real cat Kedam, everybody , lurking in the grass for passing prey she can kill

( click on the picture for a larger view of my backyard predator )
and sitting on her favorite cushion in HER house

( click on the picture for a larger view and check out the spooky green reflection in the eyes)
I'm only allowed to live here provided I open doors for Her Highness, fill the water dish and fill up the food container. I'm on constant probation : one too many mistakes and I'm sooo fired!

Himitsu Kichi

2009-09-08T20:59:00.004+02:00

The acclaimed anime Eureka Seven ( known in Japan as Psalms of Planets Eureka Seven )

has aired a long time ago, well 2006.

One thing about the series remains a favorite for me till today :
the captivating end theme Himitsu Kichi by Takada Kozue.
Some days I'll play the song, hit the repeat button and bore the hell out of my cat by playing it for hours and hours . Ah, the joy of living alone in your own place.

I can almost sing all the words ( except I don't know what they mean, yet :)
except for Ooki na sora ( big sky) and Ooki na namida ( Large tears ).

Here's the singer herself (she looks so kawaii with that guitar that looks too big for her , so I guess she's a bit vertically challenged , but there's nothing undersized about her voice !)

Anime often has very good opening and ending songs. Too bad I can't get the CDs of the singers here.
Amazingly, halfway through the series the ending song was changed and I stopped watching it. Ah, the shame : episode 26 to 50 are gathering dust somewhere in my collection. I'll have to dust them off one of these days.

Moroccan delights : lemons, olives and turkey

2009-08-22T07:44:00.011+02:00

One of the most wonderful combination of tastes is this Moroccan dish, which mingles the robust tastes of olives with lemon and chicken ( or turkey ).
The original recipe uses whole chicken drumsticks, I'm replacing them with diced turkey.
It is cooked in a tajine, which most people don't have. The tajine is a clay pot , which has a large conical closed top to let the heat and steam circulate and is meant for slow simmering dishes. (This is not my kitchen , I don't have a tajine)

I'm replacing it with a large heavy pot, which works just as well.
You'll need :
1 kilo of turkey breast, diced roughly in cubes of 3-5 cm
3 medium onions ( red or yellow), chopped

2 citron confit ( pickled lemons ) chopped with all the juice ( there's an explanation below on how to make it or how to use fresh lemon) with the pips removed!
(the zests are separate in this picture , that's not required :) see below)

300-350 grams of green pitted olives (mine are straight from the jar!)
2 or 3 teaspoons of turmeric powder (yellow root , we call it curcuma here ;)
2 tablespoons of olive oil

2 or 3 garlic cloves , peeled, core removed and diced in 3 or 4 bits
1 slice of ginger, diced finely or grated

1 - 2 handfuls of fresh coriander leaves, shredded by hand ( if I can't find it fresh , I don't use any,I find the taste hardly changes )
1/2 to 1 teaspoon of pepper ( 10 twists of the pepper grinder )
no salt ( the traditional recipe uses salt, but the citron confit already has a lot of that )
Large pot with lid.

Heat the oil in your favorite large pot on a medium fire.
Brown the turkey cubes lightly on all sides by stirring them in the oil for about 4-5 minutes or so.
Add the onions and stir fry for another 5 or so till the onions are glazed.The turkey tends to stick to the pot, keep stirring.
Pour the turmeric powder all over the meat and stir to get them all colored.

Put everything else in , except the olives and the coriander leaves.
Pour water in till the meat is a bit more than half covered.
Bring to a simmer and reduce the heat to very low ( 2-3 electric) so it keeps slowly simmering : check regularly that it simmers : boiling dries out the meat !
Leave to simmer for half an hour to 40 minutes and add the olives and the coriander ( if you have any ).

Leave to simmer for another 15-20 minutes.
Done ! My advice : serve this robust dish with couscous (made from semolina ). ( I feel steamed rice is not the proper companion for this taste ). There's still a lot of moisture in there and the couscous absorbs those lovely juices so well.

It keeps well in the fridge (must be the lemon acids). I'll be having it on and off for the next 10 days with couscous : about 8 portions. Hmm! The SMELL ! To die for.

I use precooked couscous and add boiling water and a small dash of olive oil ( as on the package ). Add a portion of the hot dish in a deep plate , eat with a spoon. Lovely.

My selfmade citron confit. Why are the zests separate ? Because I had started to peel the zest of 4 lemons when I suddenly decided to use 2 of them for citron confit.

Citron confit can be made by cutting whole lemons lengthwise with 2 deep slices down the middle, , but not all the way down, so it doesn't fall apart. Pour a tablespoon of salt in the middle of each lemon and put them in a glass jar with a tightly fitting top. Leave the pips in, you'll remove them when you use it.
You'll need untreated lemons , not the normal kind whose skin is treated with chemicals to prevent rot.Don't wash a treated lemon with hot soapy water as a replacement , it doesn't get rid of the chemical.
Leave the jar in the room for a day and then keep it in the fridge for 2 to 4 weeks.The lemon juice will run out and the lemons will become glazed. Use both in the dish.

When I'm out of citron confit or untreated lemons , I cheat by peeling and dicing a normal lemon and leaving some of the white skin on and adding salt.

Here's a tip : if you buy garlic it usually comes in a bunch of pods. I find they dry out or start to go bad after a few weeks.
To have a fresh supply that's quick to use, peel the cloves, remove the cores and keep them in a jar with a tight lid in the deep freeze. Same for the ginger : peel and slice. Glass jars have the advantage that you can see what's inside.
Also I find the frozen ginger is very easy to dice finely.

Beer trek : the new frontier.

2009-08-13T23:08:00.017+02:00

It was bound to happen sometime: we Belgians make beer , drink beer, cook with beer and make world famous chocolates.
Beer Brewery De Ryck has boldly gone where no one has gone before.

They sell a collection of beer chocolates (no no ! not chocolate beer : Beer Chocolates ! )

Unfortunately even the English version of their website will only give you a Dutch description of these delicacies, so for you my dear readers , I've translated it into English.
( Because I like you all so much, I want to share this inside knowledge with you ! :)

( Want to get a better view ? Leftclick the image for a mouthwatering larger view )

Oh and did I mention they also have beer cheese, beer marmalade, beer sorbet and beer pâté ?
Belgian type breakfast , anyone ?

Japanese Art Festival Richmond : everybody arrives for the great kimono show

2009-08-12T00:11:00.001+02:00

Finally : the kimono show post. Do a leftclick on the pictures to get a larger view.

A bit later on the first day of the Festival , April turned up, everybody got into kimono , so I made them all pose !

Everyone getting ready for the group pose :

They're ready ! From left to right : Isla, Hong, Chantal and April.

The kimono showing was held in the main hall. Thank God I photographed it , it was all over in under 15 minutes!
April walked on stage first with Chantal and Isla, introducing everybody.

Commenting on their kimonos for the public.

Akemi comes on , telling us she's dressed up her friends in some rare and expensive kimonos from her collection.
Akemi's friend n° 1Akemi's friend n° 2
View from the back : the red and yellow bow is a clip-on bow ( they have that ??!) , the right is a genuine folded one.

Akemi's friend n° 3 : this furisode (long sleeved) is worn only by unmarried women (Aha! Must remember that when I visit Japan ;)
The "Aaaaaah, she's so kawaii !" moment : the girl from the Chibi stand.

" Thank you everybody ! " ( I really need a bigger flash)

Day 2 : Kelly visits the stand .
(Chantal , if you want the RAWS , use the email me Form on my blog site )

Cooking lesson with Atsuko : hands-on cooking

2009-07-29T01:13:00.015+02:00

On Sunday I had booked a cooking lesson with Atsuko from Atsukos kitchen to learn hands on how to make proper onigiri.
The lesson was great , I can recommend it. If England wasn't so far to commute, I'd sign up for more lessons!

Atsuko-sensei herself.
More students arriving.
Ingredients for the wrapping and the filling.

More ingredients. Check out those lovely origami cranes.

With the rice precooked ( and after being explained how to make proper 'sticky' rice : you need to use Japanese rice and wash it properly before cooking with the right amount of water.) Knew that.

Put the rice in a large wooden tray (rub with a wet towel to keep from sticking) and fluff the rice before use. Take a small handful of rice , add a small amount of filling in the middle and quickly knead it into a triangular shape, then wrap partially or completely with nori, while still warm.
I also made one with some stringy konbu ( seaweed) around it.
Some were with beef , some with salmon, some with umeboshi ( I love umeboshi !)

According to Atsuko sensei my onigiri looked good enough to sell and her assistant complained mine were better than hers. I know how totally polite Japanese are, so I'm always suspicious of so much praise, but actually , they do look OK.
I just have to learn to make em more quickly.

I didn't like this picture I'd taken , so I made a new batch at home.
Check it out these triangular ones : you were right Atsuko-sensei , they're good enough to sell.

I also made a round one and one fully wrapped. I call it the 'surprise package' ( it has umeboshi in it).
Afterwards Hong, Francesco and I ate them at the stand , they were good, but you should have seen Hongs face curl up when she bit into a 'surprise package' and got to the good part. I ate the rest of it : she thinks umeboshi are too sour. Hahaha, sorry, Hong.

Of course I didn't sell the ones I made at home : I ate them and when the sun came out I had this lovely Japanese beer to finish it off. It's way better than the Asahi super dry. It's right up there with the best German pils beers. Hontoni!
Cheers!

Japanese Art Festival in Richmond

2009-07-24T22:02:00.026+02:00

On 11th and 12th of June I drove up to England for the Japanese Art Festival in Richmond ,

Busy parking my motorbike in front, saw Hong (see MCM Expo) pull up and unload boxes from a car. Turns out she would be running a stand offering manga, obi and kanzashi.
Hong is a total sweety : she let me stash my gear behind her stand.Not wearing the vest keeps me from turning into a total sweaty ;) Thanks, Hong!

A bit later Chantal and Isla turned up and started helping out ,before they went to get changed into kimonos.
The stand : Chantal taking stock, Hong tying a thingy around her obi and Isla praying ?!

The goodies : beautifully handmade kanzashi.

More beautiful kanzashi.

The nice lady with the Chibi stand.

The stand of Japan Center (left) and the people from JP books (middle) , where I bought a few books. "Learn japanese for busy people" . I asked for " Learn Japanese for people with absolutely no spare time" , but it is not out yet.

I didn't go for their suggestion to buy 'How to speak Japanese with Osaka dialect' . I'll try to learn the standard first.

The hallway leading to the Main hall aka the QCH , rushing towards us is Akemi Solloway ,the lady who is the main organizer for the event and in the back you can see the stand of Karen and Nanniiebim , where I bought a few nice manga ( every manga she had basically :). Nanniebim is the one standing behind the table with the red and yellow books.

In the Queen Charlotte Hall , I saw plenty of nice performances, like these awesome Taiko drummers.

Back at the stand , business was a bit slow , so they're having fun with their fans.

Keep checking this blog, I'll be back with more pics.

MCM Expo May 2009

2009-07-15T21:50:00.010+02:00

I've been too busy to keep up my blog for too long, but I have a good excuse : I've been visiting London on and off during long weekends the past month.
The MCM Expo of London is billed as one of the largest anime, manga and film festivals. No otaku or cosplayer should miss it and judging from the incredible amount of people waiting in rows for an early entry, I don't think any did!

I didn't take pictures of cosplayers this time around , but I couldn't pass up on this couple in a pirate ship . ( IS that One piece ? )
The actual hall was actually smaller than a similar event ( FACTS ) we have in Belgium , but you have so many people rotating through this that's it's has more visitors than ours.
It also allows major producing companies , while we don't allow any but small vendors.
Also a number of movie and tv celebrities attend, which we do have (but only for signing sessions) and here they do Q&A sessions.

I got to see the lovely Linda Hamilton live doing a Q&A. She explained there was no shortage of rolls offered to her after the Terminator movies, if she wanted to play a tough cop or similar parts, but nothing interesting. Hollywood typecasting, sigh!

The highlight for me came on day 2 when I met Priscilla of Kimono Daisuki and some of her friends.

From left to right : me, Priscilla, Mel and Hong. I 'borrowed' this pic from Priscilla's Flickr page.

We went inside to browse around a bit : I'd already seen everything three times over , so I just tagged along.

As elegant as Mel looks in her Lolita outfit she also has a (dark?) other side you wouldn't expect.
Here's Mel doing a Muhammed Ali on the guy next to her : dance like a butterfly, sting like a bee. He's being demolished and by the look on his face , totally not believing this is happening to him.
Get them , Mel!
After the show we went outside for a few pics : Hong and her boyfriend : Francesco.

Priscilla and Mel. The black stuffed animal with the blue stone and the huggability factor of 1000 ( according to Priscilla) is Larg the Mokona from the Tsubasa series.

Afterwards everybody went to a Chinese restaurant where we ate a Chinese 'delicacy' I'd been looking to eat for a long time : Century eggs.
They're an interesting taste : a bit salty and sort of rubbery and of course they look very black.
I found a recipe here. I really liked it, thanks again for the treat and the nice time , guys !

Durian : the inside story

2009-05-28T23:05:00.004+02:00

After getting so many tips from my readers ( thanks everyone !)
I donned a pair of leather gloves and split the durian along the seams.

The insides reveal soft fruity nobs.

They taste very good, with a flavor that does not compare to anything else, nutty with hints of pineapple and banana and a soft texture like a very ripe banana .
The seeds inside are not very large , so you get quite a lot of fruit.
The hard part is stopping yourself from eating it all straightaway !

Kept inside a plastic container in the fridge , they'll keep for at least 4 days.
I haven't cooked the seeds yet, but I have drunk water from the hard shell in the traditional way : it picks up a little flavour from the inside : not bad.

I can understand why Malaysians go gaga about this fruit, it's very tasty.

That's a what ? Can I eat it now ?

2009-05-17T15:46:00.001+02:00

I bought this fruit I'd never seen before at an Thai food store despite it's high price ( 15 Euros for a kilo). The internet tells me it's a durian. I can eat the pulp and the seeds should be cooked or fried.
Hm! But when is it ripe enough to eat ? Plenty of recipes and what to do with the pulp, but WHEN IS IT RIPE ?

It is smelly, but not very. If I inhale the smell very deeply, it feels as though I'm becoming a bit short of breath.
I can see a crack on one side that opens when I force it open a bit and shows a clearer interior .
When I shake it, the inside clearly rattle as one solid block.
Do I keep it in the fridge or out in the open or do I eat it all at once?
Questions,questions. Anyone out there that can give me a few pointers ?

Cherries ! At last !

2009-05-17T15:43:00.002+02:00

While the cherries on my trees are appearing in large numbers

and I can see a few that are starting to ripen

I'm not too excited ,because a lot will still dry out before they're ripe and
I'll lose a number of them to the birds.

Still I'm content, because last year ,because of the late frost killing all the flowers , I didn't have a single one !

Japanese Natto - Belgian Cheese

2009-05-14T22:02:00.021+02:00

Of all the typically Japanese foods I have tried , I had not been able to try natto ( fermented soy beans) yet. No shop in Belgium has them and it wasn't until I traveled to London that I was finally able to buy some.

They have a lot of interesting articles at Japan Center on Piccadilly , but no natto! Aaargh!

Fortunately a Japanese lady, living in London was so kind to tell me about a shop a few streets further on where they did have the REAL DEAL ! AT LAST !

Thanks to the cold weather I got home safe with my frozen treasures.

The smell ( which you read so much about on the Internet ) is not bad. I can identify the mustard, but the other two ? Too much kanji.

Sure , it looks a bit odd, with the sticky threads trying to hold the beans together, but so what ?
I eat half of the natto, just plain without any sauce, to make sure I know what they taste like.
They're rather soft, a bit crumbly ? but not bad. (click on the pictures for a better view !)

Together with the mustard and the green ( whatever it is ;) it tastes a bit more interesting.

The threads stick a bit to your lips and teeth , but nothing out of the ordinary.

I have no idea what the sauces are , because I can't read the kanji (yet) : any suggestions ?
Click on the picture to get a larger version

Frankly , I'm not disappointed, but I thought the smell and taste were going to be much stronger.
The smell and taste are about the same as this Belgian blue mold cheese 'Grimbergen'

but definitively less than for instance this French Roquefort.

I think a dislike of natto depends on what you are used to. We're always scared of what we're not used to. ( except for me , because I'm always : "What this food ? I don't know that ! I MUST TRY this ! )
Look at this cheese : it's a typical semi-soft cow's milk cheese from France ( we have them in Belgium too ) with a red crust. The red crust is a mold, which is a fungus.
( click on picture for a better view)

Mold is something you don't want on your bread or on your fruit , but in the case of such a cheese , YOU EAT IT !
Look carefully at the picture, there's also some white and gray mold there.

In Belgium ( and France ) we have many soft cheeses with white mold or red mold on the outside. If you're not used to it , I can imagine you'll go "Yuck!".
Same thing with Natto.

As for strong smell and strong taste: let me introduce you to one of our ancient and very local specialties ( only in Belgium ) , the world champion of smelly cheeses :
our traditional Brussels Cheese ! It's world famous ( especially in Belgium).

Almost all semi soft and hard cheeses are made from curdled milk, by pressing the curd into shapes and rubbing the outside with salt.

This cheese is made from skimmed milk. The curd is mixed with salt and hand kneaded, then the cheeses are dried on straw in freely circulating air ( the farmers used to do it in the loft under the roof) until it becomes dry and hard.
The crust will develop a shiny glaze because of the thin layer of bacteria growing on it.
Then it'll be ripened by humidifying it and rubbing with salted water for several months.
Before sale it'll be bathed for a few days in salted water and again in tepid ( in between warm and cold) water.

The result is a unique cheese that has 0 percent fat. ( Yes , ZERO ). Ideal for dieters.

It's also fairly salty and has a strong taste , so you can only drink strong black coffee with it , hehe , no other drink can stand up to its taste, wine would taste like tap water , beer like watered milk.
As for the smell, it's right up there with sweaty horses ( on a summer day after a long run ), old boxing gloves ( right after a long training ) , I LOVE IT. Have some for breakfast, you're instantly awake, haha.

Unfortunately, the last big producer of this original delicacy near Brussels has stopped and sold his factory ( the land on which it was built has become very expensive ! We can thank Europe for that ) and only a few small true cheese makers remain.

For you , my cherished readers, I have spared no effort , money or time to locate and buy one of these real traditional Brussels Cheeses!

Doesn't it look lovely ? (click on the pictures for a larger view ). If only I could post the wonderful strong smell !

If ever you visit Belgium , pay me a visit. We'll eat some together on a slice of my delicious homebaked bread and drink strong coffee with it.

Balletjes in biersaus ( Meatballs in beer sauce)

2009-05-09T21:29:00.008+02:00

Spring is coming and summer isn't too far away, time for another traditional recipe.
This one comes from the center of Belgium, where the cooks use beer in the kitchen even more cheerfully than the French cooks use wine !

You need ( for 4 persons )

2 bottles or 0.75 liters of REAL BELGIAN gueuze ( there IS NO substitute )
( click on this picture to see it in large scale glory : you can almost smell it ;)

( try a dry lager if you can't find the real thing , the result will be good but different )

1 kilogram of lean mixed minced meat ( half pork and half beef )
2 egg yolks
1 tsp of freshly grated nutmeg
a slice of bread 1 cm thick
1/2 cup of milk
butter ( or olive oil )
1 tablespoon of beurre manié (butter and white flour)

I'm making this dish with about 600 grams of lean mixed minced meat
so I use only one yolk and a thinner slice of bread.
Trim the crusts of your slice of bread ( I prefer brown : it adds character! ^_^)

Let the bread soak in some milk .

Add your egg yolks to your minced meat.
Grate about a fifth of a nutmeg (I guess about 1,5 teaspoon ;)
on your meat and add some pepper. ( 4-5 turns of your peppermill )

Now squeeze most of the milk from your bread which should be nice and soggy by now, add it to the meat and knead it all firmly to a nice mix with your hands.

Use a spoon to scoop some mix into your hand and form into balls of a size you prefer.
Rub your hands with a little water, but not too much or you'll find the minced meat
slides around instead of rolling into balls! I use the spoon to scrape the meat of my palms every now and then. A spoon also lets you measure the same amount easier than when you try to scoop some up with your fingers.

I made mine about 4 cm thick and look at that, I got exactly 20 of them !

Melt some butter in a frying pan ( I used a non stick wok ) and on a fairly high heat ( 7 out of 12 electric) brown the balls on all sides in 2-3 minutes ( they shouldn't be cooked through yet ! )

When done , transfer them to a large pot , so they're all on the bottom.

Pour your bottle(s) of gueuze over them to make them happy , put the lid on and let them simmer on a low heat for half an hour.

The original recipe does it all in the same pot and then calls for
degreasing the sauce, which I find a bother.
My way leaves most of the fat behind in the frying pan so you don't have to do this.

Make a tablespoon of beurre manié by mixing a tablespoon of oil or butter with flour. Keep adding flour till the mixture becomes a smooth paste that is nearly starting to crumble. Try using a neutral oil ( first pressed virgin olive oil can be taste a bit too strong )

Scoop the balls out of the sauce and put in a warm dish.

Whisk the beurre manié lightly into the sauce to bind it ( it never gets really thick , but that's not what you aim for anyway so don't worry ). Beurre manié is the same mixture as roux , but roux is cooked by heating it and adding the liquid beforehand. Such as in white sauce. Beurre Manie is added after the cooking and binds for a shorter time , which is fine because you'll eat it right away.

Pour the sauce over the balls in a dish. Ready to enjoy!
(click on picture for a mouthwatering larger view O_O )

Because of the gueuze the sauce has a nice slightly tart taste (tart is slightly acid but nicer ;) which goes very well with the tenderly cooked meat (ah if only I could post the SMELL !)
You can cover this in foil and heat up later in a microwave but it is hard to resist eating it right away! Serve with ample slices of bread ( you will need them to mop up the sauce ! ).

Flemish Rata : a dish from the coast

2009-04-17T21:01:00.012+02:00

Koksijde is a city at the very west of the North sea coast of Belgium. While browsing through my 'Original Flemish Dishes' cookbook I came across this local recipe, which I just had to prepare, it's so unusual.
You need
4 slices of bacon or breakfast bacon , 1 cm thick (the original recipe uses slices of normal bacon 1 cm thick, I used these to cut back on the fat. )

1 kilo of firm cooking potatoes
1 medium onion
25 grams of butter or tablespoon of olive oil
2 bay leaves (laurel),
a sprig of thyme or 1/2 teaspoon of dried thyme
some pepper
1 liter of freshly brewed coffee

Peel your potatoes and cut the larger ones in half , put in a larger pot.

Pour the coffee over them ( yes, that's right : coffee !) till the potatoes are mostly covered and add two bay leaves and a sprig of thyme (or 1/2 teaspoon of dried thyme) and pepper. Bring to a boil put the lid on and let it cook slowly. The original recipe adds salt here, but since the bacon is already salted, I leave this out.

While the coffee is starting to boil , saute your peeled and diced onion in a pan with the olive oil or butter.

Add the four slices of bacon after a few minutes and bake them on both sides on a medium fire for a few minutes (they don't need to be cooked through! )

Scoop the onion into the coffee and arrange the meat on top of the potatoes.

Close the lid and let it simmer on a low fire till the potatoes are done (prick them with a fork to check if they're done through) : takes 20 minutes or more , depending on how slowly you simmer it.
I've turned two slices over ,: you can see how nicely they've browned on the side touching the coffee.
Serve the potatoes in a deep plate, pour a generous helping of coffee sauce over it and add a slice for each person.

As you can see , the potatoes are colored on the outside, the meat has been steamed to a nice pink : the coffee taste has mostly disappeared, the sauce tastes slightly salty and of meat with hints of thyme and bay leaf.

Oh, and to make the most of the sauce , you just have to mash your potato in it with your fork! Wicked!

I like this dish,I've made it twice already and I'm told it still appears regularly on the dinner table in Koksijde.

Easter Monday : cherry blossom viewing

2009-04-13T18:22:00.014+02:00

Today is Easter Monday .It's a holiday in Belgium , and today the weather has been
wonderful.
Since my largest cherry tree is in full blossom , I'm having a cherry blossom viewing.
( the trees behind the cherry are my two pear trees )

This is cherry blossom : ( click on all pictures to see a larger view)

This is pear blossom : lovely but quite different from the cherry blossom.

To drink on such a lovely day , I'm having a Kriek Lambic , which is a beer that originated when people conserved their surplus of cherries (noordkrieken) by keeping them in barrels of beer.
These cherries are bright red and taste more sour (tart) than the other types which taste more sweet.
The alcohol in the beer preserves the cherries. To make this beer , which won the gold medal in Brussels in 2005 , 240 grams of cherries are added to one liter of Lambic beer and then ripened in oak barrels. This type of beer has been made like this since the 19th century.

As is traditional in Belgium , every beer has its own type of glass to drink it from.

This beer tastes tart and a bit sweet just like a real cherry and is very popular in summer : drink it rather cold. Very refreshing. It's a lovely naturally red colour ( no colorants , no sweetener ! )

See how even the foam is a lovely pink from the cherries ?

Lambic is a beer that can only be produced in one area in the world , namely around Lembeke, not very far from Brussels in Belgium and then only during winter.
This is because all the other beers are made to ferment by adding yeast under carefully controlled conditions in isolation. Lambic is made to ferment by letting the brew cool off in large tanks with all the windows open, so the wild yeasts in the air can fall into the brew and start the fermentation. During summer there are way too many organisms in the air : the fermentation would run wild. Since these wild yeasts are specific to this area, it can only be made there.

The result is a unique beer with a taste that is very complex and that also varies from year to year. Because it is rather flat ( doesn't foam ) older lambic is mixed with younger lambic which gives geuze , a beer that does produce a nice foam and is even more complex of taste.
The pressure in the bottle can get quite high , so they use bottles of thick glass with thick corks and a metal wire to keep the cork in (just like champagne).
The best ones can taste quite tart, like biting into a rather unripe apple , which is a shock to people used to the 'usual beers', but works wonders to help you digest your food after a large and copious Flemish dinner ;)

This is the 'chapel' where the brew cools down overnight and collects the necessary microorganisms to start fermentation from the outside air with large ventilators :

(Disclaimer : this picture is the property of Brouwerij Boon , Lembeke, Belgium ). Looks like a swimming pool full of beer , doesn't it ? It's not beer yet, it has a long way to go before it is.
The site is in Dutch only, but the wonderful pictures there speak for themselves.

Large oak beer barrel being scraped on the inside.

(Disclaimer : this picture is also the property of Brouwerij Boon , Lembeke, Belgium )

Of course this being Easter , we have Easter eggs . These are all brown and black chocolate with a liquid filling ( I'm not fond of white ) and every colour of wrapping is another filling : coffee, vanilla, lime, banana, fondant, and many others I've forgotten.

At work we got a small present for Easter : a bag with some eggs and this kawaii chocolate bunny.

For this cherry blossom viewing I bought these original handmade 'cerisettes' at a chocolatier in Mechelen ( cerise is French for cherry ). The cherries are whole (stone and stem and all) and are kept in alcohol for up to 5 years. The taste from the cherries transfers to the alcohol.
These real cherries are then each covered with dark chocolate which is filled with the original alcohol. They're quite large and a mouthful, but as the chocolate cover starts to melt and the cherry flavoured sweet alcohol flows into your mouth you'll have a wonderful experience. Trust me ! ( See the stems sticking out ? ) ( Click the picture for a mouthwatering full view :)

Tokyo Promotion Day : From Old Japan to New Japan : Shodo , Sadō and Robots.

2009-03-26T19:57:00.021+01:00

Target of the Tokyo Promotion Day was of course to promote Tokyo as a touristic hot spot, and show that it has a lot to offer for every kind of tourist. And at reasonable prices too !
Every visitor got a full package of folders, with maps, hotels, places to go and places to see.
I still haven't completely read mine.

Throughout the hall were displays explaining about things to see, things to do ,things to eat and how to get around and to Tokyo.

Placards with useful information were showing us everything about Tokyo, Japan

Things to enjoy

spare parts !

A Foodie's Guide!

There was an anime theater (whee!) , showing all kinds of anime throughout the day.
but I found out it was dubbed in English instead of original Japanese with sub titling, so I only watched one show, ( although I really wanted to see Coluboccoro ( see poster ) but it was programmed at the same time as my reservation for the tea ceremony).

There were several traditional activities you could participate in : old Japanese games , origami ( paper folding ) , shodo (calligraphy) and a tea ceremony (sadō).

"Everybody hold your pen like this. This is the character for tree..."

With so much to do and to see in one day I had to choose : I decided to take part in the tea ceremony, because it's the only thing I couldn't replicate at home.

We had to sit in front of the tea lady , in seiza style. Oh boy ! Although we got a zabuton ( cushion) to put under our knees , after a few minutes most people started feeling THE PAIN and started to try and find easier positions.
This is where I SHINE! I can sit in seiza style effortlessly like forever : seven years of serious bodybuilding and stretching and running has given me legs that are very strong and also very flexible. ( Strength training shortens your muscles : you absolutely need to stretch each trained muscle for 30 seconds each after training to keep them long.) So I was able to sit there , smiling like a Buddha , while around me painful motions and shifts were being performed.

We got a bowl of green matcha tea ,a sweet on a paper and a bamboo whisk , with which we had to stir the tea in a horizontal figure of eight ( a bit more difficult than the vertical figure of eight I'm used to as a cook) and then whisk the top of the tea quickly into a nice froth ( Oh YES! That one I'm good at :I revved up the right wrist and whisked away like an runaway outboard motor , but ever so elegantly mind you : only the hand and wrist moving, while the rest of the body stayed still :).
Then we had to take the wisk out , lightly scraping it at the front, put it to one side, hold the bowl on the right hand and turn the front away from us, drink the tea in three gulps and eat the sweet. The tea wasn't very thick or bitter ( I have matcha at home that is more bitter).
Still, I'd love to get hold of a bamboo whisk and bowl and do it at home. It was a wonderful experience !

I got the chance to talk to the lady after the ceremony. She explained : " I have been studying this style of tea ceremony for seven years. But this style is not so popular in Japan these days." "Ah ? so why do you study this style?" "Because I learned from my grandmother " "Seven years ? I should call you sensei then ?! " " No no, not sensei, I still have to study a few more years before I can teach"
Ah, such modesty !

The ROBOTS are coming, the ROBOTS are coming

This cute little doggy drew a lot of attention : it tapped its right foot to the rhythm of the music
and responded to petting by flashing it's lights and flicking it's ears.

A young Japanese woman standing next to me said : "What is that ?" I said "It plays music.. You can pet it : go ahead. Stroke its nose" She did. The I-dog flicked its ears,flickered its LED lights and made cute little noises. She was enchanted : " Ah, it's so cuuuuute. I mean.... it's so, so, mm.., so.."
I knew just the word she was looking for : " It's .. kawai ?" " Yes, kawaiiiiiiiii !!"
I have a feeling that kawaii means a lot more than just cute.
I think it's cute , cuter, cutest, kawaii.

Oh, she totally wants one of those !

Wheeee! I am I-sobot.

Everywhere there were Japanese hostesses in blue (vests ?) to help explain.
Here a British boy is getting vital instructions on the use of THE REMOTE CONTROL.

Look at the gleam in his eyes : I can see him thinking " Just add a jet pack and a plasma beam gun and I'm controlling my very own Gundam." World domination is the next logical step.

One one side , getting very little attention was this techno marvel . It plays music from an inserted MP3 player : I saw it rotate and spin to the rhythm of a pop song it was playing. Impressive. It can't do stairs , but it never rolled of its platform , it's that smart.
I'd love to get one to follow me around the house , but it would probably scare the cat

You could get your digital photograph taken and printed to take home , posing in front of two Tokyo landmarks : a tori

and modern buildings

From left to right : April, Priscilla, Mel, Isla, Hong & nihon buyo dancer Chie Nakayama ( from my previous post ) (Disclaimer : this picture is from Shigatsuhana's (April) flickr files )

All in all , it was well worth the trip , the long freezing drive on the motorbike, etc.. but I've already blogged about that.
One day , I'll visit Japan. Till then events like this are a welcome introduction.

O-hitashi : spinachrolls with sesameseed

2009-03-24T23:04:00.006+01:00

This Japanese dish has been around for centuries and is one of my favourites because it's quick to make.

Serves 2
250 grams of spinach
1 tablespoon of soy sauce
1 tablespoon of water

1/2 tablespoon of sesame seed

Bring slightly salted water to a boil and quickly boil the spinach in it for 20-25 seconds.
(tip : I usually use a pot with a sieve in it so I can lift the spinach out in one move.)
Rinse the spinach straightaway under cold water.
Squeeze all the water from it.
Mix the water and the soy sauce in a bowl and add the spinach to it . Mix the spinach and sauce well.

Heat a dry cooking pan and stir the sesame seed till lightly brown. Take pan from fire.
Squeeze all the sauce from the spinach and form into a roll about 4 cm thick.
(tip: I found this to be very easy if you form a roll and then wrap it into plastic foil.
I firmly squeeze and form the wrapped roll in a makisu ( a bamboo rolling mat used for sushi ) and then remove the foil )
Cut into 4 parts, dip one end in the sesame seeds and serve straight away.

(click for large version ) : Don't they look delicious ?

I like it so much I usually eat all four of them !

Tokyo Promotion Day : Drums, Dance, Music, Lions (lions ?!)

2009-03-13T18:53:00.015+01:00

During the day , several traditional live performances were taking place at a small stage
( against a background of Hokusai's beautiful ' Fukugawa Mannenbashi Shita' print).
The first one I saw, was a Shishi-mai ( Lion-dance) by the group Arigato Shishi , which is performed at shrine festivals and New Year , to ward off evil spirits and bring good luck, bountiful harvests, etc..
The Lion , portrayed by a very flexible actor wearing a shishi-gashira, or lion's head,
is accompanied by a flute player and a drummer and performs all sorts of acrobatic moves on stage.
( click on the pictures for a large version )

At one point during the dance the Lion apparently seems to settle down for a nap
and it takes quite a bit of serious clapping with the fan ( by the flute player , who has donned a mask)
and hefty drumming to get the Lion to wake up again.

Near the end of the dance , the Lion comes into the audience and 'bites' people on the head,
which is supposed to bring you luck all year long. I visited this performance twice, but no luck for me this year : I didn't get 'bitten'.

Next was a traditional Nihon Buyo ( Japanese dance ), performed by Nakagawa Chie, who's been studying folk and traditional dance from an early age, performing around the world.

With no more kimono and a fan , she managed to entertain me thoroughly for the entire period of the dance. It was quite fascinating !

A long succession of lots of very elegant moves.

Making good use of the long sleeves on her beautiful kimono.

The ensemble "Hibiki" performed several traditional pieces of Japanese music. A Sankyoku is made up of a koto , a shamisen (a three-stringed lute) , played by Arisawa, Shino and the shakuhachi (bamboo flute) played by Coxall, Michael . This ensemble has been together since 2003.
You can listen to a koto here, played by Okuda, Satoshi (Utanoichi).

You didn't need to go up to the stage to see whether Hirota Joji & the Taiko drummers were performing. You could hear them from outside !
As you can see the women got to beat the big drum too and I can tell you they didn't hit it with any less enthusiasm or power as the men!

It was beautiful to see how everybody kept beating perfectly synchronized , even when the drumsticks went high up.

:) The female drummers smiled the whole time while the young men frowned and Hirota-sama kept a watchful eye on his pupils from the back.

"Woooh! " At the end of the performance , the sticks go up.

Next time : From Old Japan to New Japan : Shodo , Sado and Robots.

Tokyo Promotion Day : I'm off to London!

2009-03-06T17:03:00.022+01:00

At the end of January I traveled to London to visit the Tokyo Promotion Day on Saturday 31st. ( The homepage of their website won't let you get to the original pages anymore , but you can take a peek via this page).
Instead of a quick oneday (hurry,hurry!) trip I decided to make a weekend of it , arranged for 2 overnight stays at a B&B ( bed and breakfast) somewhere in Kent and on Friday morning I took off. By motorbike of course ! Sure , it was the middle of winter and it was really freezing, but that wouldn't stop me !
(click the pictures for a large version)

Waiting at Calais Harbor for the trucks to unload from the ferry (which you can see in the back behind the gate sign).

Safely strapped to the deck on level 5. I'd be in England in one and a half hours.

By 7 pm I stopped at the Chinese restaurant "The Sundridge House" where I had a nice evening dinner before going to the B&B.

Saturday morning I took the train to London , leaving the bike at the station. Walking to the exposition, I walked by Buckingham Palace and took these pictures.

Looking past the Queen Victoria Memorial at Buckingham Palace.

The Victory statue on top of the memorial.

As you can see I was not the only one taking pictures on this lovely sunny Saturday.

The theme of the exposition : Tokyo : So old, So new, So Tokyo.
There was an awful lot to do and see here : the old and the new. Traditional arts, traditional activities to participate in, a Hokusai exposition; lots of information for tourists going to Tokyo, there was even anime and robots !

I've always admired Ukiyo-e ( I have like 3 books on Hokusai alone)

and apart from the Hokusai exposition here, I was able to watch a real hanga (woodblock printing) artisan at work!

Look at the print on the front left : for every color he needs to carve those separate wooden printing blocks( you can see 3 of them in front ) that have to be inked ( unless the colors are completely separate ) and they have to match exactly !

Did you know that Hokusai made everyday-life sketches that were called manga ?
You can see some of these sketches here. Several of the Hokusai manga volumes were on display at Tokyo day.

Right next to him there was a craftsman creating kanzashi (flower-like hair ornaments from silk).

Aren't they すてき (lovely) ?

To see more of Tokyo day , keep visiting !
Next time on this blog: Real Live Stage Events : drums,dance,music,lions (lions ?!)

Snowy fields

2009-02-24T14:37:00.013+01:00

Global warming or not, this winter we've had more snow than usual.
My pampas grass seems to be holding up nicely.

Is that a black panther sneaking up on me ?

Ah no it's my cat , Kedam, plowing through the snow.

With the sun out, I pack up the camera and go for a walk .
A short five minute walk takes me to the open fields behind the village where I live.

Cows graze here in summer, now it's all snow up to the horizon.

The rivers are frozen over ,

with a few places where the flowing water has cut through the ice.

The do it yourself snow-mobile.

As the sun starts to set , temperatures drop : time to head back home.

The setting sun colours everything in shades of bronze and russet.

( As always , click on the pictures for a larger view )

Country road, take me home.

The sun has almost set and I'm almost home.

Vlaamse stoofkarbonaden : Beer, Beef, Belgium.

2009-02-15T14:50:00.024+01:00

I promised a while ago to present a traditional dish from my country that could be cooked abroad. Here it is.

Foreign dishes can be hard to cook for many reasons : unfamiliar , hard to get ingredients , unfamiliar cooking techniques and cooking utensils.

This very traditional Flemish recipe should be do-able for most people.

Basically it's a very hearty stew of beef and onions in beer.

The finished dish can be frozen in portions for later, reheated quite simply (microwave !) and you can eat it with cooked or pureed potatoes or French fries or slices of brown bread.
I find it goes very well with Japanese style steamed rice ( click photo to see a larger version).

No vegetables ? If you eat it after a vegetable soup like leek or spinach, you'll have a very complete and balanced meal.

The following ingredients are for 4 servings (in Belgium! Could serve 5 or 6 in other countries ))

1 kg of lean unsalted cooking meat ( this beef is sold in Belgium mostly precut in cubes and made from the brisket or neck : it's a tough but very nutritious and lean meat, that needs long slow cooking to get tender )
3 medium sized onions
1 heaped tablespoon of brown sugar
1 tablespoon of plain flour
1 large bay leaf
1 sprig of thyme
100 grams of unsalted butter
1/2 liter of good brown beer
1 good slice of bread
1 tablespoon of mustard (Dijon or another hearty one)
pepper
salt

Large pot with lid ( to cook )
Large pot ( to hold the browned meat )

3 hours of your time ( although 2,5 of those are spent letting the food simmer , so you can spend them doing other stuff around the kitchen )

Where are the brisket and the neck ? See below

I use these red onions because they've got a good flavor. Yellow ones are good too, but don't use the very large ones ( they're too weak and sweet tasting ).

Peel and chop the onions while crying your eyes out ;)

Cut the beef in medium sized cubes (about 3 - 4 cm ).
Melt the butter in the large pot on a medium fire ( electric setting 6-7 out of 12)

(Here I use 1 and a half tablespoon of olive oil instead of butter because
a) I almost never use butter in the kitchen
b) I am Flemish , therefore I am allowed to (haha)
c) it doesn't change the flavour of this dish
d) olive oil is healthier
e) I made this on a Sunday and couldn't get butter from the shops

Add the beef cubes and brown them lightly on all sides ( moisture comes out from the cubes : keep stirring to let most of it evaporate ). Use a large pot ! This one's 27 cm across.
If you have a smaller pot or larger amounts of beef , brown the beef cubes in portions, otherwise the pan will not get hot enough and your beef will not get browned , but start to cook. The browning is important for the taste.

Tip the browned cubes of meat in a dish and sprinkle the flour over them ( you could also do this after they go back into the pot later)
Turn the heat down a bit and put the onions in the pot.
Keep stirring them till nearly glazed in the fat left behind by the meat. Add a little butter or oil if needed.

Sprinkle the brown sugar over them and stir for a minute to color the onions.

See how nice and brown the onions have become ?

Add the spoon of vinegar and stir.
Put the beef back in the pot and add your beer. It will foam a lot when you pour it in but that's OK.

Use a Belgian brown beer , NO OTHER BEER will do !

Seriously, use a good tasting brown beer . Don't use a low alcohol table beer : too sweet. Don't worry about the alcohol : at the end it will all be gone. Kids can eat this dish : they'll love it.

Season with five to six turns on your pepper mill and a few pinches of salt. Put in the thyme and the bay leaf. The beer should cover most of the meat.

Turn down the heat ( electric setting 3 out of 12) , put the lid on and let simmer quietly for an hour.
After that , the smell when you lift the lid will be tantalizing. Trust me it will get even better.
Don't worry that the meat is still very tough at this point : you're only halfway.
Spread the tablespoon of mustard ( use Dijon or another hearty mustard ) on your slice of bread and put it on top of the meat with the mustard side down.
(DO USE a self baked full grain brown bread like me ! White bread is for WIMPS ! And toothless old people !)

The bread will bind the sauce , the mustard aids in flavoring and tenderizing the meat.
Since it completely dissolves , you can use white or brown.

I keep the heat fairly low and add a little beer ( a few tablespoons ) at this point if I find it's becoming a bit dry.
Later on , use water or the beer taste will be too obvious.
Check from time to time and stir.
Make sure it doesn't get too dry and starts burning , which can happen because there's now flour from the bread in the stew : burning would ruin the dish.

It'll take from 1 to 1,5 hours till it's ready.

You can tell by seeing how tender the meat has become : it should come apart easily ( see photo ) but not completely fall apart : you're not making a sauce. Taste it and let it stew longer if you feel it's not tender enough.
You can see in this picture that it's still quite moist.

I like serving this dish with the same beer I've cooked it with.

Have fun and let me know how it went !

(I've found many variations of this dish on the web ( especially on Dutch sites) . FORGET about those , they're all FAKES ! This is the ONLY REAL ONE ;)
Actually, as with most traditional dishes , the recipe varies slightly in several parts of the country and from cookbook to cookbook.
This recipe comes from an out of print cookbook from 1984 (no longer available and only printed in Dutch) that compiled 125 original recipes from all over Flanders ( the Flemish speaking part of Belgium).
Tip : use a flat bladed wooden spoon for this kind of dishes : it's a lot better to stir food that's sticking to the bottom of the pan. You can use the high tech non stick one ( I have both ) but I can buy ten of the wooden ones for the price of the other ;)

Autosalon 2009 : Bikes , bikes, bikes !

2009-01-18T12:02:00.033+01:00

Before everyone starts thinking this is a cookery blog, I've just visited the 2009 Autosalon in Brussels .
I have to buy a new motorbike . I'm commuting to work every day and my present Yamaha Diversion 600 is sadly nearing the end of it's economical life.
Since you can get better conditions at the 'Salon' I arranged to meet my regular dealer 'MTSVerlinden' there and look at the new Diversion.

At the exhibition they have a special parking lot for motorbikes only , guarded 24/7 and totally free of charge !

The one in front is my current Yamaha Diversion 600. I have driven it for more than 120,000 km in the past 4 and a half years and it's still going strong, totally reliable but alas , I need a new one to commute so I can keep deducting the cost from my annual income tax (hehe ;).

The new Diversion 600 can be had in red , blue or black.
Here's the red one ( you can look but no touching !)

( Click on these pictures for a larger view)

I've got my eye on the blue one, though.

Here's another new Yamaha model ( the BIKE, I'm talking about the BIKE !). It's the naked version of the Diversion and available in white, yellow and black. Yamaha has redone the engine and drastically redrawn the bike.
Check out that beautifully shaped rear end , guys. (Honestly, I'm STILL talking about the BIKE!)

"Do I look OK on this ? " ( If you ask me you look just fine on that )

" Are you taking PICTURES of me ?" ( No ma'am, I'm only interested in the bike. I swear :) )

( Hello ? Could you look a bit less skeptical, ma'am ? You're a YAMAHA saleslady for Pete's sake : perhaps you could... try to smile when you're sitting on a new Yama ? ;)

Alright already , it's time I try on my future ride for size.

Fase 1 : swing the right leg over (unstoppable indeed!)

Fase 2 : Position the feet. Zip up the jacket.

Fase 3 : Smile at the lady who's pointing my expensive brand new digital camera at me. (Pleeeze don't drop that!)

There's no denying the TRUTH : I make this bike look GOOD. We're talking perfect harmony between rider and machine here , people.

Now bring me the paperwork and guide my hand to that dotted line where I can sign my name. I'll have mine in blue , please :)

They're from the US of A : big , heavy , costly and way too much chrome too polish for my taste
, but everybody wants to know what it feels like to sit on a Harley. Right , lady ?

And if you thought Harleys had too much chrome , check out this .. err, trike.

And if you don't like two wheels in the back, you can have this one with two wheels in the front.

This one has two wheels in the front too, but.. surely that's no longer a bike , is it ?

You can't ride a motorbike without a helmet : check out the ones below.

Flower power is back !

If you want to see more , you'll have to check out the website for pictures like the one below or better yet, go over there and see it yourself ! It's open till next weekend !

Oooh , looking good, girls ! Still , I'm convinced you'd look way cooler on a Yamaha ;)

Best wishes for 2009

2008-12-31T23:10:00.001+01:00

See you all in 2009 !

F.A.C.T.S. 2008 : the inside story and pictures . All will be revealed !

2008-12-28T20:29:00.021+01:00

FACTS is an event held every year in October in Ghent (Belgium) where ALL real fans meet to get overdosed on 7000 square meters of Fantasy, Anime , Comics, Toys , Space , famous guests, food, beer ( hey, it's in Belgium ;).
Thousands of visitors come each year to this genuine mekka where shops from Belgium and abroad display and sell their wares. Despite it's success , large distributors and companies are requested not to attend.

This is Jean , an acquaintance of mine, who runs the popular shop "De Stripkever" in Mechelen , that sells comics, strips, manga , anime and figurines.
It also has a counter and tables out front where you can sit down and drink coffee, tea, eat pancakes ( or have a beer ).

The cosplay competition isn't limited to Anime and Manga characters. This place is unique : only here will you find so many characters from Stargate , Star Wars and other movies shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Naruto and Inuyasha.
Picture above : R2D2 (the robot) from Star Wars driving down the ramp while on the left two soldiers from Stargate let him pass.

Do I even need to introduce this pretty character ? Isn't she just totally kawaii ? かわいいね?

( For those of you who've been living in a galaxy far , far away (pun intended) these past 10 years and have only just now arrived on planet Earth, this is Haruno Sakura , the female lead and ninja from the very popular Naruto anime and manga )
( I've watched an episode of the anime and , frankly , 'our' Sakura is definitely prettier ! )
(click on pictures for larger version)

The three lovely ladies in the picture below are from left to right Yuko Ichihara (xxHolic) and two characters from Vampire Knight ( someone from the night class whose name I can't remember ( read : failed to find on Google ) and Shizuka Hiou ).

Here's a cute character that showed up in the corner of one of my pictures ( I didn't notice till I started editing them.) I'd really love to know which character she is : anybody any ideas ?

See you next year at FACTS 2009 !

Christmas Market !

2008-12-12T02:11:00.015+01:00

Tomorrow Friday 12th , the Christmas Market in Leuven will begin and go on for 10 days. Leuven is the town where I was born.

It's one of the oldest and certainly the coziest Christmas Markets in Belgium.
Visitors come especially by bus from other countries to visit it.

More than 140 stalls will be there , selling drinks, food, gifts, more food, more gifts, more drinks (you get the picture ?)

Last year more than 350.000 people visited during 10 days.
That's a lot of visitors if you know that only about 30.000 people live in Leuven...

(I've totally borrowed these pictures until I get my own after I visit the market.)
Let's all go there and beat last year's record!

Do click on this picture ( see if you can spot every funny detail ). You can find the original here.BTW a P.V. is a police citation and a white letter L on a blue background is a sign you have to hang behind the window in your car if the driver is learning how to drive and hasn't got a full license yet.

Bye, everybody.

Obimaki Enokitake anyone ?

2008-11-22T20:32:00.016+01:00

Together with the mushrooms from my post on Japanese hotpot , I also bought these.

The enokitake ( the ones on the right ) I split in 8 bundles about 2 cm thick, wrap them tightly in a thin slice of bacon and grill them on a very lightly oiled very hot grill plate both sides till the bacon is crisp ( eight minutes about). Cut them in half , arrange them like in the picture. Serve with some ground white pepper and a slice of lemon.
This is an original Japanese dish called obimake enokitake (obimake because the bacon resembles the obi that is wrapped around a kimono ).

( click on the picture for a larger view : you can almost smell them! )

The insides are juicy and go quite well with the saltiness of the roasted bacon.
Easy to make and a lovely appetizer before a larger meal. I love eating these!

The large ones are king oyster mushrooms. These were new to me so I sliced them in half from top to bottom and grilled them slowly on a lightly oiled grill plate for at least 10-15 minutes till they felt softer to the touch. Nice taste.
(Sorry no pics of the cooked ones : they were eaten too quickly :)

( Tip : if you want to photograph foods that cool down quickly like these for your blog , arrange the camera and the lights at the table before you start cooking, so you can arrange the food on its dish , whip it in front of the camera and take your pictures right away without your lovely food going all cold.)
Bye!

Winter's here! First snow! (sort of...)

2008-11-22T12:26:00.004+01:00

The first snow of the year has fallen! Well ,it's cold and white , but what I just saw falling out of the sky wasn't really snow . It fell too quickly to be snowflakes, too slowly to be hail.

It's made up of tiny little snowy round stuff, that looks and feels exactly like tiny little snowballs.
Weird. Must be global warming , don't you think ?

Hotpot dinner : Nabe

2008-11-19T22:54:00.015+01:00

Winter approaches and after reading Kirin's post on Nabe Ryori ( see also her Comments on my post ) I had to have a go at a Japanese hot-pot. ( Do click on the pictures : the large sized pics look even more appetizing).
Because it's my first time I keep the recipe simple and the dinner crowd small ( once I know my way around a recipe I can add more ingredients and guests).

To serve two I made a soup base with 1.5 litres of dashi and 1.5 tablespoons of red miso. I seasoned it by adding some finely grated ginger ( less than a tablespoon I guess) a bit at a time, tasting the soup base till the ginger was noticeable but not overpowering and also added some drops of sesame oil.

The vegetables that go in are these lovely brown shimeji that I found at the Chinese supermarket ( they're from Korea , imported via the Netherlands (it's a small world ;) I'm keeping the white ones for another dish) , Chinese cabbage leaves , cut in bite-sized squares, sliced shii-take, sliced spring-onion. I put everything in the simmering base , adding the shimeji a few minutes later, because I want to keep these from overcooking.

I served it in a fondue pot ( mine has a ceramic interior and I kept the pot simmering at the table with a small alcohol burner underneath ) . I added the finely sliced beef at the table for effect ;).

Btw , this is kangaroo beef which is a very lean meat ( less than 2 % fat )!

The Nabe with the meat added : it's very lean so only needs to cook shortly ! Tastes best when it's still a bit rosy inside.

When everyone had eaten all the goodies from the pot, I added green soba and tofu to the broth. You can see the result below : the taste of the broth by then was to die for ! ( Tip : I had pre-cooked the soba , adding the same amount of cold water to it a few minutes before it was done , so it would be cooked just right after simmering in the pot together with the tofu. )

Nabe is a wonderful dish to experiment with. I can really recommend it.

Colourful seafruit

2008-10-25T14:16:00.014+02:00

Fall is coming and with it meats are appearing in Belgian shops that you can't buy during the rest of the year : wild boar, deer, pheasant, dove. I love trying them out, especially the ones from abroad like springbok and antelope.
However, when I walked past the fish stand in the local supermarket I saw a fish that you usually never see on offer ( well, not in Belgium anyway). I had to have it! Isn't it a beauty? It's quite big too , 1.7 kilos ( I put my sashimi knife next to it for reference. )

The salesladies at the fish stand were sorry to see it go ( "Our pretty fish!").

Look at its beak ( very sharp ).
I would not like to be bitten by that.

(click on the pictures to see a larger version ;)
I wonder how it'll taste. It's thick, so I should get some really nice big fillets from it.

Speaking of knives, I've bought two more knives made by Seki Ryu. They're totally sharp and light, which makes them very handy for the kitchen. The sashimi knife has one flat and one sharpened side : you can make very neat slices with it.

Bright new morning

2008-10-14T20:52:00.012+02:00

Last saturday morning started out really bright and sunny ( even though it's October already, which is usually a rainy , windy period in Belgium).
I just got myself a digital camera and now I'm learning how to use it (so many settings !) because on saturday afternoon I'll be visiting the FACTS 2008 convention , which only comes around once a year.
So no travelogue right now , I'll continue it later on.

These are the very first few pics with my new camera.
This is Tek the neighbour's cat sitting in the back of my garden. He's been courting my cat for years without any success, but not for lack of trying ;)
He hasn't given up yet.

I made this bowl of Miso soup with tofu, Marufuji Udon , wakame and spring onions. It's so easy to make and so tasty !

Honestly, doesn't this picture make you hungry ?

Watch for my next post when I get my pictures from the FACTS convention sorted out.

Just to make you more hungry, I've added one I made on Sunday morning with green soba (noodles).

2008-09-27T21:19:00.025+02:00

Day 1 : continued

Following the A832 to the West coast , you pass by a place where the water of a clear mountain stream drops over a rocky precipice : Victoria Falls.
Perfectly cold and drinkable ( I know because I drank it).

There are small and large streams like this all over the Highlands. They are one of the things ( like the mountains and lakes) that make the Highlands such a unique and unforgettable landscape.

A few kilometers further , I pass by the western end of Loch Maree. From this end one can see how big it is , stretching into the distance between the mountains left and right of it.

From here the road continues down to sea-level. The following picture shows the village of Tournaig, sitting on the edge of Loch Thurnaig. Loch Thurnaig continues to the west out into the sea ( that's on the right of the picture).

This is a typical house of the region ( small windows and thick walls : to survive the cold winters up here). An owner of a boat repair company on the North coast told me that the cold is quite bad , but that the winds can go up to 200 kilometers per hour up here in the North!

From here the road starts to go up again : just a few kilometers further one I get a lovely overview of Touraig with the Bein Airigh Charr mountain behind on the left and on the right the Torridons (mountains).

Continuing up the west coast to the north , with the road steadily climbing , I get a breathtaking view of Loch Ewe and the island sitting in the middle of it. Just like Loch Thurnaig , this loch continues on into the sea.

One of the things that I like so much when journeying here is that , when I stop to listen, all I can hear is the noise of the wind and the sea. Except for the occasional passerby I don't hear the continuous noise of cars or railroads or airplanes in the distance as I do where I live.
It is a wonderful feeling and it's one of the things I love coming to the Highlands for.

(I'll continue this and other journeys in my next blogs. See you! )

2008-09-21T21:14:00.014+02:00

I've been to the Highlands in Scotland several times and I keep going back there , because it's so beautiful.
Yes I know the weather is changeable and it rains ( frequently ) but it's worth it !

The last time I went there on my motorbike. I crossed the Channel with the ferry from Calais to Dover and drove up to the Black Isle , where I stayed at a wonderful bed and breakfast on a farm . The Black Isle is just north of Inverness, which is the main city of the Highlands.
The city is situated by the Beauly Firth which you can cross over on the bridge you see in the picture to get to the Black Isle.

From there you can travel up into the mountains to the north. You can drive for hours without seeing anything but breathtakingly beautiful wild open spaces along roads that will go from 500 meters up down to sea level in just a few kilometers.

Day 1

On my first day I traveled by the A832 to the
West Coast. You can see the road winding down from high up to sealevel in the distance in the picture on the right. ( That's my motorbike on the left of the road )

Going down the A832 you pass by Loch Maree near Slioch ( Loch is Scottish for lake ) The mountain you see in the back is 666 meters high.
I didn't swim in the loch ( water's too cold ! ) but I did get to the little sandy beach you see in the middle and picknicked there.
Actually, Scotland allows you to put up a tent practically everywhere so you can camp there if you want, but I haven't tried that yet. Maybe next time.

(Keep watching my blog! I'll continue this travelog with more pics in my next post ! And Do Click on the pics to see them in a larger format)