2010 Japan Art Festival

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

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.

Ngamantha Khayanchinthi si Piyan.

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

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

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 :)