To celebrate our anniversary, this past weekend my boyfriend Rob and I took a trip to Joshua Tree, where we rented a little desert bungalow with a full kitchen and an outdoor grill. It was the perfect chance for him to make his signature hamburgers and for me to ask him to blog about them. So without further ado...

Kerk Burgers:
A guest post by Rob Kerkovich

The Kerk and his burgers.

What better way to celebrate a weekend in the desert than by eating a juicy, succulent hamburger? I still remember the first time I ever ate a hamburger… It was 1982. My precocious mother fetched some ground chuck from our local butcher and--

OK wait. Stop. I can’t do this. I’m sorry. When Anjali, for some unknown reason, first asked me to contribute a post about hamburgers, I was totally flattered. But then I remembered something. Certain reputable sources have stated that the only people who write food blogs are wealthy Asians… I’m not Asian. And I’m closer to being Asian than I am wealthy. Regardless, I said, “Y’know what? Racial stereotypes be damned! I’m on board!” And I couldn’t wait to get started.

Then, last night, we watched Julie & Julia…

And now -- now I just don’t know if I can write anything about food. Anything that would connect me, in any way, to Julie Powell -- even if it’s writing just ONE food blog post -- would make me die inside. I just can’t do it. The Julia scenes were amazing, obviously, but the Julie parts? The only piece of Julie Powell’s story that I enjoyed was when her heart was broken, Ralph Wiggum-style, once the news reached her that Julia Child kinda thought she was bullshit.

The rest of the time, she either threw temper tantrums or made the same frowny faces that toddlers make when they’ve filled their diapers. She never apologized for any of her behavior, with the exception of blogging some weird rhetorical question in which she drops that she MAY be treating her husband poorly. And the only thing she learns, the biggest lesson she walks away with, is “make sure you finish what you start.” I’m sorry, that’s the kind of thing you’re supposed to learn from one of Aesop’s fables, not from dramatic films that take themselves seriously enough to send out SAG screeners.

Wait! Now I too am suddenly overcome by wanting to draw thin connections between myself and Julia Child!

- We’re both 6’2”

- Neither of us liked Julie Powell

- I also find things “hotter than a stiff cock”

Oh my God! She’s so inspiring! I’m going to go out there and become totally self-absorbed and then my friend will call me a bitch but I’ll be cool with it! Then every time I eat stuff I’ve made in front of my friends I’m going to talk about how awesome it tastes!

I have gotten off track. Part of me wants to just stop right now and go out on a really spiteful note… But no. No, Julie Powell has taught me to finish what I started. So...KERK BURGERS!

Kerk burgers. Photo styling by Rob.

Being no stranger to self-absorption, Kerk Burgers are called Kerk Burgers because I named them after myself. Just like how I sing songs to Anjali such as “Kerks Just Want to Have Fun” and “Living on a Kerk” These burgers are my only legacy. And they’re not even that impressive so I doubt my legacy will last very long. [Ed note: Don't believe it.]

Get yourself some ground beef. We’re doing this whole sustainable thing now so we got grass fed meat from the Atwater Village Farmers’ Market. And by “we” I mean “Anjali,” since I’m terrified of farmers’ markets.

Then it’s just a matter of securing the following, incredibly rare ingredients:

-salt

-freshly ground pepper

-garlic powder

-diced onions

-Worcestershire sauce

The hardest thing to find (the Worcestershire sauce) is available in most specialty “ethnic” supermarkets. Chances are they’ll be sold out though, so just buy in bulk online.

Take a little of each ingredient and work it into a patty (I like to do it patty by patty, instead of mixing it all in one bowl). I wish I could be more specific about the amount of each ingredient, but just eyeball it. I mean, it’s salt and pepper and garlic powder and onions and Worcestershire sauce. It’d be delicious on toast.

Now, if you’re like me, you’re a little priss. So anytime you touch raw ground meat, you’re gonna want to wipe off your hands off whenever you put it down. So, do what I do, and get someone to add the ingredients while you hold the meat and bark out “more!” or “less!” It’s a great group activity. You’ll love it. You’ll feel like you’re in an 80’s commercial for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Get out the old people, it’s time to make burgers!

Once your patties are made, throw them on a grill -- preferably one that is hot enough to cook meat -- and cook them so that you can then put them in a bun and eat them. I’d give cooking times and temperatures, but I’m still trying to figure all that out every time I make these. Of course, if you read food blogs, you probably know how to grill a hamburger, or are versed enough in cooking to know how to not screw it up, so I’ll leave the whole cooking part up to you, you little gastronomical savants you…

OK. That’s it.

When he's not criticizing food bloggers or making burgers, Rob enjoys teaching cats to read Google Maps and making funny videos about babies, football and Teen Wolf.

Smoke is seductive. It's why I love bacon, Lapsang Souchong tea, bonito flakes and smoked paprika, the dusky taste of campfires on my plate and in my cup. It's also why I asked for a stovetop smoker for Christmas this year.

The Cameron stovetop smoker is a compact rectangular pan with a lid that comes with four different types of wood chips and fairly straightforward instructions. My mind started racing soon after it arrived, visions of smoked salmon and smoked sea salt and smoked fennel began filling my head. Basically I wanted to smoke everything in my kitchen, just to see.

And with that, let's take a break to discuss how owning a smoker can lead to grave misunderstandings. For example, when you are in the car with your parents over the holidays and you turn to your sister and say, "I can't wait to get back to LA so I can smoke something," she will look at you like you are insane and you will remind yourself to specify what you are smoking so people won't suspect you of being a delinquent. Except that when you turn to a coworker a few weeks later and say, "I'm excited about smoking mushrooms on Saturday," he will look at you like you are insane and ask if that's even possible.

So be careful. And for the record, this is the only way I know how to smoke mushrooms.

I used shiitake, oyster and king oyster mushrooms, purchased at a Korean market for a ridiculously affordable price. The mushrooms soaked up the smoke like little sponges, softening and becoming intensely earthy. Were I a vegetarian or vegan trying to add a bacon-like note to a dish, I'd much prefer these to a strip of fake striped meat.

After bringing them to a friend's birthday BBQ, I froze the leftovers by laying them out individually on a sheet pan in the freezer until solid, then threw them into a freezer bag. (I'm addicted to doing this as a way to save ingredients. I blame my thrifty Presbyterian missionary background.) With kale, chopped yellow onion and a big handful of Pecorino Romano, they made a wonderful cold-weather pasta dish -- inspired by my friend Lydia -- and would undoubtedly be a great addition to risotto.

If you love mushrooms as much as I do, you'll also want to check out Machine Project's FungiFest 2010 starting this weekend. Mushroom gelato from Scoops! Need I say more?

Smoked Mushrooms

1 pound mushrooms of your choice
Olive oil
Salt
Balsamic vinegar (optional)

Clean the mushrooms by either giving them a quick rinse or just brushing them free of debris. Snap off and discard the tough stems (if using varieties like shiitake, cremini and portabella) and place mushrooms in a large bowl. Drizzle with a tablespoon of olive oil and a good pinch of salt and toss to distribute.

Smoke in a stovetop smoker according to manufacturer's instructions for 20 minutes, using the wood chips of your choice. (I did one batch with cherry and one batch with alder, and preferred the alder.) After smoking the mushrooms should be soft and slightly browned. If eating the mushrooms on their own, drizzle with balsamic vinegar and serve warm or at room temperature.

For a long time I didn't understand why anyone would choose dried beans over canned. They were cheaper, sure, but saving a couple bucks didn't seem worth the hours spent producing a pot of unevenly cooked legumes, some hard as little marbles, others so soft their skins floated behind them like ragged capes. A can opener and a quick rinse made much more sense to me.

Then I discovered the Parsons Method.

Russ Parsons mentions it in his kitchen science book for non-science geeks, How to Read a French Fry, but rather in passing, not in the solemn tones you would expect from one who is about to change the way you think about beans and how you cook them forever. (Okay, it's true. I don't actually know what tone I'd expect in a life-changing bean manifesto, but there would probably be lightning. And maybe a chorus of angels.)

His method is this: cook your beans in a dutch oven in a low oven instead of on the stove. You don't have to soak them first. And you can add salt during the cooking.

My dutch oven.

It's simple, I know. But there's magic in the even oven heat and early salting, which leaves each bean soft, whole and deeply seasoned. Plus, no soaking means you can add beans to the menu a couple hours before dinner, rather than the night before.

Another crucial component is, of course, the beans. The older they are, the longer they will take to cook and the greater the risk of uneven cooking. I usually avoid beans at mainstream grocery stores, where they have an unpredictable turnaround time, and purchase instead from Latin or Middle Eastern markets, bulk goods stores like Naturewell or farmers markets. And I have only heard good things about Rancho Gordo's heirloom beans, which ship for a flat rate of $8.

Besides extreme age, there are two other factors which lead to beans that never soften: hard water and acidic ingredients like tomatoes or vinegar. Salt is not on this list, despite the widespread belief that salt prevents beans from softening. According to kitchen-science guru Harold McGee, salt does slow the rate at which beans absorb water, but they eventually soften and cook through. I've been salting my beans for over a year now and it has never interfered with the cooking process.

Also: I really need to start dropping the phrase "salting my beans" into casual conversation.

Beans -- The Parsons Method

Measure out your beans, then wash them and pick out any bits of dirt or straw. (One cup of dry beans makes about 3 cups cooked.) If you are using chickpeas, you'll need to soak the beans overnight in cold water; for all other beans no soaking is required.

Preheat the oven to 250 degrees F. Put the beans in a heavy dutch oven and add 2 1/2 cups of water for every cup of beans. Put the lid on the pot and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Transfer the pot to the oven. Bake for 30 minutes, then add 2 teaspoons of salt for every cup of dry beans. Stir and return to the oven for another 30-40 minutes. If you suspect your beans are very fresh, start checking them after they have been in the oven for a total of 50 minutes. Chickpeas will need the full 70 minutes and often even more.

Beef chili with pumpkin.

If you'll be using the beans for another dish, you can either drain them and use them immediately, or let them cool in their cooking liquid and refrigerate, liquid and all. If you'll be eating the beans on their own, you can add more flavor by sauteing aromatics like onions, carrots and celery in oil or bacon fat in the dutch oven before adding the dry beans. Drop in a bay leaf or the herb or spice of your choice. As long as you don't add anything acidic before the beans are fully cooked, you can simmer whatever you like along with the beans.

I used this batch of beans (pinquitos, from a stand at the Hollywood Farmers Market) to make beef chili with pumpkin, using grass-fed ground beef from J & J -- the perfect meal for a rainy December night.

You may not know this about me, but in addition to being a food nerd, I am also a productivity geek, which means I neatly label my spices, I clean out my refrigerator regularly and I made this kind of embarrassing grocery list template organized around the layout of my local Trader Joe's. (I can totally send you the Word doc if you shop at the TJ's in Silver Lake, just let me know.) So it probably comes as no surprise that I have a system in place for organizing the recipes I find online. It's not perfect, but I thought I'd write it up in case it might help any other food and productivity nerds out there.

Click on any screenshot for a full-size view.

It all starts with Google Reader, the hub of my blog reading and where I am most likely to find a recipe I want to keep for later. If I'm in a hurry, I'll just star the recipe so I'll be able to find it easily later. (Extra credit keyboard shortcut geek tip: Just hit S to star an entry in Google Reader.)

If I have a little more time, I immediately save the recipe in Delicious, tagging it with "recipe" plus a mix of general and specific tags, so I have the ability later to search for either a general category of recipes or a specific main ingredient. When I have a larger chunk of time and the desire to obsessively organize, I go through all my starred items and add the recipes to Delicious. Unstarring an item (geek tip: hit S again) after saving it, tagged neatly, is a wonderfully satisfying feeling, like how it felt to empty your school binder at the end of the year in junior high.

...You're getting a deep look into my psyche here, people. I hope you appreciate it.

Here's where we kick into Mac-specific nerd mode because the best and most convenient aspect of saving recipes in Delicious is that I can look them up with Quicksilver, the application launcher program any good geek should be using on her Mac. (You can read more about Quicksilver here: "Why Quicksilver is Still the Greatest Mac App of All Time.") I just pull up Quicksilver -- with a keyboard shortcut, of course -- and type in any word from the name of the recipe to get a list of saved items with that word. I highlight the recipe, hit Return and the recipe page opens up in a new tab in my browser. Quicksilver is also adaptive, so if every time I search for "lentils" I choose Orangette's flawless lentil salad recipe, that item will begin appearing at the top of the list.

I've also been playing around with Evernote, which goes beyond storing bookmarks, allowing you to copy and paste the actual website content -- helpful in case your recipe comes from a blog that closes up shop -- and save documents, photos and even handwritten notes, so if you go to a party and eat an amazing pavlova, you can ask the hostess to write up the recipe on a napkin and save that alongside a photo you snapped of the dessert wine served at the party. It has the potential to be the ultimate recipe box, but I've only just started using it and have yet to reach those heights.

So that's it. Is it all rather underwhelming? Does the idea of accessing a recipe with just two keystrokes and a keyword leave you absolutely cold? Sorry, my friend, it's a geek thing. I like to save time looking up recipes so I have more time to cook. And eat. And, you know, lie around the house rereading the Harry Potter books. Whatever.

Fellow geeks, how do you store your recipes online?

Phyllis.

I want a chicken.

For awhile I've kind of suspected I wanted a chicken, ever since I found out it is actually legal to own chickens (but not roosters) in the city of LA. My obsession with really good eggs has already been documented and I am always on the hunt for new egg vendors at the farmers market. So after meeting a chicken named Phyllis last weekend and trying her seriously amazing eggs, it's official: I want a chicken.

My friend Jon was house-sitting for his friends in Highland Park and part of the deal was caring for Phyllis, their backyard-roaming chicken. With her green-black body, gentle disposition and head of fluffy white feathers that wobble when she walks, she's a real cutie. Fortuitously, Rob and I stopped by to visit after seeing Food Inc., and seeing Phyllis happily scratching around in the compost pile and jumping up to snag grapes off the vine seemed like a tonic for the stomach-turning treatment of animals we had just watched onscreen.

Phyllis lays one small egg about once every two days and Jon was nice enough to give me two eggs he had saved in the fridge. I knew they were destined for something simple but special, and Zuni Cafe's fried eggs in bread crumbs seemed just about perfect. It's one of my favorite ways to cook good eggs because it combines rich, runny yolks with the toasty crunch of bread crumbs and the warm flavor of thyme in a way that seems fancy yet tastes just like that childhood favorite of mine, egg in the basket. (Or egg-in-the-hole or cat in the hat or whatever it is your mom happened to call it.) With a simple beet salad -- just chopped raw beets, salt, pepper and fresh lemon juice -- and a couple slices of toasted olive bread alongside, I had the ideal summer meal: easy, oven-less and utterly satisfying.

Phyllis's eggs, by the way, were incredible. Is chicken-napping punishable by law?

Fried Eggs in Bread Crumbs

Adapted from The Zuni Cafe Cookbook

Makes one serving

3 tablespoons panko (Japanese bread crumbs)
Salt
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
A few sprigs of thyme
2 eggs

In a small bowl, mix the panko with a pinch of salt and 1 tablespoon of olive oil until the bread crumbs are the texture of wet sand. Strip the sprigs of thyme and set the leaves aside.

In a medium-size nonstick or cast iron skillet, fry panko until crumbs are just beginning to brown. Quickly add remaining tablespoon of olive oil and thyme leaves to the pan and push panko into the middle, forming a flat little island at the center. For over easy eggs, separate about half the crumbs and let them hang out at the edges of the pan. Stir them occasionally so they don't feel left out.

Crack eggs over the panko island. Cook until whites are set and bread crumbs are a toasty brown. For over easy eggs, scoop excess panko over the tops of the eggs and flip once. Serve immediately. While eating, think about the awesomeness of chickens.

For about a year, when I was in elementary school, I had a pet crawfish. It lived in a small tank on my bathroom countertop, gobbled frozen shrimp with its whirring mouth and clacked its claws angrily at anyone who got too close. If it had a name, I no longer remember it. We never cuddled. I didn't tell it my 10-year-old woes. When it died, I don't think I was particularly sad.

All of this is to say: I have no problem eating piles of crawfish at the annual crawfish boil.

It helps that my friend Will boils them up in a giant pot of bubbling broth, chunks of corn, garlic heads and whole potatoes bobbing to the surface as he stirs the whole mess with a baseball bat. That broth is really good.

And the fact that we eat off a long table spread with newspaper helps too. There's something special about eating without a plate. And with your hands, that's always good.

After all, there's no other way to to tear off heads and suck out brains and peel away legs and shells to expose a tiny nubbin of meat that you can dip into a pile of Old Bay seasoning and pop into your mouth, along with a soft and mellow bulb of garlic.

And a little dessert helps build up the appetite while the next sack of crawfish awaits its steamy end. I went for a Coke cupcake topped with a crunchy peanut frosting that had the ideal sweet-sticky-saltiness, good enough to eat with a spoon.

Also -- what, you think I'd only eat one dessert? -- a big scoop of Rob's famous Dirt Pie, a diabetes-inducing mix of chocolate pudding, crushed Oreos, Cool Whip and an entire frosted chocolate sheet cake, crumbled and stirred in. The man does not mess around. He also serves it in a plastic flower pot, adorned with a real sunflower.

My contribution to the day was two types of cornbread, two batches each. Four pans of cornbread! The crowd was so insane, it all disappeared within 10 minutes of being set out. I managed to snag a piece of each, and concluded that while both were tasty, the chipotle-cheddar cornbread was a better match for the meal. (The other cornbread was sage and honey.) Its smoky heat slowly snuck up on the back of my throat, but it was a nice surprise, as were the chewy bits of roasted corn and pockets of still-soft cheddar. If there had been any left, I would have eaten a second piece.

Instead, I ate some more crawfish.

Chipotle-Cheddar Cornbread

Adapted from Bon Appetit

Makes 9 large or 16 small servings

1 cup yellow cornmeal
1 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup grated sharp cheddar cheese
1 cup fresh or frozen corn (I recommend Trader Joe's frozen roasted corn)
1 cup buttermilk
3 large eggs
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted, cooled
2 tablespoons minced seeded canned chipotle chilies

Preheat oven to 375°F. Line an 8 x 8 square pan with foil and butter the foil. Mix first 6 ingredients in large bowl. Whisk buttermilk, eggs, melted butter, cheese, corn and chipotles in medium bowl. Add buttermilk mixture to dry ingredients; stir until blended. Spoon batter into prepared pan. Bake bread until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 30 minutes. Cool in pan on rack 15 minutes. Lift bread out onto rack; cool completely.

I love umeshu, that sweet Japanese wine made with green plums, best served refreshingly cold over crushed ice. I've wanted to try my hand at making my own ever since a friend, a fellow English teacher in Japan, let me taste homemade umeshu from a giant jar his school's Home Ec teacher had given him. When she heard he liked the stuff, he said, she had started digging in a cupboard in her classroom until she unearthed a container filled with scary-looking plums floating in a hazy liquor. It had been there for years, she said. Besides the awesomeness of a teacher brewing booze in the classroom, I was stunned by the wine itself: sweet and ultra-smooth, a silk ribbon of ume slipping down my throat.

This is what I thought of at the Hollywood Farmers' Market a couple weekends ago, when I stumbled onto a pile of unripe plums, tiny and green, exactly the specimens I used to see for sale in late spring in Japan. The stand selling them offered samples coated in Tapatio and coarse salt which were tasty, like sour-spicy little pickles, but no match for decades-old umeshu. I bought a pound and told no one about my booze-brewing master plan.

Using a recipe in Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art for guidance, I gathered the necessary components: a bag of chunky sugar, shochu/soju from the Korean grocery store and a container large enough to hold everything for a couple months. The original recipe calls for rock sugar, which I couldn't find, so I substituted an equal weight of coarse raw sugar. I was also supposed to rinse the plums and lay them out in the sun for an hour, turning them carefully to make sure they were perfectly dry. Clearly, Tsuji-san does not have a cat and thus has never heard the THUNK thunk thunk thunk of a green plum being batted off the counter and chased under the refrigerator every time he turns his back.

The culprit.

I instead dried my plums by hand with a clean kitchen towel.

After that it was simply a matter of layering the plums with the sugar in the container (I used a repurposed plastic juice bottle) and covering it all with shochu. I chose this particular Clean & Mild Taste shochu for its resemblance to a large bottle of water. It feels so wrong somehow -- which makes it very right.

Freshly submerged, the plums were green and pretty; a week later they've already dulled to beige. In three months, my umeshu will be ready to drink, just in time for the August heat, but it will only get smoother and more intense with time. Will it be as good as a Japanese Home Ec teacher's forgotten classroom brew? Probably not -- but I'll check in after I taste it to let you know.

Umeshu (Plum Wine)

Makes 1 quart

1 pound green plums
3/4 pound raw washed sugar or rock sugar
1 quart shochu/soju

Remove stems from plums and rinse in a colander. Dry one by one with a clean cloth. In a large jar or other lidded container, add the plums and sugar in alternating layers. Pour in the liquor. Seal tightly and store undisturbed in a cool, dark place for 3 months. You can drink it at this point, but it will be even better after a year. Keeps indefinitely. And you can eat the fruit!

A is for dining Alone...and so am I, if a choice must be made between most people I know and myself.
-- M.F.K. Fisher, An Alphabet for Gourmets

What do you eat when you're the only one you have to feed? As much as I like cooking for others, there is a certain quiet pleasure in making a mishmash meal that is exactly what I -- and only I -- want to eat. My favorites include a steaming bowl of okayu topped with a fat wad of kimchi, a toasted peanut butter and banana sandwich with a side of spicy pickled carrots and recently, this: egg salad with fava beans on toast.

I've eaten it three times this week, working my way through a bag of fresh fava beans from the farmers' market. It was inspired by an appetizer recipe in The Zuni Cafe Cookbook that layers mashed egg and favas on crostini, topped with a piece of smoked fish. My version includes mayonnaise -- essential to an egg salad in my mind -- and would be even better with Kewpie.

The first time I made it was on the day I brought home the favas, which were so fresh and nutty I tossed them in raw. Three days later the shelled beans were sticky and more starchy tasting, so after pulling the favas from their pods I threw them into the boiling water with the egg for a minute, then fished them out and squeezed them from their little jackets while the egg finished cooking. I ended up liking this method even more. Much is made of the amount of work it takes to prep fava beans, but when all you need is a scant 1/8 cup, cracking open the pods and peeling away the tough inner skins is strangely gratifying.

Mashed up, salted, lightly peppered and piled high onto a couple slices of good toasted bread, this egg salad is like eating spring: soft, warm, a little green. The only thing better the the last bite, toast-less, scraped up with a fork and eaten straight from the bowl. It's okay to lick your fork clean -- it's just you at the table, after all.

Egg Salad with Fava Beans

Makes 1 serving

1 jumbo egg
5-7 fresh fava bean pods
1 tablespoon mayonnaise
Salt and pepper
2 slices artisan-style bread

Place egg in a small saucepan and cover with cold water. Put a lid on the pan and bring to a boil over medium heat. While the water is heating, crack open the bean pods and pull out the fava beans, but don't remove the outer skin yet. When the water in the saucepan comes to a boil, throw in the fava beans and cook for one minute. Skim out the beans with a slotted spoon and set aside.

Remove the saucepan from the heat and let sit, covered, for exactly 7 minutes. Use this time to slip each fava bean from its tough skin, placing the newly nude beans into a medium bowl.

When the egg is ready, immediately dump out the hot water and fill the pan with cool water. When the egg is cool enough to handle, crack and peel it and add it to the bowl. Add the mayonnaise and mash everything together with the back of a fork. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Toast the bread and top with the egg salad, making sure to leave one last bite in the bowl to be eaten with just your fork.

Some smells are just magical: coffee brewing in the morning, the soft folds of a baby's neck, orange blossoms through an open car window on a warm night. Hot sticky rice mixed with coconut milk is one of those for me. It's not like we even have that long a history, considering my childhood disgust with the coconut-laced desserts my dad used to stock up on whenever we would take a family trip to Bangkok Market in Hollywood. I could not see the appeal of not-very-sweet squares of coconut jelly, soupy tapiocas, gray disks of griddled shredded coconut. Pass the Oreos, please.

But I grew up, ate my first plate of mango and sticky rice at Noodle Planet one summer and realized my dad was on to something. I thought for a long time it was the mango-sticky rice synergy that made the dish so good, but during my last trip to Thailand, after stuffing my face with a mountain of little banana-leaf-wrapped packets of coconut-milk-infused sticky rice, I realized it was the rice and coconut all along. Hot rice, warm coconut milk, that edge of salt -- addictive.

I'd bought a 5-lb bag of black sticky rice at LAX-C months ago, mostly because the grains were too beautiful and intriguing to resist. Sticky rice is usually soaked overnight and steamed, but I needed a same-day dessert for the dinner my friend Jessica was having that night. So I decided to make khao neow dam piag, black sticky rice pudding. The rice is boiled instead of steamed and mixed with a little coconut milk, sugar and salt toward the end of cooking. The finished pudding is deep purple, the grains soft yet chewy, with that warm, woozy coconut milk scent wafting up from the bowl. It was dessert that night and breakfast for the next two mornings. And since I still have 4.9 pounds of black sticky rice left, it may be my breakfast for the next year. Sounds good to me.

Black Sticky Rice Pudding with Coconut (Khao neow dam piag)

Serves 4-6

1 cup black sweet rice (also called black sticky rice or black glutinous rice)*
1 cup coconut milk
1/4-1/2 cup packed brown sugar, to taste
1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste
Sweetened shredded coconut or toasted sesame seeds (for garnish, optional)

Put rice in a medium saucepan and cover with water. Swish rice around to rinse it and pour off any loose husks that float to the top. Drain rice through a sieve and return to pot. Add 6 cups of water and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to medium low and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 45 minutes or until rice is soft. Pour off any excess water, so that the water line is just below the grains of rice. Add coconut milk, sugar and salt and simmer, stirring frequently, until pudding is desired consistency. Serve hot or room temperature, topped with coconut or sesame seeds.

*You can find black sticky rice at Thai grocery stores or online here. Don't substitute Chinese black rice, which is not sticky.

I am a pickle person. My lifelong love of kosher dills expanded, after moving to Japan, to include all manner of salted and vinegared treats. The world of pickles is massive, I realized, encompassing still-crisp quick pickled radishes and 100-year-old umeboshi, cucumbers cloaked in rice bran (nukazuke) and daikon mixed with sake lees (kasu, the rice mash left after making sake). In Japan, any traditional meal has an official pickle course. There is something very right about that.

So nowadays when I go to a taco stand and discover they serve alongside their tacos exactly the kind of spicy pickled carrots I like to eat, I don't feel bad for filling up several of those little lidded plastic containers to take home with me. It's not easy finding the right pickled carrots. They are often too sweet or too onion-heavy or flecked with too much oregano. After devouring a pile of just-right carrots alongside my burrito one night, I realized I could probably skip the middleman and just try making my own.

I gathered the spices, sliced up the carrots, and a couple vinegar-scented hours later, they were ready to be poured into an old mayonnaise jar and stored in the fridge, enough for at least two weeks of unlimited spicy pickled carrot snacking. No taco required.

Spicy Pickled Carrots

2 lbs carrots, peeled and sliced at an angle into 1/4 inch thick pieces
5 whole cloves garlic, peeled and lightly smashed
1 1/2 cups white vinegar
10 Turkish bay leaves (or 5 California bay leaves)
8 peppercorns
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups water
6 oz. whole pickled jalapenos

Pour oil in a large saucepan over medium heat and saute the garlic. Add carrots and saute for 2-3 minutes. Add vinegar, bay leaves, peppercorns and salt. Bring to a simmer and reduce heat to low. Simmer for 5 minutes. Add water and jalapenos and bring to a simmer again for another 10 mintues.

Let mixture cool completely. Transfer the carrots and cooking liquid into a covered container, discarding the bay leaves, peppercorns and garlic cloves if desired. Carrots will keep in the refrigerator indefinitely, although I usually eat them within 2 weeks.

During this time of economic uncertainty, I believe bacon can make things better. Think about it: just a little bit goes a long way, flavoring a whole pot of beans or plate of braised greens with its smoky meatiness. Leftover bacon grease -- an unappealing term, let's say bacon drippings, much better -- can be saved and used instead of oil, adding a savory something-something to an otherwise straightforward mirepoix. "Bacon makes anything better" may well be the mantra of this terrifying (and exciting -- Obama!) time, whispered like a prayer over the chocolate-covered bacon slices, bacon-wrapped meats, even bacon ice cream being eaten around the country.

And so I offer my contribution to the nation's altar of bacon: maple-bacon cinnamon rolls. Soft and yeasty, with the occasional salty-smoke hit of bacon, they were inspired by this bacon doughnut recipe I spotted. I wanted maple-bacon breakfast goodness, but didn't want to deal with large amounts of oil bubbling on the stove, so the idea for this cinnamon roll was born, using Molly's Cinnamon Rolls with Cream Cheese Glaze as a starting point. As an added plus, the fact that these are baked instead of fried makes you forget the thick layer of butter and sugar rolled up inside. Compared to a doughnut they seem almost...virtuous.

Okay, I know. Nothing with bacon ever seems virtuous. But, you know, let he who is without sin cast the first stone. I myself won't be casting any stones -- with a maple-bacon cinnamon roll in each hand, it's just not possible.

Maple-Bacon Cinnamon Rolls

Makes 18 rolls

Dough
1 cup whole milk
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 1/2 cups all purpose flour, divided
1/2 cup sugar
1 large egg
2 1/4 teaspoons rapid-rise yeast
1 teaspoon salt

Filling
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature

Glaze
1 1/4 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup Grade B maple syrup
4 slices cooked bacon, chopped

Combine milk and butter in a small saucepan and heat over a low flame until mixture is just warmed to 120-130 degrees F. (Or put them in a glass measuring cup and microwave for 30 to 45 seconds.) Pour into a large bowl (or stand mixer). Add 1 cup flour, sugar, eggs, yeast and salt. Beat with the mixer or by hand for 3 minutes. Add 2 1/2 cups flour. Beat until flour is absorbed and dough is sticky, scraping down sides of bowl. If dough is very sticky, add more flour by tablespoonfuls until dough begins to form ball and pull away from sides of bowl. Turn dough out onto lightly flour work surface. Knead until smooth and elastic, adding more flour if sticky, about 8 minutes. Form into ball.

Lightly oil a large bowl and transfer dough to bowl, turning to coat. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let dough rise in warm draft-free area until doubled in volume, about 2 hours. While it rises, mix brown sugar and cinnamon in medium bowl.

Punch down dough. Transfer to floured work surface. Roll out to 15x11-inch rectangle. Spread butter over dough, leaving 1/2-inch border. Sprinkle cinnamon sugar evenly over butter. Starting at one long side, roll dough into log, pinching gently to keep it rolled up. With seam side down, cut dough crosswise with thin sharp knife into 18 equal slices (each about 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch wide).

Butter two 9-inch square glass baking dishes. Divide rolls between baking dishes, arranging cut side up (there will be almost no space between rolls). Cover baking dishes with plastic wrap and let dough rise until almost doubled in volume, 40 to 45 minutes.

Position rack in center of oven and preheat to 375 degrees F. Bake rolls until tops are golden, about 20 minutes. Remove from oven and invert immediately onto rack. Cool 10 minutes. Turn right side up.

Combine powdered sugar, vanilla and maple syrup in a medium bowl. Drizzle glaze over rolls and immediately sprinkle with chopped bacon. Serve warm. Realize you should eat more bacon.

The wondrous World Peace Cookies.

Last weekend Rob and I hosted a holiday cookie party, a celebration of sugar and the season, with lots of mulled wine and brandy-spiked cider and people groaning, "I can't eat any more..." while shoving just one more cookie in their mouths. Success!

Neapolitan Cookies, before slicing.

I made three cookies: Martha Stewart's striped Neapolitan Cookies, Dorie Greenspan's incredible double chocolate World Peace Cookies and my own Gingerbread Bites. The gingerbread dough -- dark with molasses, spiked with black pepper -- is based on a reliable recipe I found years ago. I used it to make the standard gingerbread men the first year, but a chubby, oddly shaped man made from the cut-out scraps convinced me that thick cookies were the way to go (I was convinced after eating him, I mean, not that he actually sat me down and talked me into it) and I devised a new baking method. Instead of rolling the dough flat and cutting out cookies, I form fat little balls of dough and dip them in sanding sugar. They bake up moist and cakey with a compelling sugary crunch and are small and addictive enough to eat in multiples.

Preferably with other people around. If there's one thing I learned this weekend, it's that binge cookie-eating, like drinking, is much more socially acceptable if done in a group. Just don't try to operate any heavy machinery for a couple hours.

Gingerbread Bites

Makes about 4 dozen 1-inch cookies

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/4 cup vegetable shortening, at room temperature
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
2/3 cup unsulfured molasses
1 large egg
Raw washed sugar or other coarse sugar

Sift the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, allspice, cloves, salt and pepper through a wire sieve into a bowl and set aside.

In a large bowl, use an electric mixer on high speed to beat the butter and shortening until smooth and well-combined, about 1 minute. Add the brown sugar and beat until fluffy and light-colored, about 2 minutes. Beat in the molasses and egg. With a spoon, gradually mix in the flour mixture to make a stiff dough. Divide the dough in half and wrap each half in plastic wrap. Refrigerate until chilled, about 3 hours. (The dough can be made ahead and stored in the refrigerator for up to 2 days.)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Cover the bottom of a shallow dish with the coarse sugar. Working with one disk at a time, break off a small piece of dough and roll between your palms to form a ball about 3/4" across. Flatten the ball slightly and dip the top in the sugar. Continue with the remaining dough, placing the cookies about 1 inch apart on a parchment-lined cookie sheet. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, until the edges are firm. Cool on the sheets for 2 minutes, then transfer to wire racks to cool completely. Can be stored for up to one week in an airtight container.

Occasionally, for approximately 45 minutes, it feels like autumn in L.A., the breezes crisp, the morning light all mellow and pink. When this happens I immediately began craving washoku, Japanese home cooking, the food I used to make for myself in my tiny kitchen in Japan. Luckily, last week I had half a ginormous kabocha in the fridge, one of my favorite fall foods, and a recipe for kabocha no tori an kake, simmered Japanese pumpkin with ground chicken. It was just right: simple and warm, with that dashi-shoyu-sake scent steaming up the kitchen.

Foods like this, simple and homey, remind me of the Tanabes, a couple I knew during my second year in Japan. The husband studied English as a hobby and I was his fourteenth tutor in as many years. When I asked him why he studied English he said, "Because I used to play golf, but I started having problems with my arm." Um, okay. Despite his dubious motivation, he was an enthusiastic speaker and during our two-hour weekly conversations, we talked about everything from the American judicial system to kidnapped Korean potters in feudal Japan. But as it was sometimes difficult to find topics of conversation that interested both a retired Japanese businessman who loves baseball and a twenty-something American girl who is really into crafts, we usually ended up talking about food.

He and his wife had a field just down the road where they grew organic heirloom rice, planted and harvested by hand -- by no means the norm in Japan. Our lessons always took place over dinner, an often-elaborate meal prepared by his wife, always including a bowl of the family rice. There were occasionally special treats, like a taste of the first sake of the year, golden and sweet, made with their own rice and fermented under a kotatsu (heated table) in the next room. Or persimmons from their tree, peeled and sliced for dessert.

Though she and I never had an extensive conversation, Mrs. Tanabe thankfully being spared from tennis elbow and allowed to continue her own hobby, whenever she served something new, I would always ask about it and she would tell me, half in Japanese, half in English, about the ingredients and preparation. It was always washoku -- simple grilled fish, comforting simmered dishes, homemade pickles -- and her meals and my conversations with Tanabe-san probably taught me more about Japanese food and cooking than I ever taught him about English.

I didn't grow the rice or make the pickles, but a big bowl of simmered kabocha with Japanese rice on the side and a couple umeboshi to finish almost made me feel like I was back at the Tanabe's. It was the perfect thing to eat on a fleeting fall evening.

Kabocha no tori an kake (Simmered kabocha with minced chicken)

Adapted from Washoku by Elizabeth Andoh

Makes 4 servings

1/4 kabocha squash, about 10 oz
1 1/2 cups dashi
1 tablespoon sake
2 teaspoons sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon light-colored soy sauce*
1/4 lb ground chicken
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 tablespoon water
1 green onion or a few fresh chives, for garnish

Remove the seeds from the kabocha, but leave the skin on. Cut into twelve chunks of roughly the same size. For a nicer-looking finished dish, bevel the chunks by trimming the pointed edges of each piece, leaving a more squared edge. This prevents the edges from getting banged-up and raggedy during the cooking, but if you can't be bothered, don't worry about it.

Mix the cornstarch with the water and stir well, making a thin paste. Set aside.

Arrange the kabocha chunks skin side down in a pot large enough to hold them in a single snug layer. Add enough dashi to just cover the pieces. Bring to a boil and cover, either with an otoshi-buta, a piece of foil cut into a circle just small enough to lie directly on the kabocha, or a regular lid placed slightly askew. (Be sure to occasionally swirl with pot if you use the regular lid, so the pieces will cook evenly.) Cook for 3 or 4 minutes, or until a fork or toothpick pierces the squash, but meets with some resistance.

Add the sake and sugar and carefully flip the pieces over so they are skin side up. Replace the lid and simmer for about 2 minutes. It should now be soft enough to be easily pierced by a fork, but not falling apart.

Add the soy sauces and continue to simmer, covered, for another two minutes. The pieces should be very soft now; test again with a fork. Transfer the kabocha pieces to individual serving bowls, keeping the simmering liquid in the pot.

Add the remaining stock to the pot and bring to a simmer. Add the chicken, stirring to break up lumps. The liquid will look cloudy and unappealing, but as the chicken cooks, the liquid will become clear and the chicken will turn white. Taste for seasoning and add salt if necessary.

Add the cornstarch-water mixture, raise the heat to high and cook, stirring constantly to keep the sauce smooth as it thickens. When the sauce is clear, glossy and thick, it is ready. Divide the sauce among the bowls of squash. Garnish with chopped green onion or snipped chives, if desired. Serve warm, with chopsticks and spoons.

*Available at Japanese or other Asian markets. This is not low-sodium soy sauce, but a lighter-colored sauce with a slightly different flavor. You may substitute regular soy sauce, but the flavor and appearance of the dish will be different.

Last Thursday was my friend Carol's birthday. In addition to being a fellow appreciator of Japanese candy, Carol is a big fan of kurogoma (black sesame), so I decided to surprise her with some kurogoma cupcakes. Luckily, it's easy to make almost anything kurogoma-flavored by adding a few tablespoons of black neri-goma -- a tar-like paste of pure toasted black sesame seeds -- and some roughly-crushed whole black sesame seeds.

It's not every day you get to make something that looks like it belongs in a cement mixer....

I was pondering a kurogoma buttercream frosting, but went with a matcha cream cheese frosting instead. It was a good choice: the green tea flavor contrasted with the kurogoma and the tang of the cream cheese tempered the cupcake sweetness. Also, the green made them kind of half-leprechaun, just like Carol. These were yummy! Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera to the birthday dinner, so I don't have any pictures of Carol enjoying the cupcakes, but maybe she'll leave a comment testifying to how they made all her kurogoma dreams come true...

Kurogoma Cupcakes

If you don't have access to neri-goma, omit the paste, increase the amount of whole sesame seeds to half a cup and use a food processor to grind them to the consistency of wet sand. It won't quite be the same, but it will still be kurogoma-licious.

1 1/2 sticks (170 g) salted butter
1 1/2 cups (340 g) sugar
3 tablespoons black sesame paste
1/4 cup (35 g) black sesame seeds
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
2 1/2 cups (310 g) flour, sifted
1 1/4 cups milk

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Toast the sesame seeds in a dry pan over medium heat, stirring or tossing them constantly, until they are fragrant, about two minutes. (If you buy already-toasted sesame seeds, iri-goma, you can skip the previous step.) Crush the seeds with a suribachi or spice grinder until they are the texture of damp sand and set aside.

Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl. Add the sesame paste and seeds, eggs and vanilla and beat until combined. Gradually beat in the dry ingredients, then the milk, and beat for a couple minutes.

Fill cupcake tin and bake for 16-18 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool completely before frosting.

Matcha-Cream Cheese Frosting

1 8-oz (200 g) package cream cheese, softened
1/2 stick (55 g) butter, softened
2 tablespoons whipping cream
1 cup (125 g) sifted confectioners' sugar
2 teaspoons matcha

Beat together the cream cheese, butter and whipping cream until creamy. Add the sugar and matcha and beat until glossy and smooth.

While browsing the Japanese-language cookbooks at my local bookstore in search of some Sunday-dinner inspiration, I found a book about flavoring salt and sugar with various ingredients, with beautiful pictures of sparkling pink and green granules sprinkled over their accompanying dishes. A few minutes later, while flipping through a tofu cookbook, I spotted a recipe for silken tōfu topped with enoki, garnished with a pinch of matcha salt. Remembering that I had made something similar before from a recipe out of the trusty Washoku by Elizabeth Andoh, and also remembering I already had a recipe for matcha salt, my Sunday dinner seemed set -- and I didn't even have to buy a new cookbook.

The last couple times I made this mushroom-topped tofu recipe, the weather was cold and I used a mixture off dark, meaty mushroom varieties like maitake and shiitake, but because I wanted something more delicate in flavor and pale enough to set off the bright green salt, this time I used only a bunch of thin white enoki. The flavor of the mushroom sauce ended up light enough to let the grassy matcha taste come through.

When preparing tofu simply, Otokomae is my favorite brand to use, both for its dense but silky texture and its unquestionably kakkoii packaging. In addition to the usual blocks, Otokomae is also sold in individual packs of three, kind of like pudding cups or juice boxes. They don't require draining and one is the perfect size for a lunchtime serving or a dinner side dish.

Tōfu no enoki an kake (Tōfu topped with enoki mushrooms)

Adapted from Washoku by Elizabeth Andoh

Makes 2 servings

1 block silken tōfu (kinugoshi-dōfu), drained and pressed*
2 teaspoons vegetable oil
10 oz/300 g enoki mushrooms, ends trimmed
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sake
2/3 cup dashi
1 teaspoon light-colored soy sauce
1/4 teaspoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon mirin
1 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch mixed with 1 1/2 teaspoons cold water
Matcha salt, to garnish

Cut the tōfu in half and place each block in a shallow bowl. Heat the oil in a skillet and cook the mushrooms over high heat for about one minute, or until lightly browned. Add the salt and sake and cook for one minute more. Add the stock, soy sauces and mirin and cook for two minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the cornstarch-water mixture and stir for about one minute, or until the sauce has thickened slightly. Top each tōfu block with the mushroom sauce and a sprinkling of matcha salt. Serve immediately with chopsticks or a spoon.

Matcha salt

1 teaspoon coarse salt
1/4 teaspoon matcha

Mix the salt and matcha in a small dish or jar. In Japan, this is often served as a dip for fried foods like tempura. You can also mix matcha with sugar and sprinkle it on yogurt, cakes or cookies.

*This entry describes how to press the water out of tōfu.

It's early April, the sakura are in full bloom, and spring is in the air. Except that it's raining right now and an icy wind is blowing all the blossoms off the trees. Oh well, at least I have my shin-shōga. Shōga is your average piece of ginger, brown-skinned and sharp, and shin-shōga is its younger, springtime version, pale, thin-skinned and mild. It's this ginger, sliced and pickled, that is mounded up next to the green plastic leaf in your box of lunchtime sushi.

But pickles are only the beginning for shin-shōga. Because it has the fresh astringency of ginger without the bite, you can use it raw, and it is especially tasty when julienned and added to salads. When cooked, it loses its bright crunch, but the delicate fragrance wafting up from any dish you've added it to makes up for it. With soups and rice, you can toss in the shin-shōga right at the end of cooking and let it soften a bit in the residual heat. That's what I do when making this early-spring rice, a mix of young ginger, fresh crab and thin green onions.

Some notes about ingredients: Young ginger is a popular ingredient in other Asian cuisines, so you should be able to find it at Asian supermarkets from spring through early summer. I buy my cooked crab meat in the sashimi section of my local grocery store, where I sometimes want to cry when I see how beautiful and cheap everything is. Imitation crab meat is not a suitable substitute. Finally, the green onions in Japan are typically much thinner than in the U.S., about half the diameter; look for the thinnest you can find or just use one thick one.

Kani to shin-shōga gohan (Crab and young ginger rice)

Makes 2 servings

1 cup Japanese rice, washed and drained
2-inch (5-cm) piece of young ginger
3.5 oz (100 g) cooked crab meat
2 thin green onions

Cook the rice in a rice cooker or on the stovetop as usual. (See the directions for cooking Japanese rice here.) When the rice is almost cooked, peel the ginger, cut in half crosswise, and julienne. Thinly slice the green onion. When the rice is cooked, add the ginger, crab and green onion to the cooker or pot and stir to mix everything in. For best flavor, serve immediately.

My favorite supermarket discovery this winter was daikon greens, the leafy tops of the giant white Japanese radish, sold with immature daikon still attached. They are sturdy and bitter, with a faintly spicy radish flavor, a welcome change from the usual vegetable suspects like komatsuna, spinach and mizuna, which are quite watery and mild. Usually, after thoroughly washing the daikon greens, I roughly chop them up and briefly blanch them in boiling water, adding the white radish nubs first and waiting about a minute before adding the leafy parts.

As with all vegetables I parboil, after draining I don't cool them by rinsing them or putting them in ice water. Instead, I use the traditional Japanese method of fanning them for a minute or two with an uchiwa (paper fan), which keeps them from becoming water-logged and flavorless. I use one of those promotional uchiwa handed out on the streets of Japan during the summer alongside the promotional tissue packets. (If only all advertisements doubled as kitchen and/or beauty aids....)

To season the greens, I normally just pour on a little soy sauce and sprinkle on some toasted white sesame seeds for a quick and lazy ohitashi. They'd also be delicious tossed with a miso-sesame dressing. But my very favorite way to eat daikon greens is to wilt them, raw, with a little salt, then mix them with freshly-cooked rice, where they cook in the residual heat. It's a method I picked up from Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art and it brings out the warm, spicy aroma and flavor of the greens like nothing else.

Nameshi (Rice with greens)

Adapted from Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art by Shizuo Tsuji

Makes 2 servings

1 cup Japanese rice, washed
1 cup daikon greens or other bitter leafy vegetable, washed
1/2 teaspoon salt

Cook the rice as usual. (See the directions for cooking Japanese rice here.) While the rice is cooking, chop the greens into 1-inch pieces, including the immature radishes if attached. Put into a bowl and sprinkle with the salt. Rub the chopped leaves with your hands, squeezing them and dispersing the salt until they are slightly wilted. Drain any accumulated liquid.

When the rice is cooked, add the wilted greens and radish pieces, then lightly stir the rice until the greens are evenly incorporated. Replace the lid and let sit for a couple minutes before serving.

For at least the last year, it's been a goal of mine to master enough cooking-related kanji and vocabulary to be able to follow recipes written in Japanese. With a few exceptions, most English-language Japanese cookbooks focus on time-tested, classic recipes -- excellent for mastering the basic techniques of Japanese cooking, but not so helpful when you want to whip up one of those crazy, modern-meets-ye-olde-Japan dishes you can find at any good izakaya. (My favorite dish at the best izakaya in my town, for example, is a kabocha-stuffed eggroll served with a dipping salt spiked with cinnamon and sugar. It's like a crispy pumpkin-filled savory churro.)

The only solution is to delve into one of the many Japanese-language recipe magazines crowding the bookstore shelves. With this in mind, a year ago (a year ago!) I bought 15分でごはん! (15-minute meals), a collection of quick recipes published by a popular food magazine called オレンジページ (Orange Page). Once upon a time, I set out to make some kind of lotus root-ground pork dish because the instructions looked easy (the picture of the finished dish actually looks completely vile), but never did. Yesterday I decided if I was ever going to conquer a recipe, it should at least be something I would want to eat. So I flipped through the now rather dusty and dented magazine once more and picked out　白身魚の梅あえのっけ丼 (white-fleshed fish with plum dressing over rice). After about an hour with my dictionary and with the aid of the step-by-step pictures, I had a list of ingredients and the instructions pretty much figured out. Minus the rice-cooking time, it all came together in the promised 15 minutes, and nearly as easily as if I had been cooking from a recipe in English.

The resulting dish was simple and light, the flesh of the kanpachi turning buttery beneath its dressing, brightened by the bits of tart umeboshi. This would be a perfect summer meal, much like my beloved maguro no tataki don, but with a hot bowl of wakame soup, it worked equally well as a mild winter night's dinner.

A note on ingredients: The original recipe suggests using tai (sea bream) or other white-fleshed fish; I instead went with the less expensive kanpachi (amberjack), an oilier, less delicate fish. I think this would work equally well with hamachi, maguro and even salmon. Use whatever you like to eat as sashimi.

Kanpachi no ume-aenokke don (Kanpachi with ume dressing over rice)

Makes 2 servings

2 cups (400 g) cooked rice
3.5 oz (100 g) sashimi-quality kanpachi (or substitute the fish of your choice)
daikon, 1 1/2 inch (4 cm) piece
1/5 bundle of mizuna, rinsed and dried
1 large or 2 small umeboshi
1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 teaspoon salt
pepper to taste

Peel the daikon and cut into matchstick-sized pieces. Cut the mizuna into 1-inch (3-cm) lengths. Remove the seed from the umeboshi and dice the flesh. With a very sharp knife, slice the fish into 1/2-inch (1-cm) width pieces.

In a bowl, mix the olive oil, salt and diced umeboshi. Add the daikon, mizuna and fish, then toss together using chopsticks, distributing the dressing evenly. Taste for seasoning and add more salt if necessary. Scoop the rice into a bowl and top with the fish and vegetable mixture, making sure each serving gets a good amount of umeboshi. Sprinkle with pepper and serve.

It's wintertime and buri is king. Buri is yellowtail, that pink-edged sushi staple also known as hamachi. But buri is a grown-up hamachi that has eaten too much over the holidays and is now cloaked in a warm layer of yummy fat that it swears to god it is going to shed once the weather warms up and it can make it to the gym. For now, buri is buttery. Raw, it nearly melts in your mouth. Cooked, it is meaty and flavorful, especially when coated in a dark miso marinade and grilled, which is how I eat it about once a week during the winter.

Hatchō miso, favored by those in the central part of Japan, is so dark it is almost black. Hearty, salty and strong, this is not the sweet, pale stuff most often served at Japanese restaurants abroad. I remember my first bowl of miso-shiru (miso soup) here in the heartland of Japan. I felt like I had been punched in the tongue. But, you know, in a good way.

Another dark-food favorite of mine is kuro-zu, brown rice vinegar, which is the good-boy vinegar to Hatchō's bad-boy miso. Extremely mild and supposedly extra-nutritious, kuro-zu is hyped here as a healthy drink and all-around tonic for what ails you. I like to sprinkle it on raw vegetables. If you can't find it, about half the amount of regular rice vinegar is a suitable substitute.

And finally, if you don't have any buri nearby, you can try this recipe with salmon, black cod, swordfish or other meaty, oily fish.

Buri no Hatchō yaki (Miso-marinated grilled buri)

Makes 2 servings

2 buri fillets
1 tablespoon dark miso, preferably Hatchō miso
1 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon kuro-zu (brown rice vinegar) or 1 1/2 teaspoons rice vinegar
1 1/2 teaspoons mirin
Chopped green onions or pickled ginger shoot, for garnish

Make marinade: In a shallow container, stir together the miso and soy sauce until smooth, then add the vinegar and mirin. Taste for seasoning and add more soy sauce or mirin as needed. Put the fillets in the marinade and coat completely. Cover the container and put in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. (Or, if you live in an unheated Japanese apartment, just leave it on the counter while you assemble the rest of your meal.)

Grill the fillets on a grill or in the broiler for 6-10 minutes, flipping halfway through cooking. Test for doneness by pressing the fish with a finger or chopsticks. It should be firm with some give, like a medium steak.

This is the week you have to stop denying autumn is over. Wrapped up in a new wool coat, you ride your bike in the frosty morning, snow-dusted mountains on the horizon, burrowing your chin deeper in your scarf. The leaves have fallen. Your scary fume-spewing kerosene heater is out.

But it's okay. This autumn was a good one. Especially that persimmon tart.

Kaki flood the markets in autumn, especially in this part of Japan, which is famous for its persimmons. (It's even rumored that perhaps the name of my town, Ogaki, once meant "big persimmon." Which I think is far cooler than the present meaning: "big gate." Boooring.) The kaki sold raw is almost exclusively amagaki, the rounder, more flat fruit which are eaten while they are still firm; in the U.S., they are often labeled as "Fuyu persimmons." The longer, more pointed kaki, shibugaki -- which are terribly astringent until they soften completely -- are typically dried and sold later in winter, especially around New Year's. The best part about this kaki glut is that it makes it possible to buy one persimmon for less than 100 yen (about $1), something you can't say for apples. Thus, when the tart-baking urge struck, it was kaki I reached for.

A simple tart, it is nothing more than thinly-sliced fruit, sugar, butter and a sprinkling of spices in a basic crust. When baked, the persimmon pieces soften and meld together to become, after cooling, something gently chewy, kind of like a Japanese yōkan or a very soft Fruit Roll-Up. With some vanilla ice cream or whipped cream, it will be so good you might, like me, be forced to make another one a few days later. Or, if the amagaki season has already ended, daydream about it through at least a couple cold bicycle commutes.

Kaki no taruto (Persimmon tart)

For dough:
1 stick (115 g) cold unsalted butter
1 1/4 cups (155 g) all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 to 4 tablespoons ice water

For filling:
3 persimmons, peeled, seeded and sliced 1/8-inch thick
1/4 cup sugar
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1/2 stick (55 g) cold butter, sliced thin

Vanilla ice cream or sweetened whipped cream

Make dough: Blend together flour, butter, and salt in a bowl with your fingertips until most of mixture resembles coarse meal, with the biggest lumps about pea-sized. Drizzle 2 tablespoons ice water evenly over and gently stir with a fork until incorporated.

When you squeeze a small handful of the dough, it should hold together without crumbling. If it doesn't, add more ice water, 1 tablespoon at a time, stirring after each addition until incorporated (keep testing). Don't overwork the mixture or add too much water, or your dough will be tough.

Form dough: Divide the dough into 4 portions. With heel of your hand, smear each portion once across your work surface in a forward motion to help distribute fat. Gather dough together with a pastry scraper and form it into a disk. Chill, wrapped in plastic wrap, until firm, at least 1 hour.

When you are ready to assemble the tart, preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). On a lightly floured surface roll out dough into a 13-inch round and fit it into a 10-inch tart tin, trimming the excess. Arrange the persimmon slices decoratively on the pastry shell, overlapping them. Mix the nutmeg and ginger with the sugar and sprinkle on top of the fruit. Top with butter slices and bake for 45 minutes or until the crust is golden and the persimmon slices are lightly browned. Serve with ice cream or whipped cream.

The supermarket shelves in Japan are stocked with instant gomoku takikomi gohan (five-ingredient-boiled-together rice), but little do the Japanese housewives know it's so easy to make from scratch! Actually, they probably know, so I don't know what the problem is.

Besides being an easy, one-pot meal, this dish just reeks of autumn. Literally. Every time I open my rice cooker after making it, the steamy scent just makes me think, Autumn. Mushrooms. Crunching leaves. Gobō. Mmm...

The orginal recipe I followed (from the half-Japanese, half-English Recipes of Japanese Cooking) calls for chicken thighs as one of the five ingredients, but I have successfully made a vegetarian version with abura-age (deep-fried tofu). And even if you have an aversion to konnyaku, that gelatinous, flavorless devil's tongue jelly, it is an essential part of the dish, providing occasional chewy mouthfuls that liven things up.

Gomoku takikomi-gohan (5-Ingredients Mixed Rice)

Makes 3 servings

1 1/2 cups Japanese rice, washed and drained
3 oz/80 g chicken thighs
2-inch piece of carrot
1/3 gobō
2 dried shiitake mushrooms
1 package konnyaku strips
1 cup dashi or chicken broth
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
2 tablespoons, plus 1 teaspoon sake
1 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce, preferably usukuchi shōyu (light soy sauce)
1/2 teaspoon salt
mitsuba or other leafy green herb, for garnish

Put the chicken in a bowl, sprinkle with 1 teaspoon sake and let stand while you prepare the other ingredients.

Put the mushrooms in a small bowl and cover with 1 cup water to soften. Cut the carrot into matchstick-sized pieces. Scrape the gobō with the back of a knife under running water to clean it, then cut into thin shavings. Rinse if desired. Drain the mushrooms, reserving 1/2 cup of the soaking water, then remove the stems and cut into strips.

Pour the stock and reserved mushroom-soaking water in a medium-size pot and add the mushrooms, carrots, gobō, konnyaku and chicken (with sake and accumulated juices). When it begins to simmer, add the sugar and sake and continue cooking for 1 or 2 minutes. Add the soy sauce and salt and simmer for another minute.

Drain the ingredients into a sieve over a bowl, keeping the solids and liquids separate. Put the washed rice in a rice cooker or pot and add the solid ingredients. Measure the strained liquid; add water or pour off some of the liquid so it measures 1 1/2 cups. (Use slightly more liquid if you are cooking in a pot rather than a rice cooker.) Pour the liquid into the rice cooker or pot and cook as usual. (See these instructions for cooking Japanese rice on the stove.)

When the rice has finished cooking, stir to distribute the ingredients. Garnish each serving with a few mitsuba or other herb leaves.

So in my continued quest to flavor every possible dessert in my life with kinako, I came up with a kinako frosting this weekend to top these banana cupcakes. The kinako seems to temper the tanginess of the cream cheese a bit, which makes for a more mellow, not-overly sweet frosting. I'm thinking of using it to top some kabocha cupcakes in the near future.

Kinako-Cream Cheese Frosting

Makes enough for approximately 1 dozen cupcakes

3 oz/85 g cream cheese, at room temperature
3 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
2 tablespoons whipping cream
1/3 cup confectioners sugar
1/4 cup kinako, plus 1 tablespoon for sprinkling
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Beat together the cream cheese, butter and whipping cream until smooth. Add the confectioners sugar, kinako and vanilla and beat on low speed until combined, then beat on high speed until fluffy.

After spreading or piping the frosting, put 1 tablespoon kinako in a sieve and sprinkle over your cake or cupcakes.

A year ago, while suffering through a bout of the flu, my first illness in Japan, I wondered what on earth I was supposed to eat. Pho and tom yum gai, my usual cold remedies, were nowhere to be found -- and simple chicken soup seemed to only be available in unappealing cubes. Luckily, a more informed friend gave me a boil-and-serve package of okayu, rice porridge. Mixed with kimchee, it sustained me for the next four sinus-clogged days and has continued to be the only substantial thing I eat when the Japanese cold season knocks me flat. (Which is often. Now, in fact. I credit it to the irritating habit Japanese people have of not staying home sick ever, unless they are on their deathbeds, maybe, but until then breathing their germy-germs all over me.)

When you are sick, there is nothing simpler than popping a foil bag of okayu in boiling water for a few minutes, but making it from scratch is nearly as easy -- just cook the washed rice grains with three times as much water as usual. Making it with leftover rice is even easier and probably the most common method. In Washoku, Elizabeth Andoh credits the association of okayu and breakfast to the overworked Japanese salaryman. Most wives end up with an uneaten portion of rice from the night before, prepared for husbands who didn't return home until long after dinnertime, so they often use it to make okayu. Topped with an umeboshi, some chopped herbs or cooked greens, it makes a savory and comforting breakfast for two.

When I ate okayu for the first time during that first Japanese flu, I suddenly remembered I used to eat the Thai version of okayu every Sunday afternoon with my dad when I was small. Using the leftover portions of rice lurking in the fridge, he would boil up a big pot of what I called Soupy Rice. Sprinkled with tiny dried, salted shrimp and chunks of pickled cabbage from a can, it was an addictive mix of the bland and the aggressively salty. I was especially partial to the pickled cabbage, excessive consumption of which, my mom seemed convinced, would strike me down with a heart attack at the tender age of seven. Thus I was always left wanting more.

This remembered obsession is undoubtedly why I thought of topping my okayu with a big helping of kimchee, plus an extra serving on the side. With no mom for thousands of miles around, I usually end up eating about four times as much kimchee as what you see in the picture. I have a theory based on absolutely nothing but my penchant for pickled cabbage products that the super-helping of chili and garlic keeps the germs at bay. At the very least, I'm keeping all the people at bay and thereby breaking the cycle of illness. I like to consider it a sort of public service.

Leftover Rice Okayu

Serves 2

1 cup cooked rice
2 cups water or stock
1/8 teaspoon salt
toppings (kimchee, umeboshi, chopped fresh herbs, nori, etc.)

In a pot, heat rice and one cup water or stock over low heat, stirring to break up any lumps. Cook for about 5 minutes, stirring frequently, until the water looks starchy and the grains begin to lose their shape. Add the salt and remaining water and simmer for 2 more minutes, or until the desired consistency.

Serve in big bowls, topped with whatever you like. Eat with a spoon and chopsticks.

You're looking at two membrane sacks stuffed with salted, chili-seasoned eggs from a fish called suketōdara, or Alaska pollack, or mentai. Hungry yet?

This is what mentaiko ("mentai babies") looks like when you buy it in the supermarket. It's a common onigiri (rice ball) filling in Japan and occasionally pops up in things like bi bim bap or pizza, but one of the most popular and, in my opinion, most delicious ways to eat mentaiko is on pasta, typically in a butter- or cream-based sauce.

This may seem strange. When I told a friend in the U.S. about the "fish egg pasta" popular in Japan, she thought I meant some kind of fish-flavored egg noodles, maybe a variation of squid ink noodles. When I told her I actually meant pasta topped with fish eggs, I think she may have briefly considered never emailing me again. But mentaiko, and especially mentaiko pasta, deserve a try. The salting and chili-seasoning process produces something a little spicy and not very fishy, with a flavor all its own. Heck, I'll even go so far as to say mentaiko is my favorite of all the fish roes! You heard it here first, people.

I've eaten mentaiko pasta in restaurants and at the home of a mentaiko-obsessed friend, and it seemed time for me to try making it myself. I used the recipe in Harumi's Japanese Cooking, a good book to have if you are interested in trying out some of the modern-style dishes Japanese people like to eat.

It took less than ten minutes to put the sauce together -- squeezing the mentaiko out of the membranes was strangely gratifying -- and the finished dish was nearly as good as and several pounds lighter than the incredible cream-based version served at one of the cafes in my town. Next time I'll look for darker red mentaiko, as the usually-shocking-pink sauce is part of the allure for me. And I might throw in some mushrooms as well. Perhaps there's a mentaiko pizza in my future?

Some notes on ingredients: If you can't get mentaiko, make a nice eggplant parmesan or something; there are no substitutes. See the notes about shiso here. Kombu cha powder is a hard one. Harumi recommends using a strong fish stock as a substitution, but maybe you could mix kelp powder (available at health food stores) with some matcha powder. Or just throw in some parmesan cheese. The kombu cha is just there to add umami anyway.

Mentaiko Pasta

Adapted from Harumi's Japanese Cooking

Serves 2

6 oz/170 g uncooked thin pasta (such as spaghettini)
3 oz/85 g mentaiko
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 teaspoon kombu cha (kelp tea) powder
2 small sheets of nori, cut into matchstick-sized pieces (about 2 tablespoons)
3 shiso leaves, finely shredded
chopped green onion or chives, to garnish
soy sauce, if needed

Boil the pasta in salted water according to package directions. While it is cooking, soften the butter for 10-20 seconds in the microwave, then beat until creamy. Remove the roe from the membrane and mix into the butter. Add the kombu cha powder and stir until smooth. It will resemble buttercream frosting at this point, but resist the urge to eat it straight from a spoon.

When the pasta is al dente, drain and immediately mix with the butter mixture, tossing to coat the pasta evenly. Taste for seasoning and, if necessary, add a little soy sauce. Divide onto two plates and top with the shiso, nori and a sprinkling of green onions or chives.

Melons are big in Japan. Not really size-wise, more in popularity. And price. And sometimes weirdness. Take, for example, this:

It's not just on The Simpsons....

While (sadly) not usually square, melons in Japan are reliably delicious, sweet and juicy and full of flavor, which is more than can be said for 90% of the melons sold in the U.S. So even though I wasn't sure I wanted to adulterate my beautiful, perfect, expensive melon, I decided to go for it and came up with this sorbet, using this recipe and this overview of sorbet-making. It's sweet, cool, melon-y and takes up less room in my teeny tiny refrigerator than a real melon would. It's the taste of summer, frozen!

Melon Sorbet

Makes 8 servings

about 1 pound (500 grams) diced melon
3 Tbs lemon juice
2 Tbs sake
1 cup sugar, or to taste

Process the melon in a food processor or blender until smooth. Add the remaining ingredients and process for 30 seconds. Taste for sweetness. The mixture should be hovering on the edge of too sweet; frozen desserts seem less sweet than they actually are. Process in more sugar as needed, then pour the mixture into a lidded container. Chill in the refrigerator for one hour.

Put mixture into your ice cream maker and process according to the manufacturer's instructions. (If you don't have an ice cream maker, there are instructions for freeze-and-stir sorbet-making in the sorbet overview I linked to above.) Transfer to a lidded container and freeze for at least 3 hours before serving.

As much as I'd like to believe the health benefits of kinako are retained when it is eaten in ice cream form, I have a feeling the whole milk, heavy cream and egg beat the soy into submission. I suppose you could try making this recipe with soymilk. But I like my ice cream deliciously detrimental to my health.

Kinako in ice cream form does, however, retain its nutty flavor and general yumminess. If you like peanut butter, you'll like this.

Kinako Ice Cream

Makes 4 servings

1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup whole milk
1/3 cup kinako (toasted soybean flour)
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup heavy cream

In a saucepan over medium-low heat, stir together the sugars and milk. Gradually stir in the kinako. When the mixture begins to simmer, remove from heat, and whisk half of the mixture into the egg. Pour the egg mixture back into the saucepan, and stir in the heavy cream. Continue cooking over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a metal spoon, about two minutes. Remove from heat, and strain into a container with a lid.

Chill in the refrigerator, ideally for at least 4 hours and up to overnight. This will improve the texture. Pour chilled mixture into an ice cream maker, and freeze according to the manufacturer's instructions.

Tsuyu is the name for the rainy season in Japan, which is currently in full swing. The two characters of the word mean "plum rain," which I think is a rather undeservedly pretty name for several weeks of constant rain, sogginess and encroaching mold.

Tsuyu is also the name of a sauce usually used as a dip for cold noodles. I think tsuyu is delicious during tsuyu. I thought there might be some connection between the two, but my word detectivery was cut short when the first Japanese person I asked said, "They're just homonyms." (My word inventery, however, has continued unabated.)

I've been using tsuyu a lot in the last couple weeks, especially on days when it's too hot to fire up the fish grill and I'm sweating so much I can barely peel the paper bands off my soba noodles. My reliance on tsuyu as a way to cook without really cooking explains why I buy the bottled stuff, as opposed to making it from scratch. I'm a terrible Japanese housewife, I know. But the Kikkoman Hon Tsuyu is really very good, I assure you.

Some additional ingredient notes: Katakuriko is a starch made from potatoes, similar to cornstarch, but with its own special texture. So while cornstarch is an acceptable substitute, I think the lovely chewiness of agedashidōfu made with katakuriko is not to be missed. (You can buy it online here.) Lastly, I find it is worth it to spend more on soba noodles. More expensive noodles will undoubtedly be more flavorful and have a better texture than the cheaper brands in the store, so go ahead...spend the extra dollar. Plum rain season comes but once a year.

Agedashidōfu (Fried Tofu with Tsuyu)

1 block momen (cotton) tofu
2 Tbs katakuriko (potato starch)
vegetable oil
1/4 cup tsuyu
2 Tbs green onion, chopped
1/2 myōga bulb, thinly sliced, or 1/2 tsp grated ginger

Drain the tofu. I wrap mine in paper towel, put it in a bowl and microwave it for 50-second intervals two or three times, wrapping it in fresh paper towel between zappings. Then I let it sit for 5-10 minutes on a dry paper towel. It loses a lot of water and feels much more firm at that point.

Cut the tofu into eight pieces and dredge in the potato starch. Cover the bottom of a skillet with a thin layer of vegetable oil and heat over a medium flame. When the oil is hot, put in the pieces of tofu and cook briefly on all sides, until just barely golden. Remove from the oil and put on a paper-towel-lined plate.

Transfer the tofu to two small bowls and top with the tsuyu, green onions and myōga or ginger.

Thanks to James for introducing me to the delicious simplicity of homemade agedashidōfu.

Cold Soba Noodles with Sesame Tsuyu

1 bundle of soba noodles (about 100 grams)
1 Tbs white sesame seeds
1/3 cup tsuyu
1 Tbs green onion, chopped

Bring a pot of water to a boil and add the soba noodles. Cook for about 4 minutes, or until the noodles are al dente. Immediately drain into a colander and rinse well under cold water.

Toast the sesame seeds in a pan over a low flame, tossing or stirring the seeds constantly until they become fragrant and golden. Pour into a small bowl and with a pestle or wooden spoon, grind and crunch up some of the seeds. Add the tsuyu and green onions.

Put the noodles in a large bowl and serve with the sesame tsuyu. To eat, dip the noodles in the sauce and slurp away!

The summer heat and humidity descended last weekend and, not wanting to cook anything beyond rice, I thought it was the right time to experiment with maguro no tataki don, or minced raw tuna over rice, especially since June is apparently when maguro tastes its best. The quail egg addition was inspired by a dish I had at an izakaya in Osaka a few months ago. I've recently been eating a lot of myōga, a kind of ginger, so I sliced that up and threw it in, along with lots of green onions, some grated ginger and chopped shiso. The fresh taste of the herbs mixed with the buttery fish, the slippery egg and the hot rice was so good I ate it three times over the weekend. (In part because I didn't know what else to do with a dozen quail eggs.) I hearby proclaim it The Official Delicious Coma Dish of Early Summer 2006.

Some notes on ingredients: Myōga and shiso are both available at Japanese markets, but if you can't find them, you could substitute other leafy herbs. Shiso is said to taste a bit like a combination of basil and mint. Cilantro might also be good and would make me jealous because I can't buy cilantro here. Quail eggs can most likely be found at Japanese or Chinese markets; a fresh, organic chicken egg yolk could be substituted.

Maguro no tataki don (Minced Tuna and Herbs on Rice)

Serves 2

5 oz/150 g sashimi-quality raw tuna
1/2-inch piece of ginger, grated
1 1/2 Tbsp chopped green onion
1 myōga bud, thinly sliced
1 shiso leaf, thinly sliced
(or substitute 2 Tbsp fresh herbs for myōga and shiso)
1/4 tsp soy sauce, or to taste

1 cup freshly-cooked Japanese rice
1 quail egg or 1 organic chicken egg yolk

Using a very sharp knife, mince the tuna. (Or buy already-tataki-ed tuna from a Japanese grocery store. And yes, I did make up the word "tataki-ed.") In a small bowl, mix the tuna with the ginger, green onions and herbs. Add the soy sauce and mix.

Spoon the rice into two bowls and top with the tuna mixture. Make a small hollow in the middle and crack the egg into it. Serve with Japanese pickles and mugi-cha, cold barley tea.

These pancakes have a nutty taste and more protein and B vitamins than your average pancake. They also have a tendency to stick to the pan, so use a nonstick skillet and butter it a bit before you add the batter. Also, buttermilk is unheard of in Japan, so I use a mixture of whole milk and plain yogurt. You could use a cup of buttermilk instead.

Kinako Pancakes

3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup kinako (toasted soy flour)
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
dash of salt
1/2 cup plain yogurt
1/2 cup whole milk
1 egg
3 Tbs melted butter

Sift the dry ingredients into a bowl. Stir together the yogurt and milk, then add to the flour mixture. Add the egg and butter, then stir to combine. Lumpiness is okay.

Heat a nonstick skillet over a medium-low flame and add some butter or a bit of oil. Pour the batter into the skillet, about a half-cup for each pancake. When the edges of the pancakes look dry, flip them to cook the other side. Keep the finished pancakes warm in a low oven (250°F) until you are done making all of them.

Serve with butter, maple syrup and extra kinako for sprinkling on top.

Until kitchens with gas and plumbing became common in the 1920s and ‘30s, housewives in Japan had to cook rice on a wood-burning stove, a complicated process which required maintaining a low flame, then a high flame, then—at exactly the right moment—removing the wood from the fire and finishing the cooking over the coals. All this, and without lifting up the lid to peek, which would have ruined the pressurized conditions needed for the rice to cook properly. This was a jingle used back then to describe the rice-cooking process:

Hajime choro-choro
Naka pa-ppa
Akagao ga naite mo
Futa toru na.

First it bubbles,
Then it hisses.
Even if the baby is crying from hunger,
Never remove the lid!

So housewives would stand patiently over the stove as the rice cooked, using the various sounds and smells coming from the pot to decide when to pull the burning pieces of wood out of the stove. Most likely while wearing a kimono and standing a dirt floor, which was the standard for traditional kitchens. Ye olde Japanese housewives were hardcore.

Nowadays, of course, almost everyone has an electronic rice cooker, which became household staples after they debuted in Japan in 1955. The rice-cooking process is the same—low heat to slowly warm everything inside the pot, then high heat to stew the rice in boiling water, then very low heat to let the grains steam in the remaining water—only now it is monitored by electronics rather than women wielding burning pieces of wood. I guess that’s what they call progress.

Japanese rice is short-grained and more sticky than the long-grained rice eaten in countries like Thailand and India, which makes it easier to eat with chopsticks. The ideal Japanese rice is tender, full-flavored, glossy and moist; to achieve this, the rice must be thoroughly washed before cooking to remove all surface starch. Measure your rice into a bowl, cover it with water, swish the rice around until the water becomes cloudy, pour off the water and repeat the process until the water runs clear, usually after four to six rinsings. You can save the starchy water for watering your plants (which I do) or boiling vegetables. After the final washing, drain the rice into a mesh colander and let the excess water drip away for a minute or two.

When cooking Japanese rice, the official water-to-raw-rice ratio is 1.2:1, but, in addition to preferring whole numbers to fractions, I prefer rice that is a little more stiff and sticky, so I use a 1:1 ratio. Also, I get my rice from a teacher at school who has a rice field, and I find her rice is a little less dry than store-bought rice. (I know, rice from a real field! It’s a novelty I still appreciate.) Rice is harvested in the fall and the grains gradually lose their moisture during the course of the year, so they are their driest at the end of the summer, and you may have to add extra water then.

Japanese Cooked White Rice

Note: I always use my rice cooker when making rice, so the stovetop directions are based on the instructions in Washoku by Elizabeth Andoh.

Makes 2 cups cooked rice

1 cup Japanese-style white rice, washed
1 cup water (or 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons for drier rice grains)

If you have a rice cooker: Place the rice and water in the cooker and start it. Once the active cooking cycle is over, make sure the rice remains in the cooker for 10 minutes, lid closed, to steam the grains. This ensures the proper texture. Stir the rice before serving.

If you don’t have a rice cooker: …You should get one. It’s worth it. In the meantime, put the rice in a straight-sided pot with a lid. Let it sit in the water for 10 minutes to absorb some moisture.

Place the pot on high heat and bring to a boil, which should take 3 to 5 minutes. Don’t open the lid; instead pretend you are a Japanese housewife and listen for the sounds of boiling (choro-choro) and look for the steam chattering the pot lid.

Reduce the heat to low and cook for about 5 minutes or until you hear a low hissing sound, indicating that the water is almost absorbed. If you have to peek, now is the time to do it, but replace the lid quickly. Increase the heat to high for 30 seconds to dry off the rice.

Remove the pot from the heat and let the rice steam for 10 minutes with the lid on. Stir before serving. There will probably be a crusty, browned layer of rice in the bottom of the pot. This is a delicacy in many rice-eating countries. In Japan, it’s called okage. You should eat it, either by mixing it in with the rest of the rice when you stir, or by itself, sprinkled with a little salt.