cuddlefish | (no subject)

HA.

HA HA HAAAAAAA!

You all thought I was dead, didn't you?! >:D

I didn't do much on Christmas, but just today, I made a feast for my parents that included the following:

KINAKO DONUTS (I made them from pancake mix. I think we cooked them too long D: They tasted funny.)

KURI KINTON (You know, the stuff that looks like moneybags? It came out a little wet but recognizable. I did NOT put in too much food coloring. They're fine.)

ANNIN DOUFU with NATA DE COCO (Annin good, nata de coco eh. Now I know not to lust after it. Also, next time I will try putting the bag of syrup right in the gelatin.)

AND

SOBA (of the TOSHIKOSHI kind) topped with TEMPURA SHRIMP.

For the last, I have nothing to say. It was awesome. You envy me. YES YOU DO.

My best Christmas present from my dad was soap that smells like almonds.　I can't stop smelling it...and pretty soon I will smell like it...and I might have to eat myself... (ノД‘) And the best present from my Mom was a strawberry shortcake. We had to give up on ordering one from a Japanese cake, and then lo and behold---my mother had the presence of mind to order one from a Chinatown bakery. We picked it up today. Imma eat it around midnight.

Happy new year everyone. (=w=)

I have begun playing DOMO online. D: A lot. ...what does this make me? (Does anyone want to come play?)

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A.. almond soap, and quirky Japanese dishes(?!!) Ohhh! YES I envy you, but only for this year because next year I will do anything to acquire some proper food for New Year's Eve myself (unless I get sick before the holidays which is why I didn't get anything special now =A=). I had to look up what kuri kinton was, a mash of chestnuts and sugar, possibly mixtured with sweet potatoes? Sounds godly.. just how did you gather the ingredients in your non-Japanese environment?

oh yes,

a happy new year to you too (= w =)

I got what I could at normal supermarkets, and went to Boston/Cambridge for Asian supermarkets. That's where I got soba, nori, candied chestnuts, sweet potatoes, daikon, wasabi, kinako, annin doufu and the nata de coco. All that actually required two different stores, but I've been collecting the ingredients that keep well for a while now so I didn't have to buy much the day before. And I changed my menu slightly to cover crap I wasn't using.

...I'm turning into an old lady. D:

Actually, the kuri kinton might...not...be mostly kuri? It was mostly sweet potatoes and sugar with whole candied chestnuts mixed in. But it was in the appropriate shape of moneybags for financial luck. I actually didn't like it as much as I just like Japanese sweet potatoes baked and plain.

Good luck in your food endeavors =w= There's all sorts of things you can make for New Year's, but I think the soba is the easiest to put together. (Real osechi food is too hard. :/)

Soba with tempura does sound like a good idea. Although I'm not sure if I'll end up with udon or whatever other type of noodles instead. In any case I'll be sure to go on a sidequest for all the right ingredients, heh, yea.. if you can tell me what they are :>>> Actually I've found an easy recipe for udon with tempura, and it tells me I should top it with spinach and douse it with dashi-flavoured soup, do you think that will do for soba too? Not saying that it isn't high time that I hunt down some fancy cookbook on traditional Japanese dishes and desserts anyway. I don't want to have to be exploiting your culinary wisdom like this =|

As for now..! >:D

I also wondered whether you bought the annin doufu in ready-to-eat servings? Otherwise I could get tofu, I could get almonds, and look for an ancient Chinese way to transmutate those into jelly somehow..

If I had the choice, I would top tempura udon or soba with sliced scallions and put some wakame seaweed in the bottom instead of spinach. If you're not going to actually put the soba in a soup, you can top it with little strips of nori seaweed, and on the side serve a dipping sauce, and grated ginger, daikon and scallions to put in the dipping sauce. (Daikon is to match the tempura---I forget if it's a legitamate condiment for noodles.)

A Japanese cookbook is good. The best cookbook I have is...it's big and thick and doesn't have any color pictures. It has tons of information and backstory on ingredients and home cooking. I don't feel like looking up the author, but the cover is black and white, and...it's thick. If you can handle a little funny English, there are some recipes on the web, too.

In Japan they sold annin doufu in little cups like pudding at the convenience store...and I bought one like every day ._________. No such luck here. I made my annin doufu with a ready-made mix from the Japanese supermarket, but there are recipes on the web. Try searching for Chinese almond jello. The ingredients are available in normal supermarkets here.

Yes, I prefer seaweed to spinach too.. and I am quite crazy about ginger lately, so I think I'll go with your choices for the soba. Luckily I just remembered this nature food shop (I believe I mentioned it in my LJ before, there was an appetizing guy working there =w=), which seems like a good place to start my search for exotic ingredients (like agar-agar for the jelly, if it turns out that tokos don't carry ready-made mixes). I'm still uncertain about where to get stuff like daikon and candied chestnuts but, oh well there are quite a few shops left to try before I even have to think of walking into any uninviting Chinese ones.

Um, I'll keep an eye out for a thick black and white cookbook with no pictures :D but maybe I'll end up buying into a smaller illustrated one first because those are easier to find and they allow me to gaze at the dishes even when I'm not making anything myself.

Whops, got so absorbed by thinking of food and all that I forgot to say thanks D: So THANKS, and I'll return the favor by posting pictures of the results one day? (Should I?)

Maybe I should be posting more entries about my weekly experiments with food anyway...

and I only just noticed the marvelous title of this page.. HA HA HA HAAAAA

It is an excellent title.

I hear things about candied chestnuts (in syrup) being sold in France and Italy, so maybe you could find something closer to home. They're a little pricey. Also, the European ones look different but that only matters if you're all "OH I WANT MY CHESTNUTS TO BE YELLOW AND SMOOTH SO I CAN CUT THEM INTO LITTLE HEARTS D:" like me :/

The sweet potatoes I talk about are the Japanese kind. There is a very big chain health food store around here that sells them, so if you have any of those, try that. Asian supermarkets can be kind of a crapshoot because sometimes they don't carry produce. ^^;

Almond jello doesn't HAVE to be made with agar-agar---you can make it with any unflavored gelatin, powder, sticks, whatever. Agar-agar just has a particular texture when it breaks up. It's like it flakes instead of crumbling. (Also, it's made of seaweed instead of frightening animal parts.)

I am only too happy to have an opportunity to ramble about food and how to find the weird Japanese stuff. Thank you for asking.

Ah good. It's nice to know I can still use animals in my jello if I can't find agar-agar. The flaking does sound like it's worth an extensive search for it though! Besides I don't really want my VERY SPECIAL self-made-up-holiday jello to have the bones and souls of cows or sheep in it.. However I think I will use gelatin for the humongous monster jelly I'm going to make as a practice :D It will be wobbly and big and require the sacrifice of many sheep bones (AND THEN IT WILL BE LIKE THE JELLY EQUIVALENT OF THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE REQUIRING THE SACRIFICE OF MANY MANY LIVES!! OH GOD NO).

Hmm yes, rambling about food is a wonderful way to spend time in between meals I think! At least it's an arguably less condemnable subject than guys who stick their fingers up and into eachother's hineys. heh heh. (although we need that sort of talk too if we don't want to complete our transformation into old ladies .A.)

It's not a dry flaking, like pie crust, because the jelly is too soft, but it does feel different.

The Philosopher's Stone kind of...IS jelly, isn't it? There's all that stuff about red water, and then it turns into a cute little stone when you pour it out or drop it in water. Mm, jellied human souls.

If you make a really big jelly...put it on a plate and wobble the plate. The taller the jelly the better---it always cracks me up. (Could that be done with the Philosopher's Stone?!) You can also do this with creme caramel pudding (the kind that doesn't have beaten eggs), but that's generally not made with gelatin at all, just egg.

Yes, that is very arguable. My time spent talking about that sort of consensual act is WELL SPENT.