Color and Cooking

Presentation is very important to Japanese cooking as a whole, a good example being color combination, which happens to be the one aspect I tend to pay special attention to when preparing a meal. Aside from brown, the color of health in Japanese cooking, I like to include a balanced portion of green, red and yellow--two primary plus one secondary color as noted on a typical color wheel. Such endeavor not only delivers extra aesthetic quality for a dish, but also a better nutritious balance as a 2:1 vegetable to protein ratio is best for digestion, which results in a healthier diet.

Use Your Milk

Milk is a popular ingredient for dishes I make/would like to try out in the future. However, the amount of milk required in a single-person recipe tends to be quite small, and I don't drink milk as is anymore due to calcium overdose as a child. (Think about having 2-3 liters of milk a day due to orders by grandparents...)

With that said, since milk is typically sold in 1 liter size containers and relatively easy to expire, a milk carton could move straight into garbage category after being used only once or twice in my kitchen, which is a lot of waste. Then I came across a simple recipe on the website of a Japanese farm that teaches how to make tofu using just milk and white vinegar, which I tried right away and voila, problem solved! Milk tofu is now one of my favorite side dishes at dinner, served with home-made sauces of all kinds that makes both my fridge and my tummy very happy.

Dragon Boat Festival

Eating chimaki (zhongzi in Chinese) in celebration of the Dragon Boat Festival! The filling tends to differ per region, and my family usually makes the following versions each year: red bean and peanut. Yum!

Rediscover Your Salad

I used to hate salads with a passion, which is probably not a surprise considering how much of a junk eater I was before discovering the joy of home cooking. It took some time before I came to the realization that salads require as much personalization as any other complicated dish to become truly likable, i.e. how a recipe learned from books/TV shows is always tweaked according to one's unique daily intake preference before it is made into a staple at respective households.

Whether it be the choice of vegetables or seasoning used, keep trying until you arrive at the absolute best combination for you and you only--that would be when you truly appreciate having a salad at your dining table time after time.

Purple Yam Love

 
Lately I have become quite fond of purple yam as an ingredient for side dishes, served with yuzukoshō (a Japanese paste made from chili peppers, citrus fruit and salt) and black pepper. It is also a great substitute for rice and noodles as part of your daily carbohydrate intake. Give it a shot if you find it at a supermarket near you!