Wednesday, September 15, 2004

Sodium-Laden


My supper

This was my supper tonight. A bowl of white rice, broiled fish and miso soup. Yes, I hear the voices: “That’s Japanese traditional breakfast!” I know, I know. The thing is, I had a big lunch at a Chinese restaurant today, and had very sweet banana bread later in the evening, so I wanted to have something really Japanese (in other words, something salty) for supper. With what was left in the fridge, this was the best I could do. Of course I’m not totally happy with this combination. Obviously, this meal contained a bit too much salt and too little vitamin C. (Later I ate a New Zealand gold kiwi as a dessert to make up for the lack of VC.)

Just for your information: The dried fish I had today was a sweeter kind called “Mirin-boshi,” which uses more mirin (rice wine) for seasoning than salt.
This is how they make this sweeter-kind of dried fish.

BTW, can you help me with English? Do you call this “grilled fish” or “broiled fish”??? I heated the dried fish in something like a "toaster oven broiler”. So then it’s broiled fish? Right?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi obachan,

Just discovered your food blog and absolutely love it! I love Japanese cuisine (the really really authentic kind - bento boxes, etc) and have been looking for a Japanese food blog written in English for some time now!

I was just wondering - if you have more time, could you please post more recipes of what you cook - everything looks so delicious!!!

Quick question on the dried fish - do you need to hydrate the fish before grilling or do you just grill the fish directly out of the package?

Thank you!
jcheng

obachan said...

Hi jcheng,
Thanks so much for dropping by :D OK, I’ll do my best to post more recipes. The only thing is that I have never measured the ingredients nor followed any written recipes when I make Japanese dishes that my mom taught me how to make. So it’s a kind of challenge for me to prepare recipes for such dishes. Forgive me if I can’t do it as often as you expect.

I just grill the dried fish out of the package. I don’t know anyone around me hydrating it before grilling, but I’ve heard that if the dried fish was too old, sprinkling a little sake (NOT water) on it before grilling would make it taste better. Never tried it myself, though.