The 'Japanese Cooking/Remedies for Japanese Homesickness' Thread

[Uncle Wally 2]

The comfort foods we grew up with are the medicines that will remedy our most impulsive longings for home when we live abroad.

While I was living in Japan for 4 years, my kitchen was my refuge from culture shock.

Good cuisine is the same the world over. We all basically eat the same stuff. We just season and cook it differently.

If you posses proper ingredients, seasonings, and cooking techniques, it is possible to approximate any cuisine anywhere in the world, using only fresh, local ingredients.

To cook proper Japanese food anywhere in America, you need but a few things:

* You need a basic American supermarket, or better yet- a fish market, a butcher's, and a farmer's market or vegetable garden.

* You need a few basic Japanese seasonings that are definitely at your disposal (though you may never have known that you had access to them).

* You need the ability to make basic culinary improvisations when certain ingredients are unavailable.

* You need to be literate in English, or any other language in which resources are provided for basic Japanese cooking.

I aim for this to be a thread in which we share recipes for cooking Japanese food, a relatively simple food, food that allows our beloved Japanese spouses to feel more at home. After all, home is pretty much where we eat and sleep, and we can sleep anywhere. We can only truly eat at home.

Here it is, folks. Share away.

More specifics from me to follow, but now it's bedtime.

[Uncle Wally 2]

I apologize preemptively if my tone sounds patronizing, but from what I've gathered by reading this website, many of you may not be very familiar with Japanese food and cooking. I consider myself to be relatively knowledgeable on the subjects, and especially considering the threads that pop up here seeking advice for helping a Japanese spouse overcome homesickness, I wish to share what I know.

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I'm of the opinion that when a couple from two cultures cohabit, the food they eat ought to be proportionate to that arrangement.

If your spouse is from Japan, you should find a source of Japanese ingredients for your spouse to use, and you should learn to cook some basic Japanese dishes yourself.

Seek out a local Asian or international foods grocer. Mixed in on the shelves amongst the Thai, Vietnamese, and Chinese products and whatnot, you should find an assortment of non-perishable Japanese basics to combine with fresh ingredients from the American supermarket. American supermarkets often have an 'international foods' aisle where you can find a few of these items, but they will likely be domestic versions of lesser quality and higher price. For example, the Stop & Shop nearby has packaged sheets of nori seaweed, imported in bulk from Japan and re-packaged in California for about $5 each. The Asian market sells the same basic product packaged in Japan for half the price. Tubs of domestic miso paste at Stop & Shop are twice the price of their larger Japanese counterparts at the Asian grocer's. This is common to nearly every Japanese product the Stop & Shop has. The Asian market also has certain Asian vegetables that are simply unavailable elsewhere nearby.

If you can't find an Asian grocer, and if you live in a part of America where even the most basic Japanese ingredients are unavailable, seek out a source on the Internet. There are many Japanese import companies in the United States from which you can mail-order these products from an online catalog.

Next chapter to soon follow…

[Melrose Plant 1]

I apologize preemptively if my tone sounds patronizing, but from what I've gathered by reading this website, many of you may not be very familiar with Japanese food and cooking. I consider myself to be relatively knowledgeable on the subjects, and especially considering the threads that pop up here seeking advice for helping a Japanese spouse overcome homesickness, I wish to share what I know.

You are correct. Being pretty heavily Vietnamese in this forum, we don't know a lot about Japanese food.

**********************************************

I'm of the opinion that when a couple from two cultures cohabit, the food they eat ought to be proportionate to that arrangement.

If your spouse is from Japan, you should find a source of Japanese ingredients for your spouse to use, and you should learn to cook some basic Japanese dishes yourself.

I wish you could convince my wife of that. The proportionate part of that anyway. We eat about 95% Vietnamese, 5% from any other part of the world. I wonder if you have observed the same as me--that Americans tend to be more "omnivorous" than people from older parts of the world. I cannot personally imagine eating only Vietnamese food every day for the rest of my life. The thought is actually kind of depressing. Yet, that is exactly what most Vietnamese eat. Every day. For all their lives. We really are the Great Melting Pot.

Luckily, we found an Asian Supermarket which is owned by Vietnamese. Not Thais, not Laos, not Chinese. That is definitely a boon to us. And you would be shocked to find out how cheaply we eat. In today's economy, that makes up for a lot of things that are lacking in Vietnamese cooking.

Seek out a local Asian or international foods grocer. Mixed in on the shelves amongst the Thai, Vietnamese, and Chinese products and whatnot, you should find an assortment of non-perishable Japanese basics to combine with fresh ingredients from the American supermarket. American supermarkets often have an 'international foods' aisle where you can find a few of these items, but they will likely be domestic versions of lesser quality and higher price. For example, the Stop & Shop nearby has packaged sheets of nori seaweed, imported in bulk from Japan and re-packaged in California for about $5 each. The Asian market sells the same basic product packaged in Japan for half the price. Tubs of domestic miso paste at Stop & Shop are twice the price of their larger Japanese counterparts at the Asian grocer's. This is common to nearly every Japanese product the Stop & Shop has. The Asian market also has certain Asian vegetables that are simply unavailable elsewhere nearby.

If you can't find an Asian grocer, and if you live in a part of America where even the most basic Japanese ingredients are unavailable, seek out a source on the Internet. There are many Japanese import companies in the United States from which you can mail-order these products from an online catalog.

Next chapter to soon follow…

I hope your wife is getting on well in the U.S. I used to do 80% of the cooking when I was married to my former wife. Now it is less than 5%. I am awaiting further installments of this thread. Haha, my wife will say I need to get a Japanese wife.

[tinyrosie 0]

I apologize preemptively if my tone sounds patronizing, but from what I've gathered by reading this website, many of you may not be very familiar with Japanese food and cooking. I consider myself to be relatively knowledgeable on the subjects, and especially considering the threads that pop up here seeking advice for helping a Japanese spouse overcome homesickness, I wish to share what I know.

**********************************************

I'm of the opinion that when a couple from two cultures cohabit, the food they eat ought to be proportionate to that arrangement.

If your spouse is from Japan, you should find a source of Japanese ingredients for your spouse to use, and you should learn to cook some basic Japanese dishes yourself.

Seek out a local Asian or international foods grocer. Mixed in on the shelves amongst the Thai, Vietnamese, and Chinese products and whatnot, you should find an assortment of non-perishable Japanese basics to combine with fresh ingredients from the American supermarket. American supermarkets often have an 'international foods' aisle where you can find a few of these items, but they will likely be domestic versions of lesser quality and higher price. For example, the Stop & Shop nearby has packaged sheets of nori seaweed, imported in bulk from Japan and re-packaged in California for about $5 each. The Asian market sells the same basic product packaged in Japan for half the price. Tubs of domestic miso paste at Stop & Shop are twice the price of their larger Japanese counterparts at the Asian grocer's. This is common to nearly every Japanese product the Stop & Shop has. The Asian market also has certain Asian vegetables that are simply unavailable elsewhere nearby.

If you can't find an Asian grocer, and if you live in a part of America where even the most basic Japanese ingredients are unavailable, seek out a source on the Internet. There are many Japanese import companies in the United States from which you can mail-order these products from an online catalog.

Next chapter to soon follow…

I am not Japanese but I lived in Japan for six and half years before I married my husband and moved to the US. I like Japanese food alot and crave for it from time to time. With the help of a Japanese friend who has been living here longer than I do, I found a big Korean supermarket that has alot of Japanese ingredients with reasonable price (it's called H-mart and I think they have stores in other parts of the US too), and a small Japanese specialty store that sell not only packaged Japanese foods and ingredients but also fresh seafood for sashimi and sushi, fresh Japanese vegetables (like kyuri, mizuna, gobou, daikon, different kinds of kinoko, etc), and Japanese rice (imported from Japan, not the one from California).

So anyways... so far I cook only simple Japanese foods like oyakodon, kare rice, ebi furai, and japanese green bean salad. Next time maybe I will try making kinpira.

[chuckandkim 0]

tinyrosies, I love H-mart !

unclewally,

H-Mart is the place we get all our japanese foods Kim studied and lived in Shizuoka for 8 years before we met. Heavily mixed in Vietnamese/Japanese and American traditional foods at my dinner table each week, I must say. Make dinner more interesting.

We often stock up on those: frozen udon; ichimi, menma, wassabie, somen, soba, salmon furikake, tama furikake, souyu etc.

For FISH: You can get fresh and I mean fresh as in swiming fishes in the tanks here at H-Mart or any Korean's supermarket in the States. Depends where you live. You can get them filet, clean and cut as you wish for free there.

www.h-mart.com

Hope you find one near by...