Japanese BBQ

Many people, including myself, want more vegetables and a variety of them at BBQ parties, but we're tired of the same old. There is such a thing as a Japanese BBQ, but not everyone has a hibachi nor a shichirin. But we can over come this, it just takes a bit of improvisation.


Okra is super simple. Brush on some oil, then sprinkle some salt on top. Little bit of crunchy on the outside, and nice and soft on the inside. Simply awesome. Now, because they do Pirouettes on you when you skewer them with just one stick, just use another as you can see in the photo below with the konnyaku.


If you're adventurous, you can also grill konnyaku with hatched cuts in it. Once you see it brown on the corners, it's ready to go. We tried it with the sweet miso; it was ok, but there was a special korean sauce someone had there, and that was really good.


Eggplant! make sure it's the long kind, the skin is softer, and they're done faster. Some people just put the whole thing on the grill; it's lovely with ponzu and some grated ginger. But ever since I had one explode on me, I'm slicing them in half (long ways). Also if sliced in half, you can enjoy it with some sweet miso sauce spread on top (I'll post the recipe for this next week). Delish.

Happy summer!


Some photos provided by American Otaku. Thanx!

Summer = Cold Tofu

Herbs are always hard to purchase at stores. Usually they sell too many in a package that are too old already, and you have no time to use them. I started growing my own chives for tofu - it's delicious with cold tofu and fresh grated ginger with a little bit of soy sauce over it... refreshing...



Now, being Japanese, the summer cold tofu just doesn't feel complete without Shiso. You may see this used as garnish on your sashimi or sushi dishes, but it is super fragrant and quite lovely to eat.



It's sometimes called Perilla in English, but it's not very common in western culture. It's a bit minty, but not tooth pastey, and the texture is somewhat like parsley, but not as prickly... hmmm... it's hard to explain.



My favorite way of using Shiso is, of course, with sushi and sashimi. But since I can't have that at home nearly enough, I have to have another way of enjoying Shiso. It worked really well in my cod-roe pasta the other day, so I'm going to have to try it with a garlic pasta and see how that goes, but always a summer favorite is on top a block of chilled tofu with chives and ginger on the side for a variety of simple but refreshing flavors!

HenoHenoMohe JA!

I remember drawing this face even before I started writing. Even after I learned how to write Hiragana, I used it to doodle, or fill a blank face if I didn't feel like giving it sparkly anime eyes. It's nothing pretty, but it's one thing every Japanese person knows how to draw. Like a stick man, as good or as bad as one may draw it, you still know that it's a stick man (unless you're my dad). I think that's how it works with "henohenomoheji" as well.

It is a face that was often used on scarecrows in Japan using the letters "he", "no", "mo", and "ji", all adding up to "henohenomoheji". Yah, unless you know what the letters look like, this still won't make sense right? Breakdown:



And for the purpose of this blog and profile picture, I just altered the "ji" to "ja" for Japa Stuff, that looks like this:



so that's how the profile pic came to be! Nice to meet you!