Magic pot of Kitamono
They say the best way to learn someone else’s language – love the girl for which this language is native. The fastest way to learn another people is to understand what and how he eats. In this sense, to get acquainted with Japan is easy and nice, because Japanese food is one of the easiest and most healthy in the world.
The Japanese food is different, for example, from Chinese the fact that in the subway dish it is being prepared so that you will never guess what it is cooked, and in Japan – you never guess that it is generally cooked!
The Japanese are very inquisitive in food, they like to try someone else’s and exotic food, but in their own they are very conservative: rice, fish and seafood, soy – those three pillars on which their kitchen. Here and begins the national character. Japanese is essentially not an inventor: when the people live very closely, he is forced to live according to the rules, and ingenuity is always a search for extraordinary. But what the Japanese once learned, he will do thoroughly. For example, raise rice. Recognize his varieties to taste. Determine in which part of the country it is grown – also to taste.
Right Japanese rice – round, grains to the grain. Cook it – a whole science. True, in our time, rice is boiled using electronic rice cooker. Yes yes, it is electronic, not electric. Of course embedded in ricewood "Brain" Not too much, but they are enough to maintain the desired temperature, set the right direction of water flows and steam. Then the finished product will be in moderation crumbly and moderately. Timer will turn on the device at the right time, in the desired one – will turn off and will keep the finished product with hot, though the whole day, so that the hostess has always been at hand. Freshly brewed rice.
Mostly it is so eating – just rice. As we have bread – not a separate dish, but the basis and the necessary part of the lunch. Rice can be mixed with special vinegar – and it will be the basis for sushi. By the way, in addition to Rolls and Nigiri-Zushi, there is another third, not quite popular in the west view of the sushi – Kansaizushi (Kansai – part of Japan, where Osaka is located): Rice, mixed with special ingredients and placed in edible molds – balls, sprockets, hearts.
Rice is wonderful and keeps the form. Japanese mothers prepare for their children oniigir – rice triangles with hidden in a piece of fish or chicken, or a spoon of vegetable salad, wrapped in nori – dried by specially algae. Rice can be sprinkled with a dried mixture of Furikake, consisting of vegetables, crushed fish, shrimp, nori, and get another delicious and simple dish. With rice you can do anything. The only thing that cannot be done, from the point of view of the Japanese, is to cook sweet milk rice porridge. Even the most polite Japanese cannot hold back the grimace, only hearing about such.
Fish has always been the main in the Japanese diet, which is not surprising – the ocean is he, always near. And in it a wonderful tuna – a marine analogue of the cow, except that milk does not give. Delicious Relicious meat – Although the Zhar on the coals, although you have a couple, at least raw. Or Lachedra (Hamachi) – Sirevato Pearl File for Sashimi. Or shrimp and sea scallops adorable warm waters shelf. Squid, octopuses … Yes, if there are few of them, marine inhabitants, only hand! However, the fish in Japan is not so cheap, as it might seem, rather, on the contrary – good fish is expensive.
And finally soy. From soybeans prepares weight of dishes – from soup to traditional sweets. MISO Soup – the world’s easiest soup. It is enough to stir in boiling water Actually Misho – Salted paste of fermented soybeans. As a refueling, pieces of tofu are usually added – soy cheese, dried sea cabbage, chopped green onions, but in principle you can add anything or not to add anything at all. Misho – dietary food, very useful for the stomach.
It would be unfair to not be noted that in Japanese cuisine, many specially grown mushrooms and various herbs are used, right up to small edible chrysanthemum flowers, which decorate dishes. There are still gardens and wild vegetables, fresh and pickled (Zookamo), and amazing for the taste-but-ko (bamboo sprouts) and Rencon (lotus root).
The inseparable part of the Japanese food culture – Bento, traditional ready lunch for travelers. In a special box or container at the rate of one person, rice is served with other dishes: sweetened fish, pickled and fresh vegetables, in a small sauce – with a bottle – a bottle. The same boxes with food collect mothers for schoolchildren and young wife for their own not too well earning spouses. Ready Bento can be bought in any supermarket and in 24-hour shops. If necessary, you will immediately warm up.
In Japan, there are many writers and unwritten rules on how to behave in one way or another. There are, for example, you can everywhere – in the train car, sitting on the lawn, on the windowsill at the Institute. It is impossible to eat on the go and, of course, in this sense of all rules – you can not interfere with others.
One of the features of Japanese meals – there is no concept "Basic dish". No division and changes – first, second, soups or cold and hot dishes. Lunch can be started with any dish. Is that dessert still eaten last.
Japanese food is easy to cook, but to make a prepared dish in a special Japanese style – not easy. This, like the art of Iquiban, should learn. You also need to learn to eat chopsticks. But it’s just very simple, a little workout – and all! The sticks are very convenient, they are essentially becoming a continuation of the fingers – more precisely, just long fingers that can be taken anything – hot, small, wet, slippery.
Sticks are comfortable and when cooking, especially if you have to prepare and eat at the same time. After all, many Japanese dishes are prepared right on the table – sometimes a cook, and sometimes eaters themselves, and it does not require special skills.
One of the most beautiful and delicious dishes – Sukiyaki. The word cuts a little rumor of the Russian man, although it is translated just like "Favorite fried". It will take a thinly sliced beef, several types of mushrooms, tofu, leek, bifun – transparent noodles, cooked from rice and potato starch, soy sauce, mixed with culinary wine (Mirin), spicy herbs. All products are beautifully declined on the dish. A gas burner is installed on the middle of the table (in the past it was a brazier on coals, and now it becomes increasingly replacing the Teflon-electric analogue), on the bottom of which a little sauce is poured with wine. In this sauce, meat, tofu, mushrooms are slowly roasted – everything that lies on the dish. You yourself put the crude product on that part of the frying pan, which is closer to you, you ourselves turn, decide when the food is ready. Of course, all procedures are made by chopsticks. Before each who sits at the table, put a deep saucer in which the raw egg is broken – it is necessary to cool roasted pieces taken from the frying pan before they fall into the mouth. And, of course, rice – everyone should have a cup with hot rice.
Bitchy Yaki – Wonderful Meeting with Entertainment for Small Company. If you do not have any of the listed products – it does not matter, it can be replaced by what you got familiar and familiar. If only it was delicious. The conversation flows smoothly, food – like every Japanese – not hard for the stomach. Because of the table, everyone goes off, but not cluttered.
Winter version of the bitch-yaki is called Namparo. Skaono season comes in Japanese families together with cold. Folk granny says: "In cold weather in the pot must be thick", and Nabeamono and there is a thick food in this very clay pot DONABE. However, for the preparation of Namarono, the Japanese use another dishes – an iron or copper pan, a pot and even a frying pan with high walls.
Pot or pot with a pre-cooked broth put in the center of the table on a portable gas or an electric stove, there are plates with prepared products near the table: fish, meat, mushrooms, vegetables … Broth boiling on slow heat, add marine cappist Kombu, Sake, soybean Sauce, lemon juice. After that, each of the participants of the meal is no matter, a family member or just one of the guests – completes the process of making a dish independently, each for itself. Takes from the plate what he wants, and puts in boiling broth. By readiness, he himself takes out chopsticks from the pan, shifts himself on a plate and eats, having sick with sauce.
When liquid remains in the pan, there is a boiled rice there and warm up again. It turns out something like liquid porridge. Sometimes instead of rice uses thick homely wheat noodles Udon.
Namarono love all the Japanese, they are preparing at home and order in restaurants. This dish has a lot of positive parties. First, you can use all the variety of products and any combinations thereof. Secondly, each piece is in broth short-time time, so useful substances from products are not digested. Thirdly, the table setting does not require special hassle, we need only small plates for each and saw for sauces. The most necessary for Namarono is a warm and friendly atmosphere at the table. The Japanese say that in this sense, Namarono is the most Japanese of all Japanese dishes. After all, in the kitchen of the rising sun, a pleasant company and pleasure from communicating in a circle of family and friends – the main condition of a good feast.
