Lioness in Japan

Restaurants in Tokyo try hard to cater to women. There are countless establishments that want to cash in on groups of women looking for healthy affordable nosh in a cozy environment conducive for gossiping.

One such place is Cucina Hirata (detailed review here).

The dainty desserts are tiny (waist-friendly) and look fabulous enough render oohs and aahs.

Fresh salads as a starter – again on the healthy theme…

And anything vegetarian somehow earns a healthy stamp of approval. I don’t know about you but I think this veggie lasagna is far from healthy because it was so rich in cheese and pasta despite its generous serving of vegetables. But my companions exclaimed we had such a healthy lunch.

That doesn’t detract from the fact that this is one helluva lasagna.

So a week before I left for NYC, I organized a “hanami dinner” at Shibamatsu, a chanko nabe restaurant in Nakameguro, but the sakuras were still hiding and my friends told me it was pointless to take a walk along the Meguro River. Besides, nobody would be out and about in the awful post-storm weather.

But a cold evening meant that chanko babe was exactly what the doctor ordered.

Chanko nabe is hot pot eaten by sumo wrestlers. It is full of veggies and high in protein, becauseof the meat, fish, and tofu that is simmered in delicious hearty soup stock.

We ordered miso and shio based soup – both were delish but the miso was excellent. In fact, I couldn’t get enough of the soup and drank tons. My Japanese friends noticed that my Singaporean friends and I drink a lot of soup when we go out for hot pot, and apparently, Japanese tend to leave the soup in the hot pot, so there’s soup leftover to cook rice or noodles…

It tasted even more wicked with dollops of yuzu koshou, a heady mix of green Japanese chilli and yuzu. The spicy kick made the Singaporeans in the pack salivate…well this one anyway. And it was mutenka!

Other notable eats were the slivers of fresh sashimi…

And this flower like tomato. You’ll be surprised how popular it is to just served fresh-cut tomatoes with a spot of mayo on the side as an izakaya dish and it does refresh the palate from all the salty grub that is usually on offer.

Have you eaten grilled garlic swimming in oil? Funny how I have no qualms eating raw garlic to stave off a flu bug but cooked garlic gloves in oil give me the heebie jeebies.

It was surprisingly not garlicky at all and very soft. It kind of melted in my mouth… We nibbled on this at a late night yakitori place somewhere in Nakameguro. Love that I’m getting to explore more of my hood…

Btw, hello from Frankfurt. I would’ve touched down from a red eye flight from NYC to Germany by the time you read this.

I stumbled upon a local sushi bar near my house, and again, lack of time and a rumbling tum led me to this place. Somehow noodles or a curry seemed too heavy for lunch that day, so sushi it was…

It was a teeny tiny nook that could probably seat only 15 people and the lone sushi chef took centre stage behind his colourful counter of mouthwatering raw fish.

This lunch set came with a bowl miso soup and chawamushi which was absolutely delectable. From now on, I would always need chawamushi to be paired with sushi!! I paid a mere 980JPY for this sensational platter.

I think this place is called Sakana Ichi, 魚いち, which means fish is number one. I could be wrong, y’know, but that’s what the kanji reads to me. Details here.

If you want ogle at my other sushi adventures: here and here.

I’ve been on a streak of showing you the things that were given to us by various friends, haven’t I?

Today’s one is Yakun kaya jam, brought to me all the way from Singapore by The Frou. She was here on a business trip and we caught up over dinner where she surprised me with a bottle of this and a pack of Chinese herbs for boiling soup. Excellent gifts for any homesick Singaporean.

Usually, kaya is eaten over a generous slab of butter on toast. Sigh, it was a great Saturday morning breakfast. I usually keep it clean and healthy from Mon-Fri, but I like to imbibe a naughty brunch or two on the weekend.

One of the cakes I love eating if I’m ever in a cafe having the chance to indulge in cake (which is rarely ever, to be honest), I would choose lemon poppy seed cake. I think it’s got such a cheery flavour with the lemon and the poppy seeds are almost like teeny tiny polka dots.

I’m still horrified by the amount of sugar and butter that goes into traditional cakes so I followed a recipe online but cut down the evil stuff by 30%.

The result was not a very sweet cake at all. And the texture was a bit funny, like some parts were more moist and dense than others and it didn’t have that crumbly cake texture.

But, I still liked it. I wonder if it’s because I made it that I could still think it was delicious – lol! I don’t have that same feeling with savory dishes though. If it sucks, I think it really sucks. But there’s just something about baked goods that I would willingly eat, even if it’s not that great. Maybe because it still smells good? I love the warm waft of vanilla and batter being coaxed in the oven.

When I’m uninspired to think about what to make for my meals, I just soak a bunch of beans overnight and hope for some inspiration the next day.

I had some Hokkaido potatoes, chickpeas, tomatoes, and coconut milk. I blended some onion, garlic, and tomato with water, as the chickpeas boiled away. I sprinkled cumin, tumeric, coriander seed powder, masala powder, saffron powder, cayenne pepper, and salt into the mix and chucked in the potatoes, chickpeas, and coconut milk.

It was an awesome curry, albeit a mongrel-ish one, put together in less than 15 minutes.

I wrote about having time to eat a simple meal at home while working and it got me thinking that the little things we do for ourselves daily really add up. When I was working in Singapore, I never had time to work out as much as I wanted, nor cook as much as I wanted. I didn’t even have time to blow-dry my hair. Yes, I was one of those people who ran out of the house with wet hair all the time. Basically, I couldn’t slow down and I constantly had this psychological knot in my chest from stress.

It is still stressful running your own business but I’m just grateful I have the luxury of fitting in all the things that keep me balanced on an average work day. I hadn’t been thinking of the perks of working for myself lately, so I’m just reminding myself.

I had a sudden idea to make my own kefir yogurt when I was talking to a friend about why kefir is good for your health. And it turns out Japan is mad about kefir and it’s easy to buy kefir powder online. I still don’t know how one would get kefir grains (this way, you can keep making your own kefir since bacteria multiplies on its own if you keep fermenting it) but methinks the powder is fine as is. In fact, 20 sachets cost 2,500JPY which is not too bad. It’ll definitely take me a while to get through all 25 packets because that’s 25 batches of yogurt.

I’m lactose-intolerant so I make some coconut milk yogurt. This tastes divine but it is quite runny for yogurt and you need to wait at least four days to get that yogurty texture.

Then I gave soy milk a go and it turned out weird. It looks like quite a solid yogurt but it tasted like tofu, I swear. It smelled a bit tart like yogurt should but the taste was far from a yogurty one. I’ll probably dump the rest of this batch into the bin. I also felt that it was harder to digest. Anyway, do give me ideas on what else I could make a yogurt out of, sans dairy milk.

It took 24 hours for the yogurt to be made in my trusty Yamazen Yogurt Maker and about another day for it to chill and thicken in the fridge.

I totally love DIY cooking projects…!!

One of the things I like about working from home is that I get to make myself healthy lunches if I should so please. It is seriously a luxury and I’m always thankful I can take a full hour to cook and eat without any stress.

This makes me recall the days I worked in an office in Singapore where I would stuff oily hawker cafeteria food into my stomach in 15 minutes flat so I could continue working like a mad woman. I always felt sluggish and it was a time when I wasn’t taking care of myself well at all.

Today’s picture is of a baked tofu “don”, or rather millet cooked with mixed grains, with a simple salad and boiled egg drizzled with homemade honey mustard dressing. I marinated the tofu with shoyu, mirin, black pepper and apple cider vinegar. The key to baked tofu is to press the liquid out of the tofu before you grill it.

I was so excited to find Five Star Cafe in Nakameguro! Make that two more exclamation marks!!

One of my students told me about this little nook near the station and I was in culinary heaven when I slowly savoured this bowl of delicious laksa. It actually had chor bee hoon (thick rice vermicelli) which cannot be found in other laksa versions in Tokyo. They either use mochi noodles or thin vermicelli which are not authentic.

For their dinner menu, they have chicken rice, bah kut teh, carrot cake, fish head curry, chilli crab etc on their menu and they all look very yummy from their pictures. I can’t wait to head over for dinner!

The restaurant was so cute with its tiny interior and little accents of Singaporean memorabilia. No merlions lurking around that’s for sure! They also had a message that “wan-chan” (a nickname for dogs because the sound they make in Japan is “wan-wan”, as opposed to bow-wow or woof) is welcomed in their cafe and their mascot is a pug — big aw from me as a pug-lover.

I wanted to buy a jar of kaya but they had sold out and they also sell their own version of ra-yu, or chilli oil that was probably the top food trend in the past couple of years in Japan.