Setsuden means saving electricity in Japanese, and as I mentioned in my previous post on “cool” products, it’s really important for Honshu to decrease its power consumption because there may not be enough energy to go around.

I don’t think I go all the way to save energy but I do try — I unplug appliances if I don’t use them and if I go out or go to sleep, I shut down my computer and use fewer lights, plus I try to use the fan instead of air-conditioning in the morning and afternoon, so I only use air-con at night.

So one of the frequent ways I cook meat for the kangaroo is to slow-cook stews and curries. Many people are fascinated how a vegetarian could willingly cook meat for a partner so I’ll elaborate here.

Basically, I don’t like touching meat so I buy meat that is already cut up (except for chicken) which tends to be thinly shaven slices for stir-fries or bbq or big hard chunks. I also try to cook two servings at a go so I cut down on having to cook meat daily. I also don’t taste the meat dishes but I remember the amount of various seasonings necessary for various meat dishes from the time I ate meat. I also try to make dishes that are good with or without meat, eg. sweet & sour stir fries, tacos and green curry are those that are easy to chuck in a meat component without compromising on flavour in either dish.

Anyway, let’s go back to the topic at hand: I used to slow-cook meat stews in my rice-cooker for 6-8 hours, but thanks to my new Shuttle Chef pot, I don’t need to use ANY electricity. My mum has two back home but I think it’s called Magic Pot in Singapore.

The kangaroo’s ex-colleague gave this Shuttle Chef to us as a wedding gift — how thoughtful!

Look at this baby….All you need to do is to boil your dish for 10 minutes and then leave the pot in its insulated case that will gently cook your stew (and slow heat is always key for good tender stews) for two hours, then boil for ten minutes and then cover it up again for another two hours.

Unfortunately, I had to re-boil the stew twice instead of once which meant a total of 12 hours to get the consistency I wanted. I also left the meat in the Shuttle Chef for 3-4 hours at a time, instead of the stipulated two because it was just too watery after just two hours. At the end of the second round, the meat was soft but the stew was still like a thin soup and not a gravy, so I boiled it a third time. I wasn’t annoyed by this at all since I did this on the weekend and because it took so long (it finished cooking at midnight), I kept it for dinner the next day.

Setsuden beef stew recipe (makes two servings):
1 white onion, chopped
5 cloves of garlic
2 servings of beef chunks
1 carrot, diced
1 celery stalk, chopped
1 tomato, chopped
Splash of red wine
Splash of balsamic vinegar
1/4 tsp sea salt
Pinch of black pepper
Dash of dried rosemary
Dash of thyme
Dash of taragon
Dash of chilli powder
1 bay leaf
2 cups water

The kangaroo absolutely loved it but he is very easy to please so I’m thankful I don’t need to really rack my brains on how to keep his palate satisfied. Enjoy! Let me know if you have a good stew recipe or two to share.

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Alright folks, this is the finale of “Eating cheap in Tokyo”, so I decided a Japanese dish would be a natural swan song. Though I’m very into un-cooking these days, I still have an interest in cooked food because the kangaroo is not raw.

On that note, he is very respectful and supportive of my new lifestyle, and I’m the same where he is concerned. Though he probably isn’t aware that he is 50 per cent raw when he comes home and eats these salads and raw ice-cream I make.

Anway, let’s talk about yakisoba today. Yakisoba is fried ramen noodles with cabbage, soy sauce, and preserved ginger. You can find this at street stalls during festivals like hanami (sakura season) and hanabi (fireworks in the summer) and in conbinis.

I’m not very fond of preserved ginger so I whipped up my own version in my kitchen.

Serves two, plus leftovers for the next day:
2 packets yakisoba = 160JPY
1 packet sliced pork = 250JPY
1 packet bok choy = 100JPY
½ packet shiitake (or four shiitake mushrooms) = 79JPY
2 tbs oyster sauce; negligible (one small bottle costs 300JPY at Yamaya)
1 tbs soy sauce; negligible
1 tsp sesame oil; negligible
1 tsp black pepper; negligible
One clove of garlic; negligible
1 tsp mirin (optional); negligible
1 tbs sambal (optional); negligible (or you can use Lee Kum Kee’s Chilli Bean Paste from Yamaya at 400JPY per bottle)

Total time = 20 minutes

Total cost = 400JPY per person (I inflated this to include the “negligibles”)

Stir-fry the garlic in olive oil in a wok and then add in the pork slices. Shake in some oyster sauce and let it cook for a minute or two. Toss in the bok choy and shiitake, plus add in the soy sauce, black pepper, mirin, and sesame oil. As the bok choy wilts, put in the yakisoba noodles and stir-fry everything with as much muscle you’ve got. You can include the sambal or chilli sauce at this point but it’s not necessary for yummy yakisoba. I’m Singaporean so fried noodles with chilli go together like peanut butter and jelly.

Hope you enjoyed this series and I will be posting recipes on an ad-hoc basis if I find awesome ones to share.

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I started this column back in early Dec last year because I was one of those unfortunate souls who got retrenched. Officially, I was let go in October so by then I was right into the frugal life, but I wanted to keep healthy, because frankly, I had no health insurance or disposable cash to get sick.

Fast forward to today: life is much better as my beauty business is cranking along and the kangaroo got a fantastic new job. Nevertheless, I would still like to share two more recipes before I end this series. It might not be completely aligned to my new raw lifestyle but I think these are great kitchen ideas anyway.

Pasta is too easy to reach for when you just can’t be bothered. Trust me, I’ve been there. Cream-based sauces could be too heavy and you may not store them very much in your pantry as they have a limited shelf life. That’s why tomato-based sauces are any lazy person’s go-to fall back, but you know, your taste buds could be screaming, “NOT AGAIN?!”

So how do you make it less bland? Feta cheese. In the vein of recession recipes, vegetarian dishes do help you to pinch pennies.

Today’s recipe involves eggplant and red capsicum, which are widely available in Tokyo supermarkets and are cheap.

Serves two:
1 red capsicum = 258JPY
3 small eggplants = 158JPY
2 tsp feta cheese = 70JPY (one whole bottle costs about 700JPY)
Half packet of spaghetti = 75JPY
Prego Fresh Mushroom Tomato Sauce = 400JPY
Two cloves of garlic; negligible (three whole garlic bulbs cost 100JPY)
Half a white onion; negligible (four huge onions cost 158JPY)

Total time: 15 minutes

One person = 500JPY

Start boiling water for the spaghetti. Stir-fry the garlic and onion in olive oil, and then add the eggplants. Pour in the tomato sauce and simmer till the eggplants soften. Do feel free to sprinkle black pepper and herbs (oregano, basil, parsley work well) at this point. Toss in the capsicum, as it will cook much faster than the eggplants and then stir in the feta. Your pasta may be ready by now, so just serve the sauce piping hot on a bed of spaghetti.

Honestly, when I made this, my fridge was pitifully empty, so I threw in the feta just because I had no meat and it gave the tomato sauce a deep savoury kick. My meat-lovin’ kangaroo smacked his lips over this one — too easy and absolutely delicious.

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…until I started the raw food diet. Some of you who also follow the Beauty Box blog may know I’ve been eating a raw diet for two months now and wrote about it here. I decided to keep any health or diet-related issues to the BB blog and write about my life in Japan here.

But, today’s post is not really about beauty and it’s just about me in my apartment on a lazy Sunday.

I felt kind of blah and tired out from a full-on but very fun Saturday — I was not up to doing any work, but I wasn’t too zonked out to watch 10 hours of non-stop TV. My hands felt restless, so I cranked up The Gipsy Kings and made this:

I would say this is my biggest raw achievement so far: a raw strawberry shortcake that doesn’t contain any dairy, gluten, or refined sugar. But it tasted sinfully decadent and turned the Sunday blues into an evening of simple pleasure.

I’d like to add that this post has something slightly related to Nippon: the strawberry shortcake is a ubiquitous dessert in Japan, be it in a restaurant or café, and it happens to be my favouritest cake ever.

Here’s the recipe if you are interested. Be warned, this is a dense shortcake and not fluffy like “normal” ones.

Cake
3/4 cup soaked dates, chopped
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon vanilla
Pinch salt
1 cup loosely packed left-over pulp from making pecan milk
1 cup dried coconut
1/2 cup cashews

Whipped Cream
1/2 cup cashews
1/2 cup macadamia nuts
1 cup coconut cream
1/8 cup agave nectar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon vanilla
Pinch of salt
2 tablespoon cold-pressed coconut oil

Adapted from The Sunny Raw Kitchen

Press the cake into a mold, then layer strawberry slices, and finally the whipped cream. Freeze for 45 min and then repeat the process.

It took me a little over half an hour to get everything ready for the first layer, so this cake clocked in at two hours. I was never into normal baking, but un-baking fits me like a snug glove.

What do you do to lift your spirits?

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I know I’ve gone mostly raw lately but I do have some classic dishes that brewed in my kitchen when I had a “balanced” meat-carbs-veggie diet.

The kangaroo is also returning from his round-the-world business trip so I will probably pick up these old faves because I don’t think he would be enthused about going raw with me. He’s quite open-minded but has been a bit speechless at my recent lifestyle changes.

Here is what you need for this fail-safe dinner idea:

2 chicken breasts 450JPY
½ chopped onion 30JPY
2 garlic cloves negligible
1 tablespoon of capers 80JPY
1 cup of chicken stock (made from bones or half a chicken stock cube) negligible
1 splash of white wine (or mirin) negligible
1 bunch of asparagus 398JPY
1 packet of baby corn 120JPY

Cost per head: 539JPY

Before you kick off the chicken, wash the veggies and stick them into the fish grill. Drizzle with olive oil and shake some herbs over the ensemble if you like.

Pan fry the chicken breast pieces until they brown a little. Remove from the pan and chuck in the garlic and onion on some olive oil. Once the onion turns translucent, pour in the chicken stock on high heat. After a minute, lower the heat to moderate and splash in the white wine. Add the capers and the chicken breast, then let them broil till cooked.

Squeeze in some lemon juice and it’s ready to serve.

It’s certified kangaroo sick food, so you’ve got to try this quick, delicious recipe. It’s quite light and lemony but with a savoury kick — you won’t regret it.

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As promised, I’m going to show off Karen Knowler’s luscious nori (seaweed) roll recipe today.

What I like about it is it’s got a Japanese touch and it’s a cheap, fast, delicious lunch. I’ve made this twice already and I can’t wait to have it again.

This is the breakdown for two large nori rolls and they lasted me over five hours before the hunger pangs kicked in. It’s seriously a myth that your stomach will feel empty after salads — you’ve got to put together the right mix, so the avocado is what fuels the slow burn in this recipe.

Ingredients:

½ avocado 125JPY
¼ white onion 10JPY
8 olives 40JPY
2 stalks watercress 40JPY
1 small tomato 75JPY
2 sheets of nori 60JPY

Total cost: 310JPY

The cost is a rough estimation as it is calculated according to fractions of a whole packet of veggie or bottle. What’s great about these ingredients is that they keep quite well in the fridge so you can whip up another similar dish or use them for something else within the week you bought them.

But the most important thing is, it was sensational. Oh my goodness, I never knew raw white onions tasted so awesome! The pungent fragrance mixed with a bit of sharpness is just perfect with creamy avocado and crunchy watercress.

Just a couple of tips:

*Leave an inch of border on the seaweed when you pile on your ingredients.

*Put in the leafy greens first and then the moist ones last to keep the nori from falling apart. I know Karen Knowler’s video advises the opposite so the nori can roll properly and stick together as a tube but somehow my experience was the total opposite — mine fell apart, and I had to eat the different ingredients almost separately, but the key to this scrumptious meal is to have almost every ingredient in one bite. I think it’s because I used toasted nori sheets so maybe they are less hardy than raw ones.

*The olives are quite essential to this recipe — I left them out in my very first roll which was tasty but lacked a little saltiness, so my second roll was just divine with these juicy flavours exploding in my mouth.

I am probably in the honeymoon phase, but raw is really not that hard. My first impression was that it was for people who had a lot of time on their hands — yes and no. I think if you are making very complicated recipes like raw pizza and raw burgers, you need a chunk of time to put everything together but the beauty of Karen Knowler’s recipes are they’re for the woman on the go. I mean, you really don’t actually cook.

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On Saturday, I’ll be having about 10 friends over for dinner — it’s the eve of Chinese New Year.

We should be having the reunion dinner (for non-Chinese folks out there, it’s the name of the family dinner on the eve of the new year) on the eve itself but Sunday is always iffy for lingering over an evening meal so my Singaporean gal pal suggested that Saturday would be a better day.

Chinese dumplings and ma po tofu (minced pork and tofu in a spicy Szechuan sauce) were two requests made by our Japanese friends so I agreed enthusiastically (but I had a few shouchus in my system by then).

When I came back from Sydney, I felt a little nervous because a sit-down dinner for 10 is a big job and I wasn’t sure I was going to pull it off.

Cooking for two is easy but 10 is on a different scale. What if my measurements get all screwed up for 10 because I’m so used to throwing herbs and spices together on meat and fish for two portions?

I’ve made food for 15 people for my housewarming party but that was more like a finger-food spread with two plates of noodles and rice. In contrast, this dinner would have dishes that need more thought and care put into their preparation.

Since I promised, I decided a trial run (or two) would be necessary for the dumplings, especially since I’ve never ever made them in my life.

I got my mum’s recipe — she makes awesome tasty ones! — and went shopping.

I had to go to two supermarkets to get all the ingredients but it was worth the trip because it made my Sunday so fun. I know, I’m such a geek.

Tips gleaned from this first attempt:

*Boil dumplings separately from the actual soup you are going to pair it with
*Put lots if diced sweet turnip. I put 1:4 parts to the minced pork but I think 1:2 would be better.
*I splashed a dash of soy sauce so the dumplings came out tasting too light. Two splashes would be ideal plus a sprinkle of salt.
*Fresh shiitake mushrooms are not as tasty as dried ones so I will try to get some later in the week..
*Two pieces of shrimp with less minced pork is better than more mince and one piece of shrimp.

Phew, that’s all for now. I will definitely blog about the upcoming dinner.

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Japanese housewives know a thing or two about saving money and delicious food. All varieties of nabe (means hotpot) are very easy on the pocket, takes up very little preparation time, and is very healthy because of the lack of oil and only healthy ingredients are required.

My favourite of all the hotpot dishes in Japan is shabu-shabu. I don’t think my homemade version will ever beat the ones in restaurants but it’s my lazy-gal’s solution when I don’t feel like slaving over the stove.

To kick things off, I boil some water in my nabe pot (it’s actually a claypot), while I commence chopping and cleaning my ingredients, which take about 10 minutes.

1 packet of bean sprouts = 50JPY
1 packet of tofu = 100JPY
1 packet of shiitake mushrooms = 158JPY
1 packet of enoki mushrooms = 100JPY
1 packet of engiri mushrooms = 130JPY
½ packet of shabu beef slices = 350JPY
½ packet of shabu pork slices = 300JPY

This is enough for two people and it costs 594JPY each. I haven’t counted in the bottles of goma (sesame) and ponzu (yuzu-flavoured soy sauce) sauce because a few shakes of each are too miniscule to calculate. They cost about 400 to 500JPY for a small size and they last a while.

So what you need to do is put the sauces in separate soup bowls and by then the water should be boiling. I would then transfer the nabe pot to a small gas stove on the dining table and tear the kangaroo away from his computer to sit down for a couply dinner.

Usually I put in enough into the nabe pot so I can ladle out two servings each at once so both bowls with the sauces will be filled. Add some water from the pot to the sauce to dilute it, so it turns into a savory soupy dish.

It’s great when you want to linger over dinner a bit so weekends are usually perfect for shabu-shabu, especially if it’s cold like now.

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As the world plummets into financial chaos, I can’t help but think a lot about scaling down in every aspect of my life. How do I save money but maximize what I get?

Besides beauty products and entertainment, food is another aspect I’ve been looking to cut corners on.

As an avid cook, I appreciate expensive and fresh produce but I think I’ve to avoid them completely as the yen hovers at such a high rate. I love my food and don’t want to compromise too much in terms of nutrition and flavour.

So I thought why don’t I write posts about how to eat cheap in one of the world’s most expensive cities? This new column, “Eating cheap in Tokyo”, would provide healthy, affordable, quick recipes for the Tokyo urbanite.

Why would this column be different from any other recession recipe series? Well, let’s look at the challenges at hand:

+ Unless you’re Japanese, learning how to cook Japanese needs some effort. Japanese ingredients are easier and cheaper to buy than foreign imports, so it makes sense to go Nippon in your kitchen.

+ Pasta becomes the enemy. This is probably one of the most readily available foreign food in supermarkets, so many expats rely on this as a staple but it gets boring pretty quickly.

+ Even produce in foreign supermarkets like Nissin and Daimaru Peacock have limited variety, and even if you find something exotic, it’ll probably cost the earth.

+ Conbini food sucks a**. This is one part of Japanese lifestyle that I’m against — cheap food in microwaveable containers that provide little or no nutrition. There’s a conbini on every corner of the city so it’s an easy fallback, but to a foodie like me, it just doesn’t cut it. I would rather eat MacDonald’s. No, I take that back. MacDonald’s is worse. Don’t get me wrong, I love the conbini as a concept and to indulge once in awhile is fine, but as a daily solution to quick, affordable meals, it’s just wrong.

-

ANYWAY.

Today’s recipe is Chicken Macaroni Soup. It’s an old fave from Singapore — I can’t get all the ingredients here so I improvised.

What you need:

Two handfuls of macaroni pasta = 100JPY
Half a chicken breast = 60JPY
A handful of bunashimeiji mushrooms = 60JPY
One chicken cube = 40JPY
Two leaves of hakusai (large pale green cabbage; costs 158JPY for a bushful) = 20JPY

Boil some water to cook the macaroni. Once it’s done (seven minutes usually gets any pasta to an al dente texture), drain and set it aside.

Simmer some water (a quarter of a medium-sized pot) for the soup. Add two teaspoons of soy sauce, a teaspoon of mirin, a healthy dash of pepper, a few drops of sesame oil, and if you have, dried scallops — they would transform this simple chicken soup into a lip-smackingly delicious broth.

I get a packet every time I fly back to Singapore because they are ridiculously expensive at Nissin (five big dried scallops for 1200JPY). But this dish still tastes good without it — in fact, you can chuck some coriander (200JPY) into this for extra flavour.

Total cost (with the coriander) = 480JPY
Total time = 10 minutes

I calculated the costs of the ingredients by estimating how much I used out of a full portion.

And this is great hangover food, too. It’s simple enough to make with a headache and has enough bulk to soak up any leftover alcohol in your tum.

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