I happened to see an online ad for a Japanese Rice Importer in NY recently. Has anyone ever purchased from them?
https://trf-ny.com/products/
https://the-rice-factory.square.site/

No, but I loved seeing the sticky/soft/smooth/chart for different varieties on this page
https://the-rice-factory.square.site/shop/6
Helped explain why we (chez LapLap) prefer Akita Komachi to Koshihikari rice. Means I am now aware of “Nanatsuboshi” as a variety to actively look for (“Tsuyahime” too).

The graph visualisation is helpful. Seems, through trial and error, we generally cook the “softer” rices with a little less water to coax them towards the “puchi puchi” bordering on “koshi” (tougher) texture we prefer. Stirring/turning over rice as soon as it is done cooking and resting is also important for texture. If you end up with rice that still isn’t as optimal as you’d prefer, adding a spoon of rinsed millet grains before cooking helps.

Yes, Akita Komachi is the brand I usually buy. I am satisfy with Akita Komachi! :) Now, another thing is my rice cooker is getting quite old, cannot recall when I bought it which mean least 3-4 years old, likely lot more older. Being told that I should buy new rice cooker, was told that will make difference in quality of cooked rice.

Ours must be twice that age. Nevertheless, the coating of the inside pan is completely intact and we haven’t noticed any degradation at all in quality.

For anybody who wants to invest in a decent rice cooker but is concerned about the cooker having a limited life, this is what I learned years ago (2013?) from a conversation (MrLapLap served as my interpreter) with a knowledgeable Toshiba representative at the Rice Cooker section in Yodobashi Camera in Akihabara.

Don’t wash/rinse your rice in the cooking pot - not only is the rice abrasive, but the rice bran you wash away is abrasive in itself.
Don’t use it to cook brown rice (use something else, perhaps a pressure cooker)
Try to stick to just plain rice and keep additional ingredients (such as millet) to a minimum.
If you do combine rice with other ingredients in there, never use oil.

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/28412971-post8.html

The other workaround is to try and obtain a spare inner pan at the same time you obtain your rice cooker. Some brands allow you to purchase this as a spare part, but your chances of obtaining one diminish the more time elapses from when the cooker was originally released.

——
Changing the subject somewhat, here is an absorbing pursuit for anybody missing Japan.
Photo credit to [MENTION=3593]Oliver[/MENTION]Jia1014 on Twitter.

This is a ‘ship flowchart, you can untangle it and follow the love lives of the penguins at Kyoto Aquarium.

Should keep you busy for the rest of the week!

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...8fb025138.jpeg

I do that...:( It is so convenient, less items I have to wash during cooking is good for me...:p

Does this only apply to Japanese rice cookers? I know the Korean brands, like Cuckoo, advertise the ability to cook brown rice and mult-grain rice as a selling point.

Also does anyone know where to buy replacement inner liners? I noticed that the nonstick coating in my Zojirushi has started to come off.

Most of the Japanese brands offer cookers that have functions to make brown rice. Unfortunately, if you do this regularly, the lining of your Cooking pot will degrade much faster than if you don’t. I guess they only need to guarantee that this degradation doesn’t happen within a set time frame for this to be acceptable for consumers.
Unless the pot lining is made of something exceptional - and if it were you would be paying a significant premium for it - the only way I know of (and can personally vouch for) conserving the pot lining is to stick to white rice. Or get a spare bowl for making anything else.

Each manufacturer sells spares and accessories, but it depends on the brand, model and territory. Here is the page for Zojirushi in the USA - https://www.zojirushi.com/app/spare_...y/rice-cookers
If a white rice only approach is too limiting, then check that a spare bowl is available at the time you initially choose your rice cooker and order it at the same time. Otherwise, don’t expect more than 2 or 3 years use out of it.
If you stick to white rice in a dedicated rice cooker, have a ceramic and/or cast iron stove top pot for rice mixed with other ingredients (perhaps some oil) and use a pressure cooker for brown rice, you should be able to use them all happily for 8 to 10 years, perhaps longer.
The other worthwhile investment is a bowl with a sieve that fits perfectly inside it for rice rinsing. Something you don’t hate using so you are less tempted to desecrate the cooking bowl.

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...6d9b70065.jpeg

These rice cooking tips are all so polite.

I give you this bit of bad worded stereotyped humor -
Full video https://youtu.be/53me-ICi_f8
Her rice reminds me more of Chinese rice porridge (though one of the more liquid variants) or Japanese Okayu.

I also learned that Persian style rice is cooked, drained, rinsed, and then cooked again to give it the crispy layer. And evidently some Indian rice dishes in certain family cooking styles (I will be asking a few people who love biriyani and know how to cook it) which use basmati. Some UK brands like Tilda Basmati and in Sweden rice advertise this as a way to cook rice. Cooking, then draining and rinsing also removes arsenic (an issue in certain areas though I'd probably eat less rice if it was cooked overly wet then rinsed liked this... so... same health effect?).

I like the Taiwanese Tatung classic rice cooker even though it is ugly. Much easier to clean than fuzzy logic cookers especially if you aren't fond of cleaning gaskets and easy to find a replacement stainless steel inner liner at many Chinese grocers (at least in our area). The liner isn't non-stick so you can use a metal spoon if you really want to and Uncle Roger won't be heart broken.

Still an issue, but particularly so when my daughter had an even smaller body, the arsenic and heavy metals in rice does concern me. When researching this seriously years ago I learned that thoroughly rinsing white rice in the Japanese way does have a significant impact, about 40% of any heavy metal residues are removed. So, whilst I did see that boiling rice in more water and then draining it was recommended, it didn’t seem particularly more effective than repeated rinsing of rice before cooking.

Different for BROWN a rice though, heavy metals are locked into the bran coating. I am way more careful than I used to be with brown rice, needs to be organic from a trusted source (where soil has been tested).
https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2020/...or-uk-infants/

RIP Rice 2020-2020 😆

Thanks for the info. I looked at the Zojirushi website and unfortunately its discontinued. Based on your comments, my rice cooker has held up well, going on seven years. Somewhat recently, I have used a basket strainer like the one you posted but found it breaks the rice grains. Would a plastic one be more gentle on the rice?

As soon as rice becomes wet it becomes more delicate, and some rice are simply more robust than others. You might need to adapt your rinsing technique to accommodate the rice you are using. I have recently just had to adapt my own technique as we got a 10kg bag of a European grown “koshihikari” style but which is less robust and softer than our preferred “Yumenishiki”.

My advice for rice that is particularly prone to breakage:

Use two hands to rinse and don’t grind it directly into the strainer. The video at the end of this post shows a way to do this, basically you keep some water in the bowl and separate the grains out between your hands/fingers allowing water to pass over the rice.

Work gently but quickly! Not only are you preventing the starch/bran molecules with their smell and remnants of heavy metals being re-absorbed by the rice by working quickly, you are lessening the chance of breakage.

If you’re gentle, having a plastic colander doesn’t necessarily have to be more effective than a metal one. Saying that, since it’s better to rinse rice within water if the rice is weak and brittle, you might be better off rinsing within a standard bowl and only using the mesh colander as an aid to stop grains from going down the sink at the points you drain the water.

- Note also that it can be difficult to source plastic strainers with a fine enough mesh. The only fine gauze plastic strainer I have is for a teapot. I’m currently using it to wash the tablespoon of millet I add to the two cups of the softer rice I’ve changed to. If you do find the right kind of mesh to suit you for rice in plastic, sure, go for it!


Did you click on the link to the discontinued model to see? They still have some accessories available even for models that are discontinued. You need to look at each individually to see if it’s still there.
For example, the NP-HBC10 is discontinued but the bowls can still be purchased https://www.zojirushi.com/app/spare_...rs/NP-HBC10/18

Just found out today that I’ll get to “shop” at one of my favourite Japanese stores for a week as from Wednesday.

Usually I put aside a part of my annual visit to drop in at a Tokyo branch of “Sou Sou”, but that just wasn’t possible this year. The huge surprise today when logging into the Animal Crossing Pocket Camp App was that there would be a short “pop up” Sou Sou event. Virtual shopping for virtual goods based on designs made in Kyoto.

I’ll get my jollies where I can find them, but even I understand that I am way too excited about this totally unexpected treat.

https://www.sousou.co.jp/other/pocketcamp/

Made some handrolls, sashimi, oshizushi, and musubi to commiserate about the high probably that our trip to Japan won't happen in February.


https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...ee0a93f1b7.jpg
Sashimi for the cook
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...cb47628b2e.jpg
Prep station
https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...0cfaac6084.jpg
The remnants

I recently got to know that this 'uncle roger' is a Malaysian, which makes the video doubly cringy because that chinaman accent is fake as fugg (literally nobody in Malaysia speaks with that accent, not even the most chinese educated ones).

"Uncle Roger's" accent leans towards Cantonese type to my ears. I'm more familiar with the Cantonese American or Canadian accent, Cantonese Malaysian American, and just a bit with Malaysian Mandarin one (where probably 20-30% of my conversation is in my accented Mandarin). Ng is often a Cantonese based last name though Malaysian might pronounce Ng differently So he might be using a Cantonese style accent via family (are Nigel and Roger typical Malaysian first names?) rather than Hokkien or Teochew. Or the BBC pronounced his last name incorrectly? Still way over the top and exaggerated.

Here's the comedian and chef in the video on BBC together and she doesn't personally cook rice that way, either https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dEq9pJbl60 Perhaps there is a huge untapped market for rice cookers and Zojirushi* could make inroads in UK and India. A friend said the instant pot rice cooking method still isn't quite as good as a fuzzy logic rice cooker after trying it out with medium grain rice.

Guessing at accents is a (weird) hobby of mine?

*A friend got a US Balmuda toaster. Don't forget all the lovely Japanese pour over coffee gear.

“Uncle Roger” is a fictional character with a fictional accent. Nigel Ng himself speaks just as you would expect for someone who grew up in Malaysia, went to University in the US and then went on to live in the U.K.

You should hear me “speak” English with a Spanish accent like my mother does - it is atrocious!!! Luckily I have no plans to release a video as Tía LapLap sharing my outrage at BBC paella Recipes.

Unless it’s medium grain BROWN rice!

Yes, I will have to poll friends on brown rice in instant pot. At least those who didn't use liquid smoke in theirs for pork and gaskets all impart that flavor months later.

I mostly see regional/expat cooking videos on YT so I figure someone locally might cook things in that manner and occasionally search for blogs which have expats to help adapt ingredients for local availability when I'm curious about substitutions. Twitter informed me Padma Lakshmi of Top Chef just did a series of US "Taste the Nation" which celebrates culinary diversity https://www.hulu.com/series/taste-th...1-277ec6c57368

Oh, thinking of Japanese appliances I sort of covet - Iris USA sells a 120V futon warmer also available on Amazon US. A friend imported a kotatsu years ago and I got to sit under it last winter while visiting. Do Japanese families still tend to use electric kotatsu or is the heated floor mat gaining some market share? I might look into a heated floor mat or heating pad along with a large down throw for winter WFH life since I want to open the windows at times for better circulation (not necessarily COVID seasonal, more that I get dry skin and nose easily & winter isn't very humid where I live).
https://www.irisusainc.com/blw-c2-bl...white-platinum

Oh, that futon warmer looks awesome! Thank you freecia! I see a present for my wife, for those damp cold winter days when she can't get warm enough. I looked at electric kotatsu on Amazon.jp but the shipping costs were insane.

I have the exact same plates at home!
I'd like to get more of those, but don't know what they're named or where to get them.
Do you know where you got them?

evergrn It looks like Corelle Spring Blossom
https://www.microwavecookingforone.c...ssomGreen.html
https://www.replacements.com/china-c...lowers/c/17019

The shape and plate color reminded me of a few Corelle items in our house & relatives homes from the same original set which are still used daily decades later - Corelle Butterfly Gold
https://www.microwavecookingforone.c...erflyGold.html

It's a nice practical piece of nostalgia associated with great food memories.

Oh thank you so much for identifying it!

Thank you freecia for finding them!

They are my wife's grandmothers. We have stacks of them here and use them for everything. No wear on them whatsoever after almost 45 years. We have far too many so I'm exploring paring down our stacks to 12 of each (We have about double that currently). If we do decide to offload a few evergrn, I'll be sure to PM you. I'd rather give you a better deal and know where they end up!

Thanks for the offer. I went to Corelle's website and they have similar new plates at the desired size. Different pattern, which doesn't really matter to me. So appreciate your offer very much, but I think we will just order new ones. They are pretty inexpensive anyways. I really like the texture and the fact that they never seem to chip or scratch. I too inherited mine from family. Those plates have been around our home, probably since before I was born.

Once the shiso plants’ growth really took off this month, I made the transition from finely shreddIng the leaves and adding them to pasta and salads to grinding them into a pesto type paste.

Oddly, despite the pesto having way more leaves in it, the shiso taste is much more subdued. It is extremely delicious and makes a noble alternative to pesto made with basil.
What I really love about it, is how much easier it is to maintain grown shiso and produce it in copious quantities. The basil I have is like lace from the attentions of slugs/snails and caterpillars, the shiso gets assaulted also but is far more robust.

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...8a1780a10.jpeg


Here are my suggestions for shiso pesto. Shiso does have a slight bitterness, I’m fine with it, but have to consider a 10 year old’s palate. Adding umami to the paste does round out that slight bitterness and tame it.

Shiso - between 10 and 20 leaves (a good handful), washed, stems removed and sliced just before using.
Half a small clove of garlic, minced (add more if you prefer)
A heaped teaspoon of nuts/seeds* - pine kernels are lovely but expensive, sunflower seeds are cheap and work very well in this. Pistachio nuts would be good. Walnuts, but particularly if you are using miso as they are great together. Ground almonds? Why not?
A measure of umami* - two tablespoons of dashi, or a teaspoon of miso, or a tablespoon of grated cheese (doesn’t have to be Parmesan) - or any combination of these
A measure of something sour* - a tablespoon of lemon juice, but you could use umeshu or the flesh from a couple of umeboshi
Oil* - quite a lot, I use olive oil but add whatever you enjoy
taste first before adding salt - will depend on what umami ingredients you’ve added
Black pepper? Your choice (I don’t bother)

* as-you-choose ingredients, or whatever you have in the cupboard

I don’t have a food processor and put the ingredients in a “liquid” blender. I start with the nuts/seeds and turn them into a powder (you can use a coffee grinder for this) and then add the other ingredients.

The surprise is how versatile it is, perhaps because it is a little milder than the basil kind. Can be heaped on toast or tofu, mixed with tomatoes and or cucumber for a quick salad, you can change the umami component to go with other foods - more cheese if you are making a dish with bacon, dashi if you want to eat it with soba. Since I’m reverting to low carb it allows me to make pasta for my family whilst I’ll mix it up with some sliced palm hearts or avocado, eggs, sliced cabbage or tofu. Even tastes good with kimchi.

Since I am usually in Japan in the Spring and in Spain in the summer I hadn’t really fully explored the potential of shiso before. Sure, I’ll remember a lot of the awfulness from this year, but I’ll also look back at it being the year where I better understood this plant as an ingredient.

FORGOT TO ADD - there is a discernible difference in aroma and intensity between growing-shiso early in the morning (when it does look more vigorous) and later in the day (as sunset closes in it noticeably droops). There’s a South London shop selling Gifu grown shiso pesto where the website suggests picking it before 7am. Will make my next batch extra early.

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...f26620aa3.jpeg

Little pods of death, getting ready to be made in to hot sauce.

What kind of pods are they?
My kid has finally developed a taste for chilli and is doing a lot of experimenting, but nothing hotter than an árbol based sauce. Her favourites are jalapeño/chipotle and dried puya with lemon, the main component of Valentina dried chilli powder which she has discovered goes well with cooked rhubarb, even in drinks. Turns out Mexican Valentina chilli powder is an awesome Furikake stand in.

This has also been the year where Mabo-Doufu become a family staple. Mine started off tasting Japanese but have gone somewhere different, even substandard Sichuan pepper”corns” make a huge difference. I add extra aubergine/eggplant for myself and don’t miss the rice. I find it strange that after eating Mabo-Doufu we feel similar to how we feel having been to an onsen/sento.

Am jealous of the pool - am sad we couldn’t spend the summer in Spain, instead of swimming with friends every day, poor kid has daily language lessons with me ☹️

These are all ghost peppers. My anchos and banana peppers were in-ground and we had a 50 degree cold snap that ruined them completely, yielding 7 peppers between 7 plants. There's 3 scotch bonnet plants to the right of those with ~40 pods coming along but they're verrrry slow to finish fruiting. I have a vinyl-sided greenhouse ready if they don't start to ripen by mid-September or the first days below 65.

I'm going to ferment one batch and do the other normal. Going to use our local blueberries and a not-so-local mango for two different bases.

The pool is the only thing keeping me sane up here.

I’m back to making obento in the mornings. Today I made pork shogayaki and finally figured out something I had never realised before. You can use a daikon grater to turn onion into pulp. Peeled onion grates easily, simple to clean and the pulped onion cooks in no time.

I was very pleased with myself earlier this year when I ditched the vegetable knife and started using the edge of a cheap teaspoon to peel ginger, and this newest discovery is just as satisfying.

I have a double sided Marna Oicia and used the side shown on the left - it even does garlic and ginger (which until today I was using a small Muji wasabi grater for)
Shogayaki sauce just got a heck of a lot easier, all with an implement I barely remembered I had.
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...1994098a2.jpeg

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...a3b7a5b8fb.jpg
Spicy simmer
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...0532af0d24.jpg
Finished ghost pepper hot sauce.

I made some hot sauce, it's about a 8/10 spice level for me.

I also still have a few dozen scotch bonnets and another dozen ghost peppers I'm going to prep and freeze to make chili and jerk chicken later in the year.

My plants are still fruiting and producing. I have another round of poblano, hot cherry, and banana peppers due before things get too cold.

I need to ask you about “prep and freeze” as I am looking after some plants for some of my nice neighbours who have gone away for a while. They have habaneros in a communal greenhouse which rapidly went from green to red last week. I’d like them to have their own crop, what’s the best way to preserve these peppers? Is there a best way to freeze them?

I've been told to destem and slice in half, remove seeds, lay flat inside a ziploc and suck out the air. If you have a vacuum sealer that will work as well.

You can also dehydrate them and make chili powders but that's far too complicated for my tastes.

This works well, but frankly I just cut them off the plant, rinse them, and then put them on a platter to freeze individually. Once frozen. I vacuum seal them together (in small packages), and then open / use each package as necessary. A couple minutes of thawing time on the counter is sufficient to handle them, including destemming / deseeding as desired.

Either way, IQF, vacuum seal, and refreezing has worked best for us for long term storage.

I don’t have a vacuum sealer but feel much more confident about freezing our friends’ peppers. Thank you both! 🙏 Made the mistake of trying one the other day. Boy was it hot!

Reigning back the subject of chilli toward the on-topic trail:

Every now and again I stumble onto a popular “make at home” food that my sporadically expat husband missed out on as it disseminated through his country. Having taken on and conquered Taco Rice, it’s now the turn of the Spicy Soup Curry. Have learned that soup curry is a BIG THING in Sapporo and that there is a lot of tinkering going on, particularly in Tokyo, as curries from all over Asia are being adapted for Japanese homes. Last night’s discovery was the fact that miso soup and curry/curry powders blend together in surprising and satisfying ways (but use any red/dark miso, not the sweet white kind). It’s good with dashi, but curry powder does make a vegan miso soup more interesting - like a British Mulligatawny.
Pumpkin season is fast approaching, lots of recipe tweaking opportunities await.


This is what I tried first, but without the pork - https://www.hotpepper.jp/mesitsu/ent...kuo/2020-00376 Since I was curious about curry and miso I withheld the dashi concentrate until I got to sample it without. This website has quite a few genuine curry enthusiasts who have contributed a load of curry soup recipes. Apparently dried basil is a required ingredient for a popular chicken version - https://www.hotpepper.jp/mesitsu/ent...ancho/17-00116 (My next project)
Have added a new restaurant onto my Tokyo “places to go to” list - スープカリー屋スパイス太郎

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...12f26a794.jpeg

I was really feeling my lack of quality ramen since we moved out of New York so I went all in and make some. Ichiban noodles, grilled chicken tenderloin, soft boiled egg, scallions, and a pork/chicken broth with a miso/soy sauce/vinegar/garlic tare.

The shiso I have been growing is coming to the end of its season (alas no sign of any seeds). So the plan I’ve had for the leaves at this point has been put into action.

A Northern (Sendai?) speciality called Shiso miso, where you make a sort of walnut/sesame/miso/sake caramel and stiffen it with flour. Refrigerate/freeze it for a day, cut into thin rectangles, roll in shiso leaves and deep fry them.

Just completed stage 1. Recipe here: https://hiratsukaspice.com/shisomiso/
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...329cdd5ef.jpeg

That looks delicious already! I think I tried that dish once as an amuse bouche at a sushi place many years ago.

I've been catching a lot of small bluefish up here and grilling them whole to serve over sushi rice with pickled vegetables. It's a perfect early autumn dish to eat outside on the deck.

Autumn, outside... seems to rain constantly in London now that summer has ended. At least I don’t have to keep watering the plants.

Turns out my eyesight is deteriorating. On closer inspection I discovered today that the shiso plants are sparkling with little flower/seed shoots, they’re popping out of all the leaf joints (am clearly NOT a botanist!)
Had never managed to cultivate shiso to this point before and didn’t recognise them at all. Shiso seed pickles are perhaps my favourite kind of tsukemono, am really looking forward to trying my hand at making them.

Have plans for tomorrow’s miso shiso rolling and frying, will reserve some of the leaves and miso paste to combine with chilli pepper slices and make a few spicy versions.

This past weekend my friend suggested making Hawaiian poke for a weekend dinner. Our initial plan was to drive an hour away to the Japanese grocery for the fish but I remembered a highly recommended local fish monger. I should have visited shop earlier since the quality of the fish was very good. The owner is a marine biologist and has previously consulted in aquaculture projects. Anyway we were able to get the last bluefin tuna block and got some yellowtail tuna as well. On a lark, I asked if they had any fish collars. The person doing checkout replied they had salmon and possibly tuna heads. At the same time, one of the managers overheard our conversation and asked if I was interested in hamachi collars. They had just received a couple of packages the day before. I immediately said yes and ended up with 2.5 lbs. To be honest, I was surprised that a regular fish monger in Ohio had these. Usually I've seen these only in Asian groceries.

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...9ee883e9a0.jpg
Four collars in total


https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...b8e3626bd2.jpg
Ended up broiling three

The collars ended up being a hit for dinner. For those that are wondering, the little blocks beside the collars are yellowfin tuna. According to my friend preparing the poke, meat with any sinew/silver skin shouldn't be used for poke. Didn't want to throw these pieces away so I roasted them instead.

How much did they charge for the collars if you don't mind me asking? I've been asking my local fisherman for tuna heads and collars for the last few weeks because the season has been very successful here. Sadly, no one has been able to get me one yet.

I'm shocked that they had heads. Even my shops here almost never have them.

The price was about $13/lb. I think they had a better selection due to their wholesale operation. The shop supplies some of the local restaurants and gourmet grocery stores. Are you still located in NYC? I'm surprised you couldn't find a shop there carrying fish heads.