6 posts tagged “food”

Recently I've tried out some new, exciting recipes.  Last night for dinner I made Kashmiri kofta (a type of Indian meatball),  baingan bharta (an Indian roasted eggplant dish), dal, and cucumber mint raita (yogurt dip), all of which we ate with a huge piece of Afghan bread.  The Afghan bread was surprisingly similar to some Turkish breads, with a firm, dry texture that's good for dipping in sauces.  It was my first time trying them, but the Kashmiri kofta were amazingly delicious...I didn't have any ground lamb so I substitued with beef, marinated it in yogurt and spices, then fried them with some more spices and whipped yogurt.  Baingan bharta was simple but tasty, you roast and chop the eggplant then cook it with ginger, onions, cumin, chiles, and tomatoes.  The cucumber mint raita was very cooling and went really well with the heavy meat and spicy eggplant.  By the way, if anyone's interested in recipes I'll gladly post them.

On another note, for lunch today I had a craving for Japanese "Napolitan" pasta, so I took a crack at it.  It's one of those strange Western-style dishes that you only find in Japan...basically it's pasta with sausage, green peppers, onions, (and mushrooms if you like) in a ketchup based sauce.  Sounds absolutely gross and is in no way good for you, but despite thinking that I tried it while in Japan and developed a strange liking for it.  Perhaps it's an acquired taste, but it's very popular over there...I get the impression it's like one of those dishes you've eaten since you were a kid and still love as an adult.  Anyway, if you ever visit Japan and go to a Western-style or Italian pizza/pasta restaurant there, you'll see how Japan does amazing bastardized pastas of all kinds.  They combine native ingredients like roe, nori, soy sauce, kabocha, dried fish, squid ink, etc. to make entirely new dishes, but also do delicious versions of fresh Italian seafood pastas that you rarely find in other countries outside Italy.

Recently I've gotten into cooking Indian food from scratch!  ^_^  I love Indian food and miss eating it since coming back from Japan because sometimes I used to have it at least once a week for lunch, and although there's good Indian food where I live here, it's rather expensive so I can't go as often.  Really, the Japanese lunch set system is wonderful cause you can get a large, tasty, filling lunch for considerably little money...it's really affordable and convenient. 
Anyway, I've only tried making a few curries so far, with mixed results...but I think I've worked out what I need to watch out for and be careful with.  It's crazy how some cookbooks make it fairly simple, but others go full out and do the same recipe very traditionally so it takes a lot more effort to cook from them.  The challenging thing about Indian food is the long list of ingredients (mostly spices), many of which have to be bought specifically for making Indian food, like garam masala and mace, etc.  But it's lots of fun to experiment with because Indian food is rather flexible and there's so many varieties of dishes and curries.  The next thing I'm planning to make is a simple but delicious curry called Dhingri Matar that I've recently become a big fan of after eating it at a local dosas restaurant.  It has peas and mushrooms in a rich, slightly creamy tomato sauce with a slightly tangy, sweet flavour to it, and is excellent paired with roti bread. : )  If it turns out well I might post a photo.

Speaking of curry, I was recently catching up with DELUHI news, and watched the vid of their Shinjuku in-store event interview session in which they demonstrated the pre-live shout they always do before going on stage.  According to Leda's explaination, the members (who all love curry) will put their hands together and go round the circle saying what curry they want to eat most, sort of like "which curry will get them the most hyped to perform?".  Lols, I knew DELUHI loved curry, but to go as far as to use it as their live motivation...they're such dorks. XD

A ton of awesome releases are coming up in the next few weeks as well as later in the summer, so many exciting previews of what's to come are continuing to be released.  THE KIDDIE have put out a pv preview for their upcoming single 'elite STAR+'!  It looks really good and the song sounds interesting as well.  Their look for this release vaguely reminds me of the one for 'Sayonara Setsuna', probably because they seem to be using similar greys, darks, and whites paired with blue hues and animal print accents.  The single comes out July 8th...I can't wait to hear the full song! : )

In addition, girugamesh have posted new looks and the cd cover for their upcoming single 'BORDER', which is due for release August 5th.  They're going at a pretty fast pace with their releases, and once again have chosen to do a single (though they hadn't done so in ages before 'ALIVE', tending to release albums instead).  I suspect this is because of the long Crazy Crazy Crazy tour they finished earlier this year, since they probably wrote a good amount of material while on the road (they even started recording parts of 'ALIVE' during it).  The cover for 'BORDER' is unexpected but somehow just what one would expect from girugamesh...乾杯！ ^_^;　さすがだね（笑） But I have no idea what's up with all the random Americana in the background...I guess we'll have to wait for an interview with the guys to enlighten us on that one.
  
Anyway, the boys seem to be sticking to hoodies+jeans for now, but this time have opted for black zip-up style ones with white designs on either side of the chest and down one arm.  Nii and Shuu look almost the same as before except for some minor changes, but Satoshi's gotten rid of the perm and cut his hair short again...it really suits him and goes well with his face shape.  However, when I saw the new photos I was immediately wowed by how adorable Ryo looks!  His hair is also short but more conventionally styled (no braids or half up, half down styling), and it makes him look even younger and *gasp* slightly feminine when he poses like that in his solo photo, but it's cute and an interesting change. ^_^

girugamesh have been gradually shifting to a softer, more handsome, clean look for a while now.  If you look at their style over time they went from dark and scary, heavy make-up, contacts, and spiky dyed hair to limited eyeliner and natural all black hair, as well as transitioning from the formal black suits to casual wear.  Though they've shown it before, with this I believe they can definitely break the unfortunate (and untrue!) idea among some fans that girugamesh is an ugly band for good.

On completely different, more personal note, I made an amazing discovery today!  First off, I realized a little over a year ago that I'm mildly lactose intolerant which explained why I couldn't stand eating too much cream/dairy-based sauces and I hate drinking milk.  However, I've always been a big fan of cereal, and like to have it for breakfast, but as I ingested less and less milk I became less tolerant and more disgusted by it, so I tried to find a good alternative.  I used soy milk for a while, but found the beany aftertaste a bit unappetizing unless masked by chocolate flavour, but I didn't want to use that all the time since it has so much sugar and overpowers the cereal. 
So I was at a loss for some time while I searched for a good alternative, but milk substitutes are often hard to find and dominated by soy-based products.  There is rice milk, but that didn't sound much better than soy milk.  But, today for the first time I found almond milk at Whole Foods, and was overjoyed!  I'd always wanted to try it but could never get it anywhere before and thought it might be more expensive, but actually it was priced very similar to the cow's milk.  So, I bought a carton of the vanilla flavoured and tested it when I got home....it was incredibly delicious!  None of the heaviness of soy milk, and way smoother and more refreshing...plus, I actually like the faint taste of almonds.  The word あっさり perfectly describes it!  It was seriously like love at first taste...I'm totally hooked now. XD  I definitely recommend almond milk to anyone who's interested in a cow's milk substitute for whatever reason.
[Amusingly enough, even this does in a way relate to music...one of the first times I heard of almond milk was ages ago in some tv interview with Yoshiki where he said he doesn't drink cow's milk, he drinks almond milk! :D]

Ah, finally fall break has started, so I have a chance to relax, catch up with stuff, and do some traveling. : )  It's late and I'm exhausted since I spent all day at the Osaka aquarium, then we went back to my friend's apartment for dinner, ate strange Japanese pizza, takoyaki, cake, and watched a few episodes of Evangelion...which I haven't seen since high school, so it was weird and kinda nostalgic.  I'll write more about the aquarium in the morning, but here's some interesting stuff that's happened recently:

- On Saturday I bought tickets to see Kagrra, from the conbini and felt so accomplished and excited to actually hold them in my hands, although it took a good 15-20 minutes for me to get the machine to work properly. -_-lll
 
- Today in Osaka I saw a girl cosplaying as Ruki from the GazettE...it totally made my day.  [People watching in Osaka is the best, btw.  There's so many interesting people there, and they have awesome clothes, too.]

- Apparently, Japanese "margherita" pizza has fish in it...like everything else here in Japan (or at least at the chain we got it at).  This was a horrible surprise for my vegetarian friends.  It seems a lot of Japanese people just don't get the concept of vegetarianism as it's understood in America...that is no meat, means NO MEAT (and yes, fish and pork are meat). ^^;

- I tried yakisoba pan today...which is essentially bread filled with yakisoba, or Japanese-style stir fried noodles...which sounds extremely odd and like it would be awful and gross, but is actually quite delicious (that is if you like yakisoba, of course).

Yesterday I had lunch with some people from my Japanese class at an Indian restaurant, which was pretty interesting.  The naan were huge, but the curry wasn't spicy at all.  I suppose the reason for that might be because they change the dishes to fit Japanese people's tastes, but there are spicy foods in Japan, so I don't know what's up with that.  Well actually, I guess the average Japanese person doesn't eat a lot of spicy food, so that's the cause for it.  Anyway, it was delicious and not very expensive.

After lunch we went to a nearby temple called Chionji, where they were having a flea market.  People were selling lots of different stuff like handmade crafts, jewelry, sweets, and breads.  I didn't buy anything, but it was cool to just browse the stuff.  There were some really awesome belts made out of traditional Japanese fabrics, but they were quite expensive (like, 3500 yen [=$32]), so I couldn't justify buying one to myself. : (  But, since it was a holiday the monks at the temple were giving a sermon, and we got to see the inside of the main hall, which was really amazing.  There were wood carvings of birds on the ceiling beams and a string of giant wooden beads going around the whole hall.

Yesterday I went to the Murakami exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, it was really great!  Some of his most famous pieces were on display, so it was cool to see them in person.  Unfortunately, they don't let you take photos inside the actual exhibit, but I managed to get a few, like this one of the huge sculpture in the lobby:

The cherry blossoms at the BBG were awesome too, although the petals haven't really started falling yet.  I took a whole bunch of nice photos.  Also, tonight I made my first attempt at cooking Japanese croquettes (aka. korokke).  I made beef and crab cream ones, and they turned out quite nice.  I had help with the frying though, so I can't claim I made them entirely by myself...370 degree oil just isn't my thing, hehehe. ^_^lll