The Joy of (rice) Cooking

So this weekend Eli and I finally got a Rice Cooker. You see the one that our predecessor left was so dirty that it was beyond help. I couldn't figure out how to take it apart enough to get all the nasty stuff out of it. So, thanks in great part to help from Marissa (the other spouse in Eli's office), we finally can make rice. Of course when Eli told our boss, Taniguchi Sense, about Marissa helping us get a new "rice maker" he was confused. The Japanese never call a rice cooker a "rice maker" and Taniguchi seemed to think Marissa was going to be cooking rice for us until Eli clarified.

Of course the rice cooker is Japanese. This means that all the buttons on it are marked in Kanji. We have a Kanji guide that someone left in our apartment that had translations of some of the rice cooker's buttons but we couldn't figure out how to do the "fast cook" option.... Thanks to the wonders of cell phone cameras and our friend Patricia's amazing Japanese (and Chinese) skills we are now able to make "fast rice."

Now this purchase may not seem that interesting or cool to some people. You may be asking yourself "now why can't they just make rice in a pot?" Let me tell you just how wonderful this machine is. The rice comes out just right - the perfect stickiness and none of it is over or under done. Also the pot that the rice cooks in is one of the easiest things to clean. Anything left in it after serving the rice pretty much falls out once it dries out. If that doesn't work and it won't wash out in the sink supposedly all you have to do is add some more water to the pot and run it though another cook cycle to loosen it up. Totally amazing.

Also I learned how to make Tempura a couple of weekends ago from our friend Machiyo. We went over to her house and ate a feast, only a part of which was the Tempura that she and I made. I was really surprised by how easy it was to make, so I figured I'd share the recipe.

Break an egg into a bowl and add about a cup of water. Then stir the mixture, we used long cooking chopsticks, using an up and down circle so that a bit of air gets into it. You want the top of the mixture to have some bubbles on it. After that add a bit of flower and stir twice, just enough so that the flour breaks up - the mixture should be very lumpy. Then you dip whatever you want to cook into the mixture and fry it in cooking oil. You know the oil is hot enough when a drop of batter added to it jumps right up to the surface. Turn whatever you are cooking over halfway through so both sides get evenly cooked. Also if the cooking oil ends up with lots of bits of batter floating in it you need to pull it out with a mesh spoon, or slotted spoon or anything that will not also remove the oil.

Tempura is totally delicious. Especially with sticky rice. A nice tempura sauce can be made by using a little bit of dashi (a fish based soup stock) and water and adding a little soy sauce and mirin (sweet rice wine used for cooking).

Ok now I'm totally hungry again (I just ate dinner!) Time to go over my lesson plan for tomorrow. Give the tempura a try. Also make sure you check out our photo site if you haven't been there recently, the link is to the right. We've been putting up some more.