Ask Maki anything, well almost anything (or just say hi)
posted on 13 Jan 2008 by maki ::
270 comments
This post is now closed to new comments. It’s now replaced by the new forum section, Ask Maki Almost Anything.
Thanks to you (yes, I’m looking at you!) Just Hungry and Just Bento have really grown in popularity recently. This has also meant that I’m getting more emails. I do very much appreciate getting your emails, but there’s a couple of disadvantages to email.
- It’s a one on one communication so your question will only benefit you. It might just benefit a lot of other readers. I do actually end up answering the same thing several times.
- I may not know the answer but someone else might!
- I’m really bad at email. Don’t ask me why. I try to answer things as fast as possible but sometimes emails languish in my inbox for days, or I forget about answering them. Then you get mad at me and think I’m ignoring you, etc.
- Answering lots of individual emails takes time away from me writing new posts, not to mention spending time with my family/friends, exploring new foods, and all that kind of thing.
Hence, this is Ask Maki (almost) Anything. comments here will remain always open, to ask me anything that doesn’t fit into the context of a particular post. Unless it’s something that must remain private, please post here before emailing. Thank you!
But before you ask….
There’s nearly 5 years worth of content here. Chances are your question has already been answered. Please try the Search function, right at the top of the page, before asking something. Thanks!
[Edit:] Do not use this post to pimp your refrigerator parts, miracle diet, whatever site. Such comments will be deleted.
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270 comments so far...
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Just Hungry is a site about food. There are 
Thanks! ^_^
Thanks! ^_^
Umeboshi - how to eat them?
Hi, I am so intrigued and enchanted by your website and Japanese food! I am drinking barley tea now (delicious) and learning how to cook and serve rice. I bought my first package of umeboshi and now trying to figure out how to eat them. So, questions: Are the brownish-red strands of leaf material ok to eat? I assume that this is the shisho leaf from the pickling process, but are we supposed to eat it or throw it away? When you put a whole umeboshi in the middle of an onigiri, how do you eat around the pit? Is it ok to pick it up with fingers to scrape the flesh off the pit, or do you chop it off the pit before putting it in the middle of the rice? These umeboshi remind me of snacks I used to buy at the 7-11 in my childhood hometown, called saladito’s. They were also salted plums, mouth-puckering and extremely salty, yum when you are a kid! Thanks in advance, and thank you for your time with this and your Bento site.
Umeboshi
Yes it’s fine to eat the leafy parts sticking to the umeboshi - they are as you guessed the red shiso leaves. I always de-pit the umeboshi before using it as an onigiri stuffing, because I don’t want to bite into that hard seed. Thanks for reading my sites! :)
No-Knead Desem
I just happened upon your recipe and have two questions:
1 - Do you know the hydration percentage of the desem starter as created from Laurel’s bread book? I have my own starter created by a similar method and I want to get the flour/water proportion close to that of your recipe.
2 - The amount of starter listed “1 3/4 cups of fully mature desem, containing 2 cups (120g) of flour” is a bit confusing to me. I use mainly use weight measurements in baking and I know 2 cups of flour weighs much more than 120g and 1.75 cups of starter will also weigh much more. Should I just stick with a volume measurement or is that a typo?
BTW, I love your recipes and the variety. I just made and thoroughly enjoyed Japanese Beef Curry with my sweetie.
Thanks.
The hydration in the book is
The hydration in the book is the same as I wrote in the desem day 0 entry. (I wrote that nearly 5 years ago, so I know it’s not that clearly written, but the information is there.) When the flour is mixed with the water, it does compact down to 1 1/2 cups, so that’s not a typo. IIRC the Laurel’s Kitchen book does use volume measurements so that is what I stuck with. (I can’t refer to the book easily at the moment since I’m packing up to move house and that one is already in one of the stack of boxes! If you’re interested in desem I do highly recommend getting the book, since it has copious instructions.)
No-Knead Desem
I just happened upon your No-Knead Desem recipe and have two questions:
1 - Do you know the hydration percentage of the desem starter as created from Laurel’s bread book? I have my own starter created by a similar method and I want to get the flour/water proportion close to that of your recipe.
2 - The amount of starter listed “1 3/4 cups of fully mature desem, containing 2 cups (120g) of flour” is a bit confusing to me. I use mainly use weight measurements in baking and I know 2 cups of flour weighs much more than 120g and 1.75 cups of starter will also weigh much more. Should I just stick with a volume measurement or is that a typo?
BTW, I love your recipes and the variety. I just made and thoroughly enjoyed Japanese Beef Curry with my sweetie.
Thanks very much!
Rice-Cooker Recipes Request
Hi Maki (^_^)
Do you have any dish recipes using rice-cooker?
I don’t have a kitchen, only a rice-cooker.
What else can I cook beside Onigiri??
By the way, can I cook Chawanmushi using a rice-cooker?
Do you have the recipe, Maki?
I am very looking into it, since I haven’t find the rice-cooker cookbook around my place.
Thank you.. (^_^)
Japanese cookbooks
I have just read your post (http://www.justhungry.com/2006/01/reading_japanes.html) on the book Japanese Women Don’t Get Old or Fat, which I have recently finished on the recommendation of a friend. I was not interested in it as a diet book, but one that would help me to learn more about the Japanese way of cooking, eating and thinking about food. I also have Harumi’s Japanese Cooking by Harumi Kurihara, which I found in the remainder bin of a chain bookshop. Both of these have inspired me to continue in my quest to learn to eat Japanese, and as you wrote of JWDGOF it ‘may serve as a good introduction to Japanese cooking, though definitely not the best’, I wonder if you would be able to tell me what ‘the best’ is, and what I should read now?
With many thanks,
Philippa
I wrote up a book from an
I wrote up a book from an author I highly respect here a while ago - take a look! (it’s not that expensive either, which is a plus)
Hello Maki
i love your site.GOD bless you more!
shopping at the oriental market
HI Maki!
Is it considered rude to ask the other shoppers at the oriental market what is good to buy? There was a nice girl at the market today and I asked what was in her cart and she explained to me how to steam the buns and make the dipping sauce. Was that ok?
I would love to go to the market with a guide!!!!
thanks!
Dyan
I don’t think it’s rude
I don’t think it’s rude at all - most people would love to help out I think!
Using frozen butter in baking
Is using butter that was frozen and has been thawed out okay to use in baking? Does it change the texture, how cookies might raise - or anything like that?
I recently discovered your site and have had my printer working away printing many of your recipes. I’m having a hard time trying to decide which one to try first, but have thoroughly enjoyed just reading through them. I love the way you really go into the details of why and how - so educational.
Thanks,
Wendy
frozen butter
As long as you don’t keep it in the freezer for too long (a couple of months max), and also have it very well wrapped it should be fine. I’m glad you find the site useful!
Thanks!
Hi Maki,
Just wanted to say thanks for your brilliant food sites. I’ve made loads of your recipes and they’re all spot-on and permanently added to my repertoire.
I particularly like your experimental and irreverent approach: stuff like butter & soy sauce on potatoes. Genius. It’s also inspired me to mix and match, which sometimes actually works.
Latest fave is your sweet pepper & onion confit. SO useful for using up vegbox peppers. Heavenly with olives on pasta. (Getting over-excited now…)
Basically, you’re WONDERFUL and your sites just get better.
Adulation,
MG
Thank you very much :)
Thank you very much :)
Rice Topping Question
I just got back from a 2 week stay in Japan. (I plan to return…) I had some rice at a tea house in Kyoto that sprinkled a purple powder on top of the rice. It was delish, and I want to get some. Any ideas?
If it was sour-salty, it was
If it was sour-salty, it was yukari, a furikake made from red shiso leaves that were used to making umeboshi (pickled plum). Any decent size Japanese grocery should have it.
Bless you...
That sounds right. Alas, I will have to mail order it since we really don’t have a great store around here…
Thanks! And, I love your JustBento site! Keep it coming!
Sherri
Cream Puff Custard Disaster
I made the cream puff custand recipe:
http://www.justhungry.com/2004/04/cream_puffs.html
I realize now that I probably should have kept cooking the custard until it was thickened enough. I just did it for a little longer than the time suggested and it didn’t taste flourly, so I removed it and put in the fridge overnight. It is still very runny. Can I reheat it and add more cornstarch/flour to thicken it?
Part of the problem may be that I mixed the egg/flour mixture in a bowl, then transferred it to a pan that I could use on the stove, so not every bit of it ended up in the finished product.
When you heat the milk should it be to the scalding point?
Thanks,
Wendy
You can try heating up the
You can try heating up the custard again over a low heat (so it doesn’t burn), and adding cornstarch that has been dissolved in a little milk - start with 1 Tbs. + just enough milk to dissolve it. If that doesn’t thicken it up enough, keep adding more. The custard should be thick enough that it coats the back of a wooden spoon or spatula, and you can draw your finger through it and the line stays there.
The milk should not boil…so it should heat up to just below the scalding point I guess.
Breakfast habits
Hello Maki! I’ve been following Just Hungry and Just Bento for a while now and am very grateful for all of the wonderful recipes you’ve given us! Most of the focus seems to be on lunch and dinner foods, so I was wondering whether or not you were a fan of breakfast and, if so, what kinds of food you usually have in the morning.
breakfast
I am a fairly regular breakfast eater, but I don’t do anything really special mostly. Sometimes I do make something like this green tea and rice porridge. Right now, I am mostly having smoothies with tons of fresh berries and other fruit, to take advantage of what’s in-season.
Sleek Japanese stainless steel tofu mold
Maki, I also would love to order the big stainless steel tofu mold. Do you have any clue where I might get one? Wonderful site. Great article on Tofu making. Best, Mary Beth
That is one of the
That is one of the most-asked questions around here. Unfortunately I have no idea where to get it now - I got it years and years ago in Japan. But the suggested alternative containers will work just as well.
Toaster oven vs. microwave
Thank you for two very inspiring sites!
I was wondering which you use the most for typical bento preparations (such as reheating before putting food into the box) - a toaster oven or a microwave?
I’m thinking of buying one or the other, but although you can buy them toaster ovens are rare here in Norway, and so I don’t have any personal experience in using one.
Can you get the same crispiness from a micro with a grill function that you apparently get from a toaster oven?
Any other pros or cons you have experienced with either choice?
You can’t get anything
You can’t get anything cooked in a microwave to get crisp, unless you use specialized cooking sheets or containers. However if you had to choose either a microwave or a toaster oven I would choose a microwave, because it has a lot more uses. A toaster oven is handy for quick oven-cooking, but there are other ways of cooking things. A microwave is good for defrosting, steam-cooking, etc etc. There are also combination oven/microwaves (though they tend to be quite expensive).
American Sauce
Hi Maki! I’ve been looking for recipes for Kani Cream Pasta, but the one I found called for Heinz American Sauce, something I’m not familiar with. I’m not sure if the Japanese supermarkets around here(San Francisco) have it, I haven’t really checked. But just in case they don’t carry it, could you tell me of possible alternatives to the sauce? Thanks!
‘American’ sauce is
‘American’ sauce is actually a classic French sauce for seafood. In French it is spelled americaine. It’s a fish stock based rich sauce with tomato (presumably the tomato makes it ‘americaine’ somehow). Try googling for that term! (Heinz makes all sort of region-specific sauces I believe.)
marmite
hi! i was wondering if you knew if marmite will have their guinness version out again, if so how someone from the states could score a jar (or ten….)