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I’ve posted about hot pot cuisine (nabe ryori) sometimes before, but this TV show is introducing variety of hot pot cuisine, especially supported by the locals in Japan.

As you see, there are many reasons that we like to eat hot pot in this (autumn – winter) season.
-It’s tasty.
-It’s good for health. We can have many kind of vegetables.
-We get all warmed up when we eat it.
-We feel close to each other by sharing a hot pot.
-We can choose from variety of soup, ingredients, and “Shime” (whether rice or noodle or what?)
and so on…
Ah, now you see how I ate the collagen hotpot with a lump of collagen. The collagen lump will be totally melt in a soup, and you will eat it up when you eat rice or noodle afterwards because it absorbs the soup.

Some examples of “Shime” (=to finish) from the TV.
Eating Udon for “Shime” is very common, and we do this often when we eat it at home, too.

Eating spaghetti for “Shime” is not an authentic Japanese way, but this looks good as long as the noodle is kept “al dente” and not too soft.

Eating Ojiya (steamed rice and raw egg to make something like congee) is very orthodox and common. We do this quite often at home, too.

This must be yummy! Regardless of curry taste, cheese and Ojiya is a good combination.

I want to try this restaurant or this one in this season and if I do, I’ll share my experience in this blog.

Which hot pot looks good to you? Do you have a nice hot pot cuisine in your country that you may want to share with us? I have no idea how common hotpot is in other countries. If it’s as common as in Japan, I’d like to try some foreign hotpot too, if I have a chance! :p

	Whenever I try out a new cosmetic brand or product, I never fail to check out this site to study how it is supported by actual users. Same can be said to restaurants. Gurunavi is a well-known index site for restaurants and Izakaya with discount coupons, but it’s not the resources I trust when I choose the place to eat or drink. That’s because Gurunavi only lists restaurants of which the owner agreed with paying for the advertisement cost to them. In other words, if there are small good restaurants but cannot afford paying Gurunavi for advertising, they can never be found in Gurunavi. That’s why I do pay more attention to Tabelog. Even though it doesn’t offer discount coupons, it’s more reliable in a sense that we can reach true comments from “experienced” people. I also like browsing Couponland, a free magazine to look for restaurants or beauty salons I may want to try but the other day it was totally my mistake that I didn’t double check at Tabelog after I found a nice hotpot restaurant from Couponland. Now I can see why I was unsatisfied with what we had, when I read the comments left for it at Tabelog. (You may understand what’s written, depending on your Japanese skills. But even without it, you can see it’s not very good from the numbers of stars!) As you can see in the photos, I went out to eat a soy milk hotpot with a lump of chicken collagen in Shinjuku (this restaurant) with my husband the other day. That was only because the photo I found at a Couponland was tempting, as well as discount coupon, of course! I forgot to check the reputation of the restaurant at Tabelog, and this was a big mistake! The problem was that the foods were not worth for the money we paid. Nowadays we can get things at reasonable prices with not bad quality, I feel I have paid much more than it deserved. The soy milk hotpot (tounyu nabe 豆乳鍋) was not bad, but total amount was too expensive for what we took. I never asked all-you-can-drink for 1500 yen per person, but they charged us by mistake. (I noticed their mistake when I paid money, so I didn’t pay this. If I include this amount, the sum will be something way too much!) I was disappointed at my selection, and that I missed checking at Tabelog. If you have a chance to stay in Japan, be sure to check out the restaurant beforehand, and pick out the one you go to wisely, because there are millions restaurants and Izakaya in the city area. It’s not easy to choose the one you want to try. I’d browse Couponland to find a restaurant (Izakaya) I want to try out, check it out at Tabelog for reputation, and search it at Gurunavi and if they offer better discount than Couponland, I’ll use it. At a moment, I follow this way!

The photo is a soy milk hotpot. Second photo is a lump of collagen. We boiled the pot, ate the meat and vegetables, and put rice onto the pot. This time we added grated cheese and butter with steamed rice to make it like Italian risotto. Winter season is the best time to try hotpot with collagen! When I make hotpot at home, I cannot prepare that much of collagen, but if I look for restaurants, there are many restaurants that offer hotpot with much collagen in this season. You know collagen will make our skin smooth! I was about to introduce a good restaurant at a “Travel and Eat-out in Japan” page…but not for this time. I’ll try other collagen hotpot cuisine some time again!

I’d like to share one of Japanese easy cooking recipes. It’s Buri Daikon (ぶり大根) and is a stew only with head and jaw meat of yellow tail (This part is called “ara” in Japanese), radish and some slices of ginger. Cooking books and cooking websites should have nicer pictures, but I intentionally used this one, a little bit gross appearances of the very face part of yellow tail, with its eye’s rolling off. (LOL) Some of you may feel sick, but sorry, it tastes good in spite of its looks! I used this photo not because I wanted you to feel sick, but because I didn’t want you to think like this: “Am I cooking it properly?” or “Is this what I’m gonna eat?” This is it! It looks gross, yes, but that’s how it is. Don’t worry! It’s good, cheap, easy to cook, and less fat. Buridaikon is one of the most popular home cooking dishes at the winter season in Japan.

For 4 people, you only need followings.
-500g of head and jaw meat from yellow tail
-1 small radish
-5 tbs of soy sauce
-5 tbs of Mirin
-5 tbs of sake, or cooking wine
-2.5 tbs of sugar
-a small lump of ginger to be sliced

Boil these parts of yellow tail for 2 or 3 minutes.

Drain them in a colander and wash them with water roughly.

Peel off the skin of radish and cut it with each having 2-3cm of thickness, and then cut it into half or quarter, as you like. (I used 2 small different half-cut radish, that’s why the cut-off parts look smaller than the radish next to it.)

Put everything (the washed parts of yellow tail, radish, sliced ginger, soy sauce, Mirin, sake, sugar) into the pot and pour water almost to cover the surface of these ingredients. (For those who study Japanese, it’s said, “hitahita”(ひたひた) that means to almost cover the surface. ひたひたの水を入れます！^^)

And then cook it on high heat. When it starts boiling, reduce heat to low and keep simmering it for 60 minutes, and just leave it more than another 60 minutes with no heat. This 60 minutes with nothing actually means something. During this period, the radish absorbs the soup well. Heat it again when you eat it.

Pork ginger is one of the most common home cooking recipes in Japan.
It doesn’t take time and is very easy.

To be honest, I am not someone who strictly measures ingredients when I cook meals like home-cooking recipes. That’s why I am so bad at giving instructions how many table spoon of bla bla bla…
Pork ginger is a good sample. I never measure with table spoons. Always my eyes measure but I never screw it up. :p
Maybe I am not qualified for cooking tutorials…^_^; sorry for that.
But I hope you enjoy the video I made.

Do you have any request for the next video? Are you also interested in Japanese lessons by a native Japanese speaker? (it’s me! :p )

PS. I forgot to add this photo!

I’ve filmed new videos about how to cook Japanese home cuisine, cold shabushabu.

If you cannot find Ponzu sauce, you can fix it with following ingredients for 2 people.
-2.5 tbsp of soy sauce
-2 tbsp of citrus or lemon juice
-1/2 tbsp of rice wine vinegar
-1/2 tbsp of cooking wine
-1 tsp of mirin
-dried kelp 2 x 3 cm
-dried bonito flakes

1)Prepare a small pan and boil cooking wine and mirin.
2)Squeeze citrus or lemon (remove seeds) and get 2 tbsp of juice.
3)Add 1) + 2) + soy sauce in a bowl.
4)Add dried kelp and dried bonito flakes to 3).
*Use a sachet for dried bonito flakes so that you can take it away easily later.
5)Wrap it, put it in a fridge to wait for 1-2 days.
6)Take out the kelp and the bonito flakes, and the sauce is ready!

Ponzu sauce can be used on Tofu, salad, meat, dumpling and various ways just like this example. It’s useful and healthy because it’s free from oil.

I think shabushabu is healthy because we can have good volume of vegetables while pork and sauce are almost free from oil.

Here’s the dinner picture! We had cold shabushabu with somen!
How Japanese, and how summer!!