Sake is now a well-known term outside Japan but the usage is somewhat different in Japan. This post explains how as well as other terms related to sake drinking
焼き餅（やきもち）
焼（や）き is a noun form of the verb, 焼（や）く = to grill and 餅（もち） is a rice cake. So 焼き餅…
和える
和える（あえる/aeru） is a Japanese verb to mean “to dress [main ingredient] (with {a sauce})” and it’s often used in the…
Cooking Measurement
When you look at recipes, measurements such as “1 cup” or “2 Tablespoons” etc. are used for measuring volumes but…
精進料理（しょうじんりょうり/shoujin_ryouri）
Nowadays almost everybody eats meat in Japan. However, eating meat, especially beef, had been a taboo in Japan for a…
Is Chinese food 中華料理 or 中国料理?
chuuka_ryouri or chuugoku_ryouri? Have you had an experience that you went to a Chinese restaurant in Japan and the food…
Kaiseki
If you have read or heard about traditional Japanese multi-dish meals, you may have come across the word, かいせき/kaiseki or…
to fry
to fry 2 weeks ago, I wrote that the English word “to boil” is translated into 4 different Japanese words.…
たまごをやきます
A while ago, I wrote about a cooking verb 焼（や）きます/yakimasu. There I said I have to talk about frying eggs,…
to boil in Japanese
If you have followed a Japanese recipe, you might have noticed that 3 different verbs, 煮（に）る、炊（た）く and 茹（ゆ）でる, have been…
さしすせそ
さしすせそ is all the letters in the S column but in cooking さしすせそ has a special meaning: that is, to…
Mirin, Mirin style flavouring and Cooking Sake
If you are cooking some Japanese food, you will need a few Japanese seasonings. The most common ones are 酒（さけ/sake…
Shiitake
I have been writing about ingrediants for Japanese stock and today is the last of that series. 椎茸（しいたけ/shiitake） is one…
マジック
The caption says: マジックで書いてください。 Please write with “magic”. If you see this, what would you do? Will you say “I’m…
煮干し（にぼし/niboshi） – dried baby sardines
niboshi & chirimen jako Last 2 weeks, I have written about ingredients for Japanese stock – bonito flakes and kelp.…
昆布（こんぶ/konbu） – kelp
Last week, I talked about bonito flakes which we use to make stock. Today, I’m going to talk about the…
花かつお – bonito flakes
花かつお（はなかつお/hana_katsuo）, often translated as “bonito flakes,” is shaved 鰹節（かつおぶし/katsuobushi）. 鰹節（かつおぶし/katsuobushi） is dried, fermented and smoked skipjack tuna fillet. Did you…
Daikon radish
The other day, I got asked a very strange question: If you are to eat only one kind of vegetable…
Miso Soup
味噌汁（みそしる/Misoshiru） is a traditional Japanese soup. It is made with 出汁（だし/dashi – stock） with a small amount of 具（ぐ/gu –…
Obento
The Japanese word, Obento, seems to be getting accepted in Australia to call a set menu with rice served in…
