Japanese Comfort Food by Ruth Paget
When I lived in Japan as an exchange student, my Japanese host mom made food straight out of Shizuo Tsuji’s Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art.
I took for granted nutritious and economical meals such as:
-onigiri – rice triangles with pickled plums in the center and held together by a strip of nori seaweed
-rolled Japanese omelets with snipped chives or green onions and soy sauce
-okonomiyaki – shredded cabbage and carrot pancakes made with egg and topped with sprinkled soy sauce and lines of mayonnaise
Now that I am older, I still like these items but am learning Japanese comfort food secrets by watching Japanese restaurant videos on www.youtube.com (subject Japanese cuisine) to see how the Japanese eat mounds of hearty food.
One dish of curry gravy goodness is tonkotsu udon, an udon noodle soup with sliced, deep-fried pork cutlet on top of the noodles. The pork cutlet is topped off with an omelet. The omelet is covered in curry gravy. Yummy stuff on a cold day.
After watching several Japanese restaurant videos, I have noticed that refried rice or noodles can take the place of noodle soup as a base for other items to be placed on top of them.
I have set up the following general recipe guide for making Japanese bowl meals:
*Base – Choose 1
-plain rice
-refried rice
-noodles without soup
-udon noodle soup
*Middle layer – choose 1 or 2
-sliced deep-fried pork cutlet
-omelet
*Topping
-stir-fried vegetables
-omelet -curry sauce
-tempura vegetables, seafood, or meat
Refried rice is often made with egg, carrots, and mushrooms.
Stir-fried vegetables are often made with garlic, onion, cabbage, bean sprouts, and mushrooms.
Composed Japanese bowl meals like these are delicious, nutritious, and not as expensive to make as you would think. These Japanese comfort foods might appeal to Americans who would like to save money.
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
