A Small Journey into Japanese Cuisines

Hi friends, I would like to share my experience on Japanese food so far. I love to taste different types of cuisines and Japanese cuisine turn out to be one of the best among my food lists. Japanese cuisines provides a vast varieties of dishes with rice, beans, mushrooms, noodles, soya products, meat, seafood, seaweed etc and the list goes on. I would like to share few Japanese foods, which I found to be very tasty and mouth watering.  🙂

Chashuu Ramen

First I will start with Chashuu Ramen. Ramen are noodles that actually originated in China and later introduced in Japanese cuisines. It is really yummy and I would like to suggest this to everyone who likes pork, because Pork is a main ingredient in most of the Ramens. There are instant Ramen noodles available in the stores, but that’s different from the actually Japanese Ramen noodles. These noodles are served with different flavored soups and different toppings. Ramen is a wheat noodles served in chicken/pork/fish stock. The preparation of this stock is a long process. This stock is flavored with soy sauce/miso and topped with pork, seaweed, green onions, egg etc. It seems the taste of the Ramen is based on the soup and it’s not easy to prepare it. Ginger, garlic, mushrooms are also part of the preparation. It’s a thumbs up from my side on Japanese Ramen noodles. Give it a try and you would love it.

Sushi

Next I will go with Sushi. Eehh, raw meat was what I first thought before eating Sushi and now I would say Oishi (meaning very tasty in Japanese) after tasting it. You will not get even a bit of raw taste while having it. Like ramen, Sushi also has many varieties with different fillings, toppings and their preparation as well. Actually all Sushi don’t have raw meat toppings, its one of the types of sushi which uses raw meat/fish as toppings. Inarisushi is made of fried Tofu with sushi rice filled in it. So there are different types of Sushi. Sushi is made of cooked vinegared rice combined with other ingredients. My favourite is Nigirizushi. Only people expert in making Sushi can prepare it well. Nigirizushi consists of a small mound of sushi rice with a bit of Wasabi and topping wrapped over it. The topping (Neta) can be salmon, tuna, fish egg and other seafoods. I am sure all would be wondering what is Wasabi? Wasabi is a Japanese plant with a thick green root that tastes like horseradish and is used in cooking especially in powder or paste form as an accompaniment to raw fish. It has an extremely strong flavor and its hotness is so intense that it produces vapour that stimulates the nasal passage more than the tongue. So Sushi is also a wonderful cuisine of Japan.

Zaru Soba

My next choice will be Soba. Soba is a thin Japanese noodles made of buckwheat. It too consists of different types, my favorite is Zaru soba. These noodles are served with noodle dipping sauce and seasonings like Wasabi, green onion leaf etc. If you want, add the seasoning into the dipping sauce. Be careful when you add wasabi, just add little only because it have a very strong flavor. After this take the Soba with a chopstick, dip in the sauce and have it. Yummy yummy J. It is very simple but yet so tasty.

Unagidon

My next favorite is Unagidon, it’s Japanese rice in a bowl with grilled eel coated with sweet sauce on top. The sweet sauce is made of Mirin (Japanese rice wine), Shoyu(Japanese soy sauce) and granulated sugar. They grill the eel coated with this sauce until both the sides turns brown. Once eel is cooked it is served on top of rice in a bowl. The sweet taste of the eel is delicious. There are lots of other Japanese cuisines that are my favorites like Japanese curry rice, pork curry, Tempura, beef curry and it goes on and on. J .

I simply wanted to share my experience on Japanese food and would suggest all of you to try it. I would obviously keep my journey on experiencing more Japanese food.

Thanks to Fried Eye for giving me an opportunity to share my acquaintance with Japanese cuisines.

Contributed by :

Ashitha Sreejesh

http://ashisree.blogspot.com/