Rice cake (Mochi) making and steam rice

I have made Rice Cake (Japanese Mochi) for new year today. I have some helpers today so tried with Stone Mortar since I planned to do with Rice Cake Machine. For the last one, I added dried shrimp. The picture is the scene that pounding just steamed rice gently with the pestle so the rice becomes sticky. Along the way I cooked rice (normal Japanese rice, not a sticky rice for rice cake) with Japanese kettle. Heat it with middle to strong heat until it boils, then reduce the heat for about 10 minutes without frame. Then leave it for 5 minutes before serving. If I put the rice in the wooden rice tub to eliminate extra moisture, I would obtain the best result but it was not available so I considered to use wooden Sushi tub but not used. Instead, I did use a normal plastic tapper. But the result exceeded than expectation. Each grain of steamed rice were individually stand without collapsing. The finish was almost perfect with very sweet taste.

Christmas illumination

I have decollated typical Japanese garden with American illumination. Recently illumination is getting popular in my neighbor but those are LED type and it seems to be very hard and lurid. Though power consumption is high, ordinal lamp illumination is very beautiful.

My memorial day

On my memorial day, I bought a round cake at cake shop that has been in my neighbor long years and took it to my home. I selected the biggest from the display case because my daughter’s friend was our guest on the day. It was very good. By the way, do you understand what kind of my memorial day by referring to the picture?

American Mexican foods

El Trito is a restaurant chain, mainly in California, and there are locations in Texas and Oregon. There is a location in Torrance city where the service team in USA had farewell party for me when I was leaving from USA. Coco’s serves El Trito in Japan. Popular big size Burrito in USA was modified in Texas state, so it is called TexMex food. If a Mexican food were modified in USA, it would be called Amex, if in California, would be CaMex? :-p
I have visited El Trito in Nanba Osaka at last since I was told by my friend. It was noon time on Saturday but there’s no other guest. I wondered if it was opened. There was a chef who looked like Mexican.
There was variety of popular foods on the menu so we can enjoy from the appetizer to desert. We selected very standard foods, Tortilla soup, Tacos, pork and shrimp Fajita.
They were pretty good taste and I can recommend this restaurant without any concern. But I felt they were little bit mild taste than my expectation. For example, I did not feel any flavor of Cilantro (Coriander). And the volume of the dishes was surprisingly low. The fajita in the picture was for two persons but it was less than one person’s in USA.
When we were checking at casher, there was manager so I commented frankly. He told us his war story. He worked for training at a El Trito in Long Beach for one year, and he replicated everything when the first restaurant opened in Tokyo. Guest opinion was almost 50/50. It was spoken very highly for perfect reproduced them in Japan. But related ingredients are expensive in Japan so the price of foods was expensive, also the volume of foods was too much for Japanese people, finally settled down in the present taste and volume. Salsa can be taken out though it is not promoted.

Ekiben (box lunch sold at train stations)

I had a business trip to Tokyo after a long time. Usually it can be one day trip but I needed to stay Tokyo since Monday night because the meeting was planned to start 8am on Tuesday. For Monday dinner I bought an ekiben (box lunch sold at train stations). It was a Makunouchi style box lunch as pictured. This was good. The meeting was done around 1pm as scheduled so I returned to Osaka as soon as it was done. For Tuesday lunch I bought ekiben again. It was Fukagawa style box lunch. This was so so. Local ekiben box lunch is one of fun for trip by train.

Roasted chub mackerel

Roasted Chub Mackerel is special local food in Hokuriku area of Japan. I bought it at service area of Hokuriku freeway so it was little bit expensive, but the skewered whole roasted chub mackerel was very dynamic and delicious.