Only Recipes, by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Just cook the soba and top with the rest of the ingredients. To serve just add a drop of soy sauce. To make the nori tagliolini ... well look  here ! For the onion weed... just forage it, wash and cut (you can eat the flowers, stems and bulbs... the lot!). I bought the salted sakura (cherry blossoms)  here , I love them, a bit like salted capers really!   Photos and recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

I really like the  mochi cakes , the Japanese glutinous rice blocks that are traditionally found in the traditional New Year soup ( zoni ). Mochi is usually grilled before going into the soup, but I don't have a grill for it, and tend to just boil it into it for a little. I love it. My family less so. And they don't like the idea of mochi in any our miso soups. So I tried to pan-fry it, thinking that they like everything fried, and guess what? Fried mochi is a new favourite! Now I add a block of pan-fried mochi in almost every Japanese meal I make (that is, while my mochi stock last: it is not so easy to find it in New Zealand!).  In my (short) experience one of the best ways is to pan-fry mochi is with something that will also give it a bit of flavour, like capsicums. These are the little capsicums from my garden, small but tasty! Heat the oil in the frying pan, add slices of capsicum and mochi, turn everything a few times (I like to turn the mochi blocks on all six side...

One of my family's favourite Japanese dinner: Zaru Soba and Vegetable Tempura (mostly pumpkin). For the recipes I have to direct you  here for the Zaru Soba , and  here for the tempura  (my own recipe). I have learned to cook zaru soba in Japan, but mostly thanks to the book  The Book of Soba   by James Udesky. There is a bit of process involved, but  here  you can find the step by step instructions. The soba is Vegan, and the tempura Vegetarian (egg in the batter), but you can make a vegan batter by omitting the egg. Apparently it works just fine! Let me know if you try! The tablecloth is shibori (Japanese tie-dye) and natural indigo dye. Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

When times are busy it is good to take out same ready make furikake. Furikake is a Japanese style seasoning, usually used to top rice, but useful for other dishes as well. I found one that I really like:  Citrus Furikake from Pacific Harvest , (FYI, I have not been endorsed, payed or given free products by the company, but hey, if you have any free samples - vegetarian of course, do send them this way! :-). I love seaweed and this furikake is  a mixture of 5 seaweeds: naturally flavoured kelp, karengo, sea lettuce, ao-nori, wakame, plus sesame seeds and a nice citrus touch. At home usually we sprinkle it directly on rice, or make onigiri (rice balls), or use it on noodles, vegetables, and a variety of dishes. Here are two examples. Onigiri with furikake To make the onigiri cook some Japanese (or sushi) rice (rinse it first until the water runs clear). When the rice is still warm wet your hands with water, rub them with just a little salt, and shape the rice b...

Kazuyo brought back some  soba  from Japan, three packs for me :-)! I love soba, the Japanese buckwheat noodles that can be eaten cold or hot. When we were living in Japan my husband did a lot of editorial work for   Kodansha International, and among the books he worked on there was this one:   The Book of Soba   by James Udesky. The book tells you how to make your fresh soba, but also how to cook the dry one, plus it has some recipes, some history and nutritional info. I like it. This is my soba set: plates with fitting straw mats (zaru soba is served in baskets or on mats, to keep it fresh and drained), plus some matching soba dipping bowls. I also have some tea cups with the same pattern: dragonflies! Zaru soba is cold soba topped with nori (I cut a sheet of nori in small pieces with a pair of scissor) and served with a simple dipping sauce and garnish. One thing that I learned form   The Book of Soba   is that soba is ...