Anzac Holiday
Posted April 26th, 2010 in Perth WA 6 Comments »It’s been another relaxing long weekend. How’s yours? We’re so lucky to have this long weekend with such fine weather 🙂 Watching people enjoying marine sports at the beach and Swan River really makes me feel that I’m in Perth. Water, blue sky, fine sun light…
I planned to stay home all day on the first day of this holiday, as I wanted to relax and do some housework. So, I invited my friends for lunch so that I could stay home while enjoying chatting and watching DVD. I cooked some Japanese food for them, including hijiki – a kind of black seaweed – which I brought from Japan. It is really shame that you can’t buy hijiki here as it is prohibited to import from overseas for commercial sale purpose. Wholesalers here can’t have this product, so you have to buy it in Japan and bring it here for personal use by yourself.
Anyway, I cooked simmered hijiki with other vegetables, dashimaki-tamago (Japanese style seasoned omelet), tofu with miso-negi-chicken, miso soup and potato salad. ( I will post the recipe of miso-negi-chicken later) I also had unagi kabayaki (teriyaki-grilled eel).
As I planned, I could totally relax the whole day. We had lunch, then had dessert on the couch (mochi ice cream) and chatted until the evening. 😀
On the second day I headed to the city. I wasn’t sure if the shops are open, but tried anyway. There’re many people walking around the pedestrian malls and sitting back at the cafes, but most of the shops were closed. It was after the veterans’ marching parade, but I could still feel the atmosphere. Many pubs were filled with people.
After walking around the city I moved to East Perth – one of my favorite walking spot.
It was such a beautiful day! I walked a lot and was little tired, but it was good exercise. 🙂
The last day is my relaxing day again! I woke up early and had a little walk at the park near the house. These days the sun starts to set around 6pm, which indicates that it’s already autumn and heading to the cold winder days. I hope we have more days like this – fine weather- before the rainy season starts!
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Hi Ume,
It looks like a perfect long-weekend. Your cooking looks divine. I cooked yakitori-don on Saturday night for my husband. It was delicious but very salty. Maybe next time I’ll use tamari instead of soy sauce. Do you think it would be better?
Hi Megan,
Thanks, it really was 😀
Normal soy sauce is made with 50% soy beans and 50% wheat, but tamari soy sauce is made with 100% soy beans. That’s why its taste and the flavor is more concentrated than normal soy sauce. You can use tamari for the yakitori, but you can also add little more sugar, if you like. What did you use for the sauce? Did you use sake or mirin??
Hi Ume,
I couldn’t get any sake because I was down in Dawesville, so I used rice wine vinegar, sugar (3 tbls) and also mirin (1/4 cup). Do you think if I used sake it would be better.
Megan,
Umm… I’ve never used rice wine vinegar for yakitori sauce, but it sounds interesting.
If you used mirin, if should be fine without sake. Mirin is sweetened version of sake anyway.
I don’t know why it turned out “salty” even though you added sugar and mirin.
Actually, the order in which these ingredients are used is quite important in Japanese cuisine.
Basically, the ingredients whose flavors are most susceptible to being changed by heat are added last = soy sauce, and miso. Sugar and salt are added first, and vinegar in between.
This could be the reason??
I don’t know how much soy sauce and rice wine vinegar you used.. Did you heat up the sauce before serving? Did you boil after adding mirin?
Hi Ume,
I’m not sure where the recipe came from, so it could be completely wrong. With all the sauce ingredients, they were all mixed together and it said to marinate the chicken for several hours or overnight. I didn’t have time for that, but the sauce is all made up in one bowl, instead of adding things as you cook. My husband thought it was a bit strange to do it that way.
It would have been so yummy if not for the saltiness. Maybe I should just try adding the sauce ingredients separately as you say.
Thank you for your help.
I love Japanese food so much but I’m still trying to learn how to cook it nicely.
Megan,
Actually I sometimes make sauce by mixing all the ingredients together. For marinade, normally I do this way.
The proper way of cooking is to follow the order (in which these ingredients are used), but I don’t follow it every time, especially when I’m lazy :p
Sorry I can’t give you any nice advice! I’m also still learning how to cook nicely 😀