Posted March 18th, 2009 in Japan, Perth WA, Ume's Interests | 4 Comments »
People get surprised when I tell them this, but I have never been outside of Western Australia. I’ve been living in Australia for almost 6 years, but never been to Melbourne, Sydney, Gold Coast etc… I originally love traveling, but I guess I haven’t had chance to go anywhere. It’s surprising to me too actually, I really think I should explore outside of WA sometime soon!
More surprising thing is, I don’t even leave Perth Metropolitan area often. Plus I’ve never been to popular tourist destinations even around WA such as Monkey MIa, Wave Rock, Ayres (Airs) Rock, Albany etc. The places I’ve been since I came to Perth are Swan Valley, Rottnest Island, Margaret River, Pemberton, Busselton and Bunbury. Wow..
So, I’m planning to travel somewhere this year if I can. Does anyone have recommendation where I should go? I’m thinking maybe Melbourne… or Gold Coast. Melbourne, I have a friend over there and I can visit her. Or go to Gold Coast and pretend like I’m an ordinal Japanese tourist who just flew from Kansai airport :p
By the way I’m actually going back to Japan around September (as I promised my grandma on my previous homecoming), so the trip within Australia might going to happen next year. If I had a chance to fly to Japan I prefer it to anywhere else. This time the Japan trip will be a different one as I’m planning traveling around Japan and stay at Ryokan (Japanese style hotel) with Onsen (natural hot spring) (our pre-honeymoon 
) I can’t wait! Traveling really eases my tension and stress.
(photo from lonelyplanet)
Posted March 15th, 2009 in Eat Out in Perth - Japanese Food - | 6 Comments »
Both my fiance and I have been very busy over the last few weeks, so we agreed to take a break and have a relaxing dinner out. We both like any cuisine, but I felt like something “Japanese”. Not like “teriyaki set” or “tempura set”… real Japanese food! After thinking where we should go, we made a phone call to Satsuki Japanese restaurant to book a table.
I’m glad that I choose this restaurant. The staff was so kind and polite. When I was making a reservation on the phone, the staff kindly told me “there is one table available for two, and counter seats. The available table is actually at between 2 large group bookings, so it may be little noisy.” After her suggestion, I booked counter seats. It was a great decision as those large groups were quite loud.
At the restaurant, we ordered Beef Tataki, Deep-fried Spicy Tuna Rolls, and Slowly Simmered Pork Belly.
Deep-fried sushi rolls sounded interesting to me. Did they really deep-fry sushi rolls?? … yes, they did! The tuna inside of the rolls was still raw as “sashimi”, and the tuna and spicy chili powder were well matched.
I loved the way they arranged the food on plates. They use chic looking dishes, and the garnish is well presented. The crispy lotus root chips, garnish for Beef Tataki, were lovely.
They close on Sun and Mon, and I recommend to make a booking on weekends. You can browse their food and drink menu from here.
Posted March 11th, 2009 in Food | 2 Comments »
Why don’t you try this colourful Japanese dish? Chirashi-zushi is a kind of sushi: seasoned vegetables (carrots, shiitake mushrooms..) are mixed with sushi rice, and sometimes we decorate the top with sashimi (raw fish / fish roe / seafood), shredded thin omelet and kizami-nori (shredded nori seaweed sheet).
I made this dish with grilled salmon fillet. No complicated job, as there is no need to roll up the rice and stuffing on nori sheet like sushi rolls. Once you have all the ingredients you can just mix them up ♪
<Salmon Chirashi Zushi> for 2 people
- 100~150 g Salmon Fillets (no skin)
- 1 tbs sake (or white wine)
- 2 cups steamed short grain rice
- 1 egg
- kizami nori
- sushi seasoning powder/liquid, salt
- Mix sushi seasoning into hot steamed rice. Allow to cool.
- Sprinkle sake to salmon, and leave it for few minutes. Season salmon with salt and grill until just done.
- Whisk egg with few drops of water, and cook into very thin sheet. Remove from the pan and allow it to cool.
- Cut the egg sheet into thin strips. Break salmon meat.
- Arrange seasoned sushi rice with salmon, egg strips and kizami nori.
It’s quite cheap to make if you don’t use sashimi or fresh fish roe (even though I love those expensive things :p) , or you can actually buy “chirashi zushi seasoning” which comes with kizami nori, and all the seasoned vegetables in the packet.
Posted March 7th, 2009 in Food | 6 Comments »
I try to eat red meat often as I have very law blood pressure and need to eat iron rich food. I seldom ate beef when I was in Japan, but now I eat them a lot as they are pretty cheap in Australia (oz beef) and healthy. (Japanese beef got marbled fat, so they are high in calorie and fat) Some people say that red meat is very dry and tough, but I actually like it. When you eat tough food, you need to chew and it strengthen your jaw. You can cook meat medium or medium-rare if you like it moist.
If you go to Japanese restaurant here you might find a menu “teriyaki beef”. As I mentioned in an earlier post, there is no such food “teriyaki beef” in Japan. In Japan we’d call it “steak” or “yakiniku”, maybe. Japanese steak is often eaten with steamed rice. The sauce is soy sauce based, and most of the time it’s flavored with garlic.
It’s very easy to cook. Well, it’s a steak: you basically just need to grill the meat. What you can do to make it Japanese style (wafu) is the sauce. It’s also easy to make too.
<Garlic Steak>
- 2 tbs soy sauce
- 1 tbs sake (cooking wine)
- 1 clove garlic
If you are cooking the steak in a frying-pan
- Slice garlic. Place 1 tsp of oil in a pan and sliced garlic. Turn on the heat and cook them till crisp and lightly brown. Take the garlic chips out from the pan and set aside.
- Season the meat, and grill in the same pan. Arrange the cooked steak on a serving plate.
- Pour soy sauce and sake into the pan and bring to boil. Add garlic chips, and turn off the heat. Pour the sauce over steak.
If you are grilling the meat using grill plate/BBQ
You can make the sauce separately. Cook garlic chips in a frying-pan, and take them out from the pan. Add soy sauce and sake to the pan and bring to boil. Add garlic chips to the sauce.
Posted March 5th, 2009 in Food | 4 Comments »
What do you feel like eating when you are really really hungry?? I mean, the situation where you can almost eat a horse. Would you run to KFC, or do you cook steak quickly to fill up your stomach? I, on the other hand, rush to cook rice first. When my stomach is empty I need to fill it up with steamed rice! Yes, that’s right. I am Japanese :p
I also love bread, pasta, chips, hotdog etc… but I always come back to simple steamed rice. My family owns few rice fields in Japan, so I grew up with rice everyday.
What do I eat with steamed rice? Well, steamed rice is like “main dish” in Japan. In every meal there is steamed rice, and some side dishes like grilled fish or miso soup. I can even eat one bowl of steamed rice with just few pickles. That’s what people used to eat in old era in Japan.
There are many rice dishes in Japanese cuisine, such as rice balls (Onigiri), Chirashi Zushi, Omu-Rice, Domburi, 3 Shoku Gohan etc. Some people eat noodle or Okonomiyaki as a side dish of steamed rice. It’s very easy to eat rice everyday in Japan, even you are away from home, as you can just grab Onigiri or Bento from convenience stores nearby. (they’ll heat up the food for you)
When I get hungry my character changes. I don’t know why I can’t control myself, but it’s been like that since I was a child :p So, rice is quite important food in my life, I guess. I can keep myself calm 
Email: me@umeboss.com
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