A Japanese Designer at Perth Upmarket

Posted November 23rd, 2013 in Perth WA | No Comments »

A Japanese girl Mai Rikiishi is a fashion designer who designs and creates beautiful clothes for women from her home.  She studied at Tokyo and worked in USA in fashion industry before moving to Perth in 2010.

All design are hand-painted by her and then digital printed into high quality natural fabric.  She has a 2 year old girl at home so she is doing all the work when her little girl is asleep.

She is having a stall at Perth Upmarket tomorrow the 24th November selling her beautiful dresses.  Check out her website to see her creations!

Details of all the sellers can be found here.

 


Udon Noodle Soup

Posted November 9th, 2013 in Food | No Comments »

I don’t know if anyone likes Japanese udon noodle, but it’s one of my favorite food.  Udon noodle can be eaten hot or cold ; served in hot broth, with cold dipping sauce, stir-fried or simmered in hotpot. (other ideas to eat udon is welcome :))

For typical way to eat udon is in hot broth or with cold dipping sauce.  They both are made with dashi, soy sauce, sake, and mirin – but if you are in hurry then the dipping sauce (called tsuyu つゆ) can be purchased in Japanese food section at most Asian grocery shops.  Be careful as they look just like soy sauce – same dark colour!  Some can be used straightaway, and some need to be diluted with water.  Serve chilled with cooked udon (cold or room temperature) and some condiments such as chopped spring onions, grated ginger 0r wasabi, wakame seaweed etc.

For hot broth, as I said above you can make that with dashi, soy sauce, sake and mirin.  But if you are hurry then you can buy the soup powder from Asian grocery shops.

Near furikake, dashi stock powder and Japanese pasta sauces, there is udon soup powder.  Some Asian grocery shop may not sell this.

This is Higashimaru brand, but there’re many different brands for udon soup powder.  The grocery shop near my house only had Higashimaru.

Ok, now, all you need is udon noodle (I like frozen udon noodle as they are much closer to the real udon noodle – thick and chewy) and 1 sachet of this udon noodle soup powder.  (this box contains 8 sachets)  If you are really really in hurry, just pour boiling water to the powder then the soup is ready.  Serve with cooked udon noodle.

If you have some time or want to add some ingredients to the soup, heat the soup powder in water with chicken, sliced carrot and abura-age (fried bean curd), and cook till the ingredients are tender.  Turn the heat up on the soup and pour beaten egg.  Stir, and turn off the heat.  Serve with wakame seaweed and chopped spring onions!

I cooked that for my son (the photo looks bit messy! <3) for dinner tonight.

This udon noodle soup with egg is called tamago-toji-udon (my favorite).  You can also place inari skin (seasoned fried bean curd), wakame seaweed and chopped spring onion on a bed of cooked udon noodle, then pour udon broth.  This is called “kitsune-udon“.  Or “tanuki-udon” which is udon noodle soup with vegetable tempura on top.

There sure are many ways to enjoy udon noodle!! If you happen to go to Japan find your favorite way to eat udon noodle 🙂