Sunday, July 19, 2009

Japanese Food and Glowing Hosta


Food in the Kono household is very important - as I am sure it is in most households. I love to eat, but, unfortunately, I am not a particularly great cook. So, let me tell you what happened over the last two days in our food department.

Yesterday afternoon around 4:00 the subject of dinner crossed my mind - again. What to cook. I mentioned to Ken that we had pork chops in the freezer, as well as salmon and chicken. He said to cook whatever I felt like. Well, we've had salmon every few days over the last 20 years or so, and chicken even more often than that, so I thought I would be a bit exotic and grill the pork chops.

I found a recipe for an herb rub for the pork that included a little rosemary, peppercorns, thyme, cloves and a little salt. I put all that together, rubbed it over the pork chops, added a little olive oil and grilled them to perfection. I was so proud. Along with the pork, I steamed some rice (although our rice supply was from what was left over from before we left for Japan.) It didn't look like anything was wrong with it, so I figured what the heck. We also had some fresh corn on the cob, and some packaged broccoli with water-chestnuts from Trader Joes. I found the broccoli in the freezer (also a left over from before we left.)

Well, dear readers, you would think from the reaction to this dinner, that I was trying to poison my family. Ken and Yumiko said the rice was NOT GOOD - too stale. The porkchops were just too darn American (big slabs of meat.) And the year old frozen broccoli -- well even I thought it was a bit rough.

We made it through dinner with no real harm, although my little feelings were a bit hurt.

So today, we all turned over a new leaf and drove to Narberth, PA where there is a very good Japanese grocery store called Maido. We got a shopping cart and we loaded it with everything Japanese - Miso paste; frozen sun dried himono fish; dashi (fish flakes); nori (seaweed); tofu; fermented soybean called nato; black bean and mochi cakes; sesami oil; Japanese rice; Japanese pickels; Japanese potato cakes; Japanese dumplings; and on and on.

And tonight I grilled the fish, made miso soup with tofu, dashi and mushrooms, steamed Japanese rice, microwaved the nato, and added a little fresh American broccoli. Ken was a happy, happy man. And Yumiko was a happy girl. I too was thrilled to have a little Japanese food again after plain old (really old) American for the last two weeks.

On another note, the hosta are blooming in St. Davids. Here is one that was glowing early this morning.

4 comments:

  1. Let me be clear that I love foods on both sides of the big pond. I just was not in a mood to eat a big piece of meat yesterday. Ken

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  2. Do you two only communicate on the blog? I know some other people like that too.

    Where are the pictures of your food? And, Kitty, you are an excellent cook. I don't think I've ever eaten a better meal than at the Kono residence.

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  3. Pork tenderloin (already marinated - many choices of seasonings), red potatoes coated with olive oil wrapped in foil, asparagus coated in olive oil paced on a grate. All on the grill. Can't go wrong. Kathy

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