Hijiki! 
Full of iron, fiber, calcium and VItamin A. 
It's a superfood which will help us for a better blood flow, healthier skin and a superb intestine! 
What is it?
It's a brown sea vegetable, much like seaweed but chewy. 

For those of you who have not had a taste of it, and those of you who have, this recipe is a super-easy-must-try. All you do is throw in the following ingredients into your rice cooker. It'll turn into a savoury, warm Japanese rice dish. 

Ingredients

• Hijiki (2 tbsp dry) You can buy these at Daiso, or at any Japanese supermarket. They come dry, so make sure you soak it in water before throwing it into the rice cooker!
• 300g dry rice (cook w/ ~400ml water, or follow your rice cooker instructions)
  
  

Sauce

• Japanese soy sauce 1 tbsp
• Hondashi  (Japanese broth powder) 1 tsp
• Salt 1 tsp
• Japanese sake 2 tbsp
• Japanese mirin 1 tbsp

Steps

1. Wash the rice (as usual) and place the sauce into the rice
2. Add the water per rice cooker's instruction (or add around ~400ml if you don't have instructions)
3. Add the hijiki
4. Stir a bit, then cook the rice as usual!

Who doesn't love super fluffy omelettes?

Japanese girls like me are into fluffy snacks, fluffy food, fluffy anything right now. 
Pancakes, omelettes, pastries....The list goes on.

So instead of lining up for 1hr to get fluffy omelettes, why not try it at home?

This applies to those living in San Francisco too!


Recipe for 1 omelette:

• 1 large egg (or 2)
  
• 2-3 tbsp of milk (I use Whole)
  
•  (Optional) Cheese, veggies
  

Steps:
1. Whisk the egg and milk. Try to get some air in there!
2. Heat a pan on medium heat.
3. On the heated pan, add a little olive oil or butter to prevent sticking.
4. Pour in the egg, add any optional goodies if any and mix the top layer so it gets a little scrambled.
5. Put the heat down to low and start cooking the egg to your favourite consistency slowly. Slowly!
6. Fold the egg and cook a little more.

fwah-lah!

I'll start throwing in some of the basic + necessary ingredients you'll need to cook amazing Japanese dishes here! 

I've got multiple comments about Tamagoyakis, Japanese sweet omelettes. 

According to some research, Japanese people only started to eat egg during the Edo period (16th to 18th century). Even then, I'm sure it was a luxury item. Now tamagoyakis are often made as a form of comfort food. Moms and Dads pack it in children's lunches a.k.a. obento. Every time I eat a tamagoyaki I always reminisce my mom's homemade lunches back in elementary school. 

Just like an onigiri (rice ball), it's a dish which reminds you of your family. Somehow tastes different depending on the family though the ingredients being used are probably the same. 

Ingredients being used are eggs and sugar with a dash of oil on the pan. Use a small pan for perfect results.

It may seem difficult at first but practice makes perfect. The more you try, the more easier it gets. I promise! 

As I mentioned earlier, I sometimes make these at night, cut them, freeze them in saran wrap and take it for lunch in its frozen state in the morning. By lunch time, they are defrosted and taste delicious! 

They go perfectly with rice; especially onigiri. I hope you check out the recipe I posted for this dish and try it out yourself! 

My favourite fish to cook is probably salmon. I especially love to cook it in foil! It's mess free and best of all, I can throw in all the veggies I want. I've posted a recipe for this in the past using miso-mayo as a sauce on top. 

Today, I layered chopped raw onions, raw arugula, raw broccoli then the raw salmon (salt & peppered) and put a tablespoon of Japanese soy sauce and a tiny bit of butter on top. Popped it in a 470F oven for 15 minutes. EASY and DELICIOUS. Fresh squeeze of lemon prior to eating too :)

Number of steps:  6 super easy steps
Time taken: 10 min prep, 20 min in oven.
Approx. 90 kcal per mini yaki-onigiri

About This Dish:
Onigiris (rice balls) are delicious even when they are not baked, but when the rice is dipped in soy sauce and are baked on both sides, making the onigiri crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, it's becomes a dish you will start craving for! They're called Yaki-onigiris. In Japan, my mom used to make these for lunch as it is easy and goes well with various side dishes such as chicken. It is also eaten at Izakayas along with some sake and yakitori. It's just a fun twist to your regular onigiri, please give it a try! 


You don't have to use fresh cooked rice. You could even use left over rice in your freezer or fridge to whip this up quickly for lunch! Just make sure you warm the rice up before you dip it into the sauce.

What You Need:
(Makes 11 mini yaki-onigiris)

• 2 cups of uncooked rice (Around 300g or 3 cups cooked)

The Sauce

• 1 tsp of Hondashi diluted in water (If you don't have this, don't worry about it, skip it)
• 2 - 3 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 - 1.5 tsp mirin
• 1 - 1.5 tsp sesame oil
• (Optional) sesame seeds

Number of steps:  6 easy steps
Time taken: 10 min to prepare, 8 min in oven
Approx. 30 kcal per cookie

About This Dish:
Being a girl, sometimes you just crave for desserts. Unfortunately, I find the cookies and sweets in Boston too sweet compared to those in Japan. Solution? Bake my own! These matcha cookies are not too sweet, but not too bitter; it makes the taste of matcha truly come out. All you need is flour, butter, sugar, matcha powder and an egg yolk. I'm not a professional baker, and I must say these cookies came out perfect. Just make sure to use room temperature butter!

Note: The cookies I made are tiny, bite size, miniature cookies. Please cut and bake according to your taste!


What You Need:
(For approximately 30 mini bite sized cookies)

• 1/2 cup all purpose flour (120g)
• 1 - 1.5 teaspoon matcha powder (~6g)
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter (60g) *Room temperature
• 3 - 3.5 tablespoons white sugar (~45g)
• 1 egg yolk
  

Number of steps:  6
Time taken: Approx. 5 min
Approx. 200 kcal per serving

About This Dish:
If you're bored of your regular scrambled eggs, you should definitely try "nira-tama", chives and eggs. Many Japanese moms make this in the morning since it's so easy to make but still so tasty! Goes great with rice (I love rice with natto), Japanese mayo and miso soup! 

What You Need:
(Makes 1 serving)

• 2 eggs
• 1/3 cup of raw chives (Honestly, however much you want!) 
• 1/2 - 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp soy sauce
• 1 tsp Japanese sake
• (Optional) You can add sugar, mirin, sesame oil etc. Be creative :)

Number of steps:  5
Time taken: Less than 10 minutes
Aprrox. 70-140 kcal per onigiri depending on how large you make it.

About This Dish:
History
Japanese rice balls which are called "onigiris" has been and still is a very popular staple food. Every convenience store has them for $1-$1.50 each while there are more premium onigiri stores which sell it for more than $4 per onigiri. The history of onigiri goes back to the Yayoi period (300BC-300AD)! It became a staple food after the war where a majority of the Japanese population started to eat it as a meal though it was only eaten by warriors before. 

Importance
There are so many ways of making onigiris. Extreme people treat it as a piece of art (for example, caring about the way the rice is cooked, which salt to use and to how the rice it touched) but this recipe is for people who eat onigiris casually. The most important thing to remember when making any type of onigiri is to put love and warmth into it when placing the rice into your hands. Onigiri is a comfort food in Japan; it has a sentimental and nostalgic element to it, even reminding many of their mothers or grandmothers. 

What You Need:
(for 4-5 medium sized onigiris)

• 3 cups of cooked rice (I like using brown rice, but any rice is fine!)
• A couple tea spoons of salmon flakes (you can buy them at a Japanese supermarket or easily make it yourself using this recipe)
• Couple sheets of dry seaweed
• Salt
• (Optional) Sesame 
  
  

Related recipes: Japanese tamagoyaki (sweet omelettes), salmon flakes

Number of steps: 6
Time taken: 30 min

About This Dish:
You love Japanese rice balls (a.k.a. Onigiri) but are tired of going to a Japanese supermarket to buy the delicious salmon flakes...That was my problem. Thankfully, those salmon flakes in the rice balls are super easy to make! You can store them up for up to 2 weeks in the fridge and longer if you freeze them up! Perfect! 

What You Need:

• A little more than 0.5lb of salmon! (I used the frozen salmon sold at Trader Joes)
• Sake (Japanese rice wine) 1 tbsp
• Salt 1/2 - 1 tsp
• (Optional) Roasted sesame 1 tbsp