I had lunch in Chako, a Japanese restaurant tucked away in an area in Singapore I don’t venture to unless absolutely necessary. Getting to the restaurant was slightly cumbersome. Finding it was much, much easier. In an old mall littered with used car rental offices and dentists, it didn’t take long to find Chako. Just a white wash of walls and a small sign that bore its name – so achingly minimal but such is the way of the Japanese. And when you step past its faux rice paper sliding door and into the restaurant, you’d first notice how startlingly small – no, crazy tiny it is.
The entire restaurant is decorated in typical Japanese fashion: creepy lucky nekocat with extra long whiskers stares at you from the entrance, old paintings line the walls and a 2012 Mount Fuji calender is a visual tease to anyone hapless enough to have never gone (ME!). Sitting at the back of the cashier is a small Yakult fridge – the ones you can still find at old provision stores – with not one bottle of the colourful fermented milk that reigned in my adolescence. Instead, Fridge-san is filled with old bottles of sake. Old Japanese tunes are playing in the background, distracting us from the cacophony in the adjoining kitchen. I thought it was unfortunate a restaurant like this would be so inaccessible but having dined there now I realised it all made sense. For three hours, I was in Japan – where else would I be?
Let’s talk about the food. Chako is family-owned so they specialise in homecooked Japanese food. The head cook is a Japanese aunty who married a Malay sailor back in the day so Muslims, everything from the sauces to the softbroiled unagi served in Chako is made from scratch and is halal. The only thing is they serve sake to cater to the many Japanese expats who live in the area. It’s recommended that you shoot them an email regarding reservations and preordering your food before coming down because the restaurant can only take about 15+ people and that’s it. Here’s another catch: be prepared to wait for your food for this no-nonsense obasan only cooks the minute you arrive. How long did I have to wait for my preordered meal set? 2 hours. Not even kidding.
I didn’t mind the wait because I knew about it prior to my lunch and I was there with a bunch of great friends so we were entertaining ourselves with small talk in between sips of Chako’s homemade roasted barley tea. Diana ordered the Beef Sukiyaki, layers upon layers of enoki + shitake mushrooms, vegetables, thinly-sliced beef in this heavenly broth that all of us kept stealing to eat with our rice. I had the Unatamaju set – softbroiled unagi on the fluffiest bed of egg and rice. It’s $23, definitely not the cheapest unagi bowl in the country but damn, expensive unagi tastes extraordinary. So extraordinary, 4 of us ordered the same thing lol. My cousin, Nadz, hates unagi but after forcing a spoon down her throat, I think she might just like it a lil bit more now ;p Nadz had the Gyutamaju, sliced beef and egg in soy over rice which she loved. I had a bite of hers and the beef was so tender – I’d liken it to a truncated beef sukiyaki in a bowl actually – I’m ordering this next time! We also shared the Ikabata Yaki, stir-fried squid in butter and garlic, holy batman amazing. Every set comes with a small bowl of soft cold tofu, clam miso soup and pickles too.
Chako is so good at what it does, it’s put me in this permanent Japanese food mood; I am endlessly thinking about everything I ate since Sunday and I’d go there more often if I wasn’t living off a student allowance D: The food there is definitely not everyday cheap but where else can you take a 3 hour trip to Tokyo for under $30?
I’d like to wish all my Chinese readers across the globe a very stellar Lunar New Year! GET THOSE ANGBAOS, PEOPLE! x
Chako
Tel: 6776 3919
134 West Coast Way
Hong Leong Garden Shopping Centre
Mon – Fri: 12:15pm – 2:30pm, 6:30pm – 10:30pm
Sat – Sun: 6:30pm – 10:30pm
P.S: They have excellent customer service btw, they don’t open during lunch hours on Sunday but Diana did her superwoman thing and got them to open for us. A+, ‘mainstream’ sushi joints you could never.
I think Japanese shrooms tend to get overlooked here in Singapore since it’s readily available all year, you can find it anywhere, and a packet is just under a dollar (if you know where to look). Most people tend to go for the meatier, more expensive field or portobello variety which I’m also obsessed with and I’m lucky to be living in Australia where these shrooms cost half the price they get sold for in Singapore. The bad? The ‘specialty’ Japanese shrooms are expensive and should be avoided when you’ve spent half your allowance on things best left hidden away from the mothership LOL. Every time I fly home I make sure I eat my fill of Japanese shrooms until I can’t stand the sight of them anymore.
I like the idea of having Japanese food for New Year’s because it makes me feel like I’m one with my people HAHAHAHA RIGHT! The Japanese have this ritual of eating certain foods during New Year’s and while I’m not entirely sure whether they actually eat soba then but what the heck let’s pretend they do! I hope you guys like this recipe, it’s simple and clean eating – what the Japanese do best.
Tsuyu is essentially the dipping sauce that comes with your soba noodles and you can get it at any supermarket with a Japanese food aisle. Muslims might have some trouble finding a bottle without mirin or sake in it so here’s a recipe I always follow. Just replace the mirin with a little white grape or apple juice and add less sugar since juice is inherently packed with fructose ;p And because we’re already eating the soba noodles with the exact same tsuyu we’ve made/bought, I’ve added a couple of twists for the tsuyu simmering sauce so everything doesn’t end up tasting the same 
Tsuyu Simmered Shimeji Mushrooms with Cha Soba
Ingredients
Chilled tsuyu
Cha soba (or normal soba if you prefer)
1 packet shimeji mushrooms (enoki works great too!)
A squeeze of lime juice
1 tablespoon soy sauce
Shredded seaweed1. Cook the soba according to the instructions on the packet. Drain the pot when done and if you like your soba chilled, plunge the soba in ice cold water. Drain again and put it in the fridge until ready to eat.
2. Pour some tsuyu into a pot and throw in some shredded seaweed, lime juice and soy sauce.
3. When the tsuyu reaches a light boil, it’s time to dump in your shrooms!
4. Let it simmer for about 5-10 minutes or until all the shrooms are cooked.
5. Drain the mushrooms but don’t throw away the simmering sauce! You can pour it in a bottle, chill it and voila – dipping sauce for your next soba meal!
6. Get your soba out of the fridge, pile your shrooms on the noodles, garnish with more seaweed and roasted sesame seeds! Pour the rest of your chilled tsuyu in a small bowl and you’re all set! ME GUSTAAAAAAA
Happy 2012, everyone! Thank you for reading this tiny speck of space on the web, it means so much to me! 
I was thinking of changing my layout but I remembered how torturous it was for me to recreate all my graphics last year so I’m scrapping that idea LOL. I did, however, change the typefaces for my entry titles and headings so everything looks more streamlined now – that counts right? 8D I also just renewed my web hosting for another 3 years so I guess tea noir’s not going anywhere. Here’s to a beautiful and fulfilling year for everyone!
It’s strange. It’s never occurred to me to try my hand at making sushi despite it being a staple food I buy when I don’t have time to cook. I have made onigiri before to great success but never its more elegant sister, the maki roll. It’s a combination of factors that draw me away from making the maki: 1) I don’t have a bamboo mat. 2) Rolling sushi seems to be an art form that should be left to the professionals. 3) What if I screw up somewhere?
But one becomes brave enough to take a whack at making sushi when one spends too much on ASOS. If like me, you’ve fallen on hard times but aren’t willing to give up on your weekly Japanese dinners – I bring you THE NON-DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO MAKING SUSHI /o/
You should only use medium or short-grain rice to make sushi. Long-grain or the ever popular Singaporean favourites, jasmine and basmati rice, should not be used at all! They aren’t starchy enough to hold up the shape of the sushi.
Sushi vinegar
The recommended ratio for sushi vinegar is 5 parts rice vinegar: 2 parts sugar: 1 part salt (I used a tad more sugar tho)
Whisk the rice vinegar, sugar and salt in a bowl until everything has dissolved. I made a huge batch and stored in the fridge for future FOREVER ALONE sushi parties. I can’t say how much sushi vinegar you should put in your cooked rice because it depends entirely on your concoction and the amount of rice you’ve got. I eyeballed my measurements as per usual which on most days works pretty well but the universe decided my overconfidence towards cooking needed a shake-up so I ended up adding a little too much vinegar to my rice. Bleh ._.
Thankfully I discovered this was easily remedied by adding a few tablespoons of water to the rice. Of course as I type this, I can already imagine the many Japanese sushi chefs sharpening their knives, ready to make sashimi out of me for smearing their craft. The big deal? Well, you’re not supposed to add too much liquid to the sushi rice or it’ll get too sticky, making it hard to work with. But whatever man, as explicitly stated in my title this is totally not the real way to make sushi ;p Plus: sticky rice >>>> sour rice. Yep, I am clearly not striving for perfection LOL.
Rolling without a bamboo mat.
Honestly, after coming up with my method of rolling makis without the prerequisite bamboo mat – I don’t think I’ll ever invest in one haha! It’s just so easy to do it this way, this might actually be the start of a new way of making maki rolls 8D All you have to do is leave a gap at both ends of the seaweed square as seen in the first photo (when making rolls with a bamboo mat, one only leaves a gap at one end) and you can start rolling! Just tuck in the clean edge of the seaweed in and rollllll bb. Ah, I desperately wanted to make a lame joke about a particular Adele song but I shall refrain from doing so.
Cut your roll!
Take a very sharp knife, wet it to ensure the rice doesn’t stick to the steel and trim off the edges. Then simply cut your roll into pretty maki circles!
VOILA! My spicy salmon, avocado and furikake maki roll!
Best served with some awesome raspberry lemonade, of course. Get some rice, rice vinegar, seaweed squares, your filling of choice and start making your own maki rolls! It’s really not that hard as long as you don’t try to sell them 8D
I haven’t been here in more than a month, omg. I just got a little caught up with my mid-terms, such a killer D: I have missed this blog terribly though, hopefully no one’s thought I’ve abandoned it. But I’m sure you guys are used to my disappearing acts, non? ;p They’re not pleasant but it’s something I have to do when school morphs into a clingy, possessive boyfriend. Anyway, I’m not feeling well so I’m going to cut this entry short. Good night and stay safe, everyone! x
P.S In other news, my bff got invited to the exclusive Louis Vuitton opening preview party at their new Maison store at the Marina Bay Sands, SO JEALOUS OMFG WHAT IS THIS. Read about it on his blog here! Admittedly, I am not a die-hard LV fan like he is but that’s a place I’d love to check out when I fly back in December!
Just some photos of my lunch date in the city with my bff! I managed to sneak my miu miu bow bag out of the house without my mother knowing and finally after a year of repeated mental reminders to myself that my faux leather bags still looked great next to LK’s Louis Vuitton Tadao bag, WE ARE NOW EVEN MY DEAR FRIEND. Anyway, about my mother – bless her heart, the bag is mine but she insists I use it only for dinners or weddings.
Fancy dinners and weddings occur like, NEVER? That may be a bit of an exaggeration since I did just attend a couple of weddings last week but the point is the miu miu bow is an EVERYDAY bag, it’s not supposed to be unleashed only once every full moon (or in this case, blue moon) like a Taylor Lautner style underage werewolf. Besides, she already has the Chanel 2.55 on hand for special events lol so MOM I’M SORRY BUT I’M HIJACKING MY MIU MIU.
While I do enjoy catching up with my friends (and eating 3x my body weight), being back in Singapore does have its gripes.
1) I was on the train today and this 6-year-old girl is blasting Justin Bieber on her iPhone WTF? Dude, this is not cool. Parents, please educate your children before releasing them into the concrete wilderness kthx.
2) I know a lot of Malay guys are into tattoos, it’s really none of my business what you do with your body but please for the love of AESTHETICISM, DO NOT DIY YOUR OWN TATS. I have been treated to a visual non-gasm of scrawls in faded blue ink on arms and legs. I know a lot of people make the decision (or mistake) of tattooing their girl/boyfriend’s name onto their skin but please do not attempt to scratch “REENA SYG KU” into your skin without a professional’s help. TOLONG LAH SIKIT BILA KITA NAK MAJU NI?!
3) Cupid has some serious explaining to do. Suddenly EVERYONE is getting engaged/hitched/preggers. Two years ago, my mother flipped when she found out I was dating some guy and a couple of months later, she was so happy we were no longer together, it was almost criminal (criminal because it was a dark time for me and she could have at least masked her happiness a little) Now, she is flipping out because I am a fine-fresh-fierce single *snaps fingers* with no plans to date anyone. She’s bent on getting me to date her friend’s son whom btw is SO NOT BOYFRIEND MATERIAL.
Despite the er, indulgent nature of this blog, I am not a superficial bitch. In terms of men, as cliche as it sounds, I don’t believe looks are everything. I like a guy I can converse with over pertinent issues, someone who laughs with me and maybe someone who understands the importance of LANVIN in a girl’s life (LOL I’M KIDDING!) But yeah, this “potential” boyfriend my mother had in mind just wasn’t someone I’d picture myself with. It’s great that my friends and cousins are getting engaged but it’s also great that I’m single and blissfully happy with the way my life has been – besides I want LANVIN, not diamonds ;p
ALL MAH SINGLE LADIES, I GOT CHO BACK GIRLS! x
A couple of days ago, I decided to brave the morning sunlight and make another batch of gyoza(s) with the leftover filling I had from my previous gyoza batch. It’s taken a month but I’ve managed to stay in my apartment for days at a time without getting into a boredom induced fit. It’s not that hard because once you’ve blown your money on 4 pairs of shoes in a span of 6 days, you don’t really have much of a choice, do you now?
The point is I’ve been cooped up in my room for most of the week, staying in bed as I befriend the stark, reclusive darkness of my room while watching movies on my macbook sans the greasy buttered popcorn. My cinematic adventures came to a standstill when my external HDD (hard disk drive, for you non-tech folk) choked on a deluxe movie hotdog (I think it was all the sauerkraut) and died. I think I must have died too because my life was in that external HDD- every single image I’d taken for tea noir was stored in there (and in HQ no less), my web design work, my portfolio, other bits of random shit – all equally precious to me.
It’s the perfect murder actually – the best way to kill someone is to commit tech murder. Get rid of a person’s computer and all forms of back-up he/she may possibly have and watch in glee as they quietly drown in their own desolate pool of tears. And maybe I shouldn’t have typed this slightly morbid paragraph, I don’t want the possibility of fueling a tech murder rage lol.
Disclaimer: I won’t be held responsible for any tech murders happening from this moment on kthxbai.
Afraid your computer would crash? It used to be so simple: Get an external HDD, back up everything and sleep comfortably at night knowing your files are safe from any impending virus attack. Of course, if you had a Mac in the first place, the possibility of getting hit by a virus is close to a zero so why not just save yourself a 2-3 years of misery with an unattractive Windows comp and get something snazzy off Apple.com? 8D Sadly we now live in an age where we need to get a BACK-UP FOR OUR BACK-UP; getting one external HDD just doesn’t cut it anymore, you gotta have at least two ._.
Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with Steve Jobs and Apple Inc- yeahhhh dassright dassright bb, I’m just one of those regular Mac snobs Windows lovers are accustomed to hate. Don’t worry tho, even if you are a Windows user, I don’t choose my friends based on their preferred operating systems lol (look at Nadz, she’s a Windows fan and she’s still alive lol) so I’d love you just the same – pinky promise! ;D
OKAY BACK TO THE MAIN OBJECTIVE OF THIS ENTRY: Yes! Gyoza! They look difficult to make but don’t be deceived by their fancy crimped edges: if a klutz like Nadz can make them – you can too! (LOL I’m sorry cousin, I know I’m name-dropping you excessively in this entry but know that I love you bbcakes <3) They're extremely versatile too, you can fill them up with almost everything you want (provided the combo tastes good, don't be daft and start thinking of chocolate, prawn and beetroot gyozas please) I've been making gyoza for two years now and they make such a good + cheap meal if you make a lot and freeze them all.
I’ve got a little prawn, minced chicken and cabbage thing going on thar.
This recipe makes about 60+ gyozas
Ingredients
250g minced chicken meat
300g prawns, chopped into pieces
5-6 cabbage leaves, chopped
2 tablespoons of minced garlic and ginger (I use a pre-bottled minced garlic and ginger mix I found at the Asian supermarket)
Soy sauce (don’t have any real measurements, I guess most of the time lol..maybe 5 tablespoons?)
Sesame oil (again, no real measurements. Use about 1 tablespoon? If you love sesame oil like me, use more!)
2 packets Gyoza skins
1. Make the gyoza filling! In a large bowl, combine minced meat, cabbage, soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic and ginger. Mix them together with your hands.
That’s right, get in touch with nature – USE YOUR HANDS. Mix them until the ingredients seem to stick with each other and won’t fall apart.
2. Spoon about a teaspoon of filling in the middle of your gyoza skin and moisten the edges of the gyoza skin with some water.
3. Start crimping, honey. Now this is the stumbling block for a lot of people because it’s pretty much the hardest part about making gyoza but it gets really easy once you get the hang of it.
I’m not going to go into the minute details pertaining to crimping the gyoza because there’s an excellent step by step picture tutorial here that’s guaranteed to make you a GYOZA CRIMPIN’ MASTER in no time.
I’m not a purist so I cheat and use any round, white chinese dumpling skin I can get my hands on – They’re the same thing. I like making gyozas on my chopping board, it’s the only flat surface I have available. The white atomic clouds you see aren’t a rare form of mould – it’s plain flour. I like freezing my gyoza after I’m done making them and the flour prevents them from sticking to the board once they’re frozen.
Remember less is more. Be a scrooge, you have to be economical with the filling of each gyoza or crimping is going to be a bitch.
My little gyoza minions ready to be frozen/cooked!
In the pan! You sorta fry the bottoms first til they’re crisp and then you dump about 1/3 cup of water in to steam the tops. More details on the cooking technique here.
What do you do when they’re all cooked? Make some dipping sauce, of course!
Fancy Gyoza Dipping Sauce!
50ml soy sauce or enough to fill a small dipping bowl (ooh real measurements now)
1 teaspoon rice vinegar or white vinegar
1 teaspoon sesame oil
some chopped spring onionsMix well and happy dipping!
Enjoy! If you have any questions, ask away in the comments!
Back to my external HDD, in a fit of moral panic I texted my dad and he said it might just be a problem with the casing/enclosure of the HDD so I went to get a new one for my still breathing HDD and it’s fixed now YAY! Sorry you had to read such a long rant (this could possibly be my longest entry yet lol) Have a good weekend, everyone! <3
So on Monday, I finally met Yumi for a pancakes and pasta brunch date – we were both from the same design school but never really knew of each other’s existence till she found me via tea noir and twitter. Coincidentally, we’re both going to be stuck in Melbourne for the next couple of years so I thought- ah what the heck, let’s quit being the cool, mysterious arty design bitchez we already are for a day and get to know each other lol!
Yumi’s half Japanese and prior to our date, she was trudging in the snowy mountains of Fukuoka, bravely battling the high winds to shop for the kitschy cute and weird Japan is known for. She told me she got me a couple of stuff which is incredibly sweet considering we’ve never officially met lol. I mean I could have easily been an unmarried 40 year-old man with a make-up fetish posing as a girl who writes beauty entries to lure other girls in but Yumi fearlessly decided that she was going to meet me despite the odds – you’re fierce, girl, just fierce.
LOL OK JUST SO WE’RE CLEAR: I am NOT a 40 year-old man posing as a girl mmkay. Anyway look at what Yumi got me:
HOLY. MOTHER. OF. OSAKA. When she handed me the bag (isn’t it the cutest plastic bag EVER?) I was like O__O dayumm, that’s like the whole of Japan in there rofl. She got me so many things from food to chocolate lip balm omg, thank you so much sweets!
She got me a bottle of her favourite leave-in hair treatment. I have no idea what brand this is but let me tell you girls, this is the SHIT right here. The treatment has a watery gel-like consistency and has the most amazing scent similar to that of sun-ripened fleshy peaches growing in the valleys of Persia. My life feels a little more complete now that my hair smells like peaches rofl XD Btw I am loving the engrish on the bottle – “Even turns high damaged hair from coloring and perm into moist, manageable, and shiny beautiful hair just by ‘Sa~tto’ applying it” HAHA WHUTTTT.
Yes, yes getting to the food bit now. ROYCE Fruit Bar Chocolate is a Hokkaido-exclusive, you can’t get it anywhere else except Hokkaido. Yumi’s mom received a box of ten from a friend and she gave me a piece to try. I don’t know about you guys but this feels as epic as someone giving birth to 10 beautiful babies and giving one of them away for the greater good. LOL WHERE AM I GETTING ALL THESE RIDICULOUS ANALOGIES FROM?
I have to be honest here: I’ve never been fond of mixing fruit with chocolate so being the skeptic I am, I was really expecting the usual: pieces of fruit stuck in a bar of milk chocolate (mehhh) but what lies beneath the deceiving milky pink packaging is perhaps THE best fruit-based chocolate I have ever tasted.
It’s mainly made of puffy cereal with pieces of mango, banana and assorted berries lodged in between the minute gaps and covered with a light berry-flavoured WHITE CHOCOLATE. You guys have no idea how obsessed I am with white chocolate – I know it’s not really chocolate but who cares.
ROYCE, please accept my sincere apologies, I will never doubt your supreme chocolatey powers for as long as I live. I will tell the stories of your chocolates to my children and they will then pass on these stories to their own children, thereby continuing your chocolate legacy forever. God, I’m so high on sugar right now (I just ate 2 donuts), someone save me before I start rambling incoherently >_>
Milk-flavoured candy + keepsake tin can = happiness. It’s a magic formula!~
WHOO HOO JAPANESE CURRY! And at only 178kcal per serving, how can something so good be….diet-friendly?!! BRB MOVING TO JAPAN NOWS TTYL.
OMG another pack of royal milk tea kit kat!! T__T I’m hiding this one in my room to prevent chocolate thieves, I am not going to let this out of my sight.
Kellogg’s Cocoa Rice Krispies lip balm…I have no words – I’m completely out of adjectives to describe how awesome this is. It smells and tastes like chocolate, I’m awfully tempted to just eat the damn thing.
Yumi hooked me up with a copy of egg magazine which focuses on the gyaru fashion culture in Japan.
Japanese make-up tutorials are epic, they’re really detailed and give you step-by-step instructions on how to recreate a certain look. I think this page shows you how to apply different falsies, so fascinating lol.
Oh and Yumi, here’s proof that I have a cat LOL. He sleeps in the weirdest positions ever. Thank you so much for the Japan-in-a-bag treat lol, I LOVE EVERYTHING and er thanks to your filtering/packing horror stories lol, I’ve started to pack and I totally agree with you when you said..
PACKING IS A BEECH. OMFG YOU GUYS. My pretty glitter-flecked knits…my gold brocade skirt..my houndstooth sweater..my warm cosy layering basics…my sexy forest green dress my mother must never see T__T I think I’m going to have a serious clothing meltdown soon urghhh.
I’m going to take photos of my make-up collection before I start wrapping them up in bubble-wrap, that should be interesting lol. The MAC All Ages, All Races, All Sexes Collection is finally out in Singapore, I bought a couple of things from the collection yesterday so you girls can expect that in my next entry ;D
It suddenly dawned on me a couple of days ago that the salmon onigiri I buy all the time with its mysteriously salty “ah I would never be able to do this at home” flakey salmon centre was nothing more than easy-peasy pan-fried flaked salted salmon furikake wrapped in sushi rice and a sheet of seaweed. It was a hoax cleverly orchestrated by my local sushi counter and I can’t believe I fell for it hook, line and sinker- damn those bitchez.
I will spare you guys any further theatrics but first, I must give credit where credit is due. This furikake recipe is based on two recipes I found on Just Bento: Salted Salmon Shiozake and Salmon Furikake. I’ve adjusted the recipe mainly because I don’t consume alcohol so I’ve replaced the sake with rice vinegar and totally left out the mirin. You can totally follow the recipes on Just Bento but I’d thought I’d list out what I used for my muslim readers.
Get a nice salmon fillet, no funny frozen ones please. We want it fu-resh! And no, I know it’s awfully tempting to get that discounted salmon fillet on clearance but don’t! You have to consume any discounted fish on the same day of purchase and unfortunately this recipe requires that you marinate the fish overnight so erm if you still refuse to pay that 4-5 odd dollars for fresh salmon, don’t blame me if you get a 5 ft tapeworm living in your intestines the next couple of months mmkay? ^_^
SEA SALT! Don’t let the whole “organic” thing on the package fool ya, I only bought this pack of organic rock salt/sea salt because it was surprisingly cheaper than normal sea salt lol. I won’t recommend using normal table salt because 1) noone makes salted salmon with table salt, trust me I googled 2) sea salt just sounds waaay cooler.
Wipe the fillet to get rid of excess moisture and here comes the fun part: grab a handful of salt, start pouring it all over the salmon while gently pressing the salt into the firm salmon flesh. Make sure both sides are covered and you are well on your way to cheap salted salmon flakes.
Now’s the hard part: You have to leave it in the fridge overnight. I know, I know – waiting sucks but be patient, it will be worth the wait. Wrap the salmon up in a few layers of kitchen towel, place it in a sieve with a plate underneath to catch any drips and leave it in the fridge.
The next day, unwrap your little salmon pickle and pan-fry/grill it with a little oil and a few tablespoons of rice vinegar til cooked. Use a fork or your bare hands to flake the cooked fillet, removing any bones you may find. Wipe the pan and dump the flakes back in with a splash of soy sauce and rice vinegar.
Stir the flakes around to quicken the drying process; Just Bento suggests “you can leave the flakes fairly moist, or continue stirring until they are quite dry and finely flaked. The more you dry it out, the longer it will keep. Just do not let it burn or color too much.”
So there you have it! Simple and delicious salmon furikake~ Honestly it’s supposed to be a lighter orange color but I kinda OD’ed on the soy sauce LOL You can use this to top your rice or use it as a filling for your onigiri. I didn’t have the time to make pretty lil onigiri so I made some sushi rice, placed it in my bento box and sprinkled some of the salmon furikake + some strips of seaweed! Makes a really good, frugal lunch XD
This entry is dedicated to my homeboi Aaron who sent me some of his rough figure sketches he did for school, you make me so proud bb! Straight A’s at design school this semester, werk it!
LOVE THE SHOES IN THIS ONE!
Mmm what a hottie.
I’ve got more to show actually but I like these two best ;D (and this entry is getting seriously long) so I’m going to stop yakking, apologise in advance if this entry is filled with grammar mistakes (it’s almost midnight, forgive me!) and bid you all good night! If you’ve got any questions regarding the recipe, ask me in the comments ;D
