It has been hard to forget the first time I saw the movie “Small Forest”, the inner calm and peaceful moved, as if to see the material is not abundant childhood, that eat everything is very delicious.
Children are particularly greedy, after school all the way to smell the smell of the food next door, home is the most looking forward to dinner one day.
When I grow up, I often use convenience stores or takeout for three meals a day. What to order has become the most tangled problem every day.
The choice of food is growing and the number of fine restaurants is endless, but eating can seem like a loss of happiness.
How to wake up sleeping taste buds? The answer comes from Yataro Matsuura, one of the best living men in Japan.
“If life is only about convenience and novelty, it will be tasteless. The delicious food is the taste of the creator, who was born from passion, sincerity and effort for the consideration of the diners.”
For 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, he thinks about more simple and nutritious hand cooking. You might come up with a thousand ideas on how to make a dish taste better and make it easier to cook, and try them out and come up with just a few.
It is this twist that makes his tips easy to practice and convincing.
His credo is to live mindfully every day. He created a website called “The Basics of Life” to share ideas and thoughts about food, clothing and shelter. Under his influence, people around him began to look at the beauty of everyday life.
His unique lifestyle aesthetic, The 100 Basics series, was immediately acclaimed and reprinted as many as 11 times a year, revered by millions of Japanese. In his new book, The 100 Basics of Life, he takes a closer and more honest look at the beauty of everyday life, deconstructs every step of it hand by hand, and uses his lifelong pursuit of basic life practices to help people regain a sense of order in their lives and live as normal as a new day.
The simplest food he writes about can burst into a touching, wondrous burst of flavor as a result of the chef’s careful preparation. It can be as simple as a warm soup of radish in winter or a refreshing bowl of cold cucumber noodles in summer.
Give up the high-oil, high-salt diet of modern society and only taste the freshest and rustic ingredients of the season.
Let’s follow Yataro Matsuura’s guide to 10 of the simplest Japanese recipes to make a comforting meal for yourself or your family.
Egg bun rice is a modified Western food invented by the Japanese. It began to appear at the end of the Meiji era. It is both a popular menu in western restaurants and a home-cooked dish. I believe that everyone has their own favorite omelet. Spread the fluffy omelette over the chicken rice, then quickly flip the omelette and rice, and finish with the special sauce. Egg bun rice, which comes in all shapes and sizes, is a creative dish.
When it comes to egg-packed rice, chicken rice is the key to its taste. Make the fragrant chicken rice, then cover or wrap the baked omelet as you like, and the delicious egg bun rice is complete. Here’s a heart-pounding egg bun made by covering a small amount of chicken rice with a fluffy omelet.
The most important ingredient in the recipe for the best chicken rice is soy sauce, which makes a delicious egg bun.
“Making Method”
1. Remove the skin on the chicken legs, cut the chicken legs into 1cm pieces, add salt and black pepper, and rub thoroughly with your hands.
2. Pour the olive oil into a saucepan over medium heat. Add the garlic to the saucepan and fry until fragrant.
3. Add the onion to the pan and fry over medium heat for 2 minutes. Add the chicken legs and fry for 3 minutes.
4, add tomato sauce and soy sauce, mix well, pour rice, high fire stir-fry. Finish with some parsley and the chicken rice is ready.
5. Make 1 omelet per head. Pour 2 eggs into a bowl, add water and salt, and mix well with chopsticks.
6. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Pour the eggs into the saucepan and immediately stir with chopsticks.
7. Use the edges of the pan to shape the omelet. Place the omelet over the chicken rice and sprinkle with black pepper.
“Ingredients for Chicken Rice (Serves 2)”
Chicken leg… 100g
Olive oil… Two spoons
Garlic… 1 clove (chopped)
Onions… 1/2 (chopped)
Parsley… 2 tablespoons (chopped)
Ketchup… 60g
Soy sauce… spoonful
Salt… pinch
Black pepper… pinch
Rice… 150g
“Ingredients for an Omelet (Serves 2)”
Eggs… 2 times 2
Water… 1 tablespoon times 2
Salt… A pinch times 2
Butter… 10 g * 2
02
“The beauty of cooking lies in the preparation
Muta Bangzi style carrot rice,
Shredded fried tofu and carrots.”
In her book, the prose writer Yoshiko Masuda recounts a story about a woman named Kuko Mueda. When she was busy at work, she would want to go into the kitchen and make a lot of stews and carrot rice. She would put them in the refrigerator and start working without thinking about herself.
For carrot rice, “Cut carrots and fried tofu into thin shreds, then cook them slightly for sweetness and mix them with cooked rice.” This can also be said to be a delicious emergency food made by Muta for himself. I laughed out loud at the thought of her ingenious trick. But either way, it must taste really good. In that case, I might as well follow her steps, so I made carrot rice.
It’s a lot of work to shred carrots and fried tofu, but if you do it carefully, it’s easy. Next, stir fry sesame seeds and chopped ginger. I have a light flavor, you can adjust the amount of soy sauce you like.
“Making Method”
1. Pre-cook the rice.
2. Cut the fried tofu into 1/6 pieces and put them into boiling water. Cook for about 5 minutes and remove the oil.
3. Completely cool, press with kitchen paper, drain, and shred.
4. Cut the carrots into thin pieces about 1.5cm long and chop the ginger.
5, open the medium heat, the stock, soy sauce, cooking wine into the pot, boiling into the fried tofu.
6. Cook for about 5 minutes, add carrots, stir well and continue to simmer until dry.
7. Turn off the heat, add the ginger and sesame seeds, and stir evenly.
8. Mix the ingredients into the rice. Sprinkle salt to your liking.
“Materials for 4 Persons”
Carrots… 140g
Fried tofu… 1 sheet
Stock… 100mL
Soy sauce… spoonful
Cooking wine… Two spoons
Ginger… 10g
Fried sesame seeds… Two spoons
Salt… A little
Rice… 0.15l
03
“How happy we would be if we could absorb it while learning it
— Make it your own by baking apples more often.”
Baked apples are a famous American family dish. Every family has different flavors and recipes. In America, a good baked apple can be eaten on the go. It is the taste of mother and is a dessert that anyone will enjoy.
Here’s how to quickly make baked apples during the apple harvest season. It’s super easy. You can choose your favorite side dishes, such as raisins, nuts, etc. I suggest you do it several times to explore your own style. Also, enjoy steaming apples with vanilla ice cream.
The roasted apples are also very tasty overnight. It’s a little bit softer in the microwave, but the flavor is really penetrating.
“Making Method”
1. Cut the washed apple in half and scoop out the core with the tip of a knife. Arrange the apples in an oven lined with cooking paper. Divide the butter into 10g chunks and place them in the same place as before the pits. Juice orange simultaneously with the juicer.
2. Sprinkle cinnamon and caramel on the apple slices.
3. Spoon over the honey and pour the juice evenly over the whole apple.
4. Bake in a 160C oven for about 40 minutes.
5. Transfer the baked apples to another container, scoop up any remaining sauce from the tray, and pour over the apples.
6. Plate the apples and serve with vanilla ice cream. In addition, you can use a peeler to break up the peel of the orange and sprinkle it over the apples.
“Materials (manageable components)”
Apple… 3
Butter… 60g
Cinnamon… 3g
Caramel… 40g
Honey… 60g
Oranges… 1 piece
Vanilla ice cream… Appropriate amount
04
“You should always try everything for yourself
— A delicious hand made of citrus vinegar that silences all delicious people.”
Japanese hot pot can’t be eaten without citrus vinegar, a wonderful combination of fresh and refreshing juices and rich umami juices. Try making chicken scald with handmade citrus vinegar tonight!
“Hand Made Citrus Vinegar”
Hand-made citrus vinegar is so delicious you want to bang the table. “If it’s so delicious, I want to make it myself, even if it takes a little effort.” — That’s what anyone who wants to try it thinks. Even the picky yummy ghost, will be convinced of it speechless.
1. Wring out the wet towel and gently wipe the dirt on the surface of kelp.
2. Add soy sauce and Japanese sweet cooking wine in a small pot and open fire to heat. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and cook for about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool completely.
3. Mending basket on a bowl, place citrus fruit and start juicing. To press fruit, cut the fruit in half crosswise with a knife and squeeze gently. If squeezed, it will taste bitter, so please pay attention.
4, squeeze clean, add soy sauce, Japanese sweet cooking wine, kelp, bonito dried in juice, wrap with plastic wrap, in the refrigerator for 2 days.
5. Mending the mending belt and filtering dried bonito in a mending basket is done.
* The leftover bonito dried in mending basket could be wrung from with chopsticks or other tools.
* Pour the citrus vinegar into a storage container and keep in the refrigerator for about 2 weeks. But the fragrance is volatile, it is recommended to use up about 1 week.
“Material (Easy to handle portion · about 400mL)”
Citrus juice… 1 cup (200mL)
Grapefruit, tangerine, pumpkin, etc., depending on personal preference
Soy sauce… 1 cup
Japanese sweet cooking wine… 80mL
Kelp (10cm x 3cm)…… 4 tablets
Bonito dried… 25g
Matsuura so gently and in such minute detail, he passed on to everyone his tips and reminders for everything from cooking and daily tasks to organizing closets, cleaning and shopping for vegetables and spices.
Once in a while, stop and re-evaluate the things you normally take for granted. Encounter the beauty in life that is born of the connection between hand and heart.
Let’s spend today with Matsuura Yataro.
