🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <2054@aegis.or.jp> davidg@aegis.or.jp (Dave McLane) writes:

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   Lots of good information here and following (which I've cut). The
   main thing I could add so far is that you don't usually eat just
   noodles plain but with some kind of 'soup' (don't know what the word
                                               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
   is in Japanese, but I've seen 'soup' in katakana). 
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   Also easy are the bottles of 'da-shi' and 'tsu-yu' you see in the
                                 ^^^^^^       ^^^^^^
Why, Dave, it seems you DO know the words... :-) :-) As best as I can
tell, Tsuyu refers to the cold dipping sauce variety like you have with
zaru-soba or soumen. Dashi is soup stock and is an ingredient in a
number of things including miso soup. I asked one of the Japanese
engineers here, and he said that the soup in ramen and other warm noodle
dishes is just called soup. (su-u-pu)

   supermarket (labels in hiragana). You just open the bottle, pour
   some in a bowl adding water if it doesn't say 'staight' (usually in
   katakana). Then you can add 'ki-za-mi' chopped 'ne-gi' (something
   like chives but not so strong a taste), 'o-ro-shi' (grated ginger,
   which you can get in a plastic tube), and maybe some chopped
   'myo-ga' (sorry, don't know what this is in English). You eat the
   noodles by dipping them in the soup. 

Negi are simply green onions. Oroshi just means "grated." When I hear
the word "oroshi" all by itself, I tend to think of "daikon oroshi"
rather than "oroshi shoga." Daikon oroshi is also a common thing to dump
in your tsuyu. I was married to a Japanese woman for about 7 years, so I
know a lot of kitchen words. Besides I like to cook (and eat) so I paid
attention to these words. :-)

   Ladies my laugh when they hear about this kind of "cooking" but,
   hey, it tastes great!

In my experience most ladies (especially Japanese ladies) don't seem to
expect men to be able to boil water, so I don't think you'll get laughed
at.

If you like easy dishes, you might want to look on your grocers shelves
for instant "kama-meshi." A "kama" is a pot for making rice. The inside
part of an electric rice cooker is the kama. Anyway, kama-meshi is most
of a complete meal that is cooked in a rice cooker. The instant ones are
a package of vegetables and meat or seafood that you pour into your rice
cooker with your rice and water, then you just flip the switch. When
it's done you usually have to stir the veggies and stuff back in because
they tend to all end up on top. I think this is generally "winter food"
so you might get funny looks if you start asking around for it in
August.

If cutting things up and browning meat still falls within your
definition of "easy cookin'" I would also recommend instant Mabo-dofu.
Generally you get a package with the sauce in it. You brown some ground
meat in a pan, mix in the sauce and some cubed tofu let it simmer awhile
then throw in some chopped negis. It's actually chinese food, but quite
common in Japan. You can get it in varying degrees of spiciness. It's
easy, tasty and filling (you eat it with rice.)

I better end this for now, I'm getting hungry. :-)

Mark Dyer		English: markd@tdd.sj.nec.com
NEC America, Inc.	 $BF|K\(B$B8l(B: markd@csl.sj.nec.com
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