INGREDIENTS

There are some Japanese foods that we're eating every day but we don't know their names and sometimes we meet them in the recipe books but we don't realize that we are actually familiar of it.

Azuki- dried small beans. Soaked with water first then cooked with rice or sweetened. Serve as a dessert.

Daikon radishes which are white in color and elongated like carrots. Some are very long at around 12 inches . All white inside and out. Peel before eating in row for salad and cooked in stew or soups.

Dashi- always present to all Japanese fish stock for preparing and seasoning for Japanese dishes. Fresh are from dried bonito flakes. Powderizes dashi are available in plastic and some in jars for stocking as an instant dashi at home.

Deep-fried tofu slices (abura-age) these are soft sliced to thin squares placed in transparent plastic plastic packet. keep always refregerated and to removed excess oil, must have to blanche first in boiling water. Drain from water and pat dry with paper towels

Dried bonito flakes (katsue bushi} are dried shaving of bonito fish prepared in different sizes. The larger sizes are for dashi soup stocks whereas the finer size are used for garnishing.

Japanese Soy sause- is an essential ingredients in most in asean countries. It is made from soybeans, wheat and salt. For Japanese there are readily prepared light soy sause available in their table, called it-usukuchi shoyu. Their soy sause for cooking is koikuchi shoyu which is more concentrated and taste heavier than the usukuchi shoyu.

Kanpyo- are long, thin strips of dried gourd that are used in sushi, slow cooked in claypot dishes and for tying foods together .

Konbu - a seaweed type of seefoods that made dried and sold as flat black sheets with white powder in the surface. Use as flavoring for sushi rice and dashi stock but discarded when suchi or dashi serve in the table