ごまの炒り方・すり方(How to roast and grind sesame seeds)

In my previous entry on May 21, I wrote the Okra recipe using sesame seeds.
Some of my friends didn't know how to roast and mill sesame seeds, so I put the procedure below:)

1. Prepare a pan without oil(Sesame seeds contains oil, so we do not need to put oil in a pan). Heat the pan at low heat.
2. Put sesame seeds in the pan(arrange sesame in one layer). Cook at medium or low heat, shaking the pan, move it to or from the fire.
*careful! Sesame seeds are easy to get burned!
3. When 2 or 3 sesame seeds splatter, turn off the fire. Keep shaking the pan since there still be remaining feat.

See the pic below on how they look like after they're roasted.
The image is small, so click it and see with a bigger picture:)



4. Grind sesame with すり鉢(suribachi:mortar)&すりこ木(surikogi:pestle). If you don't have them, you can use mill. When you use mill, only 1 second process is enough to grind sesame.




Roughly grind sesame seeds like this.




After roasting sesame seeds, we usually grind them. If you don't grind them, it's too hard to chew up into pieces since they are so small, therefore they will be excreted without fully digested. So, to absorb enough nutrients from them, it' better to grind them. In addition to that, grinded sesame seeds taste much better than those of not.
It is best to grind them rough and leave some whole sesame seeds.

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オクラのゴマ和え (Okra dressed in sesame sauce)

It's too hot to go out in the day time now in Philippines...
At times like this, eat okra and recover!
It's said eating okra helps to releive summer lethargy.

This is very popular dish in Japan.
People uaually eat this in summer:)



[Recipe]

Ingredients for 2 people:

6 pieces of okra
3 big spoons of white sesame
1 big spoon of めんつゆ(Mentsuyu: noodle sauce)
1/2 small spoon of sugar

1. Boil okra until cooked through. Drain off hot water and cool them down.
2. Roast sesame in a pan and bray them in a mortar (If you don't have a mortar, you can use mill. If you use mill, only 1 second is enough to mill sesame).
You want to bray sesame like the picture below.



3. Remove caps from okra and cut them into one-bite size and mix them with sesame, Mentsuyu and sugar. Then it's ready to eat!



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Cafe Adriatico

Cafe Adriatico!! I have long wanted to visit!!
My Filippino friend took me to this place and I was so happy that I could finally find this place:)



My first try, I could not find the place since I didn't have the address.
I asked so many people where this place was, but all of them took me wrong places.
I did my best for 2 hours, but I just simply resigned in the end.
Just got too hungry to keep on searching the place.
Later I found out that they were closed down by fire at that time anyway.

I don't want you to have same experience like I did, so I put the address below:

Cafe Adriatico
Address
1790 M Adriatico St Malate
Phone
02 525 2509
Hours
11am-11pm



The reason I wanted to visit this place were that it's famous for the good foods and the atmosphere. Cafe Adriatico is a remodeled pre-war house. I love traditional and historical places! I love their another restaurant "Abe" which is in the Fort area, too.

We ordered chocolate eh and enjoyed the place:)



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みりん (Mirin)

In my precious entry, I used みりん(Mirin) for cooking. It's a Japanese condiment contains about 14% of rich alcohol. I'm sure that everybody has Mirin in their kitchen since it's used for so many Japanese recipes. It's essential for Japanese food!

Mirin usually looks like this.
The price is normally about 130yen for 200ml, 400yen for 1L.



If you want to know more about Mirin, Wikipedia has a page for it:)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirin

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お漬物 (Otsukemono) -soy sauce based version-

Living abroad, I miss Japanese food so much!
Fortunately, I can find some ingredients for Japanese food where I live.
So, I cooked easy but traditional Otsukemono today.

If there is Kimuchi for Korean, Otsukemono is for Japanese!
You eat Otsukemono with rice. It's a good side dish:)

Cucumber in Philippines is too big compared to Japan.
I prefer cucumber in Japan.





Ingredients for 4 people:
2 pieces of cucumber
(If it's not like Japanese cucumber, but big one, 1/2 of cucumber)
2 big spoon of soy sauce
1 big spoon of Mirin
1/2 piece of garlic


1. Grate the garlic. Cut cucumber into one-bite size
2. In a bag, put all the ingredients and put it in a fridge
3. Wait half day and it's done.

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RUN FOR JAPAN!!

There was a charity run for Japan. I like running and I wanted to help people who suffered from Tsunami, so I participated in that event!
I was in Japan when Tsunami happened, and even though it was pretty far from where earthquake happened I could feel the ground moving for more than 5 minutes. I can imagine how awful people felt in Sendai and Fukushima.


First, you need to register! I paid 350 pesos for registration.
They have 3k, 5k and 10k courses. Since I'm a beginner, I took 3k.



Around 4:50AM. Already so many people there!



3k starts at 5:50AM! RUN FOR JAPAN!!
Why it's so early in the morning? Because it gets super hot after this.



... I got lost while taking pictures and accidentally took 5k course.
I ran 5k, anyway.



There were some jumping points:)



Thanks doggy :)



I really appreciate people's kindness!
Thank you for helping my country!!