beans

hmmm.. contemplating if i should announce this..


i am officially... a fan of natto (japanese fermented beans)!! okie, to some people it's some kind of acquired taste to be able to appreciate it. the first time i tried it, i didn't like the taste nor smell. it was only due to my recent visit to Shinryoku that i fell in love with it.


i like it better than the chinese fermented beans (which people stirfry with minced meat and use it for other stuff) coz it's less salty, less likely to disintegrate easily when you bite it, it has this sticky texture which i like and most of all, it is one thing which makes me think of wanting to eat one bowl of sticky japanese rice with. these days, rice isn't exactly a staple for me.


i ate it with salmon again, but this time better salmon. i must also say that i added a new type of sauce into the mixture and everything went really well together. the natto is not so stinko (though to me, it smell all right) and makes it really sticky. yum yum, fun fun! haha


which brings me to the next thing that i wanna talk about. on Sat, i bought this Japanese salad dressing from Cold Storage. It's called 'Kurozu Dressing Onion'. At first, i didnt wanna get it coz i'm not exactly a fan of onion. however, after testing it on my simple salad, it's damn shiok and brings out the taste of the simple salad!! how simple is the salad? well, you only need 3 things.


Korean strawberries (sliced)
Cabbage (thinly cut/chopped/sliced)
Kurozu Dressing Onion (add according to your own preference)


I used Korean strawberries because they are sweeter and it adds a natural sweetness to the salad. The cabbage used was any cabbage you can find in markets. After chopping the cabbage into thin strips, you'd have a bowl full of cabbage and then put the sliced strawberries on top of the bed. drizzle the dressing on the cabbage and strawberries.


the dressing is slightly oily, sour, flavorful and brings out the sweetness from the strawberries even more. i guess it must be due to the onion in the sauce as well. i was surprised that the simple salad tasted awfully good!! Love it entirely and i will continue to buy this brand of dressing. it is very promising :D i can imagine using this sauce for so many other stuff!! For a price of $8.50 i think it's pretty worth it!


no wonder that bottle which i got was the last one.. hmm.. cool! Pictures next time i guess.. i didnt think of taking a pic of the dishes today. too tired and lazy!! haha, it's a work day after all!!

more things japanese

so i went grocery shopping earlier on. no plans as to exactly what i wanted to get, but i knew i wanted to get greens and lady's fingers were on top of my mind. so i ended up getting a couple of greens, canned tomatoes from HUNT's and i also got salmon sashimi as well as natto.


the taste of the maguro natto lingered so much in my mind that i so wanted to try more of it. i was just worried the kind of natto i was buying, didn't know if they tasted the same or are there any different. so i went to Cold Storage to check it out and realised that there were only two brands. one with the funny japanese doll face and another one nicely packed into 3 cups, organic and i dunno if it's because it's pretty green packaging attracted me to buy more than anything else, in the end i just got it. hoping it would taste exactly like the one i tasted the other day.


it's simple enough to make. coz everything was already prepped, you just need to mix everything together.

the green cup, came in a set of 3

the sticky natto!! see those silky strands!?

the super yummy soy sauce. so flavourful and not overly salty

the mediocre salmon sashimi.. haha..

i didnt take a pic of the final product in view of the fact that it is not very pleasant to look at. but it tastes delish enough and pretty yummy. i added a dash of lemon juice coz the salmon came with a slice of lemon and added the soy sauce in the sashimi set, with some wasabi as well.


ultimately, i think natto tasted better with maguro than salmon. but i am surprised that the natto itself is pretty good. hmm.. a good addiction for the new year i gather?? Haha..