African scene - oil painting

Just to show off my progress - I painted a picture for a friend of mine for Christmas. It hasn't been dried yet - this is the weird shining on the tree leaves.
She loves African stuffs, so I decided to create a savanna scene in sunset:

Once I read a quote from someone, that you are on the good path when you know, your knowledge is far from perfect :) Yeah, great to discover the faults and take care of them next time ;) There is a Japanese word, kaizen - meaning lifetime learning, developing your skills continuously  It is pretty worthy to remember of it - improves my patience as well :D

Again something Japanesish to shovel into the belly :)

Might be a bit boring, but today's dinner was again something rather Japanese style.
A friend of mine just got bored and wanted to eat with someone, so I "used him out" a bit and sent for shopping :D Unfortunately the main ingredient, maple syrup was out of stock everywhere, but don't panic, I solved the problem - somehow.

The soup was very easy to cook from chicken neck, carrot and leek with miso paste:

The main dish was a kind of Japanese-Italian-Canadian for me, but what a wonderful taste!
Some days ago I saw a maple syrup marinated beef steak somewhere and tried to find the recipe. Used this one: easy: soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, maple syrup and garlic for the marinate. Here came my trick: instead of maple syrup I used chopped walnut and Golden syrup. Not the same taste of course, but really delicious!
You only have to put the beef into this mixture for 15 minutes and then grill for 15 minutes as well. The surface should be a bit crunchy, but inside it is beautifully rose and raw <3 Oishiiiii!
Just need a sharper knife to slice it thinner.

The dessert needed the maple syrup again, the substitution was Golden syrup and a special sugar mixture what I received from a friend of mine for Xmas ^-^ Let's say it was an American pancake's happy marriage with a waffle :) Topped with sour cherry in the above mentioned sugar rush and whipped cream.

Itedakimasu ^-^

The Japanese blog dinner

I organize blogdinners every once in a while and today we had Japanese day :)
I tried to find different dishes from different areas of Japan.

This is how it looked like before we destroyed the whole table:

The soup was a really simple miso-soup with chicken and shiitake mushroom:

The next dish was nigiri sushi. Sendai (Miyagi prefecture) inspired me to create the weird red one. After the WWII a Japanese restaurant owner started to use some leftovers by military forces near this area. These were beef tongue and oxtail. The tongue gained a high popularity all over Japan, they create it as sushi, grilled or in curry. The oxtail is cooked as a soup and served as part of the beef tongue menu.

I found only smoked beef tongue in the market.

The white nigiri is octopus.

The main dishes are from Osaka: okonomiyaki and takoyaki (just a quick Japanese lesson: yaki means grilled). Okonomiyaki is my favorite and served the purpose of "life bouy", if something goes wrong tonight :) And the dish which had quite big chance to destroy the evening is... the takoyaki. It is very simple pancake based balls filled with octopus. The problem is in Japan they use a special baking form made from heavy iron. I tried to buy it last year, but I could not lift it with one hand, that's why decided to buy just a small baking form. Nah, I have to say takoyaki cannot (CANNOT) be baked in oven :( Even 220 degree was not enough. I tried a fried egg Tefal form to make some small flat pieces, and also to transform the little ugly shapeless somethings from the oven into an eatable but still ugly "takoyaki". 

Both dishes are decorated with okonomiyaki sauce and mayo. 

Ohm, I just discovered the shape of the takoyaki plate... really sorry, do not show it for children.. or say, it is an ugly Christmas tree :)))

And the dessert is mochi.

Green tea mochi, green tea covered with kinako (roasted soybean flour) and "ume-mochi": artificially colored and in the middle you can see umeboshi.

My usazukin's choice was the ume-mochi tonight :)

My first oil painting

I started an oil painting course some weeks ago. I loved drawing when I was  kid (Als das Kind Kind war.. :)), but sucked at ratio and aquarell.
Now bought the famous Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain instruction book by Betty Edwards and let's see how I proceed...

This is my first oil painting: an empty bottle with a candle inside, put in front of black bunting:

Ichi, ni, san, yon, go, roku, shichi... shichimi?

On my last Japanese lesson we learned the numbers and by the number 7 I was thinking, that I have a spice called Shichimi, bought in Kyoto, and whether it has anything to do with the number. Yes, it does, Shichimi means Seven tastes, because it is a mixture of 7 spices.

I had chicken thighs (without skin ;)), and the recipe I found is the following:

• 1 cup flour
• 1tbs Shichimi
• 1 piece of garlic
• salt, pepper

I dipped the chicken into the flourmix, then into egg, and again into the mix. And would have fried into lots of oil, if I have had enough, thus something was hissed in the bottom of the pan - diabetic version. :) Five drops of sesame oil were added.

And to increase my creativity I painted today (it is not allowed to spit on it, I have a sensitive mood today). The original picture was found on facebook.

The Indian taste

Recently a very dear friend of mine visited me and she cooked marvelous Indian food. I had a desire  today for something similar.
I tried to use double extent from spices as I would put in, just remembering her operance in my kitchen, but still it was half so spicy :) However even the curry bottle committed suicide and jumped into the pan (hallelujah for Paris and my laziness: I should have not prepare the spice, but could finally open the one I bought 2 years ago).
After I unfroze the big whitish something, it turned out not to be chicken thighs, but chicken skin. Why on Earth did I freeze something, I would never eat? Remains a riddle forever. So liver was the choice.

And the recipe:
I braised an onion on lot of oil (maybe 4 tbs), dropped half piece of hot paprika and 4 small cocktail (pronounced as "cock tail") tomato, poured some water on it. At this phase the curry bottle dove :D (Curry Madras), and I added more red paprika, pepper, chili and salt. Oh and a garlic (German one, it is much bigger than the Hungarian ... I can say this only about garlic, have no other data :))
At the end came the liver and at the very end the peas.

Pure, not stirred

After

About Indian food - similar to Hungarian - always the book "Shogun" came into my mind, where the Japanese explained to Anjin-san why it is important to have a separate house for the kitchen :D

Woman, when you move about in your household service your limbs sing like a hill stream among its pebbles. 
-- Rabindranath Tagore

My childhood drawings, paintings

I was speaking with a dear Indian friend of mine about paintings and winter sceneries, and it popped out that when I was a child (Als das Kind Kind war...) I painted a lot of snowy village scenes, because my mom loved it so much. And I grabbed my portfolio. If you could know what kind of childhood treasures are hidden inside and how much memories! Now you will know them :)

The oldest pictures I found was exactly the snowy ones from my 9-11-year-old period. No, I wasn't a genius, but I liked doing it.

Nah and from now on please don't ask me where does my love towards Japan come from... because it is so old, I even can't remember :) These pictures are copies from ukiyo-e in my book "Snow, moon, cherry blossom". Ooops, now I have opened it and a draft felt out, together with a graphics bought in Paris :D The pictures are from my 14-16 yo age and done with colorpencils.
Well, yes, even such an early age I had no patience to finish things.

And now comes the adult content from 16-20 yo period maybe :)
That awkward skull made with brushpen stuck to really dark memories :(
The guys are created with pencil - the first one was coming from a Chippendale calendar that I received as a birthday present from a friend of mine. Handsome blondie with green eyes (L)
The abstracts again made with brushpen.

And finally a painting from my grandfather. Unfortunately we did not share the same blood, so i could not inherit his talent :(

Birthday lunch a la Japonais

My mom had a birthday in the middle of October, I promised her to invite her for a lunch in a good place. The good place turned out to be finally my flat :D Her only request was not to include any raw fish or meat (somebody knows me very well :)) Of course she could not run away from the Japanese style.

In details: it was a 4 course menu with appetizer, soup, main course and dessert. And of course with Japanese beer.

With more details:
Salmon misosoup, I used a modified version of kasu-jiro from runnyrunny999: instead of the fried tofu I used original one and had not got the salmon cream. Open-eyed readers have already observed on the previous picture, that the 2 soups look differently: my mum received leek, and I got wakame - dried algae.

Daigakuimo
Even though I put it on the table as an appetizer, might be that this is a dessert :) Sweet potato caramelized on sugar.

Yakisoba
Classical :) Chicken breast roasted with carrots, mushrooms and leek, mixed with pasta and poured with yakitori sauce. The sauce is a heaven, however its ingredients cannot really found in an average kitchen. Cheating again: I used mirin instead of honey.

Melonpan
Its name refers to its "exterior", has nothing to do with melon taste. It is not easy to make it: you need two kinds of dough: a short pastry and a batter. The batter has to be knead and flapped, really good exercise to get rid of stress, I could hardly stop myself :)
I mixed the base batter with macha powder (green tea), that's why the lower layer is a bit greenish. Two pieces of them is sprinkled with poppyseed. The melonpan is sometimes filled with different delicious creams. Unfortunately this was the first and last occasion that I baked it: we are not compatible with the little pat :(

Itadakimasu!

Mushipan

I'll go to Japan in spring! And I had to celebrate it. Recently found a new video by cookingwithdog and a new idea for the next celebration too (do I need a reason for it? No, I don't!)

Mushipan
You can translate it to steamed bun, and can be flavored according to your taste. The base dough consists of flour, sugar, water and baking powder. It is sprinkled with sweet potato and raisin.
Because I had cinnamon-sugar for long, I used that one.

The green elf - D9

And the last day... was hard to bring myself back to Hungary. :) Mostly that I had to work next day (just turned out later that I miscalculated my holidays and still have 4 days left :o ... brain damage).
Just to be sure first I headed to the airport, to be over the stressful part. After that I lugged all of my luggage (18+10 kg) into the city center and had an idea to visit the Guinness Storehouse. I became a big fan, although I hate beer, but this one is heavenly! It is not so bitter and the whip on the top tastes like a cappuccino :)

Guinness Storehouse
OK, let's make a beer! What do we need? Exactly 5 things are the basics for a good Guinness:

1. Barley - they use Irish barley
2. Hops - did you know that it can grow very high - even to 5 meters? It produces natural fragrances and oils, which adds flavours to the beer.
3. Water - comes form the close Wicklow Mountains (D3-D5 hiking trips!), every day 8 million litres! This is the reason why they established the brewery here, more than 350 years ago.
4. Yeast - it is grown in Dublin, and from the early 19th century the yeast from each brew is transferred on to the next, there is always a small amount locked int the director's safe :) 
5. Talent :) - Arthur Guinness established this brewery in 1759 and signed a leasing contract for 9000 years, including the access for the city's watersource. Clever guy ;)

  

  

  

  

OK, we have our 5 ingredients, let's make beer! Not really difficult: the barley is malted, roasted (at 230 degree for about 2.5 hours, only in the last 5-10 minutes changes its color), cooled down, milled, mixed with hot water and mashed.
It is filtered off and boiled with the hops (at 100 degree for 70 minutes).
Then the yeast is added and the fermentation begins (2 days).
At the end it is clarified, matured and ready for packing into barrels. :)

  

For perverts, like me, an interesting screenshot.

  

After that comes the enjoy of the beer (needed sense-organ is the eye), then the testing (eye, nose, tongue). Interesting - at least for me: you have to leave the draught beer alone for 2 minutes for self-clarification. When it is poured into the glass, it is an ugly whitish brew, like it would be only foam. And it starts to clarify and became the well-known black beauty.

  

The expensive ticket included either to teach me how to draw off beer or a pint of Guinness on the 7th floor Gravity Bar (or a cola... hahaha...). The queue was too long at the draught and I was a bit unsure about my own abilities, therefore I chose the bar. Was a really weird feeling, like a daylight disco with panorama onto the whole city!

  

And at the end my usual shopping mound - for myself :D

Summary: I can only recommend Ireland, mostly for those who like friendly people, the nature and fat food :)