Rice Cooking!

On our walks, we have grown friendly with a neighbor Kazue who was born in Tokyo. We always stop and talk to her if she is in front of her house. We asked her if she would be interested in taking us on a shopping tour of Japanese markets. We had been to Little Tokyo in downtown Los Angeles, and we knew about Sawtelle on the West side of LA, but were unaware of any other Japanese areas.

Boy were we wrong! Gardena and Torrance we found out from Kazue were where there are large Japanese communities and many large grocery stores.
We spent the day there and had lunch at Sanuki no Sata in Gardena and went to several stores. We bought a Sanyo Rice Cooker.

Kazue was invaluable in showing us many vegetables and ingredients we would never have tried. She insisted on coming to our house later in the week to show us how to cook rice.

We had purchased rice from Japan, you had to repeatedly wash it before use. Once it was cooked in the rice keeper it would stay warm for over 12 hours. The rice was like no rice we had ever made, it was the short grain rice that is sticky that is similar to the rice in Sushi. You keep the uncooked rice in the freezer.

She also made a curry to pour over the rice. She refused to use our Japanese knives saying they were too dull. She went home and brought her own knife over and proceeded to dazzle us with her use of the knife. She made a shrimp curry from scratch. She took all of the shrimp shells and vegetable peelings home for her garden. The curry and the rice were great.

Feeling chastened Cliff finally watched the video that came with his Spyderco Triangle Knife Sharpener. It is a very weird contraption. Now the knifes are sharp and we won’t let them get dull again!.