I have been cooking almost every meal for myself after my mom left Taiwan. I found out I am getting more and more addicted to cooking. I always need to prep food on weekends and cook fast because I don’t have much time on weekdays. Cooking and exercise are basically the two main points on weekends and they do take most of the time in the life in Taiwan. Now my dad is almost home and it pushes me to review all those recipe for making quick meals after my dad is back, so that cooking wouldn’t affect my schedule for workout. (Workout is very important, this 1.5 hour per day is the only time I can stop and start to reflect what I did today and what I am going to do at night and the next day.)
I followed some accounts on IG and Youtube and it provides so many Japanese home-cooking recipes and they have different themes: like using up all chicken breast, or 1-pot cooking or fast meal preparing recipes, etc. I love to go through all new posts on those accounts before I go to sleep. Those Japanese home-cooking recipes are very simple, the types of seasonings are also very similar. I even bought a recipe book from the drama I just finished: 昨日何を食べた, the Japanese drama describing the gay couple living together and how one of them prepares food. I really love cooking Japanese food.
きんぴらレンコン
This is the recipe in the book I mentioned, I bought a huge lotus root just to make this dish
- レンコン
- ごま油
- チリペッパー
- 酢
- みりん
- めんつゆ
Lotus root (1 portion is enough) -> stir fry with dried chili/fresh one without seed and ごま油 -> add seasoning: 酢(Chinese black vinegar for stronger flavor)+みりん+酒+めんつゆ and cook until soft and the sauce becomes thick. The recipe has sugar inside, but I like the version without sugar:)
ニラダレ
- ニラ
- ポン酢100ml
- 白いごま 2tbsp
- ごま油 1tbsp
- ラー油 2tsp
- すりおろし生姜 1tsp
- すりおろしニンニク 1tsp
It is a very easy sauce for all kinds of steamed soft vegetables, I tried egg plants, black fungus, I think enoki, bitter gourd, cucumber will be all good. But I don’t recommend leaf-veg.
もやしときゅうり鰹漬け
- もやし、きゅうり、にんじん
- かつお節
- 塩昆布
- おろしニンニク
- ゴマ油
- 白いゴマ
For this recipe, I use different kinds of veg to make different version, carrots, cucumber, sprouts, and even celery I think will be good. It is a very refreshing summer dish.
Tofu skin related marinate
I love raw tofu skin, and I found a tofu store to get fresh tofu skin very day. It is much better than deep fried one. So I found many recipe to marinate it. But actually I create some by myself: both Chinese style or Japanese style will be good. For Japanese style, I use the same marinate as the basic pumpkin marinate below:
For the Chinese style, I can’t find the recipe anymore. But I guess I added coriander, Chinese black vinegar, ginger, garlic, soy sauce, and sesame oil. It is also kind of like traditional Chinese marinate. I like coriander so I will replace it with green onion.
基本のかぼちゃの煮物
- みりん:醤油:和風だし:砂糖 1:1:0.5:1
- 塩、水
- 白いゴマ
Although I don’t like sugar, but sugar is indeed an important ingredient in this kind of traditional Japanese dish. So I did add it. And I reused the extra sauce for marinating the raw tofu skin, I turned out to be sweet and good!
ごま油香るオクラとトマトのさっぱり
- オクラ、トマト、えのき、大葉
- めんつゆ：ごま油 2tbsp:1tbsp
- 酢：おろし生姜 1tsp:0.5tsp
Sauce is 2.+3., just heat up the mushroom and okura and add everything together. Very refreshing for the hot summer time.
白菜のさっぱりツナ和え
- 白菜、ブロッコリー
- ツナ
- ポン酢:ごま:ごま油:おろしにんにく 1 .5tbsp:2tsp:1tsp:0.5tsp
In addition to the light vegetable flavor, this recipe includes the protein: tuna. And it is also okay to change the main vegetable from the white Chinese cabbage to broccoli.
By the way, MICROWAVE saves so much time! Japanese recipe likes to use microwave to cook veg instead of steaming or boiling. So no need to wash dishes!
ピーマンの肉詰め
- ピーマン
- 肉詰め：ひき豚肉/引き牛肉/豆腐、卵1、パン粉/オートミール、牛乳、スパイス
- 中華だれ(オプション)：醤油1tbsp:オイスターソース1tbsp:おろしニンニク1/2tsp:砂糖1tsp:鶏ガラスープの素1tsp:水100cc
- or 照り焼きソース：お酒1tbsp:みりん2tbsp:砂糖1/2tbsp:醤油1tbsp
When I made this dish, I made it without any sauce, and dipped it into ketchup before eating. But actually, making sauce 3 or 4 is good for this dish too. I swapped part of the meat with tofu. There is no exact quantity of ingredients, (except the egg) in making the meat mixture, as long as the mixture can be made into a ball, then it is fine. This kind of mixture can be in variety, you can add onion, carrot or other small piece vegetables into the mixture, as you like. And the easiest way to make it is put all ingredients in the mixer or cut everything first and put it into the plastic bag and squeeze it out of the bag to the green pepper cup. No need to make a mess when cooking. Quite fun!
牛肉の味噌しぐれ煮
- 牛肉、蒟蒻、エリンギ
- ごま油1tbsp:水2tbsp:酒2tbsp:みりん1tbsp:生姜20g:醤油1tbsp:味噌1tbsp
As usual, I marinated the beef with the sauce first (except ginger), and I added some other vegetables to go with beef. And by the way, adding ginger to miso dish makes the taste lighter, since miso has strong salty flavor. I learned this from one of the drama, the actor adds grated ginger into the miso soup, and the miso soup tastes very different and special. From then on, I always add some grated ginger to make the taste of miso dish better.
肉とかぼちゃの甘酢照り焼き
- 肉（とりむね/豚肉)
- かぼちゃ
- 甘酢だれ：みりん1tbsp:さとう1tbsp:す1tbsp:醤油1.5tbsp
For this kind of recipe, I usually marinate the meat with the sauce for 1 day, especially the chicken breast, because it will make the meat softer and more tasty. Usually Japanese people love to put flour on the meat the pan fry it first before adding the sauce, but I don’t like it. I just stir fry the vegetable and add in my marinated meat with the marinate, and add some green onion to boil. When it is the pumpkin season, this is a good choice for warming the body up!
明太子とろろ焼き
- 明太子1、豆腐/とろろ、卵1
- めんつゆ1tbsp
- 細ねぎ、鰹節
I found a Japanese ingredient shop in Kaohsiung so I bought a box of mentaiko. Mentaiko goes well with egg roll, yam, or tofu, because these ingredients have light flavor, they go well with mentaiko, which has strong salty flavor. And by adding tsuyu it removes the unwanted seafood smelly flavor. The egg in this recipe combines the ingredients together so the dish would not remain liquid, quite interesting. The tamagoyaki with mentaiko and mayo is wonderful. However, my tamagoyaki still can’t form into a beautiful shape haha!
Why did I cook so much haha? I am so lazy to finish all the recipes. But anyway, cooking is so fun! But it is so hard to remember all recipes because Japanese seasoning is so similar. I love to prepare my own food on weekend. My weekend schedule is always: workout->big breakfast->cook->sleep->drama+snack+clean the house->workout again->yummy dinner. My dad always asks me, wouldn’t it be very boring to stay at home for the whole day? My answer is always no, because I have so many things I like to do at home. Basically weekends are my body training camp.
But of course sometimes I feel tired about this unchanging schedule. If it happens, I will get on my bike or go jogging, choose a place to go outside and walk around, my bike and Ubike is always my good friend. Kind of crazy, but well, I love eating way too much, so I have to pay for what I have done haha. That is, I have to exercise for those extra food I have. Sometimes I feel it is not right to think about that, since many people do encourage having a cheat day once a week. But I never get one. Recently I have been trying to adjust this kind of unhealthy thought. That is, try to rest more. Like sometimes, I will choose lighter exercise, but having no exercise is still hard for me. I will keep trying though, to remove this kind of unhealthy thought. After all, bearing this kind of thought for a long time is a very tiring thing.
Move on 
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