Japanese Veggies

I am very excited that this Friday we will be getting our first shipment of fresh veggies from an organic farm in this area. We will be getting it all summer hopefully! We will be getting some different veggies, this being Japan, that we are excited to cook with. I will write about them when we find out what we are getting.

In the meantime I thought I would briefly write about some of the foods that we have been using that are not familiar back home.
We really love Japanese eggplant (nasu in Japanese). They are smaller and longer and thinner than American eggplants. They are much more tender and absorb sauces and oils well. They have a great flavor and don't get as rubbery as other eggplants.
We also use Japanese sweet potato a lot. They are also usually smaller than the sweet potatoes back home. The outside is purple-ly red and the inside is yellow. They are very sweet for a vegetable. They are a bit softer and don't take as long to cook as the American style sweet potatoes.
We often use pumpkin (kabocha). The pumpkins here are small and the rind is dark green. The flesh looks similar to pumpkin flesh in the States but they are more like baking pumpkins without the large hollow inside. We usually just cook the pieces with the rind and all. It gets very soft and you can just eat it. It is easier than cutting off the peel beforehand and is probably healthy. They don't use pumpkins here to make pumpkin pie or other sweet desserts. It is a vegetable like all other squashes.
We love beets but the Japanese don't use them. We have been able to find them however, at the Brazillian supermarkets! It must be a part of Brazillian cooking. They are expensive though so they will be for special occasions.
We have been using a Japanese mushroom called nameko. They are small and bright orange. They are also covered in a natural slime that give the mushroom a great texture for soups. The taste is very nice and woody. There are many other mushrooms but we haven't tried them all.
We have been cooking with fish lately too. The seafood area of the supermarket is very intimidating. In the fresh fish area there are loads of whole fish (some of them are gigantic), clams, shrimp and other things I can't even identify. We watched an older man the other day look and look and look at all of the fish and he finally chose a flounder that was still breathing!! We looked closer and saw that all of the flounder were still breathing. I guess that is pretty fresh. But what would we do with a live flounder when we got home??
We have stuck to the already dried and already filleted fish so far. Oh, and also squid rings. Soon we want to buy the whole squids and learn how to clean them ourselves. It is much cheaper.
We have been eating a lot of noodles too. Kishimen are my favorite. It is a regional noodle in this area. Flat and wide like a fettuccine, but softer. We cook up a stock of seaweed and fish flakes (dashi) with soy sauce, and sweet rice wine (mirin) and add the cooked noodles, long spring onions (negi), mushrooms, wakame seaweed and a boiled egg. Sometimes we add some miso as well. Sprinkle some spicy red pepper powder on top and what a dinner!!!
As a matter of fact that's what I am cooking tonight for our 2nd wedding anniversary dinner!
So, gotta get cooking!