Cosmos meadow at Yakurai Garden-Part 1

I know my blog is running slow at the moment and it seems to me that with less cooking-related posts and more outdoor adventures going on, this supposed-to-be food blog is turning into a travel blog.  I actually don`t mind if that really happens, but I`m somehow sure that there will be more posts on food coming on.

So, bear with me again and I hope you enjoy the pictures we took on our visit to Yakurai Garden. And since there are too many pictures to share in one post, I decided to put the close-up pictures in a separate post (Part 2).

On the way to the garden, we passed these beautiful paddy fields under the perfect sky and I tapped his shoulder asking him to stop the bike. Just look at these, how could I not stop here??

This is me crouching over to get a closer look at...

...these precious rice stalks that have been feeding me for my whole life.

After another hour riding or so, the garden, finally. As what the garden`s homepage promised us, we could see meadows of cosmos with heavenly colors of red, pink, violet, orange, and white. The peak season is between this month and October and that might explain why the greens partly still dominate the view. But I had nothing to complain about. 

With these candy-colored flowers cheerfully seated over the green grassy stems, why should I?

And I was so thrilled to see the blue sky full of clouds above. For those of you who haven`t known me well, I`m a cloud freak. I do love blue skies, but add white fluffy clouds to them and you`ll find me shamelessly screaming while busy recording the moments with my camera. 

These clouds, they look ridiculously very near to the ground, don`t they?

There`s no flower here, but I think the colors filling in this place is equally gorgeous as those in the meadows. 

The sun was setting down and we got to take these backlit pictures before going home. 

Love this silhouetted stalks!

Coming right up with the next post for the close-ups!

Grilled shishamo with sambal

Just about a week ago, a fellow blogger Nami, whose fabulous blog "Just One Cookbook" always keeps me hungry and drooling over my PC screen, showed her shishamo wrap in one of her posts and that reminded me how I love those fish. Shishamo, or Japanese smelt, is very tasty, easy to deal with, and you can eat the whole thing, from head to tail. And since I was born with genes that makes me crave for spicy food all the time, I`m going to share with you my version of cooking shishamo. A spicy version, just like the other dishes I have here.

So this is a pack of shishamo with a sac of roe inside each of them I usually get from the store. Apparently, Nami rinses these fish before cooking them, but I do not. Ahem, I did not. Will rinse them next time.

If using oven, line them up onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and grill them for 20 mins. When I serve them without sambal or any condiments, I usually coat them with olive oil, garlic powder, pepper, and cayenne to get more flavors. And just a pinch of salt as the fish is already a little salty. But with sambal, I just grill them as is.

While the fish is in the oven, spread sesame seeds on a heated frying pan and toast them for like 5-10 mins until they lightly brown and you can smell the beautiful nutty scent. Set the toasted seeds aside when you`re done.

Next is sambal. There are various ways of making sambal involving raw or cooked ingredients, but this is how I usually make it. I actually have written about sambal last year, where I served with fried tempeh, with slightly different ingredients. This time I substituted shrimp paste for dried shrimp. I love, really love shrimp paste for its pungency, but today I wanted a milder version.

So, put chilies, onion, garlic, chili powder, candlenuts, and ginger in a food processor (or mortar, of course). If you`re lucky enough to have fresh chilies, by all means use them and you can omit the chili powder. As most of the time I can only get the dried ones, I have to add chili powder to make the paste redder like the regular sambal.

Grinding the sambal paste in a food processor might scream "unauthentic" to the air, but I`m perfectly happy with it. With the sambal. It still is a sambal for me, after all.

Saute the sambal paste with a bit of oil on medium heat. Since the paste didn`t look red enough for me, I added some more chili powder, which I didn`t show you here.

While sauteing, puree tomatoes and pour it to the sambal paste.

Last aromatic is lemon. Squeeze in the juice and grate in the zest.

Season with salt, soy sauce, brown sugar, and pepper and keep stirring it to prevent it from scorching and to reduce the water. I sometimes add fish sauce too when there are no shrimp paste or dried shrimp in the sambal. I don`t know if other Indonesian use soy sauce or fish sauce for making sambal, but to me sambal tastes more wonderful with these two condiments. 

Now this is the consistency I like when I make my sambal. Not too dry, but certainly not runny. You can use this sambal paste for spicy fried rice or red curry, although you need to add some other spices and coconut milk for the latter. 

When the sambal reaches the consistency you like, remove from heat. 

Remember the grilled shishamo? Please tell me that you aren`t forgetting them in the oven.

Toss them in the sambal to get them lightly (or heavily, your call) coated.

Stack the sambal-coated fish in a baking dish and pop it back to the oven for another 10 mins.

Or you can just serve this right away, which what I usually do when I`m super hungry.

Now for the rice, you can certainly serve the regular steamed rice, but you might want to try out this version. Put hot steamed rice in a bowl, sprinkle in the toasted sesame seeds you made earlier, add sesame oil and stir until well combined.

For two plates of rice, I added 1 tbs sesame oil. Not much, really. I just want the rice to be scented, not to be oily.

Here is the fish back from the oven, red and gorgeous. Well, who`s hungry now? I am. I certainly am. And look how happy that little kid over there.

Scented rice, spicy fish, and of course, raw vegetables. Our Saturyday`s feast, everyone.

GRILLED SHISHAMO WITH SAMBAL
 
Ingredients:

Shishamo

For sambal paste

Makes about 1 cup

3 dried chili

2 tbs chili powder

1/2 cut  onion (but preferably shallots)

Thumb-sized ginger

3 candlenuts

1 Tbs dried shrimp (or shrimp paste for more pungency)

2 small-sized tomatoes (or 1 medium-sized one)

1/2 cut lemon juice and zest

Salt

1 Tbs soy sauce

Brown sugar

Pepper

Sesame-scented rice

2 plates steamed rice

2 Tbs sesame seed, toasted

1 Tbs sesame oil

Method:
For grilled shishamo
1. Arrange shishamo fish onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and grill them for 20 mins.
2. Set aside when grilling is done.

For sambal
1. Put chili, onion, garlic, chili powder, candlenuts, and ginger in a food processor or mortar and blitz or grind.
2. Saute the sambal paste with a bit of oil on medium heat.
3. Puree fresh tomatoes and stir in the sambal paste in the pan.
4. Squeeze in lemon juice and grate in the zest.
5. Season with salt, soy sauce, brown sugar, and pepper and keep stirring it to prevent it from scorching and to reduce the water.
6. When the sambal reaches the consistency you like, remove from heat. 

For serving
1. Toss the grilled shishamo in the sambal until evenly coated.
2. Arrange the sambal-coated fish in a baking dish.
3. Optional: Pop the fish back to the oven for another 10 mins.

For sesame-scented rice
1. Spread sesame seeds on a heated frying pan and toast them for like 5-10 mins until they lightly brown and you can smell the nutty scent.
2. Put hot steamed rice in a bowl, sprinkle in the toasted sesame seeds, add sesame oil and stir until well combined.

The Okama crater lake at Zao Quasi National Park

We had another motorcycle trip and this time we rode 74 km to the south-west where one of the major tourist sites in Tohoku area called Zao Okama crater lake is located. He told me the day before that it would take 2 hours to get there considering the distance. Being a biker, he was thrilled with the plan. But me? Na-ah. I mean, two hours on a motorcycle? I couldn`t even imagine how that would feel like. But I came to quickly realize that I should take all the opportunities given for us to have some adventures out there while we can. We have the motorcycle, we have time, we have cameras, and we are certainly still blessed with our physical strengths. So, off we rode then!


This is when I wanted to take some pictures of the woods and needed to take a short break after sitting on Booboo for an hour. While waiting for me, he checked the map.

This road led us to a very long and steep zig-zag driving line going up to the mountain. Yup, we were climbing up the mountain with the lil` Booboo. I wish I could take some pictures of the climbing lines, but it was foggy up there and we couldn` clearly see anything except the road itself. I checked the thermometer and it was 15 C, ten degrees lower than in our city.


After our steep zig-zagging ride for like 30 minutes, we finallly got there.
This sign shows us the directions for two different mountains. We started from the right first.

See a small house up there? It is actually a temple. So we climbed up and boy, it might look easy (and I did think it was easy), but the stairs (not visible here) were dead steep I couldn`t speak a word while climbing on them!

On top, finally. The weather changed very quickly here, and very extreme. Like from this...

...to this. In 20 minutes. And the cloud was not above us anymore. It`s beside us. That`s how high we were.

Very earthy colors, don`t you think?

Then we headed to the opposite direction and this time was closer to the lake.

This lake is also called as Five Colors Lake because rumor has it that the color changes five times a day along with the angle of the sun.



I didn`t get to see the five-color thing, but I think that`s because we were there for only a few hours, which was apparently not enough to see the whole changes. After all, I considered my self lucky to get to see this sublime view of emerald-colored crater lake under the not-raining weather.

I thought people can`t get too close to the lake for the safety reason, but it turned out I was wrong. See two veery tiny people standing near the edge of the lake? Hint: seven o`clock.
No, we didn`t go there, of course. First, we wanted to go home before dark considering the dangerous challenging road, and second, I`m (always) a chicken. I was, am, and will always be one.

Done shooting the lake, he hiked down through a steep trail with greenery surrounds us.

When I told him that I can (proudly) call my self a hiker now, he said, a real hiker would start climbing up right from the base of the mountain with his own feet, not on a motorcycle. Oh, laugh all you want, baby. With a trail like this...

...and this?? Oh yes, I`m definitely a hiker.

A dedicated photographer would change his lenses to suit the objects under any circumstances. And it seems like I am never getting near to be one. I was busy breathing in and out I couldn`t bother to change my lens when I intended to go to the macro world. So these are the "macro"est shoots I`ve got with my regular zoom lens. And please don`t ask me what flowers they are. I think I should get a book about flowers and trees.

The weather changed again and this time the fog started to blanket all over the place.

Yes, that`s me, thinking how much calories we burned off here. I`m sorry, but I`m just getting all crazy about calories these days, even on a mountain!

And me again, exhausted on my way up to the "peak". Well, I kind of posed for the photo, but I was really out of breath! I thought I`d find something to see up there, but when we got there, all I could see is another rocky trail going up to a higher land. Oh, maybe next time, when I`m better prepared. With better shoes.

So we hiked down after this lady.

And we stopped by at a ropeway station. Under this kind of weather, I was surprised to see that some people actually still took the rides!

Here is the last flower shot before we left there.

And of course, the souvenir! We got a set of kokeshi, handmade wooden dolls. Cute, right? The dolls are kids wearing Japanese traditional clothing for each season. From left to right is spring, summer, fall (facing upward), and winter. I really should get a better photo of them. Oh, cute cute cute!

Two hours later, we finally got home unbelievably exhausted from the hiking and riding. We were too tired even to sleep that night! But looking back at how we`ve spent our day getting closer to the nature (and the clouds!) really made my day. Our day.
And I seriously need a pair of hiking shoes. And a book for plants` names.