Last week, I made a dip for Nelson Japanese film festival with Pic’s Peanut Butter and Sherry Valley Gold Manuka Honey.

It is super easy to make and taste great!!

Ingredient:

• 3 parts of Urban Hippie Misomite
• 3 Parts of Pic’s Peanut Butter
• 1 part of Sherry Valley Gold Manuka Honey
• Some water for thinning

Just mix all together. Add some water to adjust thickness as your desire.

It taste so nice with crackers and vege sticks. (Misomite & peanut butter dip is on left hand side on picture)

1. Rince rice with cold running water for few times. Then leave for over night.
2. Drain water with colander and leave for a couple of hours.
3. Steam rice until rice is soften.
4. Place rice to a bowl then cool down to body temperature.
5. Inoculate Koji culture. Mix very well with your hand.
6. Put rice in a shallow tray, cover with damped cloth. Leave in a incubator for 40 hours.  Keep temperature of rice around 38℃ and high humidity. Mix few times while rice in the incubator. After 8 hours, temperature will rise themselves. So keep your eyes open for temperature that doesn’t rise higher than 43℃.
7. After 40 hours, take rice out from the incubator. Leave rice for a while for cooling down and dries a little.

You can keep fresh rice koji in a fridge for a couple of week otherwise freeze it. You can make own Miso paste at home with fresh Koji, even you can make home made cloudy Sake.

We sell fresh Rice Koji $18.00/kg.

There are so many things that you can put in Miso soup. Miso soup’s golden couples are;

Patato & Onion, Mushroom & Leek, Kumara & Onion, Mungbean & Tofu, Cockle & Spring onion, Daikon Radish & Wakame seaweed, Spinach & Egg, Egg plant & Mizuna, Turnips & Turnip’s leaf, Cabbage & Potato, etc….

My favorite is Potato & Onion. Sweetness from potato & onion makes Miso soup much more flavorful.

Basically there are no rules. You could use pretty much anything that you want to eat with Miso soup. Also you could put more than two ingredients.

And some unusual couples are;

Bacon & Tomato, Crayfish Head & spring onion, Natto & Egg….

You just chuck the ball into your mug, pour a cup of boiling water, stir well. That’s all!!

This would be a my next new product. It would be so handy to take to your office or for tramping.

Thanks Tamoya-san!!

Ingredients; 500g dried soy bean, 3 litters of Water, 18g Epsom Salt, 100ml of Warm Water. Makes about 1kg of Tofu.

1. Soak the soy beans over night with water(not from ingredients). It will be double the size, so use large container and plenty of water.
2. Next day, drain the soy beans and put 3 litters of water, then put through to food processor or use wiz until get paste.
3. Cook in low heat for 20 mins. It is easily to get burned at bottom, so stir constantly. Skim the form off a pot of soy bean liquid.
4. leave for a while until cool down a bit. Then strain it with a fine cloth or a tea towel.
5. Now you have got soy milk and Okara. Dissolve Epsom salt with 100ml warm water. Put soy milk in the pot. Then turn heat on until it gets 75 Celsius. Turn heat off, stir the dissolved Epsom water into the pot. This is critical, don’t stir it too much. Just 3 circles that will be enough. Then leave for 15 mins. It will be separated to bean card and water. 
6. Get ready gauze or cheese cloth on container with holes. Carefully scoop up bean card into the container. 
7. Cover the bean card with gauze then put some weight on top. Leave for 15mins.
8. It’s all done.

I like to eat as Hiyayakko (very herd to pronounce for you) which is just simply cut into square and finely sliced spring onions or leeks, grated ginger, and soy sauce.