Sinner's test cooking area.

Today I made Katsudon following a recipe that I found in the internet, it worked quite well and was surprisingly easy to make. So I will link the recipe here for everyone who wishes to try, as well my personal opinion on it. I will add more to this when I try other recipes.

Katsudon

Cooking and preparation time; around 30 minutes, adding the time to heat the oil. Over one and a half hour adding cooking the rice using an eletric rice pan.

Difficulty; easy. It is very easy to make, even not using the right smmounts from the recipe the result was great.

OBS; I didn't had parsely, japanese or not, so I didn't placed it, instead I used a little bit of chopped green onions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klFyrnrUSck&feature=PlayList&p=DB39621E420022AC&index=24

EDIT: I changed the name of the tread since recently most of the recipes are less experiments/tests of new recipes on my part and more of posting already tested recipes.

heh...experimental cooking doesnt need any recipes. the recipe provided was nice though.

What I meant with experimental is to try out recipes that I never cooked or had before.

Oyakodon

Cooking and preparation time; around 30 minutes. Over one and a half hour adding cooking the rice using an eletric rice pan.

Difficulty; easy. It is very easy to make, even not using the right smmounts from the recipe the result was great. Easier than making katsudon since there arent any deep frying on this one.

OBS; I didn't had parsely, japanese or not, so I didn't placed it, instead I used a little bit of chopped green onions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMJY29QMewQ&feature=related

Anko red bean paste/jelly

Difficulty: easy

Time needed: one and a half hour at most

Ingredients: Azuki beans 500g, sugar at least 300g

How to make it:

Place the beans in a pot with water, make enough water to go over one and a half inch over the beans, cook it for ten minutes, drain the beans and discard the water, add more water in the same measure as before and cook for ten more minutes and once again drain the beans.
Add one and a half liter of water to the beans and cook for 50 minutes, remove any scum that appear from the boil. After 50 minutes or when the beans are soft, whatever happens first, drain the beans again and save the water.

Put the beans back on the pot and throw the sugar over them and mix well, taste it and adjust the sugar to your tastes, with me it needed around half a kilo to suit my taste, add a little pinch of salt to the mix, you are just enhancing the sweetness and not salting it, you can use a blender or mixer to process the mixture to make the paste smoother, I processed a little but left it a little coarse for texture.

Once the sweetness is of your liking left it cool before you store it, if you think that the paste is too thick you can add the water of the 50 minutes boil to thin the paste to your liking, the water is filled with starch from the beans, if you leave alone for a while and remove the water you will find a red/brown wet powder on the bottom of the recipient where you placed the water. I threw the water and the starch away since I wanted the paste hard, I am unsure if adding that starch would make it more consistent and harder, but just the water should make the paste thinner.

It sounds hard but it is really easy to make, most of the work is draining the beans and then mixing the paste. Now I have lots of anko in my fridge and I am thinking in how to eat it, I might make a spin off Tayaki, I mean spin off because I don't have a tayaki pan, so it would be just the dough with the anko using a regular pan. I let you guys know the results when done.

Taiyaki

Difficulty: Medium

Ingredients:
2 cups flour, 1 tsp baking soda, 1 pinch salt, 3 tbsp sugar, 1 and a 1/4 cup water, 100g or more of anko and vegetable oil

How to make:

Mix the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt and water together and mix well together until getting a smooth dough, heat a frying pan, if you have a proper taiyaki pan then use it, for everyone else get the frying pan and oil it up, use a paper towel to remove excess oil, you want only a sheen of oil there so the dough won't stick on the pan, keep the heat low, the dough burns easily, when it starts to bubble get some anko (up to your liking) and place it in one of the sides of the dough.
Then fold the other part over the anko and give it a light press for the uncooked dough to leak out from the inside, but weak so the anko will remain inside.
Flip the taiyaki over a few times until the dough that escaped from the inside is cooked, it should all be in a golden brown color, and if isn't it is still good as long it isn't charred black. Eat while is hot but be careful to not burn yourself, the anko heats fast and keeps the heat for a long time afterwards.

I know that it isn't a fish shaped taiyaki but when you don't have the right stuff you improvise, it is quite good, but since I never had a real taiyaki before I can't compare to anything. I added more sugar than I wrote in the recipe so the dough gets a flavor on its own, after all you won't get anko in every part of the taiyaki and you don't want to eat bland dough.

And don't expect the first one to come perfect, it will suck, it is a rule/fact in cooking, whenever you are doing pancakes or whatever other dish that involves a frying pan or surface the first of the batch will burn, rip and get ugly as hell because the pan temperature isn't right. From the second on it will just get better, plus you get more experience in making so it will improve.

Well this is my attempt to make taiyaki, I might try other recipes involving anko since I still have lots of it to use.

Nikuman

Difficulty: Medium

Preparation time: Long, at least two hours.

Comment: This recipe is quite old and I decided to share with you guys, it isn't all that hard to make but is quite complex so I place the difficulty level on medium, it takes time to make everything after all you are making the bread and the filling from scratch.
However the hard work is compensated by the deliciousness of the results, even if the buns turn ugly in shape, I once made 300 hundred buns to sell in an event in my hometown, sadly nikuman isn't well known here and didn't sold all that well, but on the bright side I ate around 250 nikumans in the following months without ever getting tired of them. I ate them freshly steamed, frozen, nuked, at room temperature and every other possible way, but mostly frozen.
You can steam the bun, freeze it after it is cool and store it for months, all that you have to do is steam it again or nuke it, or if you are lazy eat it frozen like I do, I don't know why but it has a different tastiness when frozen.

Recipe:

Ingredients

Dough:

300 grams of all purpose or bleached flour, or if you want half to half of all purpose and bread flour, I normally use only all purpose or bleached

3 grams of dry yeast

4 grams of baking powder

2 grams of salt

20 grams of sugar

15 grams of butter or lard, you can skip this one if you want, it doesn't make much difference, there are times that I don't use any

160 ml of water, add or remove based on the dough texture, never pour it all at once

Filling:

250 grams of ground beef or pork (if pork the name of the bun is butaman)

One 1 inch piece of young ginger chopped in very small cubes or grated

One bundle of green onions thinly chopped

2 large onions

2 or 4 cloves of garlic, thinly chopped or mashed, up your personal taste

Half a Chinese or Japanese cabbage and half regular cabbage thinly chopped

Panko or regular breadcrumbs, you add as you see fit, I will explain later

Soy sauce

roasted sesame oil

Salt

vegetable oil

Preparation:

Sieve all the dry ingredients other than the and sugar yeast together, it makes the dough fluffier. Divide the water in two containers, in one of them add the yeast and the sugar, stir it well to remove pockets of yeast, let it sit for 10 minutes, it gives the yeast a head start on fermentation.

While the yeast is waking up and feeding chop the ingredients of the filling while heating a large pan or wok, woks are great for this. When the pan is very hot add the oil and let it heat for ten seconds before throwing the chopped or crushed/mashed garlic, stir it well, when it starts to golden throw the onions on the pan, stir well mixing the oil and garlic to the onions, add ginger, add your choice of meat now.

Mix very well to incorporate the flavors, at this point I add a stock cube to add flavor, if you are using beef add beef stock cube, if pork a pork cube, but isn't obligatory, I use because it makes easier to season.
Mix the meat and the onions together, put the cabbage over the meat and put a lid over everything, the meat will heat the cabbage that will lose water, that water will create the filling juices. BTW you add as much cabbage as your pot can hold, you can add it in portions as the cabbage will get smaller as it loses moisture.

By now around five minutes had passed you check on the yeast, see if it is bubbling if it is, is a good thing, you can start the dough if you want to, or your can finish the filling it won't take long to finish anyway. If you have a food processor with a bread making implement or a bread machine you can throw the ingredients on the machine and use it to mix the ingredients.

If you use a food processor you have to knead the dough manually, if you have a bread machine it should have a kneading mode. Either way it is easier for you. But for the poor guys like me that doesn't have any machine to make our cooking life easier we mix and knead everything by hand. For machine owners throw everything yeast mix included on the machine and mix it, the dough should become smooth and shouldn't stick. Add the water separated from the total amount on the mix until the dough is smooth and non sticking, you can add extra flour if becomes too sticky.

While the machine makes your life easier let's continue to make the filling. Mix the meat and the cabbage together, add the green onions and mix, add soy sauce and the sesame oil, just a little of the oil the stuff is potent, the soy sauce you adjust the to your taste, same thing with salt, make just a tad bit salty as the dough is quite plain.

Now the filling must have this yummy and tasty juices simmering well on it, now you add the breadcrumbs, the breadcrumbs will absorb the moisture avoiding leakages on the dough, add as much as you see fin until the filling becomes consistent and just slightly moist, not dripping. Taste test the filling, if is of your liking let it cool.

For those who have to make the dough with their hands, like me, you start on making the dough, mix the yeast to the dry ingredients, add the other half of the water slowly adjusting the texture, the dough should become smooth and non sticky, add more water or flour depending of how your dough becomes, if too sticky add more flour, just little bits at time until is smooth, if too dry and flaky more water, once again little bits.

Once the dough is nice and smooth you put it on a large bowl cover it with a clean cloth and let it rise for half an hour or 45 minutes, is quite weather dependent. Either way when is ready the filling will be cool enough to work with.

After the dough rose and the filling cooled you get a rolling pin and flour it, then flour a clean flat surface and place the dough there, you cut the dough in four pieces of roughly the same size, return three of them to the bowl and with the rolling pin you open the dough, it should have around one or two millimeters of dough, so open it as much as you can until you get on that thickness.

Get yourself a round cutter, I like to use a Japanese miso soup bowl to cut, you can make it smaller or bigger. After cutting the dough in as many as you can, I get normally four circles, you remove the excess dough and save it.

You get a table spoon of filling (or more up to you), make it round and place it on the middle of the dough and wrap it with the dough, be careful to not let the filling touch the edges, if it touches the edges, the dough won't stick together and close the bun. Be careful to not rip the dough while you try to close the bun, it happens a lot to me until I got the hang of it...after 300 hundred you do get the hang...

Anyway you can look at pics on the net to see how a nikuman should look like, get a steam cooker and make it steam, if you don't have a steam cooker, I don't, you improvise, you get the largest pan that you have, a smaller pan two clean dish clothes and the lid of the large pan.

You wrap the lid with one of the clothes, it prevents water from dripping on the bun, then you place the smaller pan inside the bigger pan add water to the small pan, then add water on the large pan, it should get around two thirds of the height of the small pan, place a large plate over the small pan, the plate must fit inside the large pan, remember that boys and girls.

Soak he second cloth, squeeze the water from it, fold it and place it over the plate, turn on the stove and place the large pan with everything inside over the fire and let the water boil, place the cloth wrapped lid on and presto you have a steam pot. It works well I use it a lot, just remember of adding more water every now and then.

Now that the water is boiling and you have plenty of steam inside the pan add as many nikumans you can on the pan, steam them for 10 minutes. And there you have it, fresh and tasty nikumans. Make as many as you like.

I use this recipe every time, well I double the recipe, this one should make around 12 medium sized nikumans, my doubled version makes an average of 24, I say average because it always has a left over something, either dough or filling.

If you have left over dough you can fill it with anything and steam it. I once made ham and cheese steamed roll, it was great, also scrambled soy sauce eggs it was good as well. Or if you have anko like I did today I made anman, instead of placing the meat filling you add a spoonful of anko and steam the bun. If you have leftover filling eat it with rice, bread or anything, it is good.

I hope that you guys try it out, it is not as hard as it sounds, in my second time making it I made 300 hundred of them, anyone can make it for personal consume. Try as many fillings as you like, and post your results here.

Try Banana Flambe.

Mochi

Difficulty: Medium, it appears to be harder than it is.

Ingredients: 1 cup of Mochi-ko glutinous rice flour, 3 or 4 tablespoons of sugar, 80 to 100 ml of water, anko.

How to prepare:

Okay boys and girls this recipe is a bit on the complex side, but isn't as hard as it sounds. Before your start you should get a steaming pan ready, if you don't have one follow the instructions in how to improvise one in my Nikuman post above, fill the pan with water and turn on the stove, you want the pan ready when you are done with the dough.
Preparing the dough is pretty easy, mix the flour with the sugar, then you add the water in small amounts making sure to get rid of pockets of flour, the dough should be smooth and a little moist almost on the dry side. After mixing well in a heat proof pot make sure that the pot can fit inside the steaming pan, you have to place the dough on the steamer and let it cook for 15 minutes before moving to the next step.
After 15 minutes with the dough still hot you get a baking sheet and cover it with corn or potato starch, you mix the dough a little and remove it from the pot and put it on the starched sheet, sprinkle starch over the dough, now be careful you have to work with the dough still hot otherwise it won't stretch.
Put starch on your hands, make sure to cover everything including your fingertips, the sides of your fingers, everything, now using your hands you cut a small ball of the dough, open it up with your hands and place a small amount of anko on the middle close the dough and the mochi is ready, place it on a starched plate and continue the process until you run out of dough.

I learned the recipe from cooking with dog, originally they make ichigo daifuku, check out the video if you want to see how to make ichigo daifuku, it is almost the same thing, all that you need is an strawberry, you wrap the strawberry with anko, then wrap around it a layer of mochi, there you have it a ichigo daifuku.

Onion cream soup (there is a french name for it but I forgot it)

Difficulty: Easy

Time needed: Half to one hour

Ingredients: Flour at least 300 grams (you might not use it all, but is better have leftovers than lack)
4 to 6 large onions
300 grams of salted butter (or 70 grams of butter and lots of vegetable oil, margarine can be used as well, never tried with animal fat or lard, but it might come out good when using it)
2 cloves of garlic (it is mostly up to your liking, more garlic, less garlic, no garlic, your choice)
200 grams of bacon (totally optional, but it is tasty and gives an extra to the soup)
Chicken stock, 2 to 3 cubes of it, or more depending of how much you are making (homemade stock is good too, but remember of adjusting the salt)
2 to 3 or more liters of water, the amount of chicken stock increases together with the water level
Salt and pepper to your liking
Green onions (optional)
Croutons (also optional)

How to make:
Peel and chop the onions, the original recipe ask for thinly chopped half moons but you can cut it in small cubes or process the onions if you don't like feeling their texture on the soup.
Get a large (I do mean large) pot and put on the stove to heat, let it get hot, get another large pot and fill with water, add the chicken stock on it and let it boil, now the first pot must be hot, add the butter/and oil mixture on it, the butter will melt and reduce, add more if reduces too much from losing water, in this part i add the oil, now that the butter is hot add the garlic and the onions on the pot, mix it well and keep mixing until it gets transparent (or if you want a darker soup until the onions get on a nice golden brown color).
Cut the bacon if you are using in small pieces, you can fry them in another pan, or you can add the bacon in the hot pot before adding everything else, the point is to get the bacon nice and crispy.
Once the onion is on your desired color you add the flour to the mix, and mix it well, incorporating the flour on the hot butter/oil, the flour will make the soup become thick and creamy, you add as much as you want, there isn't a certain amount (at least on the recipe that i learned), more flour means that it needs more stock to make the soup thinner which means more soup in the end.
Then you add the boiling stock on the onion mix, two laddlefuls at time, mixing well to incorporate the liquid, you have to mix it well to not let any lumps form on it, you want a smooth creamy soup, the only texture are the solid ingredients as the onion or the bacon if you added it.
You add as much stock as you want, if you want a thicker cream you reduce the amount of stock, if you want a thinner one you add more, you want a velvety creamy soup, not too liquid or too thick. On this part of the preparation you adjust the salt and add the pepper you want (I advise on white peppercorns for appearance, you don't want small black spots on the yellowish soup).
Taste test it, if is of your liking you cut the heat and it is done, you can add the green onions here, thinly chopped for extra taste. Serve it on a bowl or even better in a mug in cold days, add the croutons for a crunch, an way of serving is with bread, some breads can be carved to form a bowl then you pour the cream inside it, make it a little thicker this time to not make the bread fall apart, breads with thick and hard crusts are the best for this, the carved out bread can be eaten by dipping in the cream.
A nice way to serving that impress people a lot is getting that bread bowl presentation in a individual level, get smaller balls of that hard crust bread (I use a Italian type of bread) and serve the cream inside it, each person will get their own edible bowl that they can eat it along the cream, less dishes to do afterwards.
Another way of making this soup different is to add boiled chicken breast to it on the preparation, you break apart the boiled chicken and throw in the pot, it gets all the flavor from it.

A small warning, the cream can splatter around when boiling, be careful, that mixture can keep heat for a long time given the flour content, it can cause burns, so use long sleeves or a deep pot.

One average making of this soup can feed around six people, there are heavy eaters in my family, so I can't be sure, my brother gets this huge mug and fills it with soup, that mug needs around a liter of stuff to fill up, so you get the idea, and before he raids the soup everyone else ate it and repeated, so it goes around well.

Need to try to cook them too!

I'll buy some ingredients!!!

Sinner's chicken salad with curry sauce

As the name says it is an original recipe of mine, an alteration of a salad that I learned a while back, it is very good and it quickly became a favorite of my family even though I only make it once and a while in special occasions. I made it the last time in the past Sunday for my grandmother's birthday lunch, everyone loved it, including the members of my family who never had it before. It requires some work and time but the results are very worth it.

Difficulty: Medium

Time needed: One hour (Maybe two if you want to take slow)

Ingredients:
Salad
1kg of chicken breast, cut in small fillets
1/2 spoon of salt (medium table spoon, but go for your tastes here)
2 heads of lettuce (I use two different types, you can use the same type)
50-100 grams of raisins (it gives a nice contrast with everything else, it can be replaced by bananas cut in slices)
100-300 grams of cashew nuts (100 grams of ground nuts, 300 of whole nuts, it can be replaced by other salty snack nuts)
one package of shoestring potato chips (I am not sure of the name, but they are potato chips that look like small and crunchy matchsticks)
Croutons (store bought or home made, read my onion cream soup for how to make croutons) Optional
Cherry tomatoes, optional

Sauce

1 table spoon of Worcestershire sauce (damn hard to spell name...)
1/2 table spoon of salt (once again go for your tastes, don't add all at once, add some, taste and them adjust)
1/2 cup of jam (any red berry jam can do)
3/4 of cup of mayo
1-2 cup of yogurt (the unsweetened firm type, the original recipe asks for 1 cup but sometimes I use two to cut back the flavor of the mayo)
2 tea spoons of curry (now more than ever add to your tastes, a little at time, the perfect way to make the sauce right is to feel a little faint tingly of the curry and a aftertaste of curry and not a 'OH MY GOD MY MOUTH IS ON FIRE!!!' feeling)

How to prepare:

Wash the lettuces to get rid of sand and other stuff on it, let it sit on a large pot of water for a while. Season the chicken with the salt, you can add fine herbs too, just a little for a little extra taste, then in a heated frying pan with a little oil or fat fry the chicken, repeat until it is all done (this is the most time consuming task of the salad, honestly).
Let the chicken cool and tear the lettuces in large pieces and then put it to dry, now start making the sauce, mix everything for the sauce together in a bowl, taste often and adjust the sweet, the spicy and the salt, it must be a balanced sauce without any of the ingredients shadowing the others, once is of your liking let it sit on the refrigerator for a while.
Now you can mix the ingredients for the salad together in a large serving bowl, or you can mix only the lettuce, raisins, tomatoes if you used in a large bowl and them put it on individual plates and then sprinkle the potato, nuts and croutons
over it, add the chicken as well, then you put some of the sauce on top of it making a nice individual presentation (my personal favorite), but if you don't want to bother with individually arranging the plates then mix everything but the crunchies on the bowl, add the chicken on top of the bowl then sprinkle the crunchies over it, serve it on the bowl with the sauce on the side, you can also have side servings of the crunchies so the guests or whoever is eating with you can add it to his or her liking as with the sauce.
This is a very filling meal, surprising for a salad, but when you stop to think this salad is a full meal when done following my recipe, it has carbs, vegies, proteins, sugar and fats( it can be reduced with the use of low fat mayo and diet jam), it is a cool/cold salad that is great for a hot day.
Ah, you can also add some sort of white cheese to it for an extra twist, the same goes for sun dried tomatoes, another good hint, those tasty juices that the chicken let out after being grilled/fried can be used to fry onions that can be used to the salad, trust me it taste great, you can use bacon, nicely fried until dry and crispy to add more taste to the salad and a nice extra texture as well, and the fat from the bacon can be used to grill/fry the chicken or even make the home made croutons. Use your imagination on this salad for many different results. I hope that you like this salad as much as I do.

Since my grandfather (who is japanese) made tofu with me helping a couple years back I wanted to try it, well I wanted to try way before that but thought that was way too much work to make it, surprisingly it isn't all that labor intensive, the tofu is comes out really good too. So yesterday I started the preparations for it, I had a couple of 500g bags of dry soy in the pantry, I made my mother buy it with that single purpose, but since we don't have blender thanks to by brother unlimited clumsiness it was on hold for months, well yesterday I convinced my mother to kidnap (borrow) a blender and a humongous pot from my grandmother and got this started, the final results of this are still to be seen as I write I am waiting the milk converting to curds, because I ended using lemon juice instead of nigari for it, well here is the how to.

Soy milk and Tofu:

Difficulty: Easy to Medium (it is more complex than hard really)

Preparation time: Long, I do mean long, trust me if you are making your own soy milk you need to start things in the previous day by soaking the dry soy beans, if you already have the soy milk then the time falls to a couple of hours.

Needed things: Soy beams (of course) 1kg (it can be 500g, but I want to make a lot so 1kg), lots and lots of water (to soak the beans, change the water after around 4 or 5 hours, then some more water, I got around 4 to 6 liters of soy milk with 1kg of soy), a blender, a huge massive pot or cauldron to boil the stuff up, or smaller pots the biggest that you have, a sieve, a clean cotton cloth or cheese cloth, a large basin or container to place the beans to soak, a large jar to pour the milk after it is done, a large spoon and a ladle. This list is for the soy milk, though plenty of stuff will be used to the tofu later.
For tofu you need a mold, I used a 2 liters plastic ice cream tub that I poked holes on the sides and bottom, the cloth, the viciously big pot, soy milk, nigari (bitter salt) or lemon juice, large spoon and ladle, sieve, the large basin, a weight to press on the mold when the tofu is in (in my case another 2 liters plastic ice cream tub, we have some lying around the house).

How to make it:

First you soak the beans overnight, or through a day, you change the water of the beans once if overnight or a couple times, don’t soak too much, one day is the limit, once the beans are large and soaked you pour around a cup or two of them into the blender with twice as much water two cups of beans equal four cups of water, blend until it becomes a grainy liquid/paste, throw in the pot, repeat the process until the soy is over, add more water if needed.
With this process I got around of 6 liters or more of milk and ground soy, you then bring the mixture to a boil, WATCH THE DAMN POT ALL THE TIME AND STIR OFTEN!!!! Trust me the stuff will foam up as it cooks and it can overflow from the pot if you aren’t careful making a mess in your stove.
Once the milk is cooked, it will stop foaming, don’t overcook the stuff, twenty minutes or so, well depends of the size of the pot and the potency of your stove, when it doesn’t foam anymore it is good to go, and there will be some foam on the top, but won’t get more, so if you have some foam there don’t worry about it unless if you stop stirring and the thing threatens to spill.
Now you strain this mess down, I strained twice, using the sieve to get the brunt of the solids and the cotton cloth to get the ones that were too thin for the sieve, for me this was the most annoying step of the preparation, once the sieve is filled with the fiber press it down with the ladle to remove as much milk from it as possible, or if you are just using the cloth wring well to get all that milk out.
Throw the fiber in a clean basin, that stuff can be eaten mixed with a lot of stuff to add more nutrition, I am still trying to get recipes for it, but I am trying to dry it to store it and mix with ground beef or other stuff, if you don’t want to eat it you can use to make compost or just throw it away.
Once you got the milk from the fiber you should get around 4 to 5 liters of pure soy milk, here the milk got a little thick, so it can be watered down to a less concentrate form, up to your taste if you want to drink it, you can make shakes and smoothies with it, do whatever you want with the home made soy milk that you made, drink quickly and store it on the fridge, it has no preservatives so after 3 or 4 days it can run bad, or you can make tofu out of it like I am.
If you are making tofu you start by cleaning the pots to remove any left over fiber, also wash the cloth and sieve, once they are free of fibers you return the milk to the pot and heat it, don’t boil it, it should be warm/hot, but not boiling. Now you add the nigari which is a coagulant (start small two or three spoonfuls of dry salt and half cup of water), you mix it with warm water to dissolve the salt and add a little at time on the milk and watch the formation of the curds as you stir it in, add more nigari if needed, try not add too much since it will leave a taste on the tofu.
Let the mix sit still for half hour or so, on this time lets get the mold ready, place the wet cloth inside the mold after wringing out excess moisture, set the mold inside the large basin to collect the whey and not make a mess in the kitchen, it is up to you find a working system to lift the mold from the whey, I am still working in mine, so be creative with it. Now lets check if separated in nice big curds from the whey, if have then you can pour ladlefuls of it on the mold, let the liquid drain and keep adding until you fill the mold or run out of curds, whatever happens first, then you fold the cloth over the curds and places the weight on top of the mold and let gravity and time do the work for you.
Let it sit for 15 to 20 minutes, remove the weight and uncover gently, see if the tofu is nice and firm, if is move the mold to the basis to let the whey seep in it, unmold gently to not break the tofu apart, carefully peel the cloth from the tofu, then you remove the bitterness of it, you place on clean water and slowly wash it with a weak trickle of water, store it with plenty of water, eat it quickly as it also doesn’t have preservatives.

This is it in how making soy milk and tofu, I let you guys know about the taste once is done (I am pressing it now). Try out if you feel like, it tastes really good when done well.

EDIT: Well using lemon/lime juice did work, but the tofu wasn't the firm type, it crumbled very, very easily and the core of it was breaking apart easily too, but other than being more delicate than your average tofu it was pretty good, with a light taste of lime in it, delicious results. I made my mother promise to buy nigari when we make it next time (if there is a next time) so we get better results.
When pressing the tofu you might want to use more weight and more time, it is okay to do so. Well this is it in how to make tofu, it is a lot of work and wields not much in the end, I am not sure of how much my tofu weighted in the end process, it was more or less half of the mold worth of tofu, and dealing with the leftover fibers took all day to dry them out so they can be properly stored. I would do it again without a doubt since where I live it gets much cheaper to make your own tofu than buy it comparing weight and prices. Besides fresh, really fresh tofu, just made in that day, tastes the best.

It has been ages since I visited this thread, so I decided to bump it and add something on it at the same time. It isn't much of a experimental recipe anymore or in the beginning either, but the first try surely was interesting, it is basic homemade stock. Yes folks basic homemade stock, sounds so strange saying like this, but as with nearly everything nowadays we get things out of the market and wonder why bother making stuff like that on our own.
Well here is why, it tastes much, much better than the stuff that you buy, being it cubes, paste, dried or concentrate. You can control the amount of fat and salt on it, as well making it more nutritious. Once you start making your own stuff you really get somewhat addicted to it, because you can see how much better it is from regular industrialized stuff.
I will cover here basic meat stock, the three main varieties, chicken, pork and beef, which are the ones that I make whenever I can, the most common one being chicken.

Homemade stock

What you need:

Bones, chicken, pork, beef, what ever you have lying better access to, in my case chicken is the easier one to gather, mostly because I buy breasts, drums and thighs, and when I do buy whole chicken, I buy it with the bones, normally I debone the breasts and store the bones in a bag, depending of how I am making the drumsticks and thighs I debone them as well, if I am just plainly roasting them I save the bones once they are eaten, as they are still good for stock making. Anyway I save around five to six chickens worth of bones in the freezer to make stock.
For beef or pork you can get the bones from either buying the meat on the bone and as with the chickens deboning them, or roasting them and getting the bones and storing them, works as well for them too. Or if you know a butcher shop that sells the bones you can get them from there, you can ask for stock bones or just whatever bones that they have lying around, not many people ask for bones here in Brazil, not sure of how it works where you live, adapt the gathering method for your region. If you get them from the butcher ask him to cut it into smaller bits, specially long bones with marrow on it, so it cooks better into a stock.
You also need one humongous pot, or smaller but still large pots, whatever you have lying around or in the size to meet your desired amount of stock. Water obviously, as much as needed to cover the bones. A little trick that I got in the internet is to add a tablespoon or two of vinegar or lime juice or whatever acid liquid of that range to the stock to cook the bones, it helps in breaking some nutrients from the bone making the stock much richer and nutritious.
Now here is the optional stuff that you can change, add or remove to taste. Leeks, green onions, garlic, onions, carrots, nutmeg, clove, cinnamon, star anise, bay leaf, peppercorns, other kinds of pepper dried or fresh, coriander seeds, and honestly any kind of spice that you feel like depending of your tastes and intended purpose for the stock, or you can make it plain stock and then at the time of use season it for your desire.
I normally also use the skin of chicken or pork to the stock to get more flavor, I also get the fat later for cooking purposes, I remove it from the stock and use to make rice and other stuff, so you don’t have to use them if you don’t want to, but I advise using meat trimmings if you feel like, after all it also give the flavor to the stock, later you can just remove any fat if you want a leaner stock.

Now for the method of making itself, it is plain simple, give the bones a wash, roast them if you want to give the stock a darker color, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to, the same work for the vegetables, roasting is optional too, throw everything inside your pot, cover with water, throw in the vinegar, if you are making lets say one to two liters use less vinegar, while it mostly cooks off and loses flavor if you put too much it leaves a taste.
Turn the heat on and let it simmer away, you can use a pressure cooker too, do the way that you feel more comfortable with, making stock is pretty much easy, normally I simmer the crap out of the bones for hours, anywhere between 3 to 6 hours, it is a killer on the gas, since the pressure cooker here doesn’t get pressure anymore.
Salting the stock early in the process is optional, though try skimming the surface of the stock if you are cooking in a open pot, it makes it clearer. Once it is done, which you decide when it is done, you sieve it to another container, if there are still meat in the bones as happen with chicken you can pick it and save it to make something later, after all wasting food is bad.
Once the stock is done you can throw the bones away, the vegetables you can decide, I find a waste to throw away, so normally I take them and make it into soup, using the stock. Now here is some important advice, especially if you make stronger stock as beef, it can upset unused stomaches it is too strong, it happened to my mother on my first attempt of beef stock, the stock was too strong when I made ramen and used the stock as base, while very tasty and much better than regular stock, especially the one that comes with it, it not only was very filling, she felt stuffed and thought that it sat like a brick on her stomach, and later she got the runs.
The problem was solved by simply diluting the stock, it was too strong and concentrated, how much is enough, that you have to find by yourself and by your own tastes and preferences. Anywhere between one by two of water to one by one, or even less, it is up to you and those around you.
How do I use stock? You ask, as mentioned before to make soups, ramen broth, to cook rice, to make sauces, anything that you do with store bought stock can be done with homemade stock, of course certain recipes that ask for powdered stuff might not work, like breads or cookies, trial and error there, sorry. Normal uses as making soup and sauces work just great, my earlier onion soup recipe works great with homemade stock, later I will add a homemade tomato sauce recipe, that works really well with homemade stock too. So try using it with anything that you feel like.

Oh yes, I was forgetting, it can happen if you make the stock sometimes, once it gets cold it might congeal a bit like soft gelatin, just heat it and it will get liquid again, and you can make the stock and freeze it, and only take the amount that you need when you feel like using it, so you can make it to last months in the freezer.

I learned this one in some cooking classes that I took a while back, it isn't all that hard and the sauce is really good, takes some effort though.

Tomato sauce and catchup:

Dificulty: Medium, it is more labor intensive than hard.

What you need:

An assload of tomatoes, preferably ripe to very ripe ones, since I can’t get my hands on Italian tomatoes, the best for making sauce, I use whatever ones I can get, quite often cherry tomatoes, which I can get cheaply on the end of a day of market.

Leek, can be the entire thing or just the green parts of it.

Celery

Onion

Carrot

Garlic

The four up here is pretty much up to taste and other than the garlic can be fully removed from the recipe. The leek and the celery are part of a bouquet garni, it is a mix of herbs to make stock, bayleaf, and other herbs go there, mostly you go by your personal preference, this is your tomato sauce, you season it to your tastes, adding or removing stuff from the basic recipe.

Water and/or stock. Here is a chance of using that nice homemade stock of the previous post.

Large pot, as big as your ambitions for this sauce.

How to make it:

For starters lets focus on the tomatoes, you can use them whole or you can seed them, I like to seed them, so it is less stuff to sieve later, plus it also makes easier to cook too. I slice the tomatoes in half and squeeze the seeds out in a sieve over a bowl, and throw the tomatoes in a pot, don’t cook them yet, after a few tomatoes I strain the seeds getting as much of the water out of them, I discard the seeds and throw the juice in the pot with the tomatoes, repeat until you get over with the tomatoes.
You can either do as I do and throw that juice in the pot, or you can just save it and if you think that the sauce is getting too dry add it, I honestly prefer to add it all in the beginning to get more flavor and getting rid of the taste of raw tomatoes. But is up to you.

Once the tomatoes are done throw in the other stuff, garlic and onion peeled, washed carrot, the greens and herbs to your taste, spices to your taste too. Add the stock and water to cover the tomatoes, then let it simmer for one hour or so. Stir it occasionally.
Once the first hour or two pass I get everything but the greens and blend it together into a paste, at this stage you have two main options, you can strain the sauce making it smooth sauce without the skin or any leftover seeds on it, or you can leave it a courser sauce. A third option is removing everything but the tomatoes at this point and mashing the tomatoes if they still hold their shape to make a rustic sauce.

Here you add a bit of sugar and salt, not much, just to cut any acidity from the tomatoes and make it taste smoother, for lack of better term. At this point you can let it cool a bit, place inside jars and store it in the freezer, I do that putting them inside microwave/freezer pots and when I feel like using them I take one and use it instead of having to taw the entire thing. So you can make lots and store or even give around to your family.

Now using your homemade sauce, as with the stock once you go home made you will see how different it is from store bought. It tastes much better once you get things right, and doesn’t take muck to get things right. I recommend a basic pasta dish, get yourself a piece of bacon and cube it, fry it with some diced onions, garlic, some spices and maybe a bit of ground meat, not too much. Cook the pasta when you are halfway through getting the sauce done.
Put a portion of the sauce in the frying mix, adjust the amount of moisture with a bit of stock or water from the cooking pasta, don’t make it too liquid, we want here a drier sauce when the pasta is added, test the salt adding as needed, when the pasta is around three quarters of the way cooked strain it not too well and add to the sauce, flip well or mix carefully, the starch from the pasta will help thicken the sauce that was a little on the thick side, you want the pasta and the sauce to blend well without having soggy pasta or liquid sauce. Add a bit of butter and some basil now that it is nearly over, mix it so the flavors mix well, then serve, eat while it is hot.
Normally I make pasta like this in individual portions, so you can adjust things finely, it is a good dish to make to your significant other or for small meetings with few friends. Plate it nicely and you are done. Normally I don’t add grated cheese as I like tasting the sauce without the interference of it.
Once you start making pasta like this you start to get really picky in how making it, but I don’t think that is a bad thing. Now for the ketchup.

For the ketchup I pretty much remove the carrot, actually nowadays I don’t even add it to the regular sauce, anyway, it starts pretty much the same as the tomato sauce, ketchup is basically a tomato sauce, but thickened a lot. The really important thing here is the spices, the spice mix make or break your ketchup, you can make it taste just like your favorite brand of store bought stuff with enough tries with the spice.
I normally use nutmeg, clove, black peppercorns, coriander seeds, bayleaf, cinnamon, fennel seeds, thyme, garlic, ginger, as my basic spice mix, for amounts, that is pretty much trial and error paired to personal tastes, you can add chillis or other peppers for heat, but that is for you to decide. Add or remove to taste, this is like the tomato sauce or stock recipe from above, you make it because it is healthier and you can adjust it to your taste or needs.
You also need sugar or substitute, if you have diabetes or other illnesses like that, salt and vinegar, you adjusts these to taste and need, if you have someone with high blood pressure you cut the salt, if you want that person to have it.

You cook it mostly like the tomato sauce, remove the seeds before cooking, add in some of the sugar and vinegar, the flavoring ingredients, and cook for half to one hour, depending of how much liquid you had when you started it. Once it is cooked blend everything and strain it, at this point I get another pot or wash the one that I was using, and cook it some more to get it thicker, now is when I normally work in most of the vinegar, sugar and salt, as it is nearly done, the sauce is thickening into ketchup, so once you get it right you just have to bottle it. However if you want to thicken it be very careful with the salt, sugar and vinegar mix here, as it reduces the flavors get enhanced, and so does those three.
To get it thick the commercial stuff adds pectin, it is a natural thickener that vegetables have, so you might not get it as thick as the store bought stuff unless you reduce the ketchup more. I warn that making ketchup can be somewhat frustrating, as making tofu, you start with an assload of stuff and end with quite less stuff, normally I make it with a portion of the sauce stated ahead, so I get around one liter of sauce that I get around 400 ml to make ketchup, that gives around 200 or so in the end. For that I use around 3 kilos of tomatoes.
It is easier and cheaper to but ketchup, I am the first to admit it, but if you want something special give this one a try, if you find a mix that you like, try writing it down for later use, so you don’t have to struggle with mixes every time.

But if you are going to plain tomato sauce, now that one is pretty worth if as you don’t need it as concentrated, and if you happen to get an assload of tomatoes cheaply or even better for free, why not giving it a go?

Boiled ox tongue with ginger

This recipe isn’t a experimental one at all, this is a kind of inherited recipe from my grandfather (he isn’t dead by the way), and I have prepared it several times already, I love this recipe, but it is kind of a one of those taste things, ox tongue, I am quite fond of †˜uncommon’ cuts and parts, but let’s admit it, not everyone likes it, so this is a recipe for those who like tongue or want to try it.
Ox tongue it quite good, for those wondering it tastes like meat, the texture can be somewhat hard for some to stomach (pun intended), this recipe is rather simple, I believe that this recipe was originated, at least in my family, from a stewed like fish dish, since I had it before with fish.
Cleaning the ox tongue is a bit annoying, you might have your butcher to clean it for you, I get my pre boiled and mostly cleaned, they remove the leather like skin from the tongue, I take things one step further and remove a skin like, well, skin from the tongue revealing the meat, mostly because I don’t like that remaining skin, it has a hardness to it that goes against the softness of the meat, and there is the visual aspect, I like ox tongue, but that remaining skin has pappilae like buds there, which likely are remnants of the buds, so I remove those, but the butcher might remove all for you when cleaning it raw.

Difficulty: Easy-medium, cleaning the tongue and peeling stuff makes the recipe a little on the annoying side, but it is a very easy to make recipe

Ingredients

1 ox tongue, cleaned (around 1 kilo more or less)
2 to 3 liters of water
1 large pan/pot (large enough to fit the tongue and the water to cover it)
Soy sauce (I use around a third of a cup more or less, I go for taste here)
Salt (anywhere to tea spoon to table spoon, again for taste here)
Ginger to taste (literally, I use very little like a one centimeter big knob and grate it into the water, my grandfather uses a around five centimeters big knob and he chops it into either thin sticks or fine cubes, oh yes, peel it)
Hondashi, bonito stock, stuff like that, a little just to a little flavor
I add between 1 to 6 garlic cloves, but this is totally optional and is my personal add on to the recipe, and since I really like garlic I use it a lot

How to make it

It is plain simple honestly, just throw everything, other than the salt and soy sauce, into the pot and boil the crap out of it, after one or two hours, less with a pressure cooker, taste the stock, add salt and soy sauce to taste, though more soy sauce than salt, as the broth/stock must be dark because of it.
You might have noticed that I haven’t told you how to cut the tongue, simple because for the initial boiling I leave the tongue whole, after it boiled I take it out and slice it thinly and return it to the boil for another half hour, that is it. Turn it off and enjoy.

This recipe is great with Japanese white rice, I also like it pure, I think that might be a good drinking side dish, but I eat it mostly with rice or pure, I put some slices over rice, some of the stock and eat it, I also use the stock and tongue to eat with ramen, I advise to find your best method of enjoying. As for taste is really good, I try leaving just a bit of ginger taste and most of the meat flavor, but it can be pretty gingery tasting. I hope that you guys enjoy it.

It has been a while since I posted a new recipe, so here is another one, already tried and tested, I am using it twice a week. Today's recipe is for homemade yogurt, a very easy recipe, that is good for you, aids on digestion and the working of your intestines.

EDIT: After my stupid brother ate the last of the yogurt, leaving nothing behind to seed a new batch, I had to start the process from scratch again, I am not sure if this affects every first few batches, or is particular to the brand of yogurt that we bought as starter, but the first four or so batches of homemade yogurt comes out very gooey and slimy, not appetizing at all, after a few batches and straining it became firm and yogurt like as the good quality stuff that I have as personal reference, becoming firm, and breaking into a liquid when stirred, I had forgotten about this when I first wrote this post.
Once the texture improved, I am not sure if was after a few batches of unstrained yogurt or after a few batches and straining it, what I know for sure is, the first batch can be very strong with its purging capacities, my mother and I after having some used the toilet a few times almost with the runs, while my brother had nothing happening to him even after eating it, such thing doesn't mean that is spoiled, just that the effects are somewhat too strong, I am not sure of why though, so just a warning for first timers making the first batch and the next few ones from it.


Homemade Yogurt, non-strained and strained

Difficulty: Pathetically easy

Preparation time: To actually prepare the recipe no more than half an hour, but total time between the beginning of the process and the time that the yogurt is done can take anywhere between 8 to 12 hours

Ingredients:

1 cup of plain yogurt, whole milk, low fat, no fat, strained, unstrained, it doesn't really matter, I personally prefer whole milk yogurt for the first/starter batch, for the second batch on, I separate anywhere between one cup of unstrained yogurt to half a cup of unstrained, or a tablepoon or two of strained, either one does the trick.

Milk, I am listing the milk before the amount since this is where you decide how much you want to make, the amounts of starter listed before can easily produce yogurt for several amounts, here are the main amounts that I am using, 1 liter, 2 liters, 3 liters and 5 liters. I personally recoment starting with 2 liters, if you want to increase it on later batches you can do it, your only limits are your containers and your refrigerator space.

Needed utensils:

One pot/pan, size here increases or decreases with the amount of milk used, so 5 liters one huge pot, one liter one small pot.

One airtight container, it can be those freeze and microwave proof stuff, large bowls with lids, jugs of the kind to make juice on, bowls and plastic wrap, whatever you have or decide to use, I recomend a plastic airtight container with its own lid, but I often also use a juice jug that has a lid to make it, so whatever you have can do as long you can cover it and later stuff on a microwave, oven or other closed space that I will explain why later.

Cheese cloth or those non disposable cloth coffee strainers, these are to make strained yogurt, I use here the cloth strainer since I don't have my cheese cloth anymore, it does the work really well.

One jug or deep pot, this is needed to place the straing yogurt on to allow the whey to drain on, later I will give a few suggestions of using the whey.

One or more airtight containers to store the finished yogurt, after all you might want to store it in smaller containers, or if you are straining it you need a new container for the strained stuff if you can only strain limited batches of the yogurt.

Cooking thermometer, I was forgetting about this one, if you have one, then you want to use it, the milk is good to be seeded with the yogurt when it is around 37 degrees, if you don't have a thermometer you can dip your finger on the milk to test the temperature(clean and washed finger please), if you can keep your finger there for 10 seconds without the temperature being enough to scald you, then the milk is good to go, I use the finger method since my thermometer is out of batteries.

How to make it:

It is pretty simple, you begin getting your choice of pot, make sure that is nice and clean, in there you add your milk in the amount that you decided to use, just to illustrate I will use 3 liters, pour the milk there and take the pot to your stove, turn it on and stir the milk, as explained before measure the temperature of the milk, you can boil the milk if you like, but I normally don't since it separates the cream from the milk, but if you are using raw milk then boil it! If you are using normal, store bought pasteurized stuff, then just heating it to the point of use is okay.
Now that your milk is nice and warm, you don't get burned with it, so the starter culture can trive there without dying from the heat, add the culture to the milk and mix well to dissolve the yogurt into the milk, transfer the milk to the container with the lid, put the lid on tight and now store the container inside a microwave, over, or whatever other space where you can fit it and the temperature won't change drastically, I either use my microwave, and no, you don't turn it on, you let nature do its job while the microwave is off, or I use the freezer of a fridge that isn't being used, this way the soon to be yogurt can stay in a warm temperature without changes.
Now that this part is done, wash everything that you used, throw away any empty cartons, containers or jugs that you won't need, and let nature do its work for 8 hours, I normally make the yogurt at night before I hit the sack, in the morning it is ready and I transfer it to the fridge, so after 8 hours, well it could be 6 too, but I normally leave for eight, I get the 3 liters of yogurt and then decide if I want to strain it or not.
If you don't want to strain the yogurt you can skip this part if you like to, if you want to keep reading on, okay, we are straining the yogurt, I like unstrained yogurt to eat sweet and strained to eat salty, adding a bit of salt and using as a spread on bread and other stuff, also great for sauces, but is also great sweet.
Now you get your choice of straining implement, a cheese cloth/sack, cloth strainer, whatever, if is a cheese cloth/sack, you need to find a place to tie it on, or tie it inside a deep pot or jug to collect the strained whey and not cause a mess, the coffee strainer works in the same way, but since it has its own frame is a bit easier to manage on a jug.
I use the strainer on the juice jug, placing it on the edges and then laddling on enough yogurt to almost fill the strainer, btw stitch side outwards away from the yogurt so it is easier to collect the final product, I then cover with tin foil or plastic wrap, put inside the fridge and wait several hours, once it is dry I remove the yogurt from the strainer and place it on a separate container, I then store the whey in another jug and repeat the process until I run out of unstrained yogurt or I decide that is enough.

Now how to use your home made yogurt, you use as you normally would use the store bought stuff, the home made stuff tastes stronger than the store bought, it is also fresher, it also lasts rather well, the strained yogurt, inside a closed container, in the fridge lasts around two weeks to twenty days, that if we let it last for that long, since normally it is eaten and used way before that, for the unstrained one, I am pretty sure that it last around that long too, but again, we don't let it get that old before using it.
I add sugar and fruit, blending it to make flavored yogurt, or I use ice cream flavoring powders to give flavor and use sugar to sweeten it, or you can use honey, you decide how you want it. The strained yogurt I normally add some salt, some chopped green onions, grated garlic, some olive oil and use as a spread or dip, it is great, nice and tangy from the yogurt, salty just right, it really strikes some of my roots. Of course you can also eat it sweet, using fruit or other methods, do as you like.
Now for the whey, if you strained the yogurt you will have lots of whey left, normally around half to seventy percent of the previous amount will be whey, and honestly that stuff is still pretty nutritious to let it waste, here are some of my suggested uses, if you make homemade bread, instead of using water or milk on the recipe, replace it for whey, your bread will taste great, I also use it in cooking, I made a curry where I used whey and pork stock instead of water, and it was great, you couldn't even tell that there were whey there.
Another use, a little unusual for some I suppose, is to just plainly flavoring the whey itself, using instant juices, powdered or not, sweetening it and then drinking it, it tastes good, it smells nice, though it has a particular smell, not a bad one, but a little unusual, here we used it with just instant juice and sugar and it was pretty good, I am still due trying adding some yogurt to the whey, not sure if some unstrained or strained, just enough to make a thickish liquid, flavoring and sweetening it to make a "yogurtish' drink, it is on my to do list though.
And of course if you don't feel like using the whey you can throw it away, or give it to your pets, I remember making yogurt with my father when I was a teen, and we gave the whey to his dogs, they loved it, I give a bit of whey to my cats now and then when they are short on cat food, they absolutely love the stuff, but again, it is your call to do whatever you want with it.

I hope that you guys enjoy your own yogurt if you decide to try this recipe out.

EDIT: I tested part of the recipe that I had suggested but not yet tried, I made a yogurtish drink, using whey from some strained yogurt that I was straining, and unstrained yogurt, dilluting the yogurt into the whey and flavoring it with Tang strawberry and sugar, it is quite good and I recomend, it is a nice drink for some western style breakfasts or 'snack', or just as a plain flavorful drink, after all it has plenty of benefits and nutrients, loads of stuff from the whey plus the yogurt added on it. Dillute to your taste, adding more or less yogurt to the whey as you like, on the same note, sweeten and flavor to taste. Btw, I am not sure of how long this mix will last without curdling, since some juices have acids on them, which by rule curdles milk, but this is yogurt and mostly a unexplored territory on that direction.

EDIT2: About the yogurtish drink, after half to one hour in the fridge waiting to be drunk, the mixture didn't curdle at all, so I assume that using powdered juices, even with a rather high acid content, will not cause the whey/yogurt mix to curdle like regular milk, therefore, making the mix stable, able to be stored for a handful of days, though I personally don't recomend letting it pass three days since the mixture with the juice. And a final note on this drink, in the ratio that I used, the drink was very, very filling, so drinking too much at once might cause overfullness or other issues, like any excessive consuption of dairy products. Still a damn good way to use leftover whey from strained yogurt.

For some strange reason this week I had the mysterious and sudden craving to eat peanut butter, it isn't that easy to find peanut butter here in Brazil, and when we do find is expensive as hell for a small 250 grams pot, since I saw a while, long while, back in a TV show that peanut butter is damn easy to make I decided to make my own, some internet searching later and I got a 'recipe' to try, and try I did.


Peanut butter

Difficulty: So damn easy, it isn't that labor intensive either, or time consuming.

Preparation time: Variable, if you can buy toasted peanuts you save yourself an hour more or less of roasting the peanuts.

Ingredients:

500 grams of peanuts, in here a standard bag that you find in any grocery store, sadly unroasted since they didn't have roasted on sale.

A pinch of salt, which is pretty much optional.

Sugar, again optional and to taste, in my case I threw around 3 or 4 table spoons.

Vegetable oil, or peanut oil, but I can't find peanut oil so I used soy beam oil, the oil is what gives the butter its spreadability, I used around 2 to maybe 4 tablespoons, add as much or as little as you want.

How to prepare:

If you can't get roasted peanuts, well we start by roasting, I used a little eletrict oven for it, it took around 30 to 50 minutes, every 5 or so minutes you stir the peanuts so they roast evenly, when roasted let it cool before using.

Get a blender and throw the peanuts there, add one table spoon of oil, the salt and sugar and blend the mix, if you want chunky peanut butter save some of the peanuts to mix later, blend the mix and add the oil little by little until it gets on the thickness that you like, also remember that peanut butter tends to harden when placed on the fridge.

I made my peanut butter semi smooth, I blended all the peanuts until most of it became a smooth past, yet there was still some sand sized bits there, for smoother butter keep blending, for crunchy/coarse blend less or add non blended peanuts after the mix is smooth, that way you can have nice and chunky peanut butter.

Store in an airtight container and consume quick, I honestly have no idea of how long natural peanut butter lasts before going bad, I stored my in the fridge, so it should last at least a week or two, in theory, outside the fridge no idea of how long it should last.

As for taste, it tasted pretty damn good, just as some of the best store bought stuff, yet a touch sweeter, because I added extra sugar, the salt goes in because peanuts love salt, so even in sweets a bit of salt makes peanuts taste better. I had some bread with the peanut butter and was great.

And later on I might try making peanut butter cookies since now I have peanut butter.

As for those of you wondering about the price of the stuff, I bought the half kilo bag for around 3,50, adding what I added it should add for around 1 extra buck, plus some electricity, so let me round the total to 5 bucks for a little over half a kilo of peanut butter.

Sounds a bit expensive when compared to the huge jars that we see sold in some countries by that amount or a little more, but here in Brazil a pot with 250 grams, a quarter of a kilo, is at the very least 4 bucks, so it was pretty cheap in comparison, and since there are no preservatives or chemicals is healthier, plus you can adjust salt and sugar, replacing or removing if you like, so if you have health issues is even better.

Katsudon is a Japanese food right?

Yes it is, katsudon is a rice bowl type of dish, more often than not a food that as don in the last part is a rice bowl, for instance gyudon is beef bowl, oyakodon is a egg and chicken bowl.

Katsudon is a fried pork cutlet rice bowl, tonkatsu is the name of the pork cutlet by itself, it becomes katsudon when combined with rice, some sauce/broth made in the recipe and some more stuff.

If you can give it a go, the recipe is rather simple and it is for mostly individual portions, and is pretty good.