Malaysia - Bak Kut Teh

Background
Modern Malaysia is a fairly new country, having come into its modern form with the creation of the Federation of Malaysia in 1963, joining with the territorries of Sabah, Sarawak, and the city of Singapore. Singapore left the federation in 1965, so we will get back to them in the future. Malaysia occupies the lower bulge of the Malay peninsula and the northern coast of the island of Borneo. As a result of this distance the two parts of the countries have very distinct histories and culture.
The peninsular part of the country has a long standing history as a trade center. Buminputra is the catch all term for Muslims on the peninsula. The non-Muslim groups are the Chinese, Indian, Portuguese and the indigenous Orang Asli. Islam's influence was brought to the island via Indian traders. Indian communities did not establish large communities until the mid 19th century during British rule. Chinese set up long term trading out posts and began intermarrying in the 15th century. Portuguese settlements were established in the 16th century with rapid intermarriage as well.
The Borneo have a wide diversity of indigenous tribes. The coastal tribes have diets consisting of fish and while the hill tribes tend to subsist on roots and game.
The Lonely Planet Food Guide to Malaysia and Singapore is a concise and excellent resource. Finding information on on breakfast was pretty easy for Malaysia. Nasi lemak consists of steamed rice with coconut mist eaten with anchovies, peanuts, cucumbers, and chili sauce. Idli are black lentil and rice patties. Roti bread served with various topping are also common breakfast dishes. Bak kut teh is a broth made with chopped pork ribs and spices and served with rice. The name translates as pork rib tea and this name along with my general love of pork ribs made me choose this one. A chicken version called chik kuh teh is eaten by the Muslim population.
The tea has many novel spices and roots used in its preparation. White pepper is the exact same seed as black pepper except the pepper fruit's skin is removed before before the drying process. Star anise is the seed of an evergreen tree found in the southwest of China. It gets its name from its close taste to regular anise but the actual plants are very different. Several components of the dish are meant for taste and medicine. Dang Gui (angelica root) is considered the female ginseng and is in the same family as coriander and celery. Yok Chok (Solomon's seal rhizome) is a starchy root. Kei Chee (boxthorne berry) are members of the new world nightshade family. I was only able to locate the Yok Chok in a 2 pound bag so I decided to omit the medicinal herbs from the recipe we made. I include the proportion below if you are able to find and use them.
The chopped pork ribs can be purchased at a Chinese market ready to use. If buying whole ribs make sure you are fully awake before going to work with your cleaver, or chop them up the night before.

Bak Kut Teh

• 1 lb chopped pork ribs, 1 ½ inches in length
• 2 heads of garlic, separated, with the skins intact
• 2 red chillies
• Dark soy sauce
• Salt
• Spice pouch
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 6 cloves
• 1 tsp black peppercorns
• 1 tsp white peppercorns
• ½ tsp coriander seeds
• ½ tsp fennel seeds
• Herb mixture (optional)
• 5 slices dang gui (angelica root)
• 5 slice yok chok (Solomon's seal rhizome)
• 1 tbsp kei chee (boxthorn berries)

1. Put spices and herbs into a muslin pouch or into cheese cloth.
2. Place ribs and unpeeled garlic at the bottom of a sauce pan.
3. Nest the muslin pouch in the middle of the ribs.
4. Add 5 cups of water.
5. Bring the water to a boil over medium heat.
6. Simmer until the meat is tender. (Our meat took about 45 minutes to be done.)
7. Add soy sauce and salt to taste.
8. Remove the spice pouch and serve in large bowls with short grain rice on the sides.
9. Thinly slice the chilies and place them in a shallow dish. Cover them with a shallow layer of soy sauce and use this for dipping the ribs.

Results and Discussion
This breakfast was not nearly as complicated as it might appear. Once the ingredients are together you can just let it simmer while you take care of other things.
The broth was very surprising. The first surprise was that it was not completely over powered by garlic. I think keeping the garlic unpeeled kept the flavor from overwhelming the broth. The pepper seeds and spices blend into a nice background. The star anise has a nice licorice flavor that hovers over the rest of the flavors. The pork ribs provide the broth with a rich texture, but it is not too heavy.
The chili soy sauce gave the ribs some heat and a nice flavor, but eating them with chopsticks is a bit of a challenge!

Uzbekistan - Shirkovok

Background
Uzbekistan is located in central Asia and has been a territorial football for several thousand years. Its ethnic diversity and location has naturally given it a wide diversity of cuisine. China greatly influenced its cooking, while India was more influential in terms of cooking utensils. I did not expect to find Korean influence, because the countries are over 3,000 miles apart, but a large Korean population was relocated there by Stalin in 1938.
Research for this meal turned out to be easier than I expected. I found a blog dedicated to Uzbek cuisine that listed several breakfast options.
Gu'shtli quymoq is an omelette containing meat, vegetables, and coriander. Tuhum dolma is a hard boiled egg served with cheese and cream cheese. Sutil ugra is a noodle dish with browned onions and milk. Shirguruch is a cream of rice dish. Shirkovok is a pumpkin soup with rice and butter. We were able to find a recipe for Shirkovok in The Art of Uzbek Cooking. We substituted butternut squash for the pumpkins since they are hard to find this time of year.

Pumpkin and Rice Milk Soup (Shirkovok)

• 4 cups water
• 2/3 cup long grain rice
• 1 ½ cups diced pumpkin or butternut squash
• 4 cups milk (NOT skim milk)
• 1 tbsp butter
• Salt

1. Bring the salted water to a boil.
2. Add the rice and pumpkin.
3. Simmer on low heat for 20 minutes.
4. Reserve 1 cup of the cooking liquid and drain the rest.
5. Add back the reserved cooking liquid and the milk.
6. Slowly warm over medium heat, taking care to avoid boiling.
7. Salt to taste and add 1 tbsp of butter.
8. Serve with sour cream.

Results and Discussion
This breakfast was a nice and simple. Most of the time is spent cooking the rice which can be done largely unattended. The taste was not anything spectacular but it was wonderful piece of comfort food for a winter morning. The squash gives some substance to what would otherwise be a pretty mushy meal. The milk base and the sour cream gives you lots of richness. The dish is also very white with white garnish—the small flecks of orange are the only real color in the dish.

Nepal - Daal Bhaat

Background
Nepal is predominantly an agricultural society, so naturally food is at the center of the culture. Given its ancients roots and intense topography, it is also unsurprising that Nepal has 36 ethnic groups and many languages. The character of the cuisine is simple but made flavorful with spices.

For the cultural and menu information we found an interesting book called Enjoy Nepalese Cuisine. Its purpose is to give people an overview of food in Nepal for people who want to know about it but not cook it. The author does this while referring you to her separate recipe book.

What qualifies as breakfast is interesting in Nepal. Being an agrarian society, the Nepalese tend to be early risers. The breakfast is hot sweet tea and some biscuits. Lunch is eaten at 8AM, when westerners normally eat breakfast. We decided to do both meals. The second meal consists of daal, bhaat and tarkari. Daal is a gravy made from split beans, bhaat is rice, and tarkari is green vegetables served with achaars or chutneys. Achaars are pickled food while chutneys are fresh.

As might be expected for such a diverse culture, all of these components come in a wide variety. We used the cookbook Taste of Nepal, which contained entire chapters dedicated to each dish. There was no particular guidance on which were preferred for breakfast, so we selected the dishes that most interested us. For the daal we chose to use black urad beans, with simple steamed rice for the bhaat, and a tarkari of stir-fried cabbage. We made a radish achaar the night before so it could marinate, but you can also make it the day of. We also ordered some samples of Nepal-grown tea from Upton Tea Imports.

This meal used three spices that might be unfamiliar to our readers. The first spice is asafetida, also called devil's dung, which has a potent unpleasant smell when first encountered. I would not use it for cooking if I ran across it randomly. It is made from the resin of a root in the carrot family. Second is timur, also known as Sichuan pepper, which is not actually pepper at all, though it resembles it. We used this once before, in the Japanese breakfast. The other new ingredient is an herb called jimbu, which is related to onions and leeks. We were able to purchase it at Bombay Market along with cumin-flavored bicuits for the first breakfast.

South Korea - Soup and Rice, Side Dishes and Kimchi

Before we start, I just want to point out that most of the time I lived in Korea, I ate something like this for breakfast:

However, Corn Flakes are not really in the spirit of the Project. The traditional Korean breakfast is not really different than lunch or dinner. Rice, soup, and kimchi would suffice for a basic meal, and usually all that is hanging around from dinner so its no trouble to put together. Since we try to cook something a little more than the basic meal, we did a few more sides: fried egg, anchovies, kim (nori), and bracken salad. (This makes seven dishes total – there should always be an odd number of dishes.)

We only had to make the soup and the bracken salad from scratch; we took the recipes from Quick and Easy Korean Cooking for Everyone, a really good basic cookbook with step-by-step illustrations and pictures of all ingredients. Everything else we got at the Korean market or had in the house (also easily purchased).

The soup could really be any light soup. We had thought of doing bean-sprout soup (a traditional hangover cure!), but we've got a surplus of greens from our farm share, so it was more practical to use those.

Greens Soup

• 1 cup frozen greens
• 2 hot green peppers (gochu or jalapeño), sliced into rings
• ½ green onion, sliced diagonally
• 3½ cups dashima (seaweed) stock or chicken stock
• 4 oz doenjang (miso)
• crushed garlic, to taste (i.e. lots)

1. Defrost greens, squeeze, and drain thoroughly.  Cut into 2" pieces.
2. Bring stock to a boil.  Reduce heat, add greens and cook 3-4 minutes.
3. Dissolve doenjang in stock, add garlic, and return to boil.
4. Stir in peppers and green onion, remove from heat, and serve.

We have an excellent automatic rice cooker, all you need to do is put in washed rice and press the button. We added a few tablespoons of black rice which makes the whole pot a pretty purple color once cooked.

Our kimchi we did make ourselves, although somewhat nontraditionally using a recipe for Pickled Kimchi from the Complete Book of Picking. Real kimchi is not pickled, but if you've ever kept kimchi for an extended period of time in your regular refrigerator, you will appreciate the utility of being able to keep it vacuum-sealed in the pantry until needed! On the other hand, if you do purchase your kimchi, avoid the commercially jarred stuff; I have yet to find any brand that is very good. Hopefully your market will have house-made kimchi with the prepared food, and this will be much better and more authentic in taste.

Anyway, the kimchi was already done and in the pantry, so the only other things we had to cook were the bracken and the eggs. A fried egg is basically a fried egg anywhere (also makes a good dinner side dish and tasty hamburger topping). The salad could be any simple dressed vegetable—spinach, sprouts, whatever—but we had the bracken left over from something else so we used that.

Bracken Salad

• 7 oz gosari (bracken), packaged/precooked type
• 1 tbsp sesame oil
• 2 tsp crushed garlic
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp minced green onion
• 2 tsp cheongju (mirin)
• 2 tsp rice vinegar
• 1 tsp ground sesame seeds

1. Rinse and drain bracken.
2. Heat sesame oil in a large pan, add garlic and bracken, stir-fry until heated through.
3. Add soy sauce, green onion, cheongju, and vinegar, continue cooking until sauce is thickened.
4. Top with sesame seeds and serve warm or chilled.

Finally, we did make one concession to modern Korean prepackaged junk-foodiness with a bottle of Morning Rice, a sweetened rice milk drink. You can buy dozens of different energy/meal-replacement/probiotic/vitamin/diet/etc/etc drinks at any cornershop; most of them are kind of vile, but Morning Rice is pretty inoffensive (actually I think Whit really liked it) and it says "Morning" right on the bottle!

Thailand - Kao Tome

Note: Yes, we disappeared last week. We did cook breakfast; scroll down to see that post as well.

Background
This week's menu had two excellent sources. A friend from Thailand gave us lots of recommendations. Her first recommendation was pah-tong-goh which is a version of donuts. I found some good recipes and many different spellings of this dish. The logistics of the day meant we did not have enough time to make them. It also seems to be a street food so it may not be something that Thai people make at home. Either way, I want to make this at some point in the future.
The other recommendation she made was kao tome which is a rice porridge. I was hesitant to try rice porridge again given how the cháo bò turned out. I started looking for recipes because it would provide a chance to compare the different approaches to the same dish. I came across the book Real Thai by Nancie McDermott which had a recipe that looked good. According to McDermott, Thai cuisine reflects its geography as it rests between Indian and Chinese cuisine.

Chili-Vinegar Sauce (Prik Dong Nahm Som)
Combine the following ingredients the night before and refrigerate.

• 1/2 cup white vinegar
• 1 tbsp fish sauce
• 10 hot chilis thinly sliced crosswise

Fried Garlic (Gratiem Jiow)
Make the night before

• 1/4 vegetable oil
• 2 tbsp minced garlic

Important Note: This entire process should not take more than 3 minutes. Otherwise you will burn the garlic as I have done in the past.  Also do not use canned pre-minced garlic as the high moisture content will affect the results.

1. Heat oil in a skillet over low heat.
2. Test the oil by dropping in a piece of garlic. The oil is ready if it sizzles immediately.
3. Add the rest of the garlic and cook until it starts to turn golden.
4. When the color change starts remove the garlic from heat.
5. The garlic will finish cooking in the hot oil.

Kao Tome

• 4 cups chicken stock
• 2 cups of cooked jasmine rice
• 1/4 lb minced pork
• 1 tbsp fish sauce
• 1/4 cup fried garlic
• 3 tbsp green onion cross sliced
• 1 handful of cilantro
• Chili-Vinegar Sauce

1. Bring stock to a boil and stir in the rice.
2. When the water starts to boil, add the minced pork and cook until the pork is done, about 5 minutes
3. Stir in fish sauce and pepper.
4. Remove from heat.
5. Garnish with fried garlic, green onion, chili-vinegar sauce, and cilantro leaves.
6. Add chili-vinegar sauce and fish sauce to taste.

Results and Discussion
Thai rice porridge was better than our Vietnamese rice porridge. The first major improvement was making the rice the night before and cutting an hour off the prep time. This version also had a much better taste and was lighter because we had a leaner meat. The chili-vinegar adds a nice accent that brings out the other flavors in the meal. The fried garlic is a nice enhancer as it gives little crispness at a couple of points. If I were to retry the cháo bò I would cook the rice the night before and start from there and save a lot of time. I also have lots of leftover chili vinegar sauce and I will have to find a way to use it up. I could see it working as a salad dressing with a couple of additions.

Iran - Khiyar with Kateh

Background
Information on Iranian breakfast was much easier to find than last week's country. The books Treasury of Persian Cuisine and A Taste of Persia provided excellent information and a variety of choices.
Archeology of Persian cooking goes back to 2000 BCE and a cookbook from the 1200s is known to exist. The 13th century cookbook focuses on combinations of sweet tasting meets with different syrups and fruits. Rice is mentioned in this text but it is not yet given any special attention. Treasury of Persian Cuisine provides an interesting aside on how Persian cuisine in the 17th century was based around balancing the humors with foods that fall into the categories of hot, cold, wet, and dry. Hot and cold foods refer to the food's energy content. The book did not mention what was meant by wet and dry.
Our options for this meal were plentiful. One was a soup with bulgur wheat and lamb called haleem, and it is served during Ramadan which has just started.  But it also takes 2-3 hours to make. The next entree I came across was khiyar which is cucumbers with feta or honey that is eaten during the spring. We have some nice cucumbers from our farm share so we decided to make this.
For our carb we had to choose between nan-e barbari and kateh. Nan-e barbari is a baked flat bread. Kateh is a rice dish where the rice is baked into a cake shape. The bread is traditionally eaten with the khiyar, but I chose the kateh because we have had flatbreads with previous breakfasts and this dish was a new challenge.

Kateh

• 2 cups jasmine rice
• 3 1/2 cups water
• 2 tsp salt
• 1/3 cup ghee

1. Wash the rice.
2. Combine water, rice, and salt and bring it to a boil on high heat.
3. Simmer on medium until all the water absorbed and stir to prevent rice from sticking.
4. Stir in ghee
5. Cover pan with a paper towel to absorb condensation and place the lid on top to secure it.
6. Cook for 30 minutes at low heat.
7. Invert rice onto a platter and serve as a golden cake

Khiyar

• Sliced cucumber with feta crumbled on top drizzled in honey

Results and Discussion
The khiyar was simple, quick, and tasty. The flavors go together really well and are nice on a warm summer morning. The cucumbers were very moist and this goes well with the dryness of the feta. The honey's sweetness compliments the feta's salty taste.
The kateh could have come out better. The basic taste was very simple and nice. (Ghee makes things taste good.) The major issue in preparation was probably not getting the ghee distributed evenly into the pan and along the sides. As a result the golden brown shell was left on the side of the pan. Looking online I found advice that I should use a non-stick pan. Follow this advice. I also think that melting the ghee before mixing it into the rice would also help to ensure a better distribution and hopefully lead to less sticking.

Democratic Republic of the Congo - Saka-Saka

Background
The background research for this breakfast was very difficult but had an elegant solution in the end. Cookbooks about the Democratic Republic of Congo or Zaire were not easily found. The next step on our search was to find cuisine of the dominant ethnic group of the country. This ethnic group is the Bantu and they are widespread through out sub-Saharan Africa. As a result I found a very comprehensive site about Somali Bantu which I stashed away for future reference.
The elegant solution came via my mother who reminded me that a good friend had lived near the DRC border studying gorillas for a year. I phoned Ayres and he recommended saka-saka. The recipe is from an African recipe site called The Congo Cookbook. I had come a across it before but I was unaware it was eaten for breakfast. In Africa the leaf would be a cassava leaf and would freshly picked form the plant. We chose to use collard greens as recommended by the website. We served the saka-saka on jasmine rice.

Saka-Saka

• 1 bunch of collard greens
• 2 tbsp peanut oil
• 1 onion chopped
• 1 clove garlic minced
• 1 bell pepper chopped
• 1/2 lb chopped okra
• can of sardines
• salt to taste

1. Tear the leaves into pieces and throw out the stemmy parts of the leaf.
2. Soften the leaves with a rolling pin.
3. Bring 4 cups of water to a boil, add the leaves, and simmer for 30 minutes uncovered.
4. Add the remaining ingredients to the pot and cook down the water.
5. Serve on a bed of jasmine rice.

Results and Discussion
This breakfast was simple once the research was done. The major mistake we made was buying a fresh packing of sardines. They had very little salt in them and so the final dish was a little bland. This problem was quickly remedied with a salt shaker. Another problem that I added far to much water at the beginning and it took a long time to cook off. The 4 cups given in the recipe is my guess at what should be an appropriate amount of water to cook the greens and have the breakfast ready in a timely fashion.
An alternative method of mashing the leaves involves a bowl, a bottle, and bashing. We chose the rolling pin method because we live in an apartment and bashing the leaves early in the morning would be rude to the neighbors. It does sound much more fun than a rolling so somebody try it and let us know.

Vietnam - Cháo Bò

Background
The two options for Vietnamese breakfast are pho and chao. Pho is a noodle soup that is served in Vietnamese restaurants. Chao is a simple rice soup. As I had never had chao I decided to make that for breakfast. Chao and pho have many variations and names depending on the meat. We made chao bo with is chao with thinly cut beef. The recipe for the chao bo was a chimera from two books: Into the Vietnamese Kitchen by Andrea Nguyen and Authentic Vietnamese Cooking by Corinne Trang. The major differences between the two dishes was there approach to the broth for the chao. Nguyen's approach required about 3 hours while Trang's recipe simply starts with water. I find it odd that Trang started with water given she writes wonderfully about the importance of broth in her introduction. We split the difference by using our own homemade broth.
We also made Ca Phe which is Vietnamese coffee for after the breakfast. Both books mention side dishes but neither list them so we had no side dishes.

Chao Bo

• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 minced shallot
• ¾ cup of jasmine rice
• 8 cups of vegetable broth
• 8 oz ground beef (80/20)
• 2 scallions
• 1 cup cilantro
• ½ cup chopped peanuts
• 1½ tbsp grated ginger
• Fish sauce (nuoc mam)
• Fresh ground pepper

1. Cook shallots and rice in oil over medium heat for five minutes until the shallots become translucent.
2. Add vegetable broth and bring to a boil.
3. Simmer uncovered for 1½ hours.
4. Add in ground beef making sure to break it into small bits so it cooks properly.
5. Cook for 5 minutes.
6. Ladle into bowls and garnish with peanuts, cilantro, ginger, fish sauce, and scallions.

Ca Phe

• 1 heaping tbsp French roast coffee
• 1 tbsp sweetened condensed milk

1. Spoon the condensed milk into the bottom of a cup.
2. Place coffee in brewer and set over cup.
3. Pour 6 oz boiling water into the brewer, wait for it to filter through, and serve.

Results and Discussion
This breakfast was not one of our favorites to make. Most of the time is spent waiting for the rice porridge to thicken, getting hungry, and making some toast. The end product is not visually appealing without garnish. The garnish also gives the dish most of its flavor with the beef and rice giving it most of its substance. I would not make this meal again for breakfast given the long preparation time. It would make a nice part of dinner and then reheat well for breakfast.
We did not have the right equipment to make the ca phe. To do it properly it requires a specialized device that is a hybrid of a French press and a drip. I did not think the coffee using our method was bad but it was weaker than it was supposed to be.

Phillippines - Longsilog

Background
The title of this week's breakfast is longsilog. The name comes from a portmanteau of the three main dishes: longganisa (sausage), sinangág (fried rice), and itlog (eggs). This method of naming meals is common in the Philippines. The fried rice recipe was found in The Food of the Philippines by Reynaldo G. Alejandro. The sausage recipe was found in Memories of Philippine Kitchens by Amy Besa and Romy Dorotan.

Longganisa (Sausage)

• 1 ½ lbs ground pork
• 1 tbsp annato coloring (powder, available at Latin markets)
• 1 tbsp chili oil
• 1 tbsp rice wine
• ½ tbsp rice winegar
• 1 tsp minced garlic
• 1 tsp lime zest
• ½ tbsp salt
• ½ tsp fresh ground pepper

1. Combine all of the ingredients in a mixing bowl, being careful not to pulverize the meat too much.
2. Divide the mixture into 10 balls all of the same size.
3. Shape these balls into sausages 3 inches long and about an inch in diameter.
4. Refrigerate the sausages overnight to give the flavor time to blend and to make handling easier.
5. Heat a frying pan to medium and put a thin layer of water in the pan. This helps to prevent sticking.
6. The sausages cook in about 5-7 minutes.
7. Place done sausages on a plate and keep warm in an oven.

Philippine Fried Rice

• 4 tbsp vegetable oil
• 2 tbsp minced garlic
• ¼ cup minced shallots
• 4 cups of cooked medium-grain rice mashed lightly with ½ cup water
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• ¼ tsp ground black pepper

1. Cook garlic in oil until golden brown.
2. Add all remaining ingredients and cook, stirring, for 10 minutes to ensure the rice is evenly heated.
3. Serve hot.

Scrambled Eggs
Scramble eggs in some of the grease left over from the sausages, top with crushed red pepper.

Results and Discussion
The original recipe for the sausages called for wild boar meat and pork fatback. Clearly the sausages would have been much more awesome had they been made of wild boar meat. I am a city dweller and wild boar hunting season in Somerville city limits is not until the fall. We were left with the choice of lean ground pork. The lean option left the sausages with too little fat and they were a little dry. I would recommend adding some fat back to help prevent this problem.
We used short-grain sticky rice in the fried rice. The stickiness of the rice caused lumps to developed as we fried it. In future attempts at fried rice the medium-grain variety will be used with the hope of minimizing the stickiness.
This was a pretty simple breakfast except for some challenges in finding certain ingredients. The most difficult was the annatto oil called for in the original sausage recipe.  We only required a small amount and all of the recipes yielded 2 cups.  It is because of this that we used annato powder to give the sausages the correct color. I really enjoyed making sausages from scratch and hope to some day be in a position where I can grind my own meat. I hope that will line up with boar season.

Japan - Rice, Miso Soup, Tamago, and Tsukemono

Background
We found a good reference for Japanese breakfasts in a New York Times article by David Kahn from 1992. It provided a lot of ideas about what the meal should include. We chose not to include fish because we could not find any that was reasonably priced and fresh.
We used recipes from Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art by Shizuo Tsuji for the miso soup and rolled omelet. The pickled vegetables, plums, fresh tofu, and various other side dishes were purchased at a specialty Japanese market, though some suitable items are probably available at most Asian markets. We also added natto(1, 2) to the menu for something traditional and adventurous.

Menu

• Rice - Short grain white rice, steamed in rice cooker
• Miso Soup - Many miso soup recipes exist online. We feel no need to add to the clutter. A useful technique in Japanese Cooking that is worth passing along is to mix the miso with half as much stock to break up lumps, before mixing it into the soup.
• Dashi-maki Tamago (Rolled Omelet) - Making a rolled omelet is difficult to describe after a single attempt. We recommend the reader consult a Japanese cookbook for illustrations of the techniques. The basic idea of the Japanese omelet is to roll an omelet and then pour another omelet and let the uncooked egg attach to the base of the rolled omelet and then roll them together. The process is repeated until you use up all of your egg mixture. The omelet is then shaped in a bamboo mat and allowed to cool for a minute. It is them sliced and served topped with shredded daikon that has been marinated in soy sauce.
  
  Making this omelet is an acquired skill. First, the pan used to make the omelet is a special pan that shapes the omelet. Mistakes I made in this attempt were over cooking the egg. A four egg omelet may also have been too large for the pan. In future attempts I would use 2 or 3 eggs. I anticipate making several more attempts before I get the hang of it.
• Natto - We got advice for preparing natto from Natto Land.
• Nori
• Tsukemono (Pickles) - cucumbers, bamboo shoots, eggplants, and plums (umeboshi)
• Green tea and orange juice

Results and Discussion
This breakfast very easy with the exception of the omelet. Purchasing all of the pickled dishes saves a lot of time (but costs a lot of money). The miso soups goes together very quickly. Only rice takes time to prepare.
The omelet is not difficult to do if you have made omelets before. The difficulty lies in combining the rolls into a single continuous piece. Messing this part up only affects the cook's pride but not the taste.
I was very neutral about the natto. The texture was slimy but nothing gross. The taste is a little sour and salty but nothing really special. I will probably not seek out natto again but I would eat it if someone served it to me. The pickled plums had a very strong taste that came in short tart burst. The pickled cucumbers tasted like regular pickles but much crunchier. We were planning on having guests so we invested a little more in this meal. In the future we would skip the sides and just have the omelet, rice, and soup.