Harumi’s Baked Cheesecake

From Harumi’s Japanese Home Cooking (http://beaulotus.blogspot.com/2009/11/harumis-baked-cheesecake.html)

Ingredients

For an 18 cm springform tin

100g Digestive biscuits
40g unsalted butter
250g Cream cheese
90g Sugar
2 Eggs
200ml Double cream
3 Tbsp sifted plain Flour
1 Tbsp Lemon juice

The butter and cream cheese have to be at room temperature.

Line the cake tin with greaseproof paper.

Put the biscuits in a plastic bag and roughly crush with a rolling pin.

Mix the softened butter with the crushed biscuits.

Make the biscuit base. Preheat the oven to 170°C.

Beat the cream cheese till soft then add the rest of the ingredients, in order, mixing each one thoroughly first before adding the next.

When the mixture has thickened, pour into the cake tin on top of the biscuit base. Bake for 45-50 minutes.

Remove from the oven and leave to cool before removing from the tin.

Not really too sure who Harumi is but lainey was gushing about her cookbook and specifically, this cheesecake. I am actually amazed at how simple it is to make (her) cheesecake. Even for someone like me, rough and definitely not refined in my cooking techniques, I actually managed to produce something that can be called a cheesecake.

As you can seen from the photograph, I didn’t use a 18cm springform tin. But I still used the same amount of ingredients for my square tin. Need more sugar for my cheesecake though, don’t think 90g is enough. Also, i think i can increase the amount of digestive biscuits. That said, the texture of the cheese, is exactly to my taste and that’s probably the most important thing. I am going to experiment more with this recipe, for example adding baileys and (lainey look away!) Oreo cookies for the base.

Simmered Mackeral in Miso Sauce (Saba no miso ni)

I used the same recipe that nietize used. Except that I added shitake mushrooms and used mirin instead of sugar and sake. I love this dish, it is heartwarming, delicious and easy to cook.

Saba no miso ni (Simmered mackerel in miso)

Ingredients

2 fillets mackerel
1/2 cup water
3 tbsps sake
3 tbsps sugar
6 tbsps miso
1 clove fresh ginger root
Preparation:

  

Slice ginger thinly. Remove bones from mackerel fillets. Cut a fillet in half. Mix ginger slices, water, sugar, sake, and 4 tbsps of miso in a pan and put on medium heat.

Add mackerel in the pan. Simmer fish for about 10 minutes on low heat, pouring the sauce over the mackerel. 

Add 2 tbsps of miso in the sauce at last and stir well. Stop the heat. Serve the mackerel with miso sauce.
*Make 4 servings

This is my favourite dish at Akashi but strangely, I have never thought of making it till today. And it wasn’t even my idea to do so , it was my mom. Google is brilliant, with just two words: ‘saba’ and ‘miso’, I found the recipe online and it turned out pretty, I would say that the taste is similar to the Akashi version. The only difference is that the saba fish is of a better quality at Akashi. It’s a really simple dish and I would want to make it in London; the only problem is i might not be able to find saba fish even in Chinatown. I will have to check and see.