FOOD BLOG

i'm not very big on food blogs, even though i love food. i also have no intention to spam this blog (and your flist) with food, but just this once, i feel obliged to share one of my favorite food that i've been eating every day for a meal.

it's called natto.

to some, this may be the most sick-tasting, disgusting-looking, horrendous-smelling food, but once you finish an entire bowl of rice with natto, there's no turning back. i was like that too when i first tried it; it was the only food that i have ever encountered that looks, smells, and tastes the same: disgusting. but i love it. i can't deny that i love it, and that i can't live a day without eating a pack of it for a meal.

this is how i usually prepare my natto:

first, get a bowl of rice ready and a pack of natto. depending on what natto brand you buy, you may get a pack of seasoned soy sauce and wasabi mustard, like the one i have here. this is the cheapest brand, $1.69 for 3 packs, bought at mitsuwa.



make sure your rice is hot. not warm, but hot. rice that just came out of the rice-cooker is the best. if you use leftover rice that's been stored in the fridge for a few days, pour a bit of water into the rice container and heat up entirely wrapped. essentially, you want your rice to be hot and moist.

the next step is to take the natto out of the pack and put it on top of the rice.



make sure you get every single piece of bean inside the package. the package is pretty small, so you don't want to waste any of the beans. also, to those of you who eat a lot, you don't want to use too much rice for a pack of natto. there should be more rice than natto, but not too much. the quantity shown in the picture is considered plenty, but not too much. if you put more rice than this, you will hardly be able to taste the natto.



pour the wasabi mustard and the seasoned soy sauce. don't use too much wasabi mustard, or it'll just taste like rice and wasabi. i like my natto-rice salty, so i usually add more soy sauce into the mix. as a final touch, extract an egg yolk and put it on top of everything.



this last part is the fun part. stir it up using your chopsticks with the conviction of a hungry monkey defending his lunch. remember what sa-chan said in gintama: "when you stir natto, you gotta stir it hard! if it's not sticky, it's no good!



and the final result should look like this:



enjoy! and be sure not to eat natto while playing wii.