Steamed rice is the staple food for Japanese. Health-conscious people add grain or barley to polished rice, or eat unpolished rice (genmai).
Miso soup is inseparable from steamed rice for breakfast. The ingredients are generally a couple of the following – tofu, seaweed, potatoes or vegetables.
The grilled fish at breakfast tends to be salmon, sun-dried fish, etc.
Rolled omelet is fried beaten eggs mixed with soup stock. Cooked rolled omelet requires a little bit of technique.
Grated radish is decorated with dried bonito or dried young sardines and eaten with soy sauce.
Fermented soybeans are healthy. Soy sauce and minced leek are mixed with the fermented soybeans about twenty times before serving. This mixture is eaten on top of steamed rice.
Dried laver which has been dipped in soy sauce is wrapped around steamed rice. It is not necessary to dip seasoned laver in soy sauce.
Pickles are preserved food. Radish, cucumber, Chinese cabbage, eggplant, burdock root, scallion and other vegetables are pickled with salt, miso or vinegar. Umeboshi are pickled plums which have been sun-dried and then further pickled.
Ozōni is eaten on the first 3 days of the New Year holidays. There are many kinds of ozōni - Kansai-style, Kantō-style, Nagoya-style, etc. Ozōni is a soup prepared mainly with rice cakes, vegetables, meat and fish. The combination of ingredients differs greatly depending on the region. There are four basic types of rice cakes – grilled square rice cake, grilled circular rice cake, boiled square rice cake and boiled circular rice cake. The soup is almost always either clear soup or miso soup.
