Anyway, being the old Japanophile and anime otaku that I am, I spent the last couple of days (rainy weather) watching far too much anime and j-dramas online.
One of them especially caught my eye- "Bambino!" is based on a manga and is about a guy who wants to become a chef in an Italian restaurant. How awesome is that? It's a lovely coming of age drama with a very good cast as well, having Ayaka Komatsu (who also did Sailor Venus in Sailor Moon live action) and Sasaki Kuranosuke (whom I loved as hot engineer guy in Zettai Kareshi!).
The story is realistic, doesn't have any silly romance (yay!), and it's mostly about pasta, so you will feel an urge to cook some after watching. How about that, East Enders/Grey's Anatomy/*insert any other mainstream Western series?
I watched all 11 episodes over the last two days and it was so fun... take that from a TV-hater like me.
I felt like embedding a video, but unfortunately, crunchyroll doesn't have that option yet and lower quality, so watch it with Spanish subtitles on youtube if you can (they have a few episodes in English, too), or pay a visit to crunchyroll, which totally rocks about Asian drama and anime, anyway (there's also a drama about cake that I'll check out next).
It's also peak season for red currants here... seems like those are not popular in other countries, but I remember growing up stealing red currants from the garden in my kindergarten and also my grandma making red currant jam.
I love the tart, sour taste of red currants and don't mind eating them on their own.
So I bought a kilo (for a 1.50 €) at the market the other day and decided to make a red currant cake. Turned out tasty, but the berries sunk to the ground (must flour them next time!) and I made it an improvised upside-down cake which was totally fat-free yet moist and fluffy.
I also kept cooking stuff from the awesome Irish foodie magazine, including this not really picture-worthy but delicious miso ramen: 
Apart from that, it's summer time anyway, so I mostly did Italian cooking (even before Bambino!), as a simple gratin of zucchini and tomatoes with lots of garlic, thyme and olive oil and risotto with loads of arugula. I'm not a summer person, but still don't want it to end, harvest-wise!
10 comments:
Good luck with work!!
Oooh, the red currant cake and gratin look wonderful!
I absolutely love some of the japanese dramas I've seen - hana yori dango (her wooden bento box was awesome!), GTO and summer snow (1st one i ever watched - hit me like a brick wall, and I've been obsessed with japanese culture ever since) to name a couple! But i'll defintely try and get hold of this bambino - I like the ones that inspire me to cook up a batch of food - I've eaten far too many noodles after watching jdoramas :)
Oh, goodness. I need to hear more about that currant cake! It's beautiful- and currants are in season here, too!
I freakin' love Bambino - so much overacting - but actually some of them are really good. It is funny to see bad actors in another language. I am such a Japanese lunatic. Sometime we will have to discuss my Sanrio, San-X, bento, harajuku, Re-ment obsessions.
WOW.....thank you so much for introdusing me to BAMBINO. I just watched the entire Episode 1 and I LOVED IT. Can't wait to watch the whole series.
That food looks delicious! I love crunchyroll. :) Have you ever tried mysoju.com for dramas? They have a good selection of Kdramas, Jdramas, and Tdramas, plus some movies as well. They often have stuff that's not available on crunchyroll. Also, veoh sometimes has dramas, but you have to download the player to watch them (but you can also download episodes, so that's nice).
woah, thanks for the crunchyroll link! I haven't been to that site in forever, and the first 5 seconds of this bambino thing looks good (he's cute!)
and also, I love tart redcurrants, too! that cake is tempting me like nothing else. :OO
Oh my goodness, I want some of that cake soooo badly!
thanks for the lovely comments!
I'll try to remember to translate + post the currant cake recipe. I've got some other red currant recipes coming up as well... those lil' berries are everywhere!
hehehe, are you all busy watching Bambino and eating pasta now?
@Mariana: I've tried mysojou, started watching Mop Girl there but somehow there's always trouble with the episodes I try watching there.
does the veoh player work with linux?
Really? Hmm, I've never had problems with watching episodes on mysoju. Maybe the drama you were watching was just having problems...I know they don't have any dramas uploaded on their site, they just link to them, so the site it was linked to may have been having problems.
I'm not sure if Veoh works with Linux, good question. Let me know if you find out!
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