Curry Rice

I spent this morning looking for festivals or other events to go to around here, but as far as I can tell, there aren't any today, so I might just go to a local temple or shrine or something. I still don't have a camera, though, so it is kind of pointless. Then it came around to lunch time, so I thought I'd take some pictures of lunch to put up.



I made some "Rice and curry" as all the food flash cards here translate it. The Japanese call it kare raisu, or occasionally, raisu kare. It's one of my favorite things to eat here, and it is pretty easy, at least the way I make it. I use these instant curry packs, so it only takes the time that it takes to cook rice.

The white stuff is rice, obviously, and the brown stuff is the curry. Like I said, I use instant curry, which is even faster than using curry roux, or whatever it is called. You just heat up a packet and put it on the rice. The other stuff on the plate is pickles, which are always served with curry.



Those are the pickles, there. They are a strange orange color, with some black stuff in it. In restaurants, they usually give you a couple tiny, pickled onions, too, but I didn't have any of those. The pickles are kind of sweet, which is supposed to counter the "spiciness" of the curry. I don't know what the pickles are actually made of, as my package of them just says kare pickles. I say "spiciness" because Japanese food is never spicy, even level four hotness curry, which this was. That's why I had to add this spicy orange/red powder, which doesn't really help that much.



There's the powder, whatever it is made of. The other bowl I have behind the water is a salad, so, yes, ma, I am eating my vegetables. It's pretty usual in a restaurant to be served a small salad before the curry comes, but I didn't have the luxury of eating it before the curry because I had to monitor the cooking.



So, yeah, that was a pretty decent lunch.



Oishikatta!