Takenoko (Bamboo Shoots) from My Boss

Takenoko Gohan Bento One good thing about working in a small office in a rural town is that you often get rewarded with fresh seafood, fruits or vegetables for your hard work. Well, actually the quality of your work does not really matter. It’s just a temporary food surplus. Almost everyone around you has at least a farmer or a fisherman in his/her relatives, and you often find yourself involved in an endless barter trading among kind-hearted grannies and aunties (and sometimes uncles, too). This time what I got was these two fresh bamboo shoots. I like bamboo shoots, but I have to admit that it’s a pain in the neck to cook fresh ones properly to get rid of the harshness. How to do it? You need to pre-boil them in hot water with a lot of rice bran added. And you need to hurry; the longer you leave them in the sheaths like this, the stronger the harshness will be. If rice bran is not available, you can use rice rinsing water instead. That’s what I did this time. And my mom told me to leave the bamboo shoots in the rice rinsing water overnight after boiling them in it. If it was only my mom who said that, I wouldn’t have believed it, but I found the same advice on the internet, too, so I followed it. But perhaps rice rinsing water is not as effective as rice bran… I didn’t recognize much harshness in takenoko gohan (Japanese pilaf with bamboo shoots), but after eating my takenoko no tosa-ni (bamboo shoots simmered in dashi and extra bonito flakes), I felt strange sensation on my tongue for a while. * Some say that if you boil bamboo shoots long enough and soak them in running water long enough, it is not really necessary to use rice bran or rice-rinsing water. I don't know how true it is, though... Takenoko no Tosa-ni But I really enjoyed the crunchiness of the fresh bamboo shoots. :) Thanks, boss. I guess I'm going to chop up the leftover tosa-ni and use them for another batch of takenoko gohan. Categories: Japanese

Saba No Miso-ni

Saba no miso-ni （Mackerel simmered in miso-based soup?) Sorry. This is the kind of dish I can never post a recipe for. I repeated tasting and adding seasonings many times, and finally had to thin down the soup quite a bit :P Categories: Japanese

Still Experimenting...

Nikujaga (Simmered Meat & Potatoes) I know. You see carrot and onion, too. But even in its Japanese name, only meat and potatoes are mentioned. I was hoping to be able to post "my" nikujaga recipe here this time, but I was not satisfied with the result. Mmmm... more trials and errors... :( Categories: Japanese

I Was Too Lazy Today...

Oden (Cooked in instant oden soup) Uh... Don't you ever expect me to tell you how to make a strange-looking boiled egg like this. It's patented. ;) OK. I lied. It’s not patented. (Of course.) :P It was nothing but my laziness. When I boiled the egg, this was what I did: I took it out from the fridge and threw it in the hot water from the tap and boiled it over very high heat. Just wanted it done ASAP. I know. A big no-no. The egg cracked right away and about 1/8 of the egg came out from the crack in the shell. Yeah, the pointy top was the part that came out. The top of the egg yolk was covered with a very thin layer of the egg white, but it came off when I sliced the egg in half. Well, I made a lot at one time, so this oden fed me for two nights. I think I had enough for this winter... Categories: Japanese

Konnyaku Day!

Jason of Pursuing my passions kindly invited me to join a blog event, “Konnyaku Day” which falls onto May 29th. To celebrate this day and bring the lovely gray food into the spotlight, participants post about konnyaku dish on his/her own blog and send URL to Jason so that he can do a roundup. OK. Here’s my konnyaku post ;) If you are not familiar with konnyaku, wikipedia tells you what it is. It certainly is considered as a diet food today, but when I was a child, it was known for a different health benefit; it was said to prevent urethral calculus. I heard this from our elementary school teacher, and I’ve met several people who said, “Oh, yeah! I’ve heard of that, too!” And none of them knew why and how konnyaku could prevent that disease. I don’t, either. :P BTW, I wonder how many of the participants decided to join this Konnyaku Day event because they really love this gelatinous food. To be honest, I have never been too crazy about konnyaku. Yes, there were a couple of times that I truly enjoyed delicate and tasty sashimi konnyaku from Kyoto or somewhere. But usually I don’t feel so happy when I find that gray stuff in simmered dishes. Nevertheless, I always include konnyaku in the ingredients when I make oden (Japanese hotchpotch) for a particular reason that I mentioned in my previous post. Now, for this post, I chose something I have heard of but never tried making before. Konnyaku no miso ni (konnyaku simmered with miso) Here's the recipe. Konnyaku no miso ni Ingredients: 1 block konnyaku 1 Tbsp vegetable oil 2 Tbsp miso 1 Tbsp sake 1 Tbsp sugar 1 Tbsp mirin (rice wine) 2 tsp soy sauce 40 mL dashi stock 1 Tbsp roasted white sesame seeds A little ginger juice – optional Some salt Sprinkle salt over konnyaku block and pound with a pestle or a rolling pin.* Wash and tear konnyaku into small chunks.** Put them in a saucepan, add water just to cover them, heat and bring to boil. Drain. In a pot (or a frying pan), heat vegetable oil. Add konnyaku chunks and fry for a few minutes. Add miso and heat until the miso is browned and gives out good aroma. Add sake, sugar, mirin, soy sauce and dashi stock. Simmer until the soup is thickened, stirring occasionally. Turn the heat to high and coat konnyaku with miso glaze, shaking the pot. (Add ginger juice, if desired.) Transfer to plate and sprinkle with roasted white sesame seeds. * I didn’t know this until recently, but this preparation is supposed to let excess water ooze out and make konnyaku suitable for simmering. ** Torn konnyaku chunks have ragged surface which allows better absorption of liquid seasonings. I came up with this recipe after combining a couple of recipes and adding my own twists, but still I was not totally happy with the taste. It will taste a lot differently if I use a different type of miso. ------- These are sashimi konnyaku blocks that are meant to be sliced and eaten raw like sashimi (sliced raw fish). They say this type of konnyaku contains more water and less calcium hydroxide. Sashimi konnyaku is often flavored with things like green laver or yuzu citrus. (Like so many other food products here in Kochi, deep sea water is added to these sashimi konnyaku in the photo.) Sashimi Konnyaku --- Green Laver(Aonori) and Yuzu flavor Some people eat sashimi konnyaku with wasabi and soy sauce just like they eat sashimi, but for me sumiso (miso-vinegar dressing) is “the must.” The way sumiso brings out the flavor of green laver or yuzu is so delightful and refreshing, and it is something particularly enjoyable on a hot summer day. I guess you could make the same kind of food out of gelatin, but I would definitely prefer the firmer and somewhat chewy texture of sashimi konnyaku in order to fully appreciate this very wafoo (Japanese-style) combination of flavors. Categories: Japanese, WaFooD

煮物 Nimono (Simmered Dish)

大根、海老と鶏挽肉の団子、若布、しいたけ Daikon, Shrimp-Chicken Meatball, Seaweed and Black Mushroom Now this is a big blooper of mine, to tell you the truth. First of all, I was going to use turnip but couldn’t find one anywhere, so I ended up with substituting it with daikon radish. Second, I was going to use shirodashi instead of dark soy, because I knew that dark-soy would ruin the color of daikon and shrimp-chicken meat balls. But before I realized it, my hands disconnected from my brain added dark soy to this soup. ※■＃△！The taste wasn’t too bad, but look how brown the daikon and meat balls turned out! :(

Tai no Aradaki

Tai no aradaki I gave up. There’s no way I can present tai no aradaki in a more sophisticated way, hiding all the grotesque parts. This is the best I can do. What could be the proper English translation of tai no aradaki? It’s basically a simmered sea bream, but what you use is the head, bones, tail and a little flesh left on the bones, which were left after the fish was filleted. So it’s a very inexpensive dish (130 yen this time for all the fish parts), but believe me, the flesh left on the bones tastes sooooo good! Especially, there are some very tasty parts in the head of the fish that my grandma really loved to eat. ;)

My Slow Cooker Repertoire #2 - Oden (Japanese Hotchpotch) -

Oden -- the "must have" in winter They say it’s going to be a very cold winter this year. I’m very happy that I have a slow cooker now! :D Here’s another dish I made with slow cooker: Oden (Japanese hotchpotch). Nutrition-wise, this may not be an excellent dish, because many of the steamed fish-cake products in cheap “oden-kit” I used this time seem to have good amount of additives and preservatives, and not many vegetables are included in this dish except daikon and potatoes. But this is just a comfort food that we have to have in winter. The ingredients this time were: ・kelp ・potatoes ・mochi iri kinchaku ・boiled eggs ・daikon ・ganmodoki (deep-fried tofu product) ・assortment of steamed/grilled fish cakes ・konnyaku (see the gray triangles in the photos) ・gyu-suji (beef tendon) on skewers This site has a good explanation of oden and its ingredients (Scroll down). To add to the info. on that site, mochi-iri kinchaku -- the one that looks like a small bag tied with a strip -- is rice cake wrapped in abura-age (deep-fried thin tofu). My absolute favorite. ;) If you’re interested, here’s a couple of tips for making tasty oden that I learned from a TV program called “Mega ten” several years ago. ・Some ingredients (fish cake products, kelp, tendon, etc.) make good broth, and some (daikon, eggs, potatoes, tofu-products) absorb broth well. Use both types of ingredients in a good balance. ・It is recommended to use konnyaku, if available. Though rather tasteless itself, it makes other ingredients in oden tastier. (The calcium hydroxide used to coagulate konnyaku is said to work on fish-cake products and make them more chewy and tasty.) To be perfectly honest, I didn’t think the fish-cake products tasted any better when cooked in a slow cooker... at least, I couldn't tell the difference. But the potatoes and daikon!! They tasted definitely better!! Oh it was soooo heavenly. :D

The Rest of the Kabocha was...

Kabocha no Nimono (Simmered pumpkin) It was used for this simmered dish. Yes, I'm talking about the kabocha pumpkin from my parents' veg. garden --- the one that I used for the casserole the other day. This is the way my mom simmers kabocha pumpkins and I should warn you that it is not a typical way in Japan. She uses chicken and another ingredient in addition to kabocha. This is the “another ingredient” which we call kakuten or hiraten around here. It means square tempura or flat tempura, but in this case the “tempura” does not mean “batter-fried food” as is commonly known. This tempura means “deep-fried fish paste.” These additional ingredients, chicken and deep-fried fish paste, give so much extra flavors to kabocha and my family loves it. I admit that this is a rather heavy and mushy dish that people in the countryside tend to make…you probably won’t see something like this in a sophisticated Japanese restaurant. Actually I once asked around among my Japanese friends, and only some of them said they would add chicken to simmer kabocha, but no one said they would add this kind of tempura. Then this could be my mom’s original?? ;P

Nimono (Simmered Dish)

煮物Nimono (Simmered Dish) - 筍の土佐煮 Bamboo shoots simmered with dried bonito flakes - しいたけ Shiitake mushroom - そらまめ Fava beans Bamboo shoots were simmered with and topped with dried bonito flakes. Since Kochi prefecture, called "Tosa" in ancient time, is famous for producing dried bonito, this simmered dish is called “Tosa-ni.” I simmered shiitake and beans in another pot because I didn’t want to have bonito flakes all over them.

Nikujaga!

Nikujaga I guess in every country you have something like this dish… something that functions as an indicator of how good you cook as a housewife or a mother. In other words, if you are good at cooking certain dishes, everyone around you would say “OH, you’ll make a good wife/mother.” You know what I mean? In Japan, this nikujaga and maybe miso soup fall into this category. I’m not good at cooking either of them, as you can tell from the fact that I’m still single ;P The name nikujaga simply means meat (niku) and potatoes (jagaimo). This is my favorite, but I still cannot make it exactly the way I want. I tend to make it a bit too sweet… then the nikujaga alone testes pretty good, but when eaten with cooked white rice, I feel that it’s not the perfect match. I’m still in search of a tasty but not too sweet or too salty nikujaga recipe that goes well with white rice. I’ve experimented some tips like adding a bit of sesame oil when sautéing or adding just a little butter at the end, but I'm still not satisfied yet. The one I made today wasn’t such a great success. Well, I’ll keep trying…like all other on-going experiments in my kitchen, not because I want to hunt a husband but simply because I want to become able to cook and enjoy my "dream nikujaga."

Daikon a la Carte

Furofuki Daikon　with Yuzu Miso “Simple is best.” That’s probably the phrase that best describes this dish. Furofuki-daikon is a typical Japanese simmered dish for winter. I brought back 2 daikon radishes from my parents’ veg. garden about a week ago. Some days passed while I couldn’t quite decide what to make out of them. Then I finally decided to give this a try. There seem to be several different versions of Furofuki daikon recipe, and I decided to try the one that called for the simplest seasoning, which is, simmering daikon with kelp, water and sake only. No dashi stock, no soy sauce. Just the flavor from the kelp. Since I’m so used to using my favorite liquid dashi concentrate, I wanted to try and see how such simple seasoning would turn out. As I mentioned in my buri-daikon entry, some preparations make simmered daikon taste much better. For furofuki, you cut daikon into apx. 3cm thick rounds, peel and do what we call mentori (= to plane off the corners.) Then make a deep crisscross in one side which should be the bottom when served. Boil them in rise rinsing water for apx. 20 min. Drain and wash with cold water quickly. Put daikon (cut side down) and a sheet of kelp in a pot and add plenty of water to cover the daikon completely. Bring to boil on high heat and then simmer over low heat until daikon is transparent and soft. I tried 2 kinds of miso toppings this time: Yuzu miso and Tori-soboro (ground chicken) miso. Furofuki daikon with Tori-soboro Miso I started with the recipe I found on a Japanese site, but ended up making many changes to the original recipe, so I don’t remember exactly how much of each ingredient I actually used. Just really roughly, this is what I think I used for each miso topping: Yuzu miso 4Tbsp Shiromiso 2 tsp sugar 1Tbsp mirin (rice wine) 1 tsp sake 1 tsp grated yuzu rind 3 tsp yuzu juice Cook miso, sugar and mirin in a saucepan over low heat stirring constantly until smooth. Remove from heat and add yuzu rind and juice. Stir well. Tori-soboro miso some ground chicken a little vegetable oil 4Tbsp miso 3 1/2Tbsp sugar 1 Tbsp sake 1 Tbsp mirin 1 tsp grated ginger root Sautee ground chicken with salad oil and set aside. Cook all other ingredients in a saucepan over low heat stirring constantly until smooth. Add the sauteed ground chicken and stir well. Remove from heat. The taste? ---- * Good* ---- Almost divine. I used a little expensive kelp this time because I thought it was the key in this simple seasoning. If seasoned strongly with soy sauce and dashi, it couldn't have brought out the best of the flavor of the miso toppings, I suppose. BTW, I didn’t waste anything. The tiny daikon shreds from mentori were mixed in this. Daikon Salad with store-bought sesami dressing On the other hand, I still have bunch of takuan (pickled daikon) that my boss gave me at the end of last year. They’re not too sweet like the stevia-sweetened ones sold at supermarkets, and very good in ochazuke (tea-and-rice bowl) :D So it was a pretty daikon-ful day today. And tomorrow will be, too.

Oden - Japanese Hotchpotch -

It’s getting colder day by day. Time for a nice hotpot dish. Oden (Japanese hotchpotch) Oh, don’t ask me how I seasoned the soup. I used instant oden soup mix. :P　As you might have guessed, I got lazy tonight. Oden doesn’t require much preparation if you use instant soup mix and buy ready-made ingredients. All I did for this was some peeling and chopping. Well, I had a long day today…. My favorite ingredients are egg, daikon and potato. Things like sausage and mini-cabbage roll are not traditional ingredients, but I like them in oden.

Great Success!! -- Buri Daikon --

Buri Daikon My boss gave me one big daikon yesterday (with leaves!) and said it was fresh from her mother’s vegetable garden in a rural town. Delighted, I made a decision right away to use it for my favorite Buri daikon :D BURI DAIKON (Daikon radish simmered with yellowtail collar) Ingredients (1 cup = 200cc) 4 big pieces buri (yellowtail) collar 1/2 daikon radish apx. 600g (21 oz) A little salt 2 cups water 1/3 to 1/2 cup sake 1/4 to 1/3 cup mirin (rice wine) 1 to 1.5 Tblsp sugar 3 Tblsp soy sauce Some slices of ginger root A little dashi powder ….optional Finely shredded citrus rind to garnish - Cut daikon in to apx. 1/2 inch-thick pieces and peel. If time allows, do this “preparation” to make daikon tastier and reduce the fishy smell of yellowtail. (* Preparation: Boil daikon pieces with a pinch of raw rice until they start looking a little transparent. Wash rice off with water and drain. Salt yellowtail collar and leave for 5 to 10 min. Put in boiling water just until the surface color changes and take out. Immediately rinse with cold water to remove slime, blood etc. Drain.) - Put daikon, yellowtail collar, water, sake and ginger root slices in a pot on mid-to high heat and bring to boil. (If available, cover with a lid smaller than the pot. We call it otoshi-buta*. If not, aluminum foil will do.) - Add sugar, soy sauce and mirin. Simmer for 25 to 30 min with otoshi-buta or aluminum foil on top. * If time allows, take off from heat and cool completely, then re-heat just before serving. - Garnish with shredded yuzu rind or shiraga-negi (fine strips of white part of long green onion, rinsed in water and drained.) The process marked with “*” does make a difference, so I strongly recommend not to skip them if time allows. Otoshi-buta (drop-lid) has this benefit. They say that boiling daikon with rice takes bitterness away and make daikon softer so that it can absorb seasoning well. It’s also said that simmered foods absorb seasoning the most while they cool down. So I’d rather go for lighter soup (using less seasoning) + cooling process than simmering in strong soup and eating right away. Close-up of Juicy daikon. Hmmmmmmm.... The buri-daikon I made today was a GREAT success mainly because both buri and daikon were very fresh. The daikon leaves were minced, seasoned and mixed with rice. Ahh…… I’m so full and satisfied. Hmmmmmm……………….