4 sides : onion salad, mitsuba suimono…

That’s the second part of this meal. Here are the small plates that make the charm of the Japanese table and nicely balance the diet.

More about Japanese style meals and recipe list

Suimono is the soup-drink you find in any Japanese meal. A very simple Spring time version :
In a bowl, put thin carrot slices, stalks of mitsuba, shavings of dry fish (kezuribushi), a few drops of soy sauce, hot water.
You can replace the fish with a few seaweeds (dry wakame).

Garnish with a few leaves of aromatic :

Japanese onion. A country of rice is a country of onion as they are cultivated in the rice paddies to rest the soil. Let’s make a salad.

If you don’t want a pungent onion salad that gives you a breath able to kills flies, mosquitoes, wasps, hornets… well, cut them thin, add salt, mix well, let one hour and rinse well.

My fix of natto, with baby leaf mizuna.

Kabu tsukemono. Pickled Japanese turnip. I grated turnip, cut some leaves, added salt. That’s after 24 hours.

Pomelo and sea grape temaki-zushi (green sushi cones)

Temaki means hand-roll. Temaki-zushi are casual, and ideal for sushi party at home. You put the ingredients on the table :

And guests make a cone pocket with nori seaweed sheet, and fill it with rice and whatever they like. That’s like when you fill your newspaper cone with hot chestnuts, anybody can do it.

Easy no ?

Today, the sushi-meshi (flavored rice) is a little special. The classic version is white rice with a vinegar/sugar/salt seasoning. My rice is polished hatsuga (germinated rice). My seasoning is pomelo juice + kurozato (Okinawan black sugar) and very very little salt. Because this is a salty filling :

Umi-budo, ‘sea grapes’ seaweeds (more about it here)

More veggies.

And you get a sushi that tastes like a tropical sea breeze…

Twilight roasted fish jaw

A simple early dinner.
ぶりかま焼き (buri-kama yaki).
I baked the jaw of a buri (yellow tail). I’ve simply drizzled oil + mirin + soy sauce on it and passed under the grill. Then, mmm….
That looks like nothing. The jaw of fish is often discarded and that’s great for me, because I can get it for a song. But if you roast it, you have a dish for a king. That’s the case for most big fatty fish, so try it with tuna and salmon too.

I had crispy radicchio (trévise)
that I ate with just a little salt and olive oil.

My usual veggie stir-fry.

Add rice, you have a yummy menu.

Midori negiyaki, always greener

A good lunch : midori negiyaki. Midori means green. Negiyaki is the Osakan hot-plate crepe filled with negi greens, the cousin of okonomiyaki. (Click here for a detailed recipe.)

Of course, a negiyaki is always green. Today, it’s greener, and garnished with an egg. It’s Spring !

How can it be greener ?
I have added to the batter, the grounds of juicing . Pasted spinach can do the trick too.

Also, I had a few stalks of spinach that served to volume up the negi. Normally, only the green part of negi is used, but I have kept some of the white and some onion that I stir-fried to decorate the bottom (and flavor it).

Cooking, adding the egg, covering, flipping…

Funny how the egg yolk popped up.

I garnished with Bulldog sauce (Japanese “Worcester”), fish flakes and dry chili.

First side-dish : hearts of romaine salad with black vinegar dressing.

Second side-dish : tofu. Yes, there is a dessert (more about it here).

Blue fish for blue Japanese lunch

Today, I’m eating イワシの塩焼き iwashi no shioyaki , salt grilled sardines. It’s a cheap local fish that brings a good amount of healthy fats. And it’s very tasty.