Aonori kibinago no kara-age

kibinago (silver stripe round herring) are these small mini-fish, often to small to cut them. So frying is the way to go. I’ve seen addition of aonori seaweed for frying and retained the idea.

Kara-age :
Rinse the fish. Sprinkle salt and pepper. Heat frying oil. Mix flour, potato starch and aonori (seaweed flakes).
Pass the fish in the mix of flours and fry. Add a little more aonori on top.

Eat them whole, so you intake all the calcium in the bones.

Sides : lettuce with black rice vinegar, sesame carrots, salted goya (bitter squash) and polished germinated rice.

Okono-minute, the quickest ‘yaki’

That’s a casual way to make a snack okonomiyaki at home.
Just make crepes, and garnish them with okonomiyaki toppings : kezuriboshi (dry fish flakes), aonori seaweed, negi leek and beni-shoga (pickled ginger). You can also use sakura-ebi (small dried shrimps). And you can skip any that you don’t want, of course.

It’s freely adapted from this recipe gottsuo-yaki. The author says that her grandmother was making this for children and she was wrapping it in a piece of paper so the kids could take it away to go play.

The crepe : blend or whip 1/2 cup of flour, 3/4 cup of water to get a thick liquid. Adjust quantities. Add a pinch of salt. And a handful of cut negi leeks (the white part).

These negi, Japanese Spring onion, leeks, scallions… are never far away from a Japanese kitchen.

Make a small thick crepe.

Garnish and drizzle shoyu (soy sauce).

Well here, I put a pile of crepes, to be garnished on the table.
The “take out” style is to paint the top of the crepe with shoyu in the pan, garnish and fold, so the sauce is all inside.

Okonomi-green, cabbage, avocado, sea weed…

Many greens for this lunch okonomiyaki. OK, I admit it, that was a way to empty the veggie box in my fridge. And the result was delicious.

About the veggieful Japanese hot-plate specialty, recipes, etc :

Les okonomiyakis gourmands (compilation, click here)

Of course, it is base on shred cabbage. Lots of it in the batter. I’ve added an egg too.

Onions, green peppers and avocado stir-fried together make the filling. It’s original, but that works perfectly.

I’ve painted the top with shoyu (soy sauce, thickened with potato starch). Then aonori sea weed flakes, dry bonito flakes, shichimi-togarashi (7 spice mix) and negi leeks…

Fish day : Steamed salmon with seaweed tartare sauce

Fish and seaweeds on the plate today.
Are there still Catholics that follow the tradition of eating fish on Fridays ? That was like a law when I was a kid and even at school they’d put fish on the menu that day. Well, they had not their concept of food industry fish. It’s a square or rectangle animal that lives in icebergs and is covered by a fur of fried bread crumbs. Nothing like that here. I’ve bought a back of Hokkaido salmon and I’ve cut it in rectangles myself, not to imitate, but I had enough for a dozen of servings. I froze some.

It’s not an Halloween sushi, but…

The sauce is only tartare by the name. It is made by mixing in a blender, blanched favas (broad beans) with rice vinegar, water, salt, pepper. Then I’ve added a big spoon of aonori seaweed flakes to bring even more marine breeze to the palate.