Sukiyaki, Japanese big dinner

As Christmas is approaching, I wish you a nice holiday season. So let’s have a sukiyaki party !
It’s a party meal designed to showcase delicious premium Japanese beef and season produce. A hot pot to cook and share on the table.

The ingredients are cut, cleaned, prepared and presented on big trays on the table.
First tray : fungi, konnyaku noodles and grilled tofu.
There were 4 types of mushrooms : shimeji, enoki, dry and soaked maitake and fresh kikurage.

Second tray : negi leeks, onions, soaked yakifu (gluten croutons) and kikuna (chrysanthemum greens).

Third tray : the beef. Wagyu, Japanese traditionally raised cows. Beside you can see cubes of beef fat.

Each eater is given a bowl with a good fresh egg. Whisk your egg with the chopsticks and get ready to dip you ingredients in this sauce.

First step : greasing the pot with fat and roasting the first slices. They can be enjoyed this way as the beef is delicious, just on its own.

That’s the technique : melt some fat, add some meat, pour a little sugar, then a little shoyu (sauce sauce), a little sake. Mix and cook.

All the other ingredients are added in small batches…

For dessert… well, there are no desserts for Japanese meal. So that’s a French tarte Tatin, made with Japanese apples.

Mushroom duet creamy sauce for one-bite steaks and soba

Maybe that’s too classic for this blog : a meal of steak, pasta and sauce. Why not ? It’s based on local produce. This sauce is ideal to serve with pasta, or with meat, or with both.
The fungi are available year round but they evoke Autumn because they have a wet forest smell.

Shiitake.

Nameko (sticky mushroom).

Stir-fried with onion, a little garlic.

Creamed with coconut cream and milk and 1 tbs of potato starch. Salt. Pepper. You don’t need much as the mushrooms are very flavorful.

Wagyu Japanese beef steaks, grilled on the plancha.
Medium rare was the less I could do with this thickness.

With home-made matcha soba noodles, and the sauce.

Brochettes et marrons

Brochette is the French for skewer, and it’s usually meat and veggie ones. Then the season of kuri (Japanese chestnut)is open…

Small steak cuts of lean Japanese beef.

On skewers with onion and red sweet pepper. I’ve passed olive oil, salt, black pepper and thyme. Let one hour.

Then grilled.

The chestnuts roasted with a few small sweet potatoes.

This fiery soup is made in the blender with the cut outs of onion, red pepper, a glass of white wine, 2 tbs of sesame, 1 ts of miso. Then simmered a few minutes.

Easy little carbonade, with early Autumn market’s basket…

The inspiration is the Belgian dish carbonade flamande, a beef stew with dark beer. It’s hugely adapted to my local ingredients. I had that alcohol free beer to finish and some frozen beef meat leftover. And season’s produce waiting to be cooked. All that took us away from the rich original Winter dish, but that’s ideal for now as weather is hot (versus sooo hot before).

I’ve started by pan-frying a sliced onion till they get a golden color. Added beef thinly cut (2/3 defrost), a chunk of kurozato black sugar, thyme, a little fresh ginger, a piece of dry chili pepper and 2/3 of a can of beer (alcohol free). Covered. Let 15 minutes on low heat. The meat is so thin that it cuts very quickly.

I’ve added croutons made of toasted abura age (fried tofu pockets) with mustard spread on it, a little water, salt, pepper. Let 15 more minutes.

Served with more croutons and thyme on top. And I had veggies :

Small long satsuma imo sweet potatoes.

I steamed them with kabocha pumpkin and small potatoes.

Freshly boiled black edamame.

Tonight, let’s bibimbap

Bring me gochujang sauce ! I want a bibimbap, the delicious Korean rice dish.

Prepare all that. I cooked ground beef meat with a little garlic and a hint of soy sauce. Local supermarkets all sell platters of namul veggies, but you can prepare yours. For the detail, click here.

I don’t have a special stone dish. So I have baked the terracotta dish, passed sesame oil in the bottom, added hot cooked rice, sesame seeds, baked again.
Then you can see a cup of broth with seaweeds. A spoon and chopsticks.