Tai no kabuto-ni. A helmet of sea bream.

A Japanese meal with tai no kabuto ni as a main.
Yes, kabuto means helmet, and the resemblance is clear. Well think about those samurai helmets that everybody wears to ride a bicycle in Japan… er, no, but that’s this type with 2 ear flaps :

kabuto source :blog from the place where they make them (click here) . Visit the page for more details. They are display models for Little Boy Festival in May.

That’s an economical dish as they sell fish heads cheaply. And they sell them ready for this dish. I mean the scales are grated (roughly), and it is split in two. Well veggie readers (I doubt you’re still here) sorry for the view. But for us that eat animals, it’s better to avoid wastes. That said I would eat fish heads anyway. Because there is a lot of flesh in it, and it is of finer texture and tastier.

Recipe :

-Rinse the fish. What you can do is put it on a grill and pour boiling water on it, just once. It makes the fish white and the scales very easy to notice, so you can finish the fismonger’s work. For myself I don’t care if I have scales in my plate, anyway, you need to pick the bones and bits.
-Then it’s a classic nitsuke sauce 1:1:1 , sake, mirin, shoyu soy sauce. And a small piece of kombu seaweed. Put these in a pan with a little water, bring slowly to a boil.
Add the fish. Make a foil cover. Pass to moderate heat. Cook about 15 minutes.

The veggies are steamed separately. Here 2 colors of carrots. And I had frozen garlic stalks. Let’s get the sides :

I had kintoki red beans, and kimchi ready.

A grated veggie salad. A soup, a drink-soup. It’s really water, veggies and black pepper. No salt as there is enough for the meal.

Genmai, brown rice.

A la recherche du pain perdu. A Frenchy’s take on French toast

Pain perdu means lost bread. It’s about recycling stale bread. It’s poor people’s food. End of the month family meals.

But the world is getting so snob. People go to restaurants to have lost bread.So they eat what when they are at home ?

There are discussion about another overrated American food chain (pleonasm) that opened recently an ambitious (pretentious) breakfast joint in Shinjuku, Tokyo’s business district. The story is they ask 1200 to 1400 yen just for French toasts… that are totally ordinary. Usually, you’d get that for 350 yen. So what’s special ?
And some idiots have paid to go and check that only the price was special. Bravo ! Their reviews are fun to read.

Shokupan, Japanese bread. It’s very industrial stuff. It was on sale, stale. Perfect. A slice = 10 yen.

An egg, a little cream and a little vanilla sugar. Plus 10 yen.

Cooked.

After making this cake, I scrapped the pan of dried ganache with a wooden spoon.

Took out the home-made spicy marmelade and some fresh mikan mandarin oranges (click here).

Let’s enjoy all that with a coffee.
You’d love that for 1400 yen ? I want to open an overrated shop, me too…

Lackered

Little fun party today : Peking duck.
Am I fooling you ? I wish it was it, but well…
Correction :
Pekinfied duck skins
But that did it for me. That was delicious.

And that’s really recycling, rock bottom level budget cooking. I kept skins in the freezer when I used duck breasts in other recipes.

Made them sweat their fat with star anise to flavor. Discarded fat.

Added soy sauce, spices and sugar. Discarded the fat.

Dried excess fat with kitchen towel. Grilled them on slow heat in oven-toaster.

Lackered skins.

Sauce made with dochi, banana, chili pepper, oil.
I served with negi leaks, cucumbers and some fresh steamed crepes.

Take a crepe, fill, roll… Verdict : hao chi le !

Dissection of a Summer kabocha, no waste

Kabocha, the sweet Japanese pumpkin are ripe in this season. There are several types. This one is the very common Nankin. So buy one, and have fun.