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.

Butakimchi nabe, spicy Japanese steamboat

A meaty nabe today. As previously, I only show the preparation for the night time hot pot. Buta is pork, and kimchi well, there is some in it :

That spice pickle will flavor the broth. I add miso and raw ginger too. That will even be too spicy and salty, so some more neutral ingredients are necessary for balance.

Konnyaku, made from some kind of root veggie. It has nearly no calories, and no flavor but the texture in the hot soup is very pleasant.

Enoki are not full of flavor either. They soak the soup and bring some texture.

Chrysanthemum greens, they have some sourness like aragula.

The meat. It’s pork sliced very thinly. The amount seems important, but that’s only 100 grams.

So everything is ready… curtain.

Post-scriptum : miam miam miam…

To-gan, Summer Winter squash

This big green object is a togan, tougan, 冬瓜 literally Winter melon, but the season started a while ago and lasts till Winter. It’s very popular in Hong-Kong to carve one and serve a soup in it.
It’s good for the hot days as it’s very watery, so it’s hydrating. To resist the heat, it is advised to avoid drinking and to eat your water instead, precisely with watery food.　

I cut the flesh. Put in a bowl with water and cook in the microwave. Easy. The taste is… What taste ? There is not much.

I’ve added a few bits of kabocha pumpkin, grated ginger and soy sauce. Let cool. And you have a refreshing Summer veggie.

With stir-fried pasta.

Enoki mushrooms, steamed, cooled, with Chinese black vinegar, miso and negi.

Salted hokke, grilled.

Well another good meal !

Happy rice to empty the fridge

A healthy stir-fry with left-overs of germinated rice :

hatsuga genmai

taasai greens
coleslaw (without sauce)
feet of enoki mushrooms

Fresh jelly ear mushrooms. That’s not a left-over. I bought them on purpose. They have little taste but a refreshing crunchiness.

Stir-fried with garlic, ginger and oyster sauce.

Tropical cream beet soup

A healthy reinvention of the Mitteleuropa pink delight. It’s full of Asian Summer veggies and the sour cream is replaced by coconut and lemon.

Shopping surprise : those 2 Nagano grown beets for 100 yen. It’s extremely cheap for Japan as I usually say tiny beets for 500 yen a piece. And is it not a Winter plant ? Well, I’m not a gardener. I only know beets from feeding the pigs. I guess the season is long and they can be store months, which is why I had the image of a cold weather food.

But there is no reason to shun them, even in extreme heat. Raw and chilled, they are very refreshing.

Garnish : cucumber, Kintoki red beans, nagaimo yam, enoki mushrooms.
The beans are cooked of course. The rest is raw.

Soup : beet root, creamy coconut milk, lemon juice, ginger, garlic, salt, pepper, ice cubes.
Just throw into the blender.

One more spoon of coconut cream (solidified in the fridge).
Mmmm… it’s deliciously sweet, nearly a dessert. And it’s fun to discover the crunchy bits.