LY : the first step of Japanese cooking
Tag Archives: iriko
Summer greens on bibimbap
As I had the Korean ingredients…
Then the classics : kimchi, shiso, gochijang. Daikon radish is here under the form of sprouts.
Brown rice with the hot weather favorites : moloukhia and goya (bitter squash). And Awaji island red onions. I have slightly steamed that. Too many raw veggies are hard to digest.
Egg yolk. The white is cooked and hidden under, I don’t throw away.
Korean Gourmande (photo compilation of my Korean posts)
A crispy side chat-wan. Iriko (small dried fish) toasted with sesame and curry mix.
With a cup of sencha green tea. Now mix and enjoy !
Quick dashi from scratch… or from fish flakes
Fish flakes… I am cheating, I could start with a block of dried fish and shave it, but I don’t do that. You can buy this “kezuri katsuo”, bonito flakes in Asian grocery stores.
Dashi is the stock. It will take 2 minutes of your time to do it. That’s a basic for decent Japanese cooking.
What’s wrong with instant dashi ? Not much, only MSG, preservatives, flavoring and higher price.
This is one recipe, among others. I use a combo of 3 ingredients, each one could be used alone.
If your Asian grocery is sophisticated, or if you are in Japan, there is a choice of different fish flakes. The taste varies. Usually, the dark color and thicker flakes give a dashi with a stronger taste. The nearly transparent flakes give a delicate flavor.
Kombu seaweed. It’s dry too. The full name is “dashi kombu” as it is so regularly used for dashi.
The white dust is salt, pass a humid cloth on it to clean it off before using.
Niboshi, iriko… whole dry fish. They are very small (2 cm). Some are a little larger, in that case, you can see a black part in the tummy, it’s a little bitter, take it away before using. No need here as you can see. They give stronger taste than the flakes. Well, it’s different. That’s why I use a mix.
1 : In a sauce pan, put 1 hand-full of flakes, 1/2 of dry fish and one small piece of kombu seaweed. Add 4 cups of water. Program your stove for 5 minutes on 2/3 of power. Forget it 20 minutes.
2 : Pass it. The fish and seaweed can be eaten (see below) or not (that’s called wasting).
Here you have dashi, Japanese all purpose stock.
Quicker trick : You can buy empty paper dashi bags (like paper tea bags, which you can use too), and fill them with the ingredients. Store them in the box, so whenever you need dashi, you throw one in a pan of water, or even in the pitcher of your electric coffee maker.
Aka-dashi… a mega red miso soup
Red miso soup, with lots of shimeji mushrooms, iriko (dried fish), stalks of shungiku (chrysanthemum), cubes of momen-tofu.
Leaves of shungiku as a salad.
Seki-han, red rice, made with brown rice and azuki beans.
Soup made with the black miso paste is called “aka-dashi” (red broth). That’s synonym with miso-soup as Japan is a very conformist country and during many years, many restaurants all over the country have presented an invariable set of “standard dishes” and the standard miso soup was red… Now if you look at specialties of different places, familial habits, it’s very different and miso soup is made in all shades.
The shungiku (chrysanthemum) leaves have fresh and slightly bitter taste. A bit like ruccola (rocket salad), but less pronounced.
They “cook” very quickly, so they are often used for hot pots. I have added the dressing (spicy fragrant sesame oil, black rice vinegar, shichimi 7 spices) after taking the first photos. Because that imediatly becomes this :
Cal432.9 F12.8g C69.2g P33.3g
GOURMANDE in OSAKA 