An easy Japanese dish.
Konnyaku (konjac). You can use blocks too, just cut them in slices or cubes.
Eringi mushrooms, cut in cubes.
Ginger. Minced. I put a good amount.
Kombu seaweed. A small cut. Later after cooking, I cut it into ribbons.
Soy sauce and mirin (or sake + sugar), 3 tbs of each. A little red hot chili if you want. Cover with water. Let simmer. I cooked 30 minutes.
Reheat the next day. Enjoy as a rice topping, a side dish or in negiyaki.
Second visit of kibinago fish bait.
南蛮づけ nanban zuke. It’s fried fish, then marinated in a sour sauce. The result is very light on the stomach.
kibinago (silver stripe round herring) are these small mini-fish, often to small to cut them. Perfect for frying.
Wash the fish and drain well water. Sprinkle black pepper and chili pepper or other spices (optional).
Heat frying oil. Pass the fish in potato starch, fry them.
The fried fish, onion, carrot, ginger (grated) a chili pepper.
For the sauce : 1/2 cup water, 2 tbs mirin, 1 tbs soy sauce, 2 tbs sake brought to a boil. Then add 4 tbs of black rice vinegar. Pour on fish and veggies. Cover. Let 30 minutes minimum. I prefer overnight.
The next day.
Renkon (lotus root) in black vinegar with ginger. Green beans and edamame in yuzu citrus juice.
Genmai (brown rice) and miso soup with wakame seaweed.
Two easy and tasty Japanese dishes.
Of course, the most important ingredient is ginger.
You can use any cut of pork that can be cooked quickly in a pan, but the easiest is to use these very thin slices.
Here are the proportions of the sauce. You need about 1 tbs per person, but use as much as you wish. The ginger is peeled and grate, you can also mince it thinly. Just mix.
First, you can stir fry onions, and keep them aside.
Cook the meat fully on both sides. Add the sauce, and a little water, let simmer about 10 minutes. Put back the onions. Reheat together.
Serve with raw veggies. Here cabbage and kintoki red carrot.
Furikake is a dry powder mix used to give flavor to white rice, or other plain food. There exist many types. This one is called yukari (purple), it is made of mostly dried akashiso (red shiso). The other ingredients of the mix vary. Here : umesu (pickled plum vinegar), salt, sugar, yuzu lemo. It’s ready to use. So just put on boiled spaghetti and that’s a side dish.
Sukiyaki. That simmered nabe (Japanese hot pot) used to be my favorite Japanese dish before I came to Japan. Well, maybe that was the only thing I knew. It’s true that it travels well, it’s easy to adapt and you can’t get it wrong.
It’s meat based. The beef is cut very thinly. It’s good to have fat for the flavor. Not a big amount is needed, as there are all the other ingredients. Maybe 70 g per person.
A egg yolk to dip the cooked meat and making it feel like velvet in your mouth.
For the sauce, shoyu (soy sauce) and nihonshu (Japanese sake). That doesn’t need to be a great sake, I refill the nice bottles. I’ve added mirin too.
Veggies : konnyaku, carrot, shiso, hakusai (napa cabbage), shungiku (chrysanthemum greens)… What I had in stock.
Everything ready for the nabe dinner…
A little tutorial of Japanese cuisine today. It’s a soup with sake lees that has the property of warming up the body. It’s ideal for the cold season.
I like daikon, the huge Japanese white radish… but my favorite bit is the leaves. So I’m very happy with this type.
Very small radishes, sweet and tasty.
Tons of greens !
Other recipes with this plant :
Daikon sesame unohana (click here for recipe)
Mini-daikon miso soup
Nameko eggs with daikon leaves
Water tsukemono with mini daikon
Leafy miso
nanakusa okayu
Besides the mini daikon, I had cooked kabocha pumpkin, onion, dry shiitake mushrooms. Then tofu and sakekasu.
酒粕 sakekasu is a by product of sake making. It arrives on the market in this season. The taste ? It’s like unsweetened goat cheese with a little sake… Well, you should try.
Amazake, a drink with sake kasu
Sake kasu soup recipe
1. Dashi stock : put a 1 tbs of dry fish flakes (kezuri katsuo) and water, bring to a boil.
2. Season with soy sauce and miri, simmer a few minutes.
3. Add veggies or whatever items you want (optional, veggies, fish and tofu are common choices)
4. At the end, cut the stove and blend in the sake kasu paste. Slightly reheat without boiling, and serve.
For vegan dashi stock click here.
This is the way to blend in pastes into Japanese soup. The technique is similar for miso. We have this set “sieve + spoon” but you can get them separately. Put pate in the sieve, plunge it in the stock and stir with the spoon till all the paste has melted in.
So I’ve cooked progressively the onions, then the radish, then the leaves and just reheated the tofu and kabocha, finishing with the paste.
Dozo meshi agare !
GOURMANDE in OSAKA 