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.

Okomeyaki, brown rice okonomiyaki

Mid-way between yaki-onigiri and okonomiyaki, a tasty and healthy lunch. That’s really interesting to enjoy together the crusty flavor of grilled rice and the cabbage soft feel of okonomiyaki.

A triple base : cooked brown rice (leftovers), dry mushrooms and cabbage.

For the batter : 1/3 cup of cooked rice, 1/2 rice flour, the soaking water of mushrooms, salt. In the blender 1 minute.
For the filling : cabbage, ninnniku no me (garlic stalks), minced fresh ginger, 2/3 cup of cooked rice.
Mix, cook one side in an oiled pan.

Flip, add sesame oil, flip again…

With sauce (here Bulldog Worcester style sauce). Then aonori seaweed flakes and chili flakes :

Warm mushroom soba soup

The weather is getting a little chilly. The time of warm soup is back. The official season of sake kasu is open, even if I didn’t wait.

Asian cuisines are very careful about seasons of dishes. You’ll say that’s everywhere that wise people try to eat season produce. True, but they have kept a concern that was important in European Medieval cuisines and has since been neglected, which is the effect of food, whether they are cooling or warming. So these are two food said to be “warming” :

Sake kasu (sake lees). The soup made with it, kasujiru, is present all along the cold season in Kansai.

Buckwheat, here in soba noodles. It’s also seen in sobagaki.

I soaked a good handful of mixed dry mushrooms, then added onion, frozen and thawed tofu, garlic, soy sauce. Simmered.

For the sides, I’ve steamed kabocha and reheated hana mame (flower beans) with soy sauce and a little sugar.

I’ve added the soba and sake kasu in the soup, more soy sauce to make it saltier.

And to spice it up a tonic mix : diced ginger, garlic, negi leeks, and chili pepper. Just mixed in, reheated and served.

Kimchi in the kabocha.

A flower on the beans. Lunch is ready.

Champilège final : genmai ‘shroom risotto

Let’s make a creamy brown rice risotto. You need a little more time, but at some point, the broth thickens just as much as with white rice.

That’s the last dish made with this basket of assorted mushrooms :

The series :
Champilège 1 : Paris in salad.
Champilège 2 : shiitake in amuse-gueule
Champilège 3 : awabitake, bunapi, in pie soup
Champilège 4 : maitake, eringi, in quiche

shiitake,awabitake, bunapi, champignon de Paris, maitake, eringi…
I had a few of each left, plus a few feet :

Minced the feet, red onion, lots of garlic…

New crop rice of this year. Tsuyahime, Princess Tsuya.
From Yamagata Prefecture, well the only problem is it’s a bit close to Fukushima. It’s a cultivar close to Koshihikari.
That’s a good risotto rice.

That’s a Japanese risotto. A fusion if you prefer. I’ve used kombu seaweed to make dashi stock. There is wine. The main seasoning is miso. Salt, pepper, olive oil, and thyme on the top :