Modern yaki

Third dish of the hot plate fiesta at Emi’s. You’ve seen :
okonomiyaki and her yakisoba. Now we are mixing both.
That’s not something she usually does, but modan-yaki (modern yaki) is a regular offer in Osaka’s okonomiyaki places.

If you have a huge hot plate, you can make it all on it. Otherwise, you can stir-fry the noodles in a frying pan with pork breast and Worcester sauce.

Then on the plate, grill the noodles and more thin slices of pork belly.

The batter-cabbage mix is the same as for okonomiyaki (more here).

Place pork on the noodles.

Cover with batter. Add tenkasu (tempura crumbs), pickled ginger and the rest of pork. Flip.

On the other side, add an egg.

Flip again.

Garnish with sauce, mayonnaise, fish flakes and aonori seaweeds.

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.

Provence fragrances escaping from the oven

A South French Sunday lunch. Think about a dinner, enjoyed slowly between noon and 5 p.m., talking and eating food cooked by the grandma.

The roast : A chicken baked inside a salty crust, with lots of perfumed herbs.

It gets very tender.

The zucchini that believed they were bananas.

Colorful Mediterranean Summer vegetables. They must be full of vitamins.

Layered, then baked. Tian is also the name of the pottery in which this dish is baked.

Teaser about the dessert (to be posted soon) :

Tarte automne-été aux trois fruits (Summer-Fall triple pie).

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…

Accras la la…

Just bring accras and you’re starting a French Antilles style party. These appetizers bring the mood. They are fried dumplings with herbs, spices and often morue (cod fish).

With a dip of salsa ? I’d usually spice them enough and I eat them like that, but I often see many Japanese people looking for the sauce whenever that type of dish appears…