Bean okayu 2 : umeboshi

Second version of the bean and rice porridge. Salt was a traditional way to preserve food in Japan, particularly for seafood and vegetables. That makes lots of salty bits to garnish an okayu (rice porridge).

The same base as for the salmon okayu.

The famous umeboshi. Litterally : dried plums. It’s a type of pickles made in several steps. Green (unripe) very flavorful plums are picked in June. They are salted. Then they are put a few weeks in a jar with water and often leaves of red shiso (that will color them). Why dried ? They are put to dry under the sun, in July-August, so they dry and catch those wrinkles. And they are put back in their liquid where they can be kept up to 2 years. I don’t do mine. Confession : I tried to make some and failed spectacularly. Well I can easily buy good ones.

Toasted poppy seeds.

Quail eggs. Did you know that they had more white, hence less fat and more proteins, than hen eggs ?

Not Japanese : Oswego tea.

Mix the egg with the hot porridge, they will cook instantly. Add the toppings, and schhhhluuuups :

Chakin egg sushi, natsu chirashi and pink lotus root tsukemono (via Gourmande in Osaka)

Chakin 茶市 is a piece of fabric used to wipe accessories during tea ceremony. So this is chakin-zushi or a fukusa-zushi. Classic filling is sushi rice and rehydrated dry vegetables (shiitake, daikon), and a shrimp is added to them. Today I filled with some Summer chirashi(-zushi), it's big dish sushi garnished with tsukemono (veggie pickles). Cook rice on sushi mode (nearly al dente) or reheat some genmai brown rice. Add the vinegar (just black vi … Read More

via Gourmande in Osaka

Garden lunch : bento chirashi

The rose sushi goes to the park for lunch….

making the chirashi

Steamed : Okra, leek whites and a shiitake.

Raw sliced Japanse turnip.

Grilled : miso sawara mackerel , with kinome.
seikyozuke sawara

Ready to go under the Sun.

Chirashi, composing a bouquet of sushi

Bara sushi (rose sushi), chirashi covered with decorative items like the ground is covered by flowers in Spring.
The rice is also flavored. This is not the most classic version.

Classic vinegared sushi rice.

+ shrimps
(dried rehydrated in Awamori, cooked with soy sauce)

+ koya-dofu
(freeze-dry tofu, rehydrated and cooked with yukari and mirin)

= chirashi rice.

Threads of egg (see more here).

Umeboshi (pickled plum) for the center.

Sea weed fabric ? Tororo kombu, and somen dinner.

Tororo kombu. This is made by shaving kombu (kelp) seaweed. It’s a dry ingredient that can be used as a topping, but more often added to soup (at the last minute). A thicker version is used as a sushi, onigiri wrapping.

A good amount of tororo kombu, and a umeboshi (salt pickled plum), on top of cooled somen (wheat vermicelli noodles).

A slice of hamachi or buri (yellow tail, greater amberjack, seriole), poached in the somen water. Then let cool in soy sauce + J- black vinegar. The broth is chilled with ice-cubes, it becomes the soup for the noodles.