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.

Romanesco ganmodoki

がんもどきGanmodoki are one of the numerous tofu based specialties that you can find in Japan. You wonder how many there are ? Oh, hundreds :

The Tofu Hyakuchin (豆腐百珍 Tōfu Hyakuchin?) is a Japanese recipe book written by Ka Hitsujun (何必醇) and published in 1782 during the Edo period. It lists 100 recipes for preparing tofu. Due to its immense popularity at the time, a second volume was published the following year.

source

And they had no romanesco then, so recipes like this were added later.
We can buy different types of ganmodoki in tofu shops, at markets and supermarkets and use them in many dishes. Making yours is easy.
Romanesco is beautiful. I’m never tired of watching it.

For the detailed recipe, see on the blog of the Gourmet that lives in Shizuoka. I simply changed the garnishing vegetables.

The stalks and leaves of the romanesco. I eat them too in soups or whatever. Here, I’ve cut thin sticks and steamed them. I’ve also steamed a few kabocha pumpkin sticks.

ヒジキHijiki seaweed. We can buy them fresh or dry. That doesn’t make a big difference. Add water to the dry ones, wait 10 minutes.

I pan-fried them.

Served with steamed romanesco, raw myoga, and shikwasa lime juice as a seasoning.

A nice plant based lunch.

Hijiki seaweed, kabocha…

A more Japanese meal today. Several small items compose it. There is nothing classic. I switched rice for fancy bread (but many Japanese do that) and it’s vegan, which is a rarity in this country.

Let’s start simple : kinudofu, creamy silky tofu with sweet chili peppers and green lemon.

I get these seaweed fresh, so I just need to rinse and cook. If you buy them dried (most Japanese grocers have them), you need to soak them about 20 minutes, use lukewarm water with a little honey or sugar for better result.

I fried cut red onion in a little oil, added the hijiki, stir-fried, then seasoned with a little shoyu soy sauce and sugar, simmered 2 minutes.
They can be served cold (like here) or hot.

Boiled kabocha pumpkin skins. That’s a leftover, I reheated and covered with sesame sauce gomadare.

When you mix, it get really yummy.

Taisho kintoki beans. I boiled a big batch recently as the 2012 crop of dry beans arrived. They are superb.

With tomato chili sauce, and parsley.

Red delight.

Something to clean the sauce : pumpkin bread.

Toasted.
Thankies gods and sacrified veggies.Itatakimasu !

A macédoine chinoise

A satisfying original stir-fry animated by Asian flavors.

That’s not cuisine from Macedonia at all. Macédoine just means a mix of cubes veggies and peas. When I was a kid, they’d tell me that was because in history Macedonia, the old country, had been made of patches of very small regions and people. Yeah ? What country was not ? The horror is that was usually about canned veggies that tasted like the can. So they invented stories to make you eat that…

Nothing like that here. I’ve fresh produce and some well cooked.

My selection. Some garlic and ginger are not on the photo.

The black things are hijiki seaweeds and Chinese ear wood mushrooms. I used them dry and they have soaked the excess of sauce.

Another black ingredient is the tablespoon of Chinese miso I have added. And I’ve sprinkled ground Sichuan pepper.

A huge plate to devour with black Puer tea. I really thought I was preparing some for 2 or 3 meals but I have eaten it all as it’s really easy to munch. You take a spoon, one more and again and oh no more ! No problem, that’s totally healthy.

Fish day : Steamed salmon with seaweed tartare sauce

Fish and seaweeds on the plate today.
Are there still Catholics that follow the tradition of eating fish on Fridays ? That was like a law when I was a kid and even at school they’d put fish on the menu that day. Well, they had not their concept of food industry fish. It’s a square or rectangle animal that lives in icebergs and is covered by a fur of fried bread crumbs. Nothing like that here. I’ve bought a back of Hokkaido salmon and I’ve cut it in rectangles myself, not to imitate, but I had enough for a dozen of servings. I froze some.

It’s not an Halloween sushi, but…

The sauce is only tartare by the name. It is made by mixing in a blender, blanched favas (broad beans) with rice vinegar, water, salt, pepper. Then I’ve added a big spoon of aonori seaweed flakes to bring even more marine breeze to the palate.