Fricassée aux champignons, mushroom and chicken stew, 21st century version

Here is my fricot… That’s the typical out of fashion dish, a stew with roux. Quelle horreur ! Really, we girls, would stay away from it, when I was a teen then a student. How many million calories or bad fats and bad sugars per plate ? Daube , a name of Southern stew is even used as an insult for some art or other writing that would be fat, watery and dull. That was in France. And we had good reasons as we have seen abominable versions in : school meal stews, cheap eatery stews, prepared dish stews… Grand-ma’s home-made was totally different, but still very *rich*. That was good, too good. Something you could indulge on a Sunday dinner.

In Japan, that’s not alt-modish at all.　That’s not hip, but that’s considered as sound modern home-made food. For some weird reason. I should buy some to take a photo, but I would have to throw the object after. As “home-made”, ahem. Well that looks like white chocolate, but that’s instant shichuu (stew) roux.
So what did I pick ? Japanese or French ?

Neither !

Revised stew. The roux is made mostly of green beans, caramelised onions, white wine. After simmering with the meat, I took the chicken out, and I passed the mixer. More boiled onions and some mushrooms were added after.

Yamacha mushrooms.

There is no cream nor butter in the dish. The white topping is yogurt. And the taste is… tatata… GREAT ! All the flavors of the good ol’ fricassée, without the heaviness.

Kuzukiri are Japanese crystal noodles made with kuzu. Kudzu. Its root. That’s a sort of starch I sometimes use for desserts. They take the sauce well and are often added to dishes like sukiyaki, at the end, to profit of the rest of broth.
With a little ground coriander seed.

A tray of ingredients to hot pot… (mini sukiyaki dinner) (via Gourmande in Osaka)

Last year…

Evening is fresher… nothing better than a small informal sukiyaki to warm up the night. Here you have carrots, konnyaku noddles, green leeks, fine slices of lean beef, shiitake mushrooms, "fu" (gluten croutons) shaped in balls and flowers, small brown "enokidake mushrooms" (their name is "yamacha" mountain brown) and a sudachi (forrest fragrant small green lemon) that I don't add into the pot but as a final seasoning for the mushrooms. For the … Read More

via Gourmande in Osaka

A tray of ingredients to hot pot… (mini sukiyaki dinner)

Evening is fresher… nothing better than a small informal sukiyaki to warm up the night.

Here you have carrots, konnyaku noddles, green leeks, fine slices of lean beef, shiitake mushrooms, “fu” (gluten croutons) shaped in balls and flowers, small brown “enokidake mushrooms” (their name is “yamacha” mountain brown) and a sudachi (forrest fragrant small green lemon) that I don’t add into the pot but as a final seasoning for the mushrooms.

For the sauce ( equal amounts, I used a cup in total)
-light-salt soy sauce,
– sake,
– mirin,
– fish broth (water + fish powder).
Plus some water. I like it much less salty and less sweet than the Japanese average.

Heat a cast iron sukiyaki pot (mine is huge…I took my mini “cocotte en fonte”). Pass a cube of beef grease if you have…I hadn’t, so a little neutral oil was OK. Grill a little piece of meat, add 1/2 of the sauce, let it bubble, slow down and add progressively 1/2 of ingredients.
Serve with hot rice (a random mix here) and wedges of lemon.
Eat.
Then in the rest of sauce, cook the second part of ingredients… If some sauce is left (I talk of a theory I didn’t test…), you can cook noddles or veggies for the next day.

Cal 559 F11.1g C88.8g P24.5g