Sashimi lunch

A classic Japanese meal around a dish of sashimi. I prepared the sides.

Steamed kabocha pumpkin and ninniku no me garlic stalks. With soy sauce.

**I simply place the veggies in a steaming basket on top of a boiling water pot, or in the steaming mode of the microwave. Thin kabocha slices take 8 to 10 minutes. Garlic stalks only need 3 o 4 minutes to be at my taste. I add sesame seeds and soy sauce when I serve them.

The sashimi : ika (calamari), buri (yellow tail) and ama ebi (nordic shrimps).

An umeboshi (salted plum).

Tofu with oboro kombu (seaweed), seasoned with the soy sauce left after the sashimi dipping.

**How to choose or make tofu.

The miso soup with hijiki seaweed, shimeji mushrooms and kintoki red carrots.

Making miso soup

Add rice. That’s a complete Japanese menu.

**Cooking Japanese rice

Black delights… (via GiO)

Black is beautiful. In Japanese cuisine, that’s really a precious color…

Ideal for the cooling weather :　炙り寿司 (aburizushi) aburi sushi. It’s fire leached sushi.
If you never had them, you must try. The transformation of taste of the fish is dramatic…

Kanburi Daikon, a Winter classic

This is an economic Winter dish. Longly simmered and heart-warming. It’s made with humble ingredients.
Daikon are huge and abundant. And it’s made with the “leftover” of fish.

The fish is buri, hamachi, etc, is Pacific yellowtail amberjack. I had never seen any of this seriole in France, but it’s very common here. It is particularly delicious in Winter. So it becomes 寒ブリ, kanburi, “cold amberjack”. The fishmongers cuts the fat and nice bits for sashimi, the lean and nice ones for teriyaki grilling. The small bits and the parts with bones are discounted. They are perfect here…

The daikon radish can be a little bitter. So, peel it, cut big chunks and boil them a while in water you kept from rinsing rice, or water in which you add a little corn starch.

A full pot… The daikon, the bits of fish, a mix of low sodium soy sauce and mirin (I like equal parts), a dry chili pepper, a piece of kombu seaweed, plenty of water… Forget it on the stove a long time, on low heat. Then taste the sauce, you can add more water if you find it too salty, or at the contrary continue a little without the lid to reduce it.
I have added the green bits of leaves at the end, and served with diced raw ginger.

Serve hot or cold. That can be a side dish. With rice, that makes a meal.

Black delights with the aburi sushi

Black is beautiful. In Japanese cuisine, that’s really a precious color.

The meal with the :
aburizushi (fire leached sushi)

It’s hijiki, seaweeds. They are cooked in dashi (fish broth) with soy sauce, mirin and carrot. I get them fresh but you can buy them dry and rehydrate them.

Kuro-mame. Home-made black soy beans in honey ginger syrup. They’ll get their post too. Beans in syrup are often a small dish in Japanese meals. There are many versions.

Miso soup with abura-age (fried tofu) and spinach.