Out of the multitude of recipes and usage of katsuobushi, one thing I love is okaka. Okaka is basically a mix of katsuobushi flakes and soya sauce, sometimes a few sesame seeds. It is often used as a filling of onigiri (rice ball). Today I tried a slightly different manner to serve these onigiri. Instead of using The okaka as a filling I decided to mix it directly with the rice and they grill the balls in a fry pan (small oven or grill can do too) to make yaki-onigiri. I served them with grilled vegetables: tomatoes, okras, shiitake, and with some marinated mackerel.
I baked 1 cup of rice, added 4g of katsuobushi flakes and a tea spoon of soya sauce, stirred well. Them I prepare the balls and flattened them in patties and grilled them in a greased fry pan until golden.
As usual, after our two hours tennis game in the morning we’re just starving and we need a good source of carb and proteins. I love the Japanese combo rice and meat balls. This time sweet potato rice, chicken and soua sauce balls, and pickled myoga in plum vinegar. Perfect!
I bake the rice in a regular pot, add the potatoes sliced at mid time; mix the chicken meat with rice flour and a bit of soya sauce and cook in a fry pan with a bit of vegetal oil. Simple. I got the picled myoga from our local farmers market.
Last year when we went back to France for Christmas we had several time beetroot, mainly in winter style salads, and I realized that in Japan this is not a common vegetable, just like fennel, kale or so many other vegetables that are common in the west (celery was hard to find a few years ago and outrageously expensive). So the other day when I spotted a beautiful beetroot I just couldn’t resist. But to be honest it was the first time ever I bought a beetroot! Back in the time we lived in Paris my mother in law would give me beetroot from her garden but she would cook them before. And usually I would prepare them in salad, since I’ve never been a big fan of it until last year!! I guess it is mainly due to the fact that in France the classic way is to boil or steam them and them make plain beetroot salads… It’s notvery attractive.
Well then, I ended up with a fresh beetroom, and it took me a couple of days to figure out what to do with it. First of all grilling it in the oven. I search for a few recipes, but them I decided to start with the simplest way: a small oven dish, the beetroot inside, baked at 180deg for about 80min. Then once cold I peeled it. Everywhere on the web I found recipes about goat cheese, beetroot, walnuts salad… Sounded nice to me but a little straighforward and anyway my husband don’t eat cheese and doesn’t really like walnuts unless it is in a delicious cake or cookie!!! So I passed this recommendation, next were soups and bortch… And finally I found a picture of a beetroot risotto: that’s it! I have bought the same day I bought the beetroot at Eataly a nice piece of vintage Parmegianno and a beautiful piece of pancetta. All set!
I used half a leek (the white part) cut in tiny pieces, and butter. Cut the pancetta and added it to the leek in the frypan. Once soft, I added a little more butter, the risotto, and finally added some chicken broth, and cooked until almost all the liquid was gone. I diced half of my beetroot and finally added it. When stirring the rice takes this beautiful pink color. I served and gratted the vintage Parmegianno on top.
I always find the pictures of risotto a bit strange. It’s not a photogenic dish. No matter how much I tried, nothing would work… Need to work on my plating! How do you serve your risotto?
What I love with katsuobushi, it’s that it suits very well greens Simply prepared: delicious spinach topped with katsuobushi, green beans, and even shishito. Shishito is a sort of tiny green pepper with a typical taste, and sometimes they can be really hot, but not often. I usually prepare shishito for snacks, by just grilling them in a pan and serving with salt. But I discovered that adding some soya sauce and topping with katsuobushi make a delicious combination. So simple and yet so many tastes of Japan in one dish!
As I was thinking of preparing something about dashi and katsuobushi for a while, I imagined that I had to pay a visit again at Ninben to see if they were selling all of the different katsuobushi I learned about, and I found there a very nice recipe book. Of course all the recipes use katsuobushi. The recipes are all quite simple and perfect to prepare for every day. Since summer has faded away very quickly this year I’m starting to want to eat some fall typical ingredients: kabocha, mushrooms… So the first recipe that inspired me was a Japanese style tart. I of course changed the recipe to adjust it to my own taste (only Japanese can put potatoes into a tart filling!!!) and it came as a perfect tart with leek, eringi mushrooms and katsuobushi, in a home made brise dough. Delicious!
Basically you prepare the dough, then cut the leek and mushrooms, grill them a little in a pan, add soya sauce and 10g of katsuobushi, stir well. Add 3 eggs and set in the dough. Bake until golden. The mix can be starling at first if you are used to mote classic tarts or quiche but it’s really delicious. the original recipe was also includîg carrot and potato, bit I don’t think it is necessary.
Dashi is one of the basic ingredient of Japanese cooking and refers like “bouillon” in French or broth to the basic soup used for further cooking. Unlike French bouillon usually made out of fresh vegetables, chiken bones or fish bones… the Japanese dashi is made out of drief ingredients. There are several types of dashi: konbu, dry shiitake, katsuobushi, ninoshi… All are related with the taste of umami. Today let me tell you about katsuobushi dashi (鰹節だし) or dried bonito dashi, since this week I will talk a lot about katsuobushi. This dashi is used in many preparations and recipes.
A piece of katsuobushi and the tool to cut the flakes (katsuobusi kezuriki-鰹節削り器)
Actually katsuobushi is not exactly just dried bonito, it also involves a smoking, drying and fermentation processes (arabushi-荒節 and honkarebushi-本枯節), and is usually referred by Japanese as the hardest food in the world. It can be made of different parts of the fish: back or belly, thus more or less fatty giving a different result. The katsuobushi is so hard that it is used in cooking by gratting it to obtain flakes on a special device called katuobushi kezuriki (鰹節削り器). Using this device requires a lot of technique to obtain beautiful flakes and a lot of energy and time. For my chakaiseki classes I learnt how to do it, but for daily use I prefer alredy cut flakes sold in small bags. These flakes are used in many ways (there will be soon a katsuobushi series or week!) and dashi is one of them.
So here are the basics about preparing katsuobushi dashi. The best is to use a water that is not too hard to obtain the most delicious dashi, and of course a good katsuobushi with a not too thin shaving (kezuri katsuo-削り鰹). A good proportion for a base for soup for two, or further cooking is by using 2.2 cup of water and 1 cup of katsuobushi. Heat the water to 85deg. Add the bonito flakes, boil for about 10sec, and then leave for about 1min off the heat. Filter.
With the recent boom of “back to the roots” and to traditions (mainly after the 2011 earthquake) and the renewal going on in Nihonbashi district in Tokyo, a number of very old and traditional shops have revamped their activities and in particular katsuobushi shops. There are now “dashi bar” where you can enjoy a cup of freshly made katsuobushi dashi, and believe me people are queuing for it! Ninben (www.ninben.co.jp) is one of the most famous in Coredo Muromachi.
This all week has been pretty crazy. I knew I would be very busy at work and that I’ll have to go early to the lab too, but what I didn’t expect is that the train to commute would let me down so many times. Usually trains are super reliable in Japan, but once in a while there are incidents, and usually they happen all at the same moment. Spending more time to commute then usual I didn’t have so much time left to spend in my kitchen and still needed to indulged with some simple food to keep : rice with sesame seeds, and greens with soya sauce, and since I knew that wouldn’t be enough for my husband, I stopped by Saboten and added some pork filet katsu to the menu.
There is an infinity of variations with crepes and pancakes, by changing the flour, adding baking soda or not, milk, egg, seeds… I love to play with all these possibilities and create something different each time. This time I grilled some eggplant and sweet pepper, so I decided to bake a big thick crepe made of chickpea flour and added some flax seeds in. For the crepe just chickpea flour, water, olive oil and salt is ok, for a less dense one adding an egg is good also. I baked it at low heat under cover and served with olive oil and pepper.
Japanese cucumber are really tiny compared to the huge one in Europe or America. Their diameter is usually between 1 and 2 centimeters and they are 12 to 20 centimeters long. There are few seeds and the the skin is not too thick so you just need to wash the and can eat them.
In summer we eat cucumbers every day and I realized I should have started a cucumber week! I buy them either in Koganei or in Isumi at the local farmers, and this week I have a load of cucumbers from K. And S. From Tsunan.
I love cucumbers in cold soup and salad, I also love them as pickles. I will soon present you my delicious pickles made in the 2-5-8 but so far I’ve been too busy with work to prepare any.
But my favorite way to eat them is as a snack while dinner gets ready because it takes 3s to be ready: wash, dry in a cloth and cut in 4 sticks and cut the sticks in 4. And when I have an extra 2min I prepare a dip of miso paste. I use fresh organic mild miso but it works with red miso too, to which I add a little of vegetal oil and stir until creamy.
