Tag: dashi

End of winter recipe

It was 13 years since I left Tokyo University for Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, and started my own research lab. The beginnings were hard but the past few years I really reached a stable balance… maybe too much balance… it was time to change… I’m back at the university of Tokyo… and starting from 0 again!!! You may call me crazy but I need some challenges to feel good. So as you can imagine the transition is keeping me busy and I don’t have much time to spend in the kitchen. Even though…

I can’t help spending 10min to prepare something to eat, and improvise a little new recipe with what was in the fridge: tiny potatoes, komatsuna and eggs. The preparation is very simple, it takes just a bit of time to cook it, which is perfect, hands are free to work!!!

Komatsuna jagga 小松菜じゃが (2 servings as full course)

  • 10 small potatoes
  • 3-5 bundles of komatsuna
  • 1 piece of thin aburage
  • 20g of katsuobushi flakes
  • 2tbs of soya sauce
  • 1tsp of oil
  • 2 eggs (optional)

Peel the potatoes and slice them, wash the komatsuna and cut them 2cm long. Slice thinly the aburage. In a greased (with the oil) pan put the potatoes and komatsuna and cook at high heat for 2min. Then add the aburage and cover with water, add the katsuobushi flakes, the soya sauce, and the eggs, stir well and cover. Let cook for 10min or until the potatoes are soft. You can serve as a soup or remove the cover and let the liquid evaporates before serving. Eat hot, because spring may be around the corner, evenings are still cold!!!

Japanese simplicity

Who said that cooking Japanese cuisine was complex???

I have the simplest and most delicious recipe of miso soup for you today and an ultra easy ochazuke recipe. Of course both require basic Japanese ingredients: dashi, and miso for the first one, and Japanese rice, dashi and umeboshi for the second one. Indeed now is the time rice harvesting in Isumi is just finished new rice of this year harvest is now available. Delicious brown rice, slowly cooked to be just perfectly soft goes perfectly well in ochazuke recipes I find, almost better than plain white rice.

For the dashi of both recipes you can choose from katsuobushi, ichiban dashi, konbu dashi or shiitake dashi. Personally I love ichiban dashi. Ichiban dashi 一番だし is a basic in Japanese cuisine and particularly in cha-kaiseki 茶懐石, so I mostly make ichiban dashi, so let’s start with its recipe.

Ichiban dashi – 一番だし

  • 1L of water
  • 15g of katsuobushi blakes (not too thin)
  • 15g of konbu

In a pan set 1cm of water, add the konbu and bring to a boil at low heat for 10min. Add the bonito and the rest of the water. Keep boiling at low heat for 5 minutes. Let rest and filter. Your ichiban dashi is ready, you can use it as a base for soup, cooking vegetables, fish, tofu, rice etc…

With the dashi made, we can then move to the other recipes. First the eggplant miso soup. Then below the ochazuke.

Eggplant miso soup (for two servings)

  • 2 little Japanese eggplants
  • 1 tbs of miso
  • 600ml of dashi
  • a bit of neutral frying oil

Wash and cut the eggplants (see top picture fir cut). In a frypan greased with the frying oil, cook the eggplants until just golden and soft, serve then evenly in two large miso soup bowls.

Heat your dashi if it was prepared ahead, or use the one you just prepared. Top the eggplants with the dashi. Set half a tbs of miso in each and stir gently. That’s it!!!

Simple ochazuke (2 servings)

  • 1 cup of Japanese brown rice or white rice cooked
  • 400ml of dashi
  • 2 pickled plums
  • 1 bundle of komatsuna or other green (water spinach, spinach…)

Serve the rice in a large bowl. Heat the dashi. In the meantime wash the green vegetable, cut in 5cm long and blanche. Drain well.

Top the rice with the vegetables, then serve the dashi, add the pickled plum. That’s it!

Have a good day!!!

One week…

This week was just like another, but it felt looooong and painful, busy with work (I’ve started a new online robotics course that keeps me busy, among the many other things I work on)… It was also our first week of telework for the both of us together in our new apartment with schedules not necessarily matching very well to have lunch together or go for a walk together. And the first week of really warm weather, summer warm, and of air conditioning. I always have a hard time adjusting to it and I felt little appetite for a few days, rare enough, and even more rare no appetite at all for chocolate. Instead I craved simple food and simple ingredients and in these situations rice, more particularly ochazuke, has been one of my best answer. Since ochazuke with vegetables is seasonal, ochazuke in May is different than ochazuke in December and the recipes I have posted so far, even if the base dashi could be similar. For a spring ochazuke I used a plain dashi of katsuobushi, but ichiban dashi would work as well, and if your vegan or vegetarian you can opt for konbu dashi only or shiitake dashi, in which I cooked some green peas (there will be more green peas recipe coming soon!!!) and some snap peas. I added after serving a bit of sesame seeds.

This dish is perfect eaten not too warm, it provides energy while having greens and liquid with strictly no fat. And it is tasty without being overwhelming.

And in a flash the week was almost over, passing with me not sharing any new recipe as I have cooked a little less or rather very simple food… I promise to do better next week!!

Spring is here!

After the fukinoto and the canola which both announce the arrival of spring and the cold unstable weather that usually accompany the plum blossom end, the next step is the real arrival of spring in late March or early April with the famous cherry blossoms of course, Mole’s quince and the jonquils putting beautiful colors in the garden but also the bamboo shoots (takenoko 筍)and the other wild vegetables: fern (kogomi こごみ), horsetail (tsukushi つくし), angelica tree buds (tara no me タラの芽)…

We don’t have kogomi and tara no me in our garden, or not that I know of yet (I discover new things each year!), I found a few tsukushi in the past but never enough or at the right time to harvest them. This year I found really plenty, enough to consider cooking some. Tsukushi are a bit of a delicate plant and their pollen is not very good so it’s better to harvest them early. The one on the picture below is for example a bit too old, this can be seen by the dark color of the head: the pollen is already about to go out! The pollen of tsukushi is blue to black, and looks like mold!!! I have never seen tsukushi in supermarkets, I assume they are too delicate for transport and shelf time. Their flavor is very subtle so I like simple preparations: quickly sautéed, or simply blanched in dashi. To prepare them, simply wash them and remove the corollas parts using your thumb by simply rolling the stem with the corolla on top of your nail. Then cook them in a pan with a bit of butter or as said above blanched them in a regular dashi. Serve them right away with rice, scrambled eggs… nothing too strong.

I my case I made a simple fried takenoko rice with sesame oil, scrambled eggs season with a few drops of soya sauce. That’s it!

Wax gourd – 冬瓜

A few years ago (or in an other life… when I was managing time differently) I used to go to 茶懐石 chakaiseki cooking classes once a month. I learned a lot there, about classic Japanese cooking techniques, about Japanese sweets and about some ingredients I was never cooking. Wax gourd is one of them. It is a very delicious vegetable but when you don’t know what to do with it… you just don’t buy it… until this class of July where I was in charge of cooking some, to be served with somen (thin noodles eaten in the summer) and red snapper. And I lived that dish so much that I remember preparing it for friends coming over for dinner.

The season for wax gourd has come again and I bought some. I was fancying preparing the same recipe but the heat and our busy schedule changed the plans and I decided to invent a new recipe using the same base. No somen (too heavy for the very hot days) and instead of red snapper (no big one found) I decided to prepare Isumin pork meat balls. Still served with a great dashi. It was super delicious. Here is the detailed recipe.

Wax gourd and meat balls (for 2 people)

– 1/2 wax gourd or 冬瓜

– 100g of pork ground meat

– 40g of potato starch or katagiriko

– 1/2L of katsuobushi dashi

– 2tbs of soya sauce

– 2tbs of sake

– cooking oil

Cut and peel the wax gourd and cook in the dashi with the soya sauce and the sake until a toothpick enters smoothly.

Heat the oil in a frypan. In a bowl mix the meat and the potato starch. Form small balls and fry them until golden.

In bowls serve the wax gourd, the meat balls, then add some of the wax gourd cooking liquid. Top with a few sesame seeds. Enjoy!

Canola flowers – 菜の花

In a flash we went from cabbages and sweet potatoes to fukinoto and canola flowers. It’s almost spring already, and the vegetables at the farmers market let you know that! Of course it’s only the beginning, and it is nice and interesting to mix winter and early spring ingredients. Canola flowers are versatile and I am very found of them. They start at the same time plum trees start to bloom and they both are markers of our wedding anniversary. Indeed, we got married under beautiful plum trees in full bloom at Gojoten jinja on a cold and perfectly sunny day of February 2007. And for the celebration lunch Kikuya’s chef prepared among the many dishes some canola flowers that we discovered at that time.

I cook canola flowers, or rather I like to call them the Japanese way: na no hana, quite often when the season comes. They are a good alternative to broccoli and more local. I have tried a lot of different combinations and developed many recipes with na no hana, and I still continue. This time with some beautiful cod fish from Hokkaido I prepared a kind of rice bowl. Simple, healthy, tasty and colorful. Try it please!

Na no hana and cod rice (for 2 people)

– 1 cup of Japanese rice (as always Koshihikari from chiba for me)

– 200g or a small bundle of na no hana

– 200g of fresh cod

– 2cups of katsuobushi dashi

– sesame oil, sesame seeds, salt

First start to cook the rice. While it cooks prepare the rest of the ingredients. In a fry pan start grilling the cod on the skin side at medium heat. In a pan prepare the dashi then add the washed na no hana. Boil them until soft. Drain once cooked and chop. Once the rice and the fish are cooked, in a fry pan add some sesame oil, the rice, the fish in crumbles without the skin, and the na no hana. Stir well and cook at high heat for 3-4 minutes. Add salt and sesame seeds and serve. Enjoy!

Two simple Japanese recipes

With some guests from France at home this weekend I cooked some simple Japanese recipes that they could reproduce back home. And because the weather was really terrible I could take all the time needed to chop thinly the vegetables and prepare recipes I usually don’t.

The two recipes I prepared were daikon and miso, and some kinpira gobo (without the red pepper). 

Daikon and miso: 

– 1/2 daikon

– 2 tbs of miso of your choice

– 1/2L of dashi of your choice: konbu, katsuo, niboshi… 

Cut the daikon in 3cm slices, peel them. Prepare the dashi and when boiling cook the daikon. It is ready when a toothpick enters smoothly. In a small bowl put the miso, add 2 or 3 tbs of dashi and stir to obtain a creamy paste. At this stage you can add yuzu peels… for a slightly enhanced version of the recipe. One the daikon is cooked, drain and top with the miso preparation. Eat while still warm.

Kinpira gobo :

 – 1 burdock

– 1 carrot

– a small piece of lotus root (optional) 

– 300ml of dashi of your choice

– 1tbs of soya sauce

– 1tbs of sake

– 1tsp of sugar

– 1 red pepper  

Peel the vegetables. Cut the burdock and gobo in thin matches sticks. Cut the lotus root and the red pepper in thin slices. In a pan boil the vegetables in the dashi. When reduced, add the sake, the red pepper, the sugar, and the soya sauce. Cook until almost dry. Add a few sesame seeds to decorate eventually.

Japanese simple dinner

Cooking Japanese is not necessarily difficult and it can be really quick. In winter I love daikon cooked in konbu (kelp) dashi and served with white miso, but this is not a whole meal so I prepared also in the same dashi some warm thick fried tofu served with little raw spinach and for the energy a bowl of rice mixed with 16 types of beans and seeds.

Prepare a konbu dashi with a piece of konbu in 1l of water, bring to boil and keep under cover. Cut 2-3cm high slices of daikon, one pr person is usually good, and cook them in the dashi. Check with a toothpick and remove them when soft.  Serve in a bowl with one tsp of white miso on top. In the dashi still heated, add the thick fried tofu (atsu-age 厚揚げ) and cook for 5min, it washes away the oil from the deep fry. If you cannot find thick deep fried tofu you can warm momen (hard) tofu. When warm serve with baby spinach and a bit of soya sauce or a bit of ponzu sauce, or just a bit of the warm dashi. For the rice, I use a mix of seeds and beans that can be found in any organic supermarket or similar (if you cannot find some leave a comment I can help providing with some). That’s it. Keep warm and have a good weekend!

Japanese food addict

When we are in Japan I don’t think about it, I naturally cook Japanese at least once a week sometimes more. When I say Japanese I mean rice (white or brown) and something with dashi and/or miso and/or umeboshi. These tastes have been part of our daily life now almost as much as good olive oil and basil. And when traveling I miss them, after a short while and the excitement of tasting new thing. They are simple, plain and fine at the same time, they are the promise also of fresh and simply delicious ingredients (for me) just as olive oil is too. Yet it is easier to find good olive oil and cook with olive oil (and with cooking with our friends and eating at their place several times I was really lucky!) than it is with miso, dashi, umeboshi and rice. I mean real delicious ones are still hard to find. So during this two-week trip I’ve craved for the simplicity of a bowl of Koshihikari with umeboshi, and that’s the first thing I cooked when I arrived home. I also prepared some dashi to cook some eggplants and used it for flavoring scrambled eggs. It is that simple and delicious. Is that the taste of home in Japan? Or does that make a Japanese food addict? What do you crave for when away from home?

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