We had friends at home for diner the other night, and I over spec the diner portions, so, rare enough, I had enough left overs for a second diner. But because I don’t like eating twice the same thing I arrange it in completely different maner.
The original dinner consisted in plain white rice, Japanese autumn veggies (sweet potatoes, litus roots, carrots, eringi mushrooms, turnips…) in dashi and sake, salt-grilled sawara, and a mushrooms and tofu miso soup.
The new version was a cha-an (sauteed rice) with sawara and sauteed veggies, with sesame. For that I fried the rice in a bit of oil, added a table spoon if sesame seeds, added the veggies, and stirred often. I removed the skin and bones of the fish and crumbled it in the rice, stirred again and served. A super delicious diner, ready in 5 min, just perfect after a long day at work!
There are several ways to use gingko nuts in cuisine. The simplest is probably to grill them, for that you just beed to break the hard shell roughly, grilled them in a pan and serve with salt. It’s the easiest because no need to remove the hard shell, everyone does while eating. Perfect as a snack. But definitely not the most elegant way. So first if all renoving the shell without breaking the nuts is important. It’s not too difficult. Then there is a brownish skin that you don’t want to serve. To remove it it’s easy, boil a dew minutes the nuts then roll them in a metal net or drainer. The peel will go away with the friction. Now you have the perfect yellow nuts that you can use for any recipe. One of my favorite use issimply with white rice, to accompany a Japanese dinner. Jusr add the nuts in the rice after it is cooked. Count 3 to 7 nuts per person. Finish with a bit of salt when serving to enhance the taste of the nuts.
I was about to buy momendofu (firm tofu) for this one plate dish when a pack of smoked tofu attracted my sight and I ended up with it. All the way back home I was wondering when I had smoked tofu last and how it was, but I couldn’t really reacall. Probably in a vegan preparation back in France, but I wasn’t even sure. Since I had in mind a one-plate with half-brown rice from Camargue, avocado and salad, I decided that I would just dice it and add it to the plate. Well, it was a nice combination, smoked tofu has a very strong and particular cheesy taste which suited well the other ingredients. I still think it would suit better smaller quantities or different preparations. Fresh tofu in Japan is so delicious that the smoke version doesn’t make too much sense I felt.
I just travelled one day to Kobe, which means that I’ve spent half of the day in the train. You could imagine that working seated in my office most of the day or working seated on a train is the same but actually the feeling is completely different. In the train I can’t open the windows to breath fresh air nor change the settings of the aircon/heater, neither the neon over lighting. So I feel dry, cold and oppressed, my eyes hurt and I feel exhausted… Anyway… The good thing, except that work was good, is that Kobe is famous for a delicious and somehow strange German cake: the baumkuchen. It’s a layer cake baked while rolling. The kind of thing hard to try at home. And the famous brand Juchheim (the first to introduce the cake in Japan) has plenty of shops in the city and of course at the shinkansen train station. So I couldn’t help but bringing back a little souvenir for our breakfast and some for my students (the tradition of bringing some food souvenir or omiyage in Japanese (お土産) is one important tradition at work).
There are many different brands of baumkuchen of all quality, you can even find some in supermarkets. There are also different flavors of cakes, the most common are plain, macha, chocolate… There is also a number of limited seasonal editions such as yuzu… My favorite for breakfast is the plain one, and I like the one from Juchheim more than the others because of it’s thin outer layer made of ice sugar and butter, which a lot of other brands don’t have.
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.
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.
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.
