Matsutake Soup with Matsutake-flavored Broth 松茸のお吸い物

One of the most common ways to enjoy the subtle flavor of matsutake is in “clear soup”. Dobin-mushi 土瓶蒸しand osuimono お吸い物 are two major types of mantsutake clear soup. When I make matsutake clear soup, I usually use kelp or kelp and bonito broth. Many years ago, one of our Japanese friends suggested using “Nagatani-en Matsutake-flavored clear soup 永谷園松茸風味お吸い物 (picture #2)” as a broth base when making clear soup using real matsutake because it would really enhance the matsutake flavor. But we did not try it until now.

This year I made clear soup from real Oregon matsutake and, instead of using kelp and/or bonito broth, I just added two packages of matsutake-flavored soup to about 300ml of water. The result was quite remarkable. We did not taste anything artificial but it definitely enhanced the matsutake flavor with an added subtle saltiness. I also used freeze-dried Japanse “mitsuba 三つ葉” green and frozen “yuzu peel 柚子”. Although the mitsuba did not add much, the yuzu peel added a nice citrus flavor (Picture #1).

Ingredients: (2 servings of clear soup)
1 medium sized fresh matsutake, cleaned
300 ml filtered water
2 packages of matsutake-flavored clear soup (#2)
Fresh or freeze dried “mitsuba” or chopped scallion
Fresh or frozen Yuzu zest

Directions:
To prepare the fresh matsutake: Sometimes the stem close to the end of the matsutake can be very fibrous. To avoid this I sliced across the stem rather than lengthwise along the stem, making thin “pennies”. This preparation made the pieces from the stem more palatable than when the stem is cut along the long axis. 

To Prepare the soup:Add the matsutake slices to the simmering water and cook for one or two minutes. Add the contents of the matsutake-flavered soup packages. Cook another 30 seconds mix to dissolve the flavorings. Add the mitsuba and yuzu zest and serve.

Digression alert:
“Nagatani-en 永谷園” is well-known for making “Ochazuke お茶漬け” seasonings and other instant soups and frikake ふりかけ rice seasonings.  The matsutake-flavored clear soup reportedly started selling at the time of the First Tokyo Olympic in 1964 and is one of their long standing best sellers. They sell two versions; a regular retail version and a commercial version or “gyomu-yo 業務用 (picture #2). The broth base for both versions appears to be the same. As far as I can tell, the only difference between the two types are the freeze dried items included. The retail version contains scallion, “fu” gluten cake, shiitake mushroom, and nori. The commercial versions do not contain shiitake mushroom, and instead of nori, they contain wakame seaweed.

No real matsutake is included in either soup type. In terms of the “matsutake flavoring”, the package does not go into details and is very vague. I learned about the flavoring by searching on the Internet and found that “桂皮酸メチル methyl cinnamate” and “マツタケオール matsutakeol (1-octen-3-ol)” are known to provide “matsutake flavors”. Both substances, apparently, can be synthesized or extracted from various kinds of plants.  How this is done and how these flavorings are used in the products appears to be an industrial secret. They did, however, do a good job of not over doing the flavoring. We could sense a natural subtle flavors/aroma of matsutake in the soup. I got the commercial version of the soup in a box containing 50 separate packages, from Amazon.

Matsutake Lunch 松茸の昼食

It is autumn and time to enjoy the seasonal dishes featuring Matsutake. In the past we have gotten fresh matsutake in the US from various sources. In recent years, we have gotten some very good ones from Weee but this year, they didn’t carry it. So, we got one pound from “Oregon Mushrooms”; one of the other sources we have used. I posted many times about  Matsutake 松茸 dishes.  This post is a summary of the various dishes I made this year. Each dish will appear in greater detail in subsequent posts. One of the major changes I made this year, was using “Nagatani-en” Matsutake-flavored clear soup 永谷園松茸風味お吸い物 in the dishes. The idea of using this flavored soup was presented to us many years ago by our Japanese friends. They mentioned that the advantage of using this matsutake seasoned broth was that it would enhance the matsutake flavor in the dish. This flavor enhancement would be especially helpful because North American matsutake has less prominent flavor compared to Japanese ones. Nonetheless we never followed up on this suggestion until this year and we have to say their observation was 100 percent correct. It really added to the overall matsutake experience.

The pic shows the matsutake dishes we had as a lunch (Picture #1). These were our usual matsutake rice 松茸ご飯, matsutake clear soup 松茸のお吸い物 and daikon and persimmon layered pickles 大根と柿の重ね漬け (this is new). Since I used “matsutake-flavored”  soup base for the matsutake rice and soup, they will be the subject of individual new posts. I also added a post about the new daikon and persimmon pickles for extra good measure. (I also used the soup base in chawamushi 茶碗蒸し, but did not take any pics so that dish will not be posted.)

Apple Cider Pudding Cake アップルサイダープディングケーキ

This is a variation on the theme of pudding cake and a continued celebration of the seasonal joy of apple cider. My wife has recently been trying various recipes baking with apple cider. Several of them used cider that had been concentrated to increase the cider flavor. My wife realized that the pudding cake recipes she had been making used about a cup of plain water poured over the raw dough before cooking to make the base pudding layer. She thought, “how ‘bout replacing the plain water with concentrated apple cider?” So she tried it using the basic recipe for vanilla pudding cake. This turned out to be very good. The top is a nice vanilla flavored cake layer covered with a of crispy crust (left lower) and the bottom is a nice pudding/sauce layer with a rich sweet/tart apple cider flavor.

Ingredient's
4 1/2 cups apple cider concentrated to 1 3/4 cups.
1 stick (4 ounces or 113g) unsalted butter
1 cup plus 3 tablespoons (143g) all-purpose flour, divided: 1 cup or 120g for the batter and 3tbs or 23 g for the topping.)
150 g granulated sugar, divided: (100g for the batter and 50g for the topping.) 
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 cup whole milk
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Directions
To concentrate the apple cider 
Put the cider in a sauce pan. On low to medium heat slowly simmer, stirring occasionally until it is reduced to 1 3/4 cups concentrate. Keep it hot to pour over the batter. 

To make the batter: 
the Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Put the butter in a glass 8x8-inch baking dish. Set it in the oven so the butter melts as the oven preheats.

Meanwhile in a medium bowl, whisk together 1 cup (120g) of the flour, and 100 g of the sugar, baking powder, and salt. Whisk in the milk and vanilla until smooth. When the butter has melted, remove the baking dish from the oven. Pour the batter over the butter.

To make the topping:
In a small bowl, mix the remaining 3 tablespoons (23g) of flour and the remaining 50g sugar. Sprinkle the topping evenly over the batter. Slowly pour the hot concentrated cider over the topping (do not stir).

Bake the cake until the top is golden brown and the cake is set on top with a gooey pudding layer underneath, 35 to 40 minutes. Remove the cake from the oven and let it stand until slightly cooled, about 10 minutes.

This cider experiment really worked. The vanilla apple cider cake was an extremely good desert. As the cake cooked the whole kitchen was filled with a very pleasant rich apple cider smell. The thick pudding that formed under the tender vanilla flavored cake layer topped with a sweet crunchy crust had a sweet/tart rich apple cider taste that went with the smell that had filled the kitchen. This is an absolutely wonderful combination of vanilla cake complemented with the sweet tartness of the apple cider. A great celebration of autumn.

Apple Cider Candied Ginger Biscuit (A.K.A. cookie) アップルサイダーと生姜生姜の砂糖漬ビスケット

This is another one of my wife’s baking projects which she made after getting some apple cider.  She found this recipe in the “Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook”. Although this is called “Biscuit” this is not the American idea of a “biscuit” which is generally a buttery flaky type of muffin. Instead this is a type of shortbread which the British may call a biscuit but Americans would call a cookie.* In any case it is made with apple cider.

The usual way of making cookies is to roll out the dough, cut out the cookie using a cookie cutter then re-rolling out the scraps to make more cookies, my wife made a modification to the procedure. She rolled the dough into a cylinder then cut slices off of the cylinder eliminating the need to gather scraps and re-roll the dough.

*Digression alert: Biscuit or ビスケット” in Japan also means British-style cookie. When I was a kid in Sapporo, we grew up with “biscuits” from “Saka Biscuit 坂ビスケット”.  They were packaged in a paper cellophane covered cylindrical wrapping. To my surprise this company is still in operation in Sapporo. They still produce several kinds of  “biscuits” but the cookies are now sold in a bag not wrapped in a cylinder like I remember. (Surprise: I found that apparently I am repeating myself since I wrote about the same thing 10 years ago.)

Ingredients:
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
⅓ cup packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons molasses
¼ cup apple cider or juice
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon ground ginger
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ cup finely minced candied (crystallized) ginger

Directions:
Cream the butter and sugar in a mixer bowl. Beat in the molasses, then the apple cider. In a separate bowl combine the flour, ground ginger, baking soda. Stir the flour mixture into the butter mixture. (I found this almost impossible to do by hand using a spatula. I resorted to stirring the flour mixture into the butter mixture using the mixer which took only seconds and worked much better.) Stir in the candied ginger. I rolled the dough into a cylinder then wrapped it in plastic wrap (#1) and refrigerated 1 hour. After taking the wrapped dough out of the refrigerator, I simply cut slices off the cylinder to make the cookies (#2). 

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Bake until lightly browned, about 15 minutes (#3 & #4)

This was a very flavorful cookie. It has a strong apple cider flavor and pleasing bursts of ginger. The only problem was that it became very hard once it cooled. Luckily just a short microwaving made it soft again

New York Style Pizza ニューヨーク スタイル ピザ

This is my attempt at making a New York-style crust Margarita pizza. My focus was mostly on the crust. The topping was just what I usually use to make a Margarita pizza using my regular Marinara sauce. This was cooked in our Pizzaiolo Pizza oven on New York Pizza mode which is a lower temperature and longer cooking time  (550F and 7 minutes) as opposed to Neapolitan style pizza (700F and 2 minutes). 

The crust was bread-y and much sturdier than Neapolitan style crust. (Meaning you can fold the pizza wedge in half and the center is stiff enough to hold the topping and cheese). As a result it is not as light and soft in texture as Neapolitan style. Do we like this crust better? I am not sure. But I think that we prefer the pizza crust I usually make which is a modified Neoplitan-style with “00” flour but with the addition of olive oil. In any case this is a very good pizza for sure.

This version was based on recipes by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt (serious eats) and in the King Arthur “Book of pizza”. In both recipes, New York-style pizza crust is made with bread flour, oil and sugar. I modified the amount to make enough dough for four 10 inch pizzas. I chose the primary fermentation at 86F for 1 hour and then slow fermentation in the refrigerator for 1 day or up to 5 days. I used enough of the dough for 2 pizzas and froze the rest.

Ingredients for the pizza dough (makes four 10 inch pizzas)
520 grams bread flour, plus more for dusting 
12 grams granulated sugar 
1 grams kosher salt 
1 grams active yeast 
340 grams water
36 grams extra-virgin olive oil

Ingredients to top a Margarita style pizza 

I just used my usual Marinara sauce
5 tbs of olive oil with crushed garlic
Slices of low moisture Mozzarella cheese 

Fresh basil leaves

Grated Parmesan cheese topping on the pizza

Directions for the pizza dough 
Combine flour, sugar, salt, and yeast in the bowl of the food processor fitted with a kneading blade. Pulse 3 to 4 times to incorporate. Stream in the olive oil while running the food processor. Then stream in water until the mixture forms a ball that rides around the bowl above the blade. Let it sit for 5 minutes to let the moisture distribute evenly. Run again to process for 15 seconds longer.

Transfer the dough ball to a lightly floured surface and knead briefly by hand until a smooth ball is formed. In a large enough bowl, add and spread a small amount of olive oil. Place the dough ball in the bowl and turn to coat with oil. Cover with plastic wrap and let it ferment at 86F for one hour (we use a bread proofer). 

Divide dough into four even portions. In the bowl used for the primary fermentation, add a small amount of olive oil and coat all 4 dough balls with the oil. Place each in a ziploc bag. Place the bags in the refrigerator and allow the dough to slowly rise at least1day or up to 5 days.

At least one hour before baking, remove the dough from the refrigerator. On a well floured surface, form the dough ball into pizza shape.

Transfer the formed pizza dough to a wooden pizza peel lightly coated with corn meal (so that the dough will not stick and the pizza can easily slide into the oven and onto the pizza stone).

Brush the surface of the dough with garlic infused oil, place on slices of cheese in a single layer and spread the sauce on top of the cheese. Distribute hand torn pieces of fresh basil leaves on the surface.

Test to make sure the topped pizza slides on the peel. Then slide it onto the pizza stone in the pizza oven. Bake at 550F or on New York Pizza mode for 7 minutes.

After sliding the baked pizza out of the oven on the peel, brush the edge of the pizza with the garlic infused oil, grate the Parmesan cheese on the top and add more hand-torn fresh basil leaves.