Garlic Chive and Cucumber Salad ニラとキュウリの和え物

Many years ago, we grew garlic chives in our herb garden which was a mistake. For one thing, the garlic chives were a very fibrous and tough. No matter how long we cooked them they were basically inedible. For another thing they grew like weeds and while the flowers were very pretty the garlic chives were rapidly out of control. They have very deep roots and are extremely difficult to weed. In desperation, we asked our gardener if he would weed the herb garden. When he saw that garlic chives were involved he immediately raised the price he would charge for the job. Even now, the garlic chives are still coming up.

Despite all this I yearned for the distinctive taste garlic chives contribute to a dish so recently, we’ve been getting them from Weee (much less weeding involved.)  I have used these blanched garlic chives, for “ohitashi おひたし” with soy sauce-based  dressing or for another garlic chives dish with grilled tofu-puff or “abura-age 油揚げ”.  This time, however, we got the garlic chives from “Suzuki Farm”. This happened in a round about way because I saw that Suzuki Farm offered Japanese cabbage. Previously, the closest thing we could get to Japanese cabbage was Taiwanese cabbage from Weee. So I decided to get some of the Japanese variety from Suzuki Farm but I needed some other items to round out the order and included garlic chives.  In any case, I blanched half of the garlic chives I got and used them to make a salad of garlic chives and Japanese cucumber with a seasoned abura-age garnish. I used a dressing made of mayo and yuzu kosho  柚子胡椒マヨネーズ. The combination and yuzu kosho mayo worked. This is a nice small dish that was just the right way to highlight the distinct flavor of the these garlic chives and above all else they were tender. 

Ingredients: (amounts are arbitrary but this is about 2 servings)
1/2 bundle of garlic chive
1/2 Japanese cucumber
1/2 Abura-age fried tofu puff seasoned (optional)

Dressing:
1 tbs mayonnaise
1 tsp yuzu juice
1/2 tsp yuzu kosho

Directions:
Blanch the garlic chive for 30 seconds, place it in ice water to cool, squeeze out moisture and cut into 1 inch length
Slice the cucumber thinly, salt it and mix, let it stand for 5 minutes and squeeze out moisture
Place the garlic chive and the cucumber in a small bowl add the dressing and top it with the abura-age if using.

Air Fried Zucchini エアーフライズッキニ

Since we had a great success air frying eggplants, my wife suggested we air fry some zucchini. I essentially cooked them exactly like the eggplants and as expected they were great. I started with 15 minutes of air frying. The zucchini was hot but still a bit too crunchy. I did another 15 minutes (Picture #1) which was good but now it was a bit too soft for me. Maybe, a total of 20 minutes would work better.

Ingredients:
3 zucchini cut into 1 inch thick medallions (This one was fairly long and made 15 rounds about 1 inch thick)
Seasoned flour (1/4 cup AP flour, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp onion powder, 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper, the amount of seasonings is to your liking)
1/2 cup panko
2 tbs olive oil
3 tbs grated parmesan cheese (optional)
1 egg beaten plus several tbs water

Directions:
Add 1 tbs olive oil in a frying pan on medium flame. Add the panko and stir until the panko is lightly browned. Let it cool. Add remaining olive oil and the parmesan cheese to the browned panko and mix well. Set aside.
Place the seasoned flour in a gallon Ziploc bag with the zucchini. Shake to coat all the eggplant surface with the seasoned flour. Shake off excess flour and dip each zucchini coin in the egg water to coat all sides and then bread it with the panko mixture, pressing both sides firmly. Place in the air frying basket with space between them (picture #2).

Since I breaded chicken tenders just before I breading the zucchini, I ran out of the previously browned panko. So, I just quickly mixed the panko and olive oil together without browning it in a frying pan like I did with the previous batch.  I used this “instant” breading on the remaining half of the zucchini shown as the pale ones on the left in the picture.

When, the zucchini finished cooking both the previously browned (right two) and “instant” un-browned (left two) panko breaded zucchini browned nicely (picture #3). The main difference was that the un-browned panko side developed uneven dark spots which I suspect must have been due to an uneven oil distribution. In addition, some oil dripped down onto the bottom crumb tray which did not happen when using previously browned panko. So, it appears the oil in the panko needs to be absorbed evenly and pre-sautéing in oil appears to work better.

Chicken Liver Cooked in Ketchup and Worcestershire Sauce 鶏レバーのケチャップ、ソース煮

Our favorite way of cooking chicken liver is simmering it in red wine, soy sauce and mirin 鶏レバーの赤ワイン煮 which goes well with a glass of red wine (naturally). I found this recipe in a Japanese food blog I follow. This is a quite different and we like it. This is much easier with less steps than red wine simmered liver. The Worcester sauce flavor is most dominating but curry flavor is definitely present.

Ingredients:
500 gram (18oz) chicken liver

Marinade:
2 tbs ketchup
2 tbs Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp grated garlic
1/2 tsp curry powder

Directions:
Clean the liver by rinsing in cold water and removing the connective tissue, and fragmented pieces. (Compared to Japanese chicken liver, the ones we can get are more fragmented and do not include the attached heart but the spleen is often attached).

Add the liver to the marinade for 15 minutes at room temperature or several hours refrigerated. 
Remove the liver from the marinade and place it in the non-stick frying pan and cook on medium heat with a lid on for 10-15 minutes turning once or twice.

The original recipe called for the liver to be cooked in a toaster oven. I chose to cook them in the frying pan with some of the marinade.

Salmon Pate サーモンパテ

When we get fresh salmon, we most often get a package of half filet of whole salmon which is quite large for us. It is not scaled so I have to scale it (since we consider the skin one of the best parts of the salmon). We make several salmon dishes besides individual filets and belly, including salmon cake/burger, Russian marinated salmon, Salmon “nanban” (fried salmon marinated in sweet vinegar) and others. A more recent addition was salmon pate of which I made two variations . This time, I made salmon scallop pate based on a recipe from the “Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook”. The original recipe is a bit complicated (as would be expected from this cookbook) so my version is a bit simplified and modified based on the ingredients I had on hand. For example, I only had a few left-over frozen bay scallops. Turned out I did not have enough scallops, so both the top and bottom scallop layers were a bit too thin. In addition, the bottom layer was too soft. (I may have to increase the amount of scallops and possibly add a binder such as egg white.). The original recipe called for a green layer of pate made from green peas and scallops. Instead I substituted chopped dill for the green peas to make a green layer. The original recipe also called for finely chopped un-cooked leeks. I thought that the uncooked leeks would be too strong in flavor so I sautéed the leeks in olive oil before adding to the pate. Despite the small size and soft consistency of the scallop layers, this was quite good as a starter. I served it with diced tomatoes and onions dressed with yuzu juice and olive oil (sort of tomato coulis)  (picture #1).

I substantially reduced the amount of ingredients from what was called for in the original recipe. (Many of the recipes in this cookbook are “restaurant volume”. We often reduce them in size to “household volume”.)

Ingredients:
For scallop pate
130 grams frozen bay scallops, thawed
1/3 cup finely chopped leeks, sautéed in olive oil
1/4 teaspoon salt, pinch of grated nutmeg, pinch of cayenne  pepper
1/3 heavy cream, chilled 
1/4 cup finely chopped dill
Ground nutmeg and cayenne pepper to taste  

For salmon pate
200 grams of fresh salmon, skin and bone removed, cut into small chunks, chilled
1/2 cup finely chopped leeks, sautéed in olive oil
1/3 cup heavy cream
1 whole egg
1/2 tablespoon tomato paste

1/2 tsp lemon zest
1/4 teaspoon salt, pinch of grated nutmeg, pinch of cayenne  pepper

Directions:
Add the scallopsbr /> with 1/3 cup of the leeks in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade. Process until smooth. Add the salt, pinch of nutmeg and cayenne pepper, and process again. With the motor running, dribble in about 1/3 cup of the chilled heavy cream in a slow steady stream. Remove half of the mixture to a bowl; cover and refrigerate. The remaining half, stir in lemon zest and dill. Cover and refrigerate. 
Clean processor bowl. Place salmon and remaining leeks in the bowl of the processor, fitted with a steel blade, and process until nearly smooth. Add the whole egg and tomato paste then mix. Season with additional ½ teaspoon salt, pinch of nutmeg, cayenne pepper, and process until smooth. With the motor running, dribble in the remaining 1/3 cup heavy cream in a slow steady stream. As soon as all the cream is in, shut off the processor and refrigerate immediately.
I used three small (2.5 by 5.5 inch) silicon baking loaf pans. Spoon the plain scallop mixture into the bottom of the pan. Then the salmon mixture over the scallop layer and smooth with a spatula. Finally, spread the dill and scallop mixture over the salmon layer and smooth it.
Wrap the loaf pans in aluminum foil and set it in a larger baking pan. Pour boiling water into the larger baking pan so that it comes about halfway up the sides of the loaf pans. Set the resulting bain-marie in the center of a preheated 350°F. oven and bake for 45 minutes, or until an instant-read thermometer gives an internal temperature of 130°F.
Remove the loaf pan from the hot water and cool to room temperature. Refrigerate overnight.
Because I used silicon baking pans, unmolding was easy.

I should have made more scallop pate. The scallop pate was a bit softer than the salmon pate. Next time, I will add just one green or dill scallop layer on the top of the salmon layer rather than one scallop layer on the bottom and one on the top (picture #2).

This made a great appetizer. It had a luscious creamy texture. The salmon flavor really shone through. The scallop layers were a bit muted but that could have been because they were rather thin. Overall quite a treat.

Air Fried Chicken Tender Cutlets エアーフライ鳥のささみカツレツ

Recently we have been trying out the air fryer function on our new toaster oven. This time, we tried chicken tender cutlets. Our favorite way of cooking these is to marinate them in mirin and ponzu, breading and deep frying them. This creates a nice flavorful and moist meat with a crunchy crust. So, this time our goal was to see if we could recreate the same flavor and texture profile of the oil fried tender using the air fryer. I changed the marinade a bit by including mayonnaise which, I’m beginning to think, is key for getting a good air frying result. Besides tenderizing the meat, the thin layer of mayo on the surface adds an oil component without being greasy as when the chicken is oil fried. In addition, I used panko crumbs sautéed and browned in olive oil. The air fried chicken tenders were a great success. The meat was very flavorful, extra tender and moist with a nice crunchy crust and no oiliness. We would even go so far as to say we like the air-fried version better than deep dried! We served this with home-made Greek (strained) yogurt dip seasoned with olive oil and salt (picture #1).

The idea of using mayo in the marinade is something I picked up from cooking blogs I follow (in Japanese).

Ingredients:
x6 chicken tenders

For marinade
2 tbs mayonnaise
2 tsp miso
1 tsp soy sauce (I used x4 Japanese noodle sauce)
1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp grated garlic

For dredging
1/2 cup panko
2 tbs light olive oil
2 tbs grated parmesan cheese (optional0

Directions:
Mix the marinade and place it in a large enough Ziploc bag. Add the tenders (removing the tendon attached to one end) and massage to coat. Removed air as much as you can and let it marinade for few hours or over night in the refrigerator.

Add the olive oil in a frying pan on medium low flame. When oil is hot add the panko and stir and toss until oil is distributed and lightly browned for few minutes. Let it cool and if using add the grated parmesan cheese.

Take out the tenders from the marinade and dredge in the browned panko bread crumbs (see picture #2).

Air fry at 450F for 10 minutes and turn them over and cook a 5 more minutes (total of 15 minutes)

I think the secret to good air frying appears to be adding a bit of oily components on the surface of the item being cooked.

1. Thin layer of mayo on the surface. It adds thin oily layer and the breading (panko) easily adheres to it.
2. Panko crumbs sautéed and browned with olive oil*. It adds  nice brown color as well as absorbs oil without dripping while air frying.

*When we air fried zucchini (subject to another post) I tried panko crumbs mix with olive oil just before breading (since I ran out of sautéed and browned panko), this did not work as well. The oil did not absorb and distribute evenly. Although the panko browned but not evenly and some oil dripped down on to the bottom of the toaster oven.