Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Mountain yam wrapped in bacon 長いものベーコン巻き

I am not sure where I first had this dish. Wrapping vegetables in thinly sliced meat or bacon is a favorite Japanese cooking technique. Classic examples of this type of dish include: scallion wrapped with thinly sliced beef or pork called "negimaki" 葱巻き, as well as burdock root and asparagus wrapped the same way. They are ususally sauteed and then braised in the usual sauce of mirin or sugar and soy sauce.  In this dish, I used a mountain yam 長芋 and bacon. Cut yam into small rectagles (I should have cut it smaller here), wrap them in bacon and saute with the seam side down in a dry frying pan. Turn and make all sides of the bacon nicely crispy. I happened to have some very nice and sweet mission figs so I sauteed the cut surface of the figs briefly in the bacon grease. I served this with reduced balsamic vinegar and grated dikon to cut the grease. It has a very interesting texture and flavor combination. This dish can go with sake or wine. My wife must have liked it, since two pieces that I left in the pan because the bacon wrapping unraveled during the cooking, disappeared while I was not looking. I am not sure if it was just the bacon she really liked or the entire dish. (She said it was the entire dish...but you can't go wrong with anything including bacon!)

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