Addendum to Sushi Taro Osechi 寿司太郎おせち料理追加

I said I may have missed some items in the Sushi Taro Osechi box and I indeed missed one very good dish. (We are still working on the box and finding additional goodies as we go). The dish we missed was the oysters smoked in-house at Sushi Taro 牡蠣燻製. They were wrapped in a pouch and somewhat hidden (I think they were under the duck).

This is not a traditional preparation but we liked it very much. The oyster was succulent and infused with a lovely smokey aroma accompanied by grilled and skinned sweet red pepper and cubes of feta cheese; both were also infused with smokey flavor.

The picture shown below is what I came up with for the evening. All were chosen for imbibing sake. The left in the back is smoked oyster, left front is Daikon namasu 錦なます (cut in wider strips with nice yuzu flavor and kelp strips) topped with salmon roe marinated in soy sauce イクラの醤油漬け and herring roe marinated in miso 数の子味噌漬. On the plate are steamed sea urchin 蒸しウニ, (left back) and simmered  sweet fish with roe 子持ち鮎の甘露煮 (I forgot this one as well since it was under the steamed sea urchin), The center are scallops braised in sweet soy sauce ホタテの甘煮, Steamed fish cake with matsutake mushroom 松茸真蒸 (both were cut in half) and the right back is karasumi カラスミ and right front is monkfish liver terrine あんきも豆腐.

As I mentioned before, the ankimo terrine is our absolute favorite and goes so well with cold sake as well as Champagne.

Of course, karasumi is the "ultimate" for sake sipping. Sake is a "must-have" with this.

The steamed sea urchin had a nice sweetness to it. We ate it like we would eat raw sea urchin; with wasabi and soy sauce.

These were what we had the night before. I reheated the small red snapper in the toaster oven. I covered the head but forgot to cover the tail with a aluminum foil which got burned. I think this was dried (probably overnight or "ichiya boshi" 一夜干し). It was a bit bony but my wife expertly deboned and removed the meat. We had it with a little bit of soy sauce.

I served karasumi sandwiched with thin slices of daikon.

I added a few items from my stash of new year foods. We had raw sea urchin from "Maruhide" 丸秀 (on the perilla leaf with nori strips), below that is octopus I prepared and served with sumiso sauce 蛸の酢味噌. The center are red and white fish cake stuffed with strips of perilla leaves and sea urchin shutoうに酒盗 also from Maruhide. The stuffed fish cake is  the same as I served on new year's day.

We went back to the osechi box. For steamed head-on prawn 長寿海老, I peeled the shell and cut the tail before serving.  Of course, sucking on the head was mandatory. Some vegetables, New year's omelet roll. I added salmon kelp roll I made as well.

As we say every year, this is an ultimate over-indulgence and we enjoyed every items with cold sake or Champagne (Taittinger Brut Prestige Rose, Blended from Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier grapes). This is Rosé Champagne but very dry with strawberry and raspberry notes and went well with these food.