New Year 3rd day evening 正月３日夕

The 3rd day of New Year, we started with all small dishes that go with sake including a tasting of three different preparations of herring roe. I wheeled out the miniature covered bowls we got in Kyoto sometime ago.

All are from the Sushi taro osechi box. From left to right are daikon in yuzu sweet vinegar or "Nishiki namasu" 錦なます which was toped with soy sauce marinated salmon roe 青竹いくら.  The center is steamed uni 蒸し雲丹, the right is a rare totally Western-style dish, oil marinated smoked oyster with feta cheese, dried tomato and olive 牡蠣燻製オイル漬け. All the dishes were heavenly. The yuzu flavor was very nice. What's not to like about uni in any form? The oysters were smoked, fat and succulent. We really liked this these dishes. They were good for sake or red wine.

This was followed by a tasting of herring roe or "Kazunoko" 数の子 prepared in three different ways. The top and bottom was what I prepared; the top is marinated in sake lee and miso and the bottom is marinated in dashi broth mirin and soy sauce. The center is from the osechi box; marinated in miso 数の子味噌ずけ (probably sweet miso like saikyo miso.

In the picture below,  on the left is my sake lee miso marinated, the middle is my soy sauce marinated and the right is Sushitaro's miso marinated.

All three were very good and very distinctly different. It was a treat to be able to taste them all together like this. The center one appears a bit darker because I used regular or "koikuchi" soy sauce for the marinade instead of light colored "usukuchi" soy sauce. Although it looked different it tasted ok. (center).

This was followed by assorted dishes from the osechi box. I put the simmered vegetables in a separate bowl and microwaved briefly to take the chill off but didn't really warm them.

The plates included two grilled fish, Spanish mackerel marinated in saikyo miso and Japanese snapper with "kino-me" sauce. Both were heated in the toaster oven. Others included simmered sweet fish with it's roe, pickled myouga, flower cut pickled lotus root, date-maki omelet roll and burdock root dressed in sesame sauce or "Tataki gobo"  たたき牛蒡.

Veggies included simmered Taro root or satoimo, kuwai, flower cut carrot, konnyaku and shiitake mushroom and snow pea.

Now we were in the last stretch of finishing the box. Even for us, this has been a rather wonderful decadent 3 days of New Year.