Nagaimo and daikon yukari-ae 長芋と大根のゆかり和え

These are small dishes we started the evening meal. Among the five items I served, only one is new which is in the blue bowl on the upper left. Upper center is squid stuffed with caramelized onion イカの飴色玉ねぎ詰 and tentacles, upper right is chicken liver simmered in red wine 鶏レバーの赤ワイン煮, lower left is sugar snaps soaked in dashi broth スナップ豌豆の塩びたし, and one in the small yellow container looking like a citrus fruit is uni or sea urchin "shuto" from Maruhide 丸秀のウニの酒盗.

This is a new item made from nagaimo and daikon. It is rather interesting and we like it.

As we mentioned before, when this squid dish is cold, I can slice it without separating the stuffing and the squid body. As you can see on the cut surface, quite few squid legs are stuffed. I drizzled our favorite spicy Spanish olive oil.

The below is another "teiban" 定番 in our household, red wine simmered chicken liver. This time I garnished with fresh thin slivers of ginger or "Hari-shouga" 針生姜.

Sugar snaps are good just blanched but this one was soaked in lightly seasoned Japanese broth. When you bite down, instead of water, you can get the subtle taste of the broth which makes an already good veggie nicer.

This is one of the five different kinds of sea urchin or uni "shuto" from Maruhide. When we got fresh uni last time, we also got these "shuto". Although frozen, they won't improve with age, so we have been hitting them regularly. This on is with hot chili and indeed the spiciness creeps up on you afterwards. This is almost as good as fresh uni.

For "Nagaimo no yukari-ae" 長芋のゆかり和えfrom E-recipe. I changed the amount of Yukari thinking the original recipe will make this dish rather salty.

Ingredients (for 2 servings, for the amount shown probably make 4 servings):
1 inch long daikon, peeled, sliced thinly and cut into thin julienne.
1 inch nagaimo, peeled, sliced thinly and cut into thin julienne.
1/2 tsp Yukari salt
1 and 1/2 tbs  sweet vinegar (300ml rice vinegar, 120-150 gram sugar and 5-10 gram salt)

Directions:
Put both the daikon and nagaimo in boiling water. When it comes back to a boil, drain and let it cool in a colander.
Dress with Yukari salt and sweet vinegar.

This is a nice dish. My wife thought everything was nagaimo but this is a mixture of daikon and nagaimo which give an interesting texture difference. Yukari (dried red perilla) salt and sweet vinegar combination is very good giving nice refreshing taste. This is another way to use nagaimo and more interesting than sushi vinegar and aonori combination. In any case, we had cold sake with these starters.