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Sunday, September 5, 2021

Squid and daikon, simmered イカ大根

This is a sort of standard dish using squid. I made this dish using the half of the squid package from Vital Choice. I posted a similar dish before. In that post, I mentioned that to make squid tender, you have to cook it either very briefly or a very long time. This time I cooked the squid briefly. I made a slight modification and included a grilled fish cake tube or "Yaki chikuwa" 焼きちくわ. The daikon and even the fish cake absorbed flavor from the squid and this is great "teiban" 定番料理 for the squid. The below is a picture of the serving immediately after I made this dish. 


The daikon was hiding in the bottom.



Ingredients:
170 gram (6oz) frozen squid, thawed, washed, body cut into 1/2 inch thick rings, tentacles separated
3 inch long daikon, peeled, sliced in 1 inch thick pieces
4 thin slices of ginger, cut into small match sticks
1 frozen fish cake tube or "yaki-chikuwa" 焼きちくわ, thawed and cut into bite size
Green beans, cooked, cut in bias, arbitrary amount

For simmering liquid
1 cup (240-50ml) Japanese broth (I used a bonito and kelp dashi pack)
50-60ml "x4 concentrated" noodle sauce (from the bottle) or half and half soy sauce and mirin

For pre-cooking the daikon
Water enough to cover the daikon
One pinch of uncooked rice (or water in which uncooked rice was rinsed "kome-no togijiru" 米のとぎ汁).

Directions:
Simmer the daikon for 30 minutes or longer until cooked though and soft, rinse off the rice grain if needed (you could prepare the daikon ahead and keep this for a few days in the refrigerator before using).

Add the simmering liquid and the ginger in a pan on medium high flame and let it come to the boil, add the squid and cook for 30 seconds to 1 minute or until the squid just becomes homogeneously white/opaque. Take out the squid and set aside.
Add the daikon and the fish cake and turn down the flame and simmer for 15 minutes.
Taste the simmering liquid and if needed add more noodle sauce (or soy sauce/mirin).
Add back the squid and simmer to warm up (30 seconds to one minute).
Garnish with the green beans and serve warm (or cold).

The next day, I served this cold with the other squid dish I made. This dish is usually served warm but even cold, this was a great dish.


The below was two  (quite different) simmered squid dishes both served cold as a starter.


These were a good taste contrast; one is very fresh bright tasting and the other is a very traditional flavor In both dishes the squid was tender due to brief cooking. In the squid-daikon dish, both the daikon and fish cake absorbed the squid flavor. The addition the chikuwa made it taste like you were enjoying more squid than was actually in the dish. 

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