New Divided Plate and 9 Otoshi Appetizers 9つ仕切り皿にのせたお通し9種類

This is on the theme of multiple small “otoshi” appetizers. Previously we used a 5 segmented plate to serve 5 appetizers. A few days ago, I found a 9 segmented square plate available on Amazon which was reasonably priced so I got two. I thought it would be hard coming up with 9 appetizers but I managed it with 8 dishes I made. The ninth dish was an exception since I didn’t make it. It was the fried shrimp head which came from Tako Grill when we had our sashimi/sushi take-out. (Shrimp head is a by-product of “botan-ebi” 牡丹海老 sashimi/sushi). In any case, I was surprised that once I started thinking otoshi I was on a roll and could have served two or three more appetizers if I wanted to. This was a nice start of the evening but even very small dishes are filling for us and we ended up with a  “shime” 〆ending dish after this.

In the 1st row, left, is a sugar snap in salt broth スナップ豌豆の塩びたし. We used to be able to get decent sugar snaps from our regular grocery store but recently, we have had to go to gourmet grocery stores to get decent ones This was crunchy, sweet soaked in salt dashi broth.

In the 1st row, center, are cucumber onion salad and stir fried shirataki, jalapeño pepper and enoki mushroom.

In the 1st row, right, is the cheese curd my wife made  but instead of jalapeño pepper, she added “Yuzukosho” 柚子胡椒, soy sauce and cream. I added a dab of yuzukosho on the side to provide an added “schmear” of yuzukosho flavor if desired.

Tsukune on a slice of lotus root 蓮根つくね.

“Uni-shuto” ウニ酒盗 from Maruhide. As I stated before this is the best uni aside from fresh uni. I served it with cucumber and perilla leaves.

I refried the shrimp head kara-age which was part of take-out from Tako Grill a few days ago. Shrimp head has a good amount of meat and is very crunchy but you have to be careful how you eat the prickly legs so as to not injure your mouth.

Recently, we discovered that Whole Foods carries fresh quail eggs. We really like boiled quail eggs. Although we can get canned boiled quail eggs, boiled eggs prepared from fresh quail eggs are much much better. I served it with marinara sauce, basil and sprinkle of salt.

Blanched asparagus with sesame mayonnaise. The dressing is a mixture of mayo, Japanese sesame paste or nerigoma 練りごま and soy sauce.

Salmon salad. My usual. The dressing is mixture of mayo, Greek yogurt and Dijon mustard.

We really like our new plates. If I serve 9 appetizers for two of us in small bowls, we have to wash a total of 18 bowls but here we had to wash only two plates. We really like the many small dishes we had here; true Izakaya-style.