Mitsuba ミツバ

Mitsuba 三つ葉 is a sort of Japanese parsley mainly used as a garnish or topping for certain dishes such as soup, katsu-don カツ丼 and chawan-mushi 茶碗蒸し. “Mitsuba” in Japanese means three leaves since it has three leaves. It has a very distinctive and unique flavor. In the past, I rarely got fresh ones at our Japanese grocery store and I could get dried ones which do not have much flavor. I tried to grow it a few times from the seeds (from Kitazawa seeds) which was not a great success for some reason. This time the mitsuba we planted in a pot on the window sill grew quite nicely (picture #1). 

I added this home-grown fresh mitsuba to the usual chawanmushi I make (picture #2). I mixed the stalks which were cut into small pieces into the egg mixture but I added the leaves just 30 seconds before serving. This time I served chawanmush hot just out of the steamer.

Althouhg mitsuba is not a major component of the any dishes incuding the chawanmushi, I really like the unique flavor.