Pre-Hanami Hanami 早咲き桜の花見

Due to the record warm weather we experienced this February in Washington, DC, the smallest cherry tree in our backyard decided the first weekend of March, although extremely early, wasn't such a bad time to bloom after all. The sun smiled on the little tree for a few days but, as could be expected, the temperature dipped down to seasonal levels just above freezing. (Luckily the other trees in our yard know better and are holding back, although a few more warm days will result in a very early Hanami this year).

Nice blue sky in the background.

This little tree is the furthest from our house. It was a volunteer which has always struggled because it was surrounded by large trees and didn't get enough light. Then, a few years ago a derecho slammed the Washington area knocking down several of those big trees opening up the canopy. Ever since, this little volunteer cherry tree has been extremely happy and thrived. Hopefully this cold snap won't set it back.

Although the other cherry trees are not yet blooming, as you can see in this picture, they are getting ready.

We just couldn't let the little cherry tree's valiant early bloom go without appropriate commemoration so we had a mini- and early-Hanami 花見 . It was far too cold to sit outside so we stayed inside and admired the tree though the window. I served three appetizers in small containers we got at Nishiki market 錦市場 in Kyoto 京都.

I also made dashi-maki だし巻き Japanese omelet (I added chopped scallion this time). I served blanched asparagus dressed in Bonito flakes with soy sauce アスパラのおかか和え, skinned Campari tomatoes and broccoli for color (after taking the pictures I put our home-made Ranch dressing on the tomatoes).

The three appetizers in the small dishes are Marinated cucumber きゅうりのキューちゃん, fine strips of chicken breast meat (barbecued the prior week) dressed in sesame dressing 鶏の胡麻和え and burdock root salad ごぼうのサラダ (from left to right).

I also served another small plate of chicken "Matsukaze-yaki" 松風焼き that I made the day before and seasoned kelp 昆布の佃煮 (recycled kelp from making broth) and my salmon salad.

Despite the cold weather, I also barbecued pork and we finished with slices of pork and my  potato salad. My wife served chocolate Junket for desert. This was perhaps the earliest Hanami we ever had but the best is yet to come.

Hanami 2016 Day 2 花見 2016 二日目

The cherry blossoms will be over very soon but we squeezed in one more day of hanami.

Still cold but nicely sunny with blue sky.

As I mentioned, previously we have three cherry trees. The newer tree, which we planted, is quite spectacular in its own right. When in full bloom the branches look like thick bottle brushes of pink cherry blossoms as shown in the picture above. The cherry blossoms on the older trees are more old-fashioned, light pink, delicately ethereal and very elegant as shown in the picture below. The two types of tree usually bloom at slightly different times. This year it was a treat that they bloomed together. 

At least, for this hanami I had a chance to go to our regular grocery store and bought a few items to make more hanami drinking snacks. I realized the garlic chives ニラ have emerged in our herb garden. So I made this dish. I did not follow any recipe but it is chicken tenderloin encased in omelet with garlic chives. I served this with green beans sautéed in butter (in the same frying pan I cooked the chicken). On the side, I put ketchup and Sriracha (small amount).  

I removed the small tendon/sinew from the top of the tenderloins, seasoned with salt and pepper. I chopped garlic chive I harvested from the herb garden.

I mixed in with a beaten egg.

I dipped the tenderloins in the egg mixture and started frying in butter. I added more egg mixture and I turned the tenderloins over so that the omelet encased the tenderloin. I repeated this process until all the egg mixture was used.

I also made my usual chawanmushi 茶碗蒸しwith crabmeat and garlic chives. I also put in some ginko nuts 銀杏 (from a can), chicken tenderloin thinly sliced against the grain of the meat.  We used our cherry blossom cut glass sake cups.

Before steaming the chawanmushi I added the smaller chunks of crabmeat to the egg mixture to be cooked into the custard. After 10 minutes of steaming, when the surface of the custard was cooked enough that the crabmeat would not sink into the custard I added the largest chunks of crabmeat.

While at the market I also got a salmon filet. As usual, I removed the belly portion and made it into a drinking snack. This time I simply seasoned with salt and pepper and pan fried it in butter. I made sure the skin was nicely crispy. I served it with asparagus which were cooked in the same pan.

So we managed to squeeze in one more day of hanami.

Hanami 2016 花見 2016

Again, Hanami 花見 season has come around. This year it was rather early and our backyard cherry trees were in full bloom on Easter weekend. The only problem for us was that we were out of town that weekend. We came back on Monday afternoon and found these spectacular cherry blossoms in our backyard (We were relieved that they were still in bloom). We have three different cherry trees; one that we planted and two that were already established on the property when we build the house. Usually the three trees reach peak bloom at different times but this year the two main trees bloomed at the same time making it more spectacular than usual. 

The sky was blue and sunny but unfortunately it was chilly and very windy.  We couldn't sit outside under the trees, so we had hanami looking from inside the house.

Since we just came back, we did not have anything special for Hanami so I made what I could from the cache in the freezer and also from food leftover from the trip. My wife bought these deviled eggs for a lunch on the road. They were not particularly flavorful and the worse for wear from the travel. 

I made the first snack from these sorry-looking deviled eggs. I just defrosted some cod roe or tarako たらこ. I removed the skin and mixed in sake and a small amount of concentrated noodle sauce from the bottle.

I just put the mixture on the deviled eggs (after cleaning them up a bit) and garnished it with finely chopped perilla leaves and chives. This was quite an improvement over the original and was a perfect first bite with cold sake.

I also defrosted some natto 納豆 and mozuku もずくin sweet black vinegar. I made cucumber cups and placed the tarako mixture remaining from the deviled egg course in the cups (left). I put a small dab of wasabi and a light splash of soy sauce on the top. For the natto I used the sauce in the package and added wasabi instead of mustard and mixed well using my natto mixing contraption, then I added an egg yolk (Davidson's pasteurized egg). For texture I added finely diced nagaimo 長芋 and garnished with nori strips (center). I served mozuki in sweet black vinegar as is (right).

The wasabi on the tarako was "real wasabi".

Natto with egg yolk is a good combination and the nagaimo dice gave a nice texture contrast.

Mozuku seaweed is famous in Okinawa and perfect with sake.

Using whatever I had, I also made a small simmered dish or nimono 煮物 from nagaimo. grilled tofu 焼き豆腐 and shirataki 白滝.

This may not have been the ideal for hanami; if truth be told I was hankering for some sashimi but at least these drinking snacks were adequate and how bad can it be if you can sip sake gazing at a panorama of cherry blossoms?