Crumbled tofu with miso and sesame くずし豆腐汁

I again got silken tofu labled "Sincere silken tofu, just right firmness 誠実の絹" the last time I made a dish on a whim without following any recipe. This time, I used 1/4 of the tofu in mackerel ball soup. I decide to use up the remaining tofu the next day. This is based on the recipe but with some modification. It is sort of a soup with tofu, deep fried tofu, shiitake mushroom and seasoned with miso and sesame.

Ingredients:
Silken tofu 3/4 (this tofu come is a smaller package)which is roughly equivalent to 1/2 for regular size tofu)
Fresh Shiitake, 3, stem end cut away, stem torn along it's length in thin strips and the caps sliced in thin strips.
Deep fried tofu pouch or abra-age 1/4, cut into small strips.
Japanese dashi broth, 400ml (I made this from my usual dash packs)
Miso 2 tbs
Roasted sesame seeds, 3 tbs, dry roasted in a frying pan and ground with a Japanese pestle and mortar or suribachi すり鉢.
Egg, medium, beaten

Directions:
Add the mushroom to the broth and simmer for a few minutes and add the deep fried tofu pouch (below).

Add the tofu by crumbling by hand (below).

Simmer for a few minutes and add half of the sesame and the scallion (below).

Mix and cook for few more minutes and resolve the miso. At the last moment, add the egg and mix.

Serve immediately and add the remaining sesame.

This is a very gentle conforting dish with a nice sesame flavor. This can be a drinking snack or even ending "shime" dish.

Miso flavored silken tofu with green beans 味噌味の豆腐とインゲン

At our Japanese grocery store, I bought this silken tofu called "Sincere silken tofu, just right firmness" 誠実の絹 from "Otokomae tofu" 男前豆腐. This is made from Hokkaido soybeans called "Pride of snow" or "Yukihomare" ユキホマレ. Since I am originally from Hokkaido, I am partial to a product like this. Since good tofu is impossible to get at the regular grocery store (the tofu we get there is pretty bad by Japanese standards but I still make some dishes from it). In any case, I had this tofu from the Japanese grocery store for a few days in the refrigerator. I thought about what kind of dish I could make to enjoy this good tofu. Cold cubes (hiyayakko 冷や奴), warm cubes in kelp broth (yudoufu 湯豆腐) or tofu miso soup (tofu-no-misoshiru 豆腐の味噌汁) came to mind but I ended up making this impromptu tofu and green bean dish with ground pork and miso. This happened because I had blanched green beans and hand chopped pork which was a by-product of when I prepared bone-in pork shoulder for pork roast. It is remotely similar to "mapo tofu" but this is not spicy at all which suites my wife better.

The quality of green beans is really hit or miss but these were especially good. They had a nice firmness and crunch but were not tough at all.

Since the flavor was very gentle, I added Japanese red pepper flakes (iccimi tougarashi 一味唐辛子) to add some zing.

Ingredients (this made 6 small servings):
Silken tofu (320 gram), Cut into cubes
2 tbs white miso
3 tbs sake and mirin
1 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp vegetable oil (or dark sesame oil for stronger flavor)
Ground pork (amount arbitrary but I probably used about 100 grams)
1/2 tsp Ginger root, skinned and finely chopped
Blanched green beans, cut in half, about 10

Directions:
In a frying pan, add the oil and when heated, add ginger and then the pork.
Stir until the pork changes color
Add the miso, sake, mirin and soy sauce. Dissolve the miso and stir until the sauce comes to a boil.
Add the tofu and gently toss until the tofu gets warm and the sauce gets somewhat thick
Taste and add more soy sauce or salt if needed.
Serve warm with a sprinkle of Japanese red pepper flakes.

The tofu was really good. The flavoring was very gentle and really highlighted the texture and taste of the tofu. This is a good first drinking snack of the evening. The leftovers warmed up nicely in the microwave oven (requires only short time 20 seconds for two small serving together in our 600W microwave oven).

Natto stuffed Tofu pouch納豆詰め油揚焼

Initially, I thought I did not post this item.  Since a search of my blog did not yield anything. But it turns out I posted this item many years ago (2009)  It was one dish among several I served that time.  Grilled deep fried tofu pouch or "Yaki abura-age" 焼き油揚 is a rather common Japanese appetizer or breakfast item. It can be eaten with soy sauce or stuffed with various items, melting cheese being one of the most common items（Kitusne Raclett)). I thawed a small package of natto without thinking about how I would serve it and came up with this rather easy solution.

Natto is a difficult food item for Westerners to approach and even some Japanese shy away from it. It took some time and effort before my wife could enjoy (tolerate?) natto. The secret is to mix it well (in my case, using a special Natto mixing tool). Mixing it well with air, appears to reduce the smell and stickiness.

After cooking, I cut it diagonally showing natto inside.

Ingredients (for two small appetizers):
2 small deep fried tofu pouches (abura-age) for Inari sushi or a rectangular one cut into two.
One package of natto
1 stalk chopped scallion
1 perilla leaf (optional, finely julienned)
Soy sauce and Japanese mustard (or use  packages came with the natto).

Directions:
If using frozen aura-age, thaw and then pour hot water over the tofu pouches to remove any excess oil, pat dry with a paper towel. If not easily opened, roll it with a rolling pin and open the pouch trying not to tear it.

Prepare the natto by mixing with the scallion, soy sauce and mustard. The more you mix the less oder and stickiness it will have. Stuff the pouch with the natto and close the opening using a tooth pick. You could grill this in a toaster oven but this time I cooked it in a frying pan until both sides were nicely browned and the natto was hot.

While it is hot, pour on some soy sauce and serve. This is still natto and may not appeal to everybody but we enjoyed it with cold sake. You need a bit of sake as a chaser after enjoying this dish.

Appetizer snacks 4 kinds酒の肴4種類

We have been enjoying Izakaya food as appetizers but I have not posted them since I have not made anything new for a while. Although nothing shown here was new, this was the starting lineup one evening . From left to right are Spanish mackerel simmered in miso sauce 鯖の味噌煮, cold silken tofu cube 冷奴 and cold simmered Japanese eggplant and shishi tougrashi 茄子とシシトウの揚げ浸し. Since we harvested myouga 茗荷 from our backyard a few weeks ago and made sweet vinegar pickled myouga 茗荷の甘酢ずけ, I used it to garnish the tofu and eggplant dishes.

The fresh Spanish mackerel came from Whole Foods.

You can have so many garnish variations for cold tofu cubes. This time I used perilla leaves, pickled myouga and chives with wasabi. After the picture, we added soy sauce.

This eggplant dish is usually deep fried first and then simmered in broth. I sautéed the eggplant in light olive oil, instead. Since I had Japanese "shishito" green pepper, I also cooked it in the same manner. I garnished it with pickled myouga and threads of ginger root.

Here is another view with a better look at the eggplant. The skin is scored so it is easy to eat. Even the myouga has the back cut into strips for easy eating.

The 4th snack was my regular "teiban" 定番 pork belly simmered in soy sauce and sugar 豚の角煮. The pork belly also came from Whole Foods. This time, I bought almost 3 lbs. Although I did not change the way I cooked it, this batch came out extremely well. Even the red meat layers were extremely tender and not dry at all. Making a bit larger quantity is more efficient in terms of my effort and we can enjoy this dish longer.

This was served warm (microwaved) with green beans (previously blanched) and a dab of Japanese mustard.

I think we had our house sake Daiginjo sake "Mu" 大吟醸　”無” with the first three dishes and then switched to Cabernet for the pork (I don't remember which red wine we had). This was a mighty good start of the evening.

Cabbage rolls with "gomoku" tofu 五目豆腐の春キャベツ包み

This is another vegan recipe from the Buddhist monk who appears regularly on a Japanese newspaper site.  Since I do not subscribe to this newspaper, I cannot get all parts of the recipe but I could watch a short video accompanying the recipe. It gave enough information for me to make, at least, a similar dish. This is a variation of Japanese cabbage rolls or rolled cabbage ロールキャベツ. This is, however, totally vegan. This is a Japanese-Western fusion and uses a interestingly different type of tomato sauce.

To carry on the Japanese-Western fusion 和洋折衷 theme, I garnished with fresh basil leaf and chiffonade.

Inside the roll is tofu and a combination of vegetables. Using a combination of many food items is sometimes called "Gomoku" 五目. "Gomoku" literally means "five items" but, in Japanese culinary parlance, it just means many items. I took the liberty of coming up with my own vegetable combination for this dish.

Ingredients (4 rolls):
1. Spring cabbage leaves, four, separated and boiled for 10 minutes until pliable. Shave off the thickest part of the veins and set aside.
2. Vegetables for stuffing: I chose white and brown "shimeji" しめじ mushrooms (white and brown beech mushrooms), separated and the bottom cut off, thin rectangles of carrots, thin squares of daikon (I happened to have simply simmered daikon in kelp broth) and julienne of hydrated and cooked kelp (again this was a byproduct of making simmered daikon). The amount was arbitrary (#1 picture below).
3. Firm (momen-goshi 木綿漉し) tofu 1/4, parboiled
4. Soy sauce (2 tbs), Kelp broth (1/4 cup), sake (2 tbs), vegetable oil and dark sesame oil for sautéing.
5. Tomato juice (I used V8 juice for more interesting flavors), 5.5oz
6. Campari tomato, skinned, and cut into quoters, 5. 7. Potato starch, 1 tsp

Directions.
1. In a small sauce pan, I added a small amount of vegetable oil and a splash of sesame oil and sautéed the vegetables. I added a small amount of kelp broth, soy sauce and mirin and braised (#2) until the liquid was almost evaporated.
2. Meanwhile, I parboiled the firm tofu for 2-3 minutes. When both the vegetables and the tofu cooled down enough to handle, I added the tofu to the vegetables crushing it into chunks by hand (#3). 3. I divided the filling into 4 portions and placed each portion in one of the four base cabbage leaves (#4) and rolled (#5).
4. In a pan in which the cabbage rolls could snugly fit, I added 5-6 oz of kelp broth and V8 juice (1 can or 5.5oz) and seasoned with soy sauce and sake (regular V8 or tomato juice contain a good amount of salt, so I adjusted the soy sauce by tasting.) (#6).
5. I put the cabbage rolls into the sauce, put on the lid and cooked on simmer for 15-20 minutes (#7).
6. I took out the rolls and kept them warm. Meanwhile, I added the cut-up tomato to the sauce and cooked on medium flame for  5-10 minutes reducing the sauce slightly (#8).
7. I added a potato starch slurry (with sake or water) and thickened the sauce. 8. I tasted  it and added a pinch of sugar (optional).

Since this is vegan, it does not have an impact of meat containing cabbage rolls but the tomato sauce was very gentle and not too acidic (may be the benefit of using fresh and skinned Campari tomatoes). This is a very good and healthy way to enjoy spring cabbage.

Braised spicy marinated tofu ピリ辛豆腐

This is a variation of the baked spicy tofu which I previously posted. Although we really liked this dish, it tends to get somewhat dry and spongy when baked as called for in the original recipe. Instead of baking, I cooked it in a frying pan. It added a nice brown crust while keeping the inside really moist. This is a much better way to cook this dish.

Since I had a fresh chives, I garnished it with them.

The preparation is the same as the baked version. The marinade consists of Sriracha (or other hot sauce, whatever amount to your taste), 1 tbs each of soy sauce, dark sesame oil, sake, rice vinegar with  grated ginger and garlic. I marinated the cubes of tofu for several hours to several days in the refrigerator. I removed the tofu leaving the marinade in the Ziplock bag. In a non-stick frying pan, I added a small amount of vegetable oil and browned the surface of the tofu cubes turning several times. When the surface was browned, I add all the marinade to the pan and turned up the flame. I shook the pan several times as the marinade reduced until only small amount of liquid remained coating the surface of the tofu.

We found this is a much better way to cook this dish. The browning made a nice crust and the tofu remained moist. The reduced marinade made a nice sauce making the mouth "sing" gently with hot flavor. It reheated well in the microwave. This is a perfect small drinking snack. This will go with either wine or sake.

Tofu pouch with cheese and nori のりチーズびりから焼き油揚げ

This is a variation on the theme of grilled abura-age or deep fried tofu pouch. I made this dish since I had rather "getting-old" frozen abura-age in the freezer. 

Instead of grilling it in the toaster oven, I fried it in a frying pan. For a change, I sandwiched seasoned nori seaweed and smoked gouda cheese.

Here you can see the first cheese layers covered half way by a seasoned nori seaweed.

I also spread a small amount of Sriracha hot sauce to add some kick. I simply fried both sides in a frying pan with a very small amount of vegetable oil until both side were crispy.

We ate this with a little bit of soy sauce. Sriracha really gave nice zing to this dish.

Cold tofu with fresh tomato sauce 冷奴の新鮮トマトソースかけ

We really like cold angel hair pasta with tomato sauce. We made this dish multiple times this summer. Since the tomato sauce is so refreshing and good, I used it for our cold tofu.

To give a bit of a different taste, I garnished it with real wasabi and aonori. I also added a bit more mentsuyu めんつゆ or concentrated noodle sauce.

The cold tofu I used was from "Otoko-mae tofu". This is called "San-ren-chan" 三連チャン  (mahjong terminology) with three square tofu containers strung together as one package. When it is unmolded, you can sort of see the Kanji character "Otoko" 男 on the surface.

I just poured on the tomato sauce (skinned Campari tomato with olive oil and  3x concentrated Japanese "Mentsuyu" sauce, please see the previous post for recipe)

This was really good. I think this will work with either basil or perilla as well. Nice cold refreshing dish for summer.

Cold pasta with cilantro Jalapena sauce 冷製パスタのハロペニョソース

This was a cold pasta dish I came up with for lunch using all the leftovers we had one weekend. When I made cold pasta with cherry tomato, I cooked too much linguine. Thinking of something similar to cold ramen noodle, I came up with this "fusion" cold noodle dish.

I added leftover  slices of barbecued and hot smoked pork loin,  spicy baked tofu,  simmered cold vegetables (I only used carrot for color), julienne of cucumber.

I garnished it with cilantro leaves.

The sauce was also made on a whim. In my immersion blender container, I added Dijon mustard, finely chopped seeded and veined Jalapeno pepper, fresh cilantro, olive oil with splash of dark sesame oil and ponzu-shoyu sauce (from the bottle) and emulsified using my immersion blender.  Because of the mustard, it stays emulsified for some time. I dressed the cold linguine with this sauce which is similar to the sauce used in cold ramen noodle with some additional flavors of Jalapeno and cilantro. For an impromptu leftover control dish, this was not too bad.

Avocado Tofu アボカド豆腐

We usually keep some avocados on hand. I buy the greenest and hardest avocados I can find and let them ripen on the counter top. The reason I buy only unripened avocados is because already ripened avocados from grocery store look like they have been used as hockey pucks; they are usually extremely blemished with brown soft spots that need to be cut out. Often, the only thing that can be done is to "euthanize" the poor things. For this reason they are not even worth buying. I let the rock-hard ones I buy ripen for a few days on the counter in the kitchen. When they start to ripen I move them to the refrigerator. That way, I have a steady supply of avocados all week. I usually slice them and put it in the sandwiches we take to work. I often make leftover avocados into guacamole. This weekend I made one into guacamole but still had one left. I happened to come across this recipe which was originally from the blog by a Japanese woman who lives in France. This looked interesting. Since my wife (and I)  are into gelatin based dishes, I made this avocado tofu.

Since we have not yet harvested new myoga from our backyard, I garnished this with my home-made pickled myoga みょうがの甘酢漬け (from the last year season), wasabi and perilla. For sauce, I just repurposed the broth from my summer cold simmered vegetables.

The below was servings for light lunch over the weekend, I noticed dark color just on the surface despite I used a small amount of lemon juice which was not in the original recipe. All avocado containing dishes discolor after exposure to oxygen. At least this dish did not turn into the non-appetizing brown color that the exposed surface of avocado often will take.

This was the sort of two course light lunch and I served avocado tofu as a first dish which was followed by lobster bisque with crab meat. This time, I thawed a tube of real wasabi. Compared to common imitation wasabi (made from horseradish), the real wasabi made a big difference, I garnished it with tobiko, thinly sliced scallion.

I also added a small leaf of perilla. For sauce, I used concentrated noodle sauce straight. This tasted better with very good bonito dashi flavor.

Ingredients:

One avocado, stone and skin removed, cut into small cubes (Original avocado weighed 225grams)(#1).

Half silken tofu* (250g) (#2)

Cream 1tbs

Lemon juice 1tsp

Powdered gelatin (I envelope, about 6 grams) and cold 3 tbs water.

*This is US made by "Nasoya". It is silken tofu and is quite good but mostly being sold for making "smoothies" (#2).

Directions:

In the  plastic container for my emersion blender, I added avocado, cream, and lemon juice (thinking this may prevent discoloration),  I added the tofu and blended using my emersion blender (#3). I bloomed the gelatin in cold water in a small pyrex ramekin. I microwave it for 30 seconds until dissolved and mixed into the avocado-tofu  mixture. I lined a small disposable loaf pan with a plastic wrap and poured in the mixture and let it set for several hours. 

This is a very luxurious dish. It has an amazingly smooth texture and nice avocado flavor that goes well with wasabi and soy sauce based sauce.

Cold Tofu with olive, olive oil and Balsamic vinegar 冷奴のオリーブオイル、バルサミコ酢かけ

This is not necessarily blog-worthy but good to have for our record. I had a this creamy tofu with intense soy bean flavor from Otokomae 男前豆腐.  I modified toppings of this cold tofu dish so it would go well with red wine.

I served it on a bed of baby water cress.

Toppings included, sliced almond-stuffed green olive,  "yukari" ゆかり(red-shiso flakes/salt), aonori 青のりwith our favorite Spanish olive oil and syrupy balsamic vinegar. 

This dish went well with the red wine we were having. The watercress added a slight bitterness. The combination of Western and Japanese ingredients worked surprisingly well.  This is certainly a variation of cold tofu toppings I should remember.

Chashu donburi チャーシュー丼

I am really running out of new things I can cook and post nowadays. My wife has really contributed a lot recently by coming up with some new dishes. Although our posts may not be as interesting or new, it is nice for us to have a record of the various dishes we ate that we can refer back to later. This is one such post. Using the same chashu pork チャーシュー I made chashu egg チャーシューエッグ, I made  this donburi 丼 or rice bowl with chashu, ajitsuke tamago 味付け卵, and spicy baked tofu 豆腐のピリ辛オーブン焼き for lunch. It was an unexpectedly pleasant and sunny day and we were lounging on our deck. This was a quick lunch to make since we did not want to spend too much time inside cooking.

I used the simmering liquid with which I made the chashu. It was concentrated; having reduced by 2/3 during the cooking of the chashu.  I let the remaining 1/3 jell by cooling it in the refrigerator and removed the congealed fat on the surface. I repurposed it by making a sauce/broth for this dish. I thinly sliced half of a medium onion and cooked it in the broth (1/4 cup) for several minutes with a lid on until cooked. I had blanched green beans. I sliced them on the bias and placed slices of chashu pork, green beans on the top of the cooked onion and cut the flame and let it warm up (not to cook further) with a lid on. Since I made baked spicy tofu that morning, I also added it to this dish. The rice was previously frozen and then microwaved to thaw. I added some of the broth to moisten the rice and the rest was poured over to my wife's bowl since she like more liquid than I do.

As I mentioned before, the egg yolk in ajistuke egg changes in consistency during the  marinating process. It becomes firmer; almost like a custard.  It also absorbs the flavor of the marinade. As far as we were concerned the egg was the star of the dish...but the pork was pretty good too, oh and there was the tofu; it was mighty fine. This was a perfect small lunch to enjoyed outside on an early summer day. I usually make some kind of miso soup but I did not this time to maximize the lounging time outside.

Cold tofu with scallion miso and green tea salt ネギ味噌載せ特濃ケンちゃん豆腐

This is not even post worthy but tasted really good. When I checked the cold case in our Japanese grocery store, this particular tofu drew my attention and I bought it (three small containers are attached together as one package). This is one of the variations of tofu from "Otokomae tofu" 男前豆腐 from Kyoto 京都 called "Toku-no Ken-chan" 特濃ケンちゃん.  This is very soft tofu with extra high protein content (toku- no means extra-thick). It showed topping suggestion on the package.

Although I did not follow the suggestions from the package, I came up with this toppings based on what I had at hand. It was topped with green tea salt, negi-miso (ネギ味噌 scallion miso), perilla and small cubes (concasse) of fresh tomato (skinned and seeded).

Negi-miso: One scallion finely chopped, 1 tbs miso, 1tbs mirin, 1/2 tbs sugar, 2 tbs ground white sesame seeds, 1/2 tsp soy sauce).

Green tea salt: Mix kosher salt and maccha 抹茶 green tea powder (about 2:1 ratio). This can be kept in a small sealed container in freezer for a long time.

I first sprinkled on the green tea salt. I then placed the megi-miso and tomato concasse, and finely chopped perilla leaves over the salt.

The consistency of this tofu is like thick cream or egg custard and has intense soybean flavor which almost tasted like peanuts. The combination of toppings and this tofu was really good. This will go with any drinks even with red wine.