New year's eve sashimi 2020 年越しの刺身

 For New Year's eve, we started with this sashimi. I ordered Atlantic  tuna toro 鮪とろ, octopus leg 蛸, and ikura イクラ (all frozen) from Catalina offshore products at least a month ahead of time because last year I waited too long and when I got around to ordering sashimi for New Year they were sold out. I also got sashimi-grade salmon but it was a large piece and would have been too much so I did not thaw it. The toro piece was small (5oz) but enough for two of us. It contained "ootro" 大トロ and small portion of "chutoro" 中トロ. The octopus legs appeared to have been imported  from Japan.

The rectangular pieces shown on the plate below are ootoro or very fatty tuna. The center flat pieces are chutoro medium fatty tuna. I chopped up the tip of the octopus legs and dressed the pieces with sumiso 酢味噌. I also served the daikon namasu 大根なます I made as well as Russian marinated salmon with ikura on top.

These were good sashimi—very fatty. We had our usual cold sake Tengumai Daiginjo 天狗舞大吟醸  with this. Although we did get Champaign to celebrate the New Year we did not get to it. We had face time with my wife's sister and her fiancé and had a New Year (virtually) together.

Marinated tuna sashimi with grated Daikon 鮪のおろし和え

This is a continuation of the “using up yellowfin tuna sashimi block”. We started with “Tuna caprese” and proceeded with the cold chawan-mushi. This was the third appetizer and second tuna sashimi dish. Without knowing specifically what I would make, I marinated 1/3 block of tuna sashimi “saku” block sliced in concentrated Japanese noodle sauce or “mentsuyu” 麺つゆ to make “Zuke tuna” 漬けマグロ. I could have served as it is or as “yama-kake” 山かけ but I did not have any nagaimo 長芋. I did have daikon 大根, however, so I made this dish.

Beside mixing in chopped scallion, I garnished it with the green part of the scallion thinly sliced. 

This is not really a recipe. I grated the daikon and let it sit in a fine meshed strainer to remove any excess moisture. I cut the marinated tuna into small cubes. I chopped one small scallion finely then mixed the tuna, grated daikon, scallion and added “Ponzu” ポン酢 (from the bottle).

This could have been a good refreshing dish but this daikon, as sometimes happens, was extremely hot (spicy) which made it difficult to enjoy. It was like eating straight wasabi or more like horse radish. We ended up scraping as much of the grated daikon as we could off the tuna. Oh well, I should have tasted the daikon before adding to the tuna. 

The last tuna appetizer was  tuna “cutlet”  マグロカツ (I did not take pictures this time but here is the previous tuna cutlet).

 We switched to red wine. Previously, I made the red wine miso sauce and had it with the tuna cutlet. We felt the sauce needed more miso flavor. I reheated the remaining sauce and added more miso. This time, the sauce was better but we think we could have even more miso in this sauce. But we finished the entire saku of yellowfin tuna.

Tuna sashimi caprese with basil and perilla 漬けマグロのカプレーゼ

This was the first of three appetizers I made one evening using a saku block of yellowfin "ahi" tuna キハダマグロ we got from Great-Alaska seafood. I am always looking for different ways to serve yellowfin tuna sashimi. The recipe I saw at e-recipe was a usual caprese with the addition on tuna sashimi.  I altered the recipe by leaving out the tomato. In addition, I used basil for one batch and perilla for the other.

The one with basil is shown on the left in the picture below . The basil came from our window-sill garden. The one with perilla is shown on the right. The perilla is from our herb garden.

Ingredients: (for an appetizer for two)
1/3 tuna “saku” block, sliced into 6 slices (3 slices per serving)
6 slices of fresh mozzarella cheese
6 basil leaves
6 perilla leaves (if large cut into two)
Good olive oil (I used our favorite Spanish olive oil)
Salt and pepper

Marinade:
2 tbs soy sauce
1 small clove of garlic, crushed  using a garlic press (or grated from tube).
1/2 tsp. sugar

Directions
Add the marinade and the tuna into a Ziploc bag, remove the air, seal and marinate for 10-15 minutes. Blot out excess marinade (I decided to cut one slice into two so that I could make the basil and perilla versions). Layer the mozzarella cheese, tuna, and either basil or perilla. Sprinkle with the olive oil, salt, and freshly cracked black pepper.

This was a really good way to have tuna sashimi. The addition of garlic in the marinade made it really good. Both the basil and perilla versions while different were good. We thought both are good but the perilla ones had stronger and more distinct flavor.

Red wine miso sauce with tuna cutlet 赤ワイン味噌ソースとマグロカツ

I thawed a block "saku" of low-grade yellowfin tuna sashimi. As usual, I tried to make some variation dishes. First I made "zuke" marinated tuna cubes with avocado very similar to one I posted. The second dish was imitation "negitoro " ネギトロ. These two dishes are very good with cold house sake "Tengu-mai"  天狗舞大吟醸.  The third dish I made was tuna cutlet マグロカツ.  I gave a twist to this dish by making a red wine miso sauce and serving it with our relatively new house red wine DAOU Vineyards “Pessimist” Red Blend 2018. I saw the sauce recipe in a digital version of the Japanese newspaper “Asahi “ 朝日新聞. The recipe was written by a sommelier. It is a reduced red wine with miso and he claimed that, with this sauce, the food will go well with red wine. He also suggested fried food would be the best with this sauce. I served tuna cutlet with this sauce accompanied with cucumber and cabbage “asazuke” 浅漬け as well as the cauliflower I usually make and skinned Campari tomato.

The reason I made this sauce was because one of the bottles of red wine we opened recently had a bit  of a musty taste/oder and we decided not to drink it. It was not corked but somehow the handling was not right since other bottles of the same wine were ok. Also we have had this wine so many time in the past with no problems.  In any case, I used a portion of this wine to make a chicken liver dish, a stew of leftover barbecued chicken, and this red wine miso sauce to finish the bottle. Once cooked, the wine lost its mustiness.

Ingredients
Red wine 200 ml
Red miso 2 tbs (I did not have red miso 赤味噌 and used “awase” miso 合わせ味噌)
Mirin 2 tsp
Rice vinegar 2 tsp
light colored soy sauce 2 tsp
Honey 2 tsp or more to taste

Directions
Reduce the red wine in half, dissolve the miso and add other ingredients and adjust sweetness to your liking by adding more honey.

I added more honey than indicated. I had to strain the sauce since it developed some sediments (due to vinegar?). I served it on the fried tuna and the fried taste completely dominated. We actually couldn’t taste the sauce at all. My wife, who never skimps when it comes to the application of sauces actually took to soaking her pieces of tuna in the sauce and said she still couldn’t taste it. Finally, in desperation she slurped it with a spoon and conceded it tasted very nice. I would have expected to at least taste the miso flavor but it was completely muted. I am not sure this may have been because I did not use red miso. In any case, this sauce did not have much flavor but we enjoyed the tuna cutlets with red wine. Since more sauce is left, I may add more miso to see if that will improve the flavor.

Red wine "Zuke" tuna and avocado 鮪の赤ワイン漬けとアボカド

This is part of the continuous effort to use frozen items before they get too old. In the freezer I found this sashimi tuna block which was labeled “best used by August of 2019”. (At July 2020 it was one month short of being a year past its “best by” due date—not too bad). This is one we got from the Japanese grocery store. Recently we tried a similar yellowfin tuna "saku" sashimi block from "Great Alaska Seafood" and I noticed it seemed to contain less water than the ones from the Japanese grocery store. I knew this one would have a high water content, so I thawed it on a rectangular plate lined with paper towel, uncovered, in the refrigerator. The paper towel was soaked when it finished thawing. I made "Negitoro" ネギトロ in the evening. The next evening, from the remaining half, I made this variation/combination of "Zuke" 漬け and "Tuna and avocado cubes" 鮪とアボカドの角切り. Using red wine in the marinade was inspired by the recipe I saw on-line  (In Japanese) and similar in idea to chicken liver simmered in red wine.

I garnished it with chiffonade of perilla and some white sesame.

Ingredients: (appetizers for two)
1/2 block of sashimi tuna (in our case, frozen yellowfin), thawed if frozen, cut into small cubes
1/2 ripe avocado

Marinade:
3 tbs red wine (I had an open California cab).
2 tbs soy sauce (I reduced the soy sauce from the original recipe)
1 tbs mirin
1/4 tsp dark sesame oil

Directions
In a Ziploc bag, add the marinade and tuna cubes. Remove the air as much as possible and let it marinate in the refrigerator for a few hours (in my case, it was close to10 hours).
Just before serving, take out the tuna cubes, blot off the excess marinade using a paper towel.
>Remove the stone and skin from the avocado, cut into bite-sized pieces, dress with either lemon juice or yuzu juice (to prevent discoloration, I used yuzu juice from the bottle).
Mix the tuna and avocado in a bowl ( I added a few more drops of Yuzu juice).
Serve on the perilla leaves and garnish with a chiffonade of perilla and some sesame seeds.

This was pretty good especially considering that the frozen yellowfin tuna which was passed its prime. I thought we would add soy sauce when we ate it but the tuna was nicely seasoned and there was no need to add soy sauce. Since it was marinated in red wine, this could have gone well with red wine but we had cold sake.

Yellowfin tuna from Great Alaska Seafood 冷凍キハダ鮪

I am always looking for alternative sources of sashimi grade fish. Catalina offshore products has been a most reliable source for a long time. Other sites have come and gone such as "Fish-for-sushi" and "Sushi at home".  When it comes to sea urchin, "Maruhide" 丸秀 which sells only uni and uni products, is where I go to get them. Recently, I came across the website for "Great Alaska Seafood". I noticed they have "sashimi-grade" yellowfin tuna blocks. You have to buy a rather large amount. (In this case, 8 lbs. that is 8 blocks or "saku" of frozen tuna each weighing about 1 lb.). The price seemed reasonable. While it would have been difficult to accommodate an 8 lb. slab of frozen fish, 8 one pound blocks were do-able and the fact they were frozen made "storage" easier.  I also figured if the fish is not good enough for sashimi, I could always cook it. So I bought it.  The picture below shows one of the frozen blocks. 

The dish shown below was the first time we tasted my purchase. I made three different preparations but I did not take a picture of the third dish which was an imitation "negitro" ネギトロ.

After thawing the tuna block in the refrigerator (it took almost 2 days), I divided the block into three portions. One I made into "zuke" 漬け or marinated tuna. This time I used "concentrated noodle sauce めんつゆ from the bottle" plus ground roasted white sesame.  I sliced the tuna and marinated the slices for several hours in the refrigerator. Just for variation, I seared half of the "Zuke" tuna (far right) using a kitchen torch. The yellow item shown on the plate below is "Dashimaki" だし巻き omelet I had made earlier. I placed the tuna sashimi on top of baby arugula. I also served "Ikura" salmon roe in a cucumber cup (upper left corner).

We really enjoyed this. This is about the same as the frozen yellowfin tuna blocks we buy at our Japanese grocery store. It may be slightly better since it seemed to contain less water. (After thawing, not much water came out). The textures and taste are about the same. The "Zuke" and "imitation negitoro" preparations made very good variations.

Hanami 2020 #3 with Uni and tuna from Catalina ３日目の花見、カタリナの刺身

After we had our first hanami celebration meal of Tako Grill take out, we received some shashimi items from Catalina Offshore products. It is rare now-a-days that they have gold uni from California but they had it and I ordered it with Pacific bluefin tuna loin, salmon and "ankimo" Monkfish liver. The fish arrived Saturday and we had our second hanami of tuna sashimi and a half of uni that evening. The other items contributed to the third continuation of hanami. I prepared half of the uni as "shio-uni" 塩うに or salted uni. The uni arrived in this plastic container which works much better than traditional wood tray.

The uni was nicely formed (not fragmented or dissolved). It was a nice orange color. Its been a while since we had uni from Catalina. We have been getting some uni from Maruhide but this one was pretty good.

I enjoyed half as sashimi and prepared the other half as "Shio uni" or salted uni. I read that this was a very usual preparation in Aomori prefecture 青森県 which is the norther most part of the main land Japan, "Honshu"本州. Most of the recipes (all in Japanese) call for 100 grams of uni and 12 grams of salt. Place the uni slightly apart in a flat sealable container lined with a paper towel, and sprinkle with the salt (see below). I put on the lid and placed it in the refrigerator for three hours. After three hours, moisture came out and was absorbed by the paper towel. Since we were going to consume the uni the next day, I just move the uni to a smaller sealable container. If you use a sterilized container (a glass jar sterilized  in boiling water, cooled and dried), the uni should last at least 1 week in the refrigerator).

In any case, I forgot to take a picture when we had this the next day. To serve it I made a bottom layer of thinly sliced mini cucumber on a plate and put the salted uni on the top. We folded the cucumber and uni into single serving seasoned nori sheets 味付け海苔 and enjoyed the combination of flavors. The uni became bit more creamy with more intense flavor. Definitely I will use this technique to preserve and enhance the flavor of uni in the future.

In any case, we had the remaining tuna two ways; one is tuna cubes with avocado 鮪とアボカドの角切り(seasoned with finely chopped garlic, sesame oil and soy sauce).

Another was just straightforward tuna sashimi with blanched broccoli with sesame dressing ブロッコリーの胡麻和え, salt broth snap peas スナップ豌豆の塩びたし, Japanese omelet 出汁巻 and "asazuke" 浅漬け of cucumber and daikon.

In any case, we had a very good 3rd hanami.

New Year's eve sashimi and Black label "Mu" sake 大晦日の夕、大吟醸 黒乃無

On New Year's eve, we feasted on bluefin tuna sashimi and boiled octopus (with daikon namasu 大根なます, not in the picture) which we got frozen from Catalina offshore products and thawed for the celebration. I also served marinated "zuke" tuna 鮪の漬け (it's the darker tuna on the right upper corner of the plate)  along with "datemaki" 伊達巻 New Year's Japanese omelet and "salmon" Russian marinade 鮭のロシア漬けtopped with ikura all of which I made (except for the Ikura).

We opened a sake we haven't had before called "Kuro-no Mu" or "Black Label Mu" daiginjo 黒乃無 純米大吟醸 which is supposedly a step up from our house sake "Mu" daiginjo. Black Label Mu is made from sake rice with an RPR (rice polishing rate) of 40% meaning 60% of the rice's outer shell has been polished away. This compares to Mu which has a RPR of 50%; the minimum amount of polishing to be classified as daiginjo. Since less of the sake rice remains after polishing Black Label Mu is obviously more expensive than Mu.

So, our expectations for this sake were high--maybe somewhat over inflated because somehow this was not what we expected. To us it tasted much sweeter than the regular "Mu" and had a more sherry-like characteristic. What our taste-buds experienced is apparently confirmed by sake metrics shown below (cited from "Tippsy Sake" website which will be the subject for a separate blog in the near future). The SMV (Sake Meter Value or 日本酒度) for Black Label is +1.0 which is on the "slightly sweet" side (neutral is +3.0). Acidity also determines perceived "sweetness". With the acidity of 1.5 and  SMV of + 3, shown as the red dot on the taste metric graph below, the Black Label is still classified "light and dry (but on the border).  (Similar metrics were not available for a regular Mu). Black Label is good for sipping but we prefer regular Mu as an accompaniment with food.

We had a few more food items and ended by making tonkatsu (I breaded it earlier and just fried it).  We had hand made/cut soba noodles from Sushi Taro but as usual, we did not eat it on New Year's eve because we were too full. I fell asleep but my wife stayed awake and woke me up just before midnight. We saw the ball drop at Times Square on TV and welcomed the entrance of 2020.

Perilla-wrapped marinated tuna tempura 漬けマグロの青紫蘇包天ぷら

This is the last of three dishes I made from the frozen block of yellowfin tuna. Actually, I was planning to make all three dishes one evening to finish up the tuna block. We, however, bogged down with the first two dishes (we had other small dishes as well) so I made this dish a day later. As a result, the tuna was marinated for 20 hours or so but it did not adversely affect the taste.

The perilla is from our herb garden. This year, our perilla went crazy and is almost 5 feed tall and the leaves are rather large. Although this is based on a recipe on line, I made some changes and used thin tempura batter instead of just potato starch. I also used toothpicks to secure the perilla. This perilla-wrapped tempura is similar to natto tempura I posted before.

I just cut thickly sliced tuna which was marinated into two bite size and wrapped it with half of the perilla leaves (depending on the size of the perilla, you may have to use a full leaf). I put a toothpick through to secure the perilla on the tuna.

I made thin tempura batter from cake flour and cold water. I coated the tuna package with the batter and fried it in 350F peanut oil for 30 seconds (I wanted the center still rare). Since the tuna was marinated, I did not have any dipping sauce or my usual green tea salt for this. This was quite good. The tuna almost tasted like beef with a crunchy curst nice perilla flavor. This will go with any kind of drink.

Otoshi 5 kinds お通し５種類

I served this 5 kind of otoshi お通し appetizer on our relatively new five compartment plates. This was the evening I also served perilla-wrapped marinated tuna tempura 漬けマグロの青紫蘇包み天ぷら but I diverted a few of the tuna skewers to be served as is (see below) which was pretty good. This multiple otoshi to start was inspired by izakaya in Japan, "Suiko"酔香 and "Shuhai" 酒杯, where they regularly serve otoshi consisting of 6 dishes. Having store-bought items makes putting together 5 otoshi easy. Actually I had more than five I could have served as starters but this plate only had 5 positions.

The left two are composed of spicy clam salad and seaweed salad. Both were store-bought and fairly good. If you avoid eating the conspicuous red peppers  (seen at the upper left edge of the dish) the "spicy"clam salad is not too spicy. The seaweed salad appears artificially dyed but has a nice crunch.

The center two otoshi are sea food; boiled octopus leg 茹で蛸足 dressed in sumiso sauce 酢味噌 (I made the sumiso to my wife's spec "not too vinegary". I used dashi to get the consistency of the sauce). The dish on the right is perilla-wrapped "zuke" marinated tuna which I "stole" from the skewers destined to be made into tempura.

Although the tuna was marinated, I put on a few drops of wasabi soy sauce. I am now making different sauces ahead of time and storing them in the refrigerator in small squeeze bottles; (sauces like sumiso, wasabi soy sauce, mustard soy sauce, and sesame dressing.) This makes assembling multiple dishes more efficient. The last dish is eggplant and broccoli seasoned with black bean garlic and toubanjan (or Duabanjiang) sauce. I made this dish a few days ago to use up Italian eggplant leftover from making ratatouille. I made it sort of Chinese stir-fri-ish but I cannot even remember how I made it (I also used Japanese miso, come to think of it). It is not spicy and I added blanched sugar snaps for a color. Although I cannot reproduce it, my wife liked it.

So, this was a great start. I served few more small dishes and planed to finish with perilla-wrapped zuke tuna tempura.

Tuna and natto with wakame sea weed 若芽鮪納豆

In my quest to make frozen yellowfin tuna more palatable, some time ago I made this combination of natto and tuna . The picture below shows the second dish I made with a combination of natto and tuna. This time I added salt preserved wakame seaweed 塩蔵わかめ.

The only drink that could possibly go with this type of dish is cold sake.

I made sure the natto was mixed very well with my natto-stirring contraption to reduce the smell so my wife literally wouldn't "turn her nose up" at it. I used the mustard and sauce packets that came with the natto and also added finely chopped scallion. I washed the salt preserved wakame and hydrateded it for 5 minutes. After squeezing out the excess moisture I dressed it with soy sauce and sesame oil.

As before, the sliced of tuna was marinated in concentrated "mentsuyu" Japanese noodle sauce 麺つゆ for several hours before the excess marinade was blotted off with a paper towel and the tuna was cut into small cubes.

This combination makes the tuna much better and even my wife is fond of this dish,

Yamakake variation 山かけバリエーション

This is a variation of "Yamakake" 山かけ. Since the frozen block of yellowfin tuna キハダマグロの冷凍冊 I had in the freezer was getting old, I decided to use it. I divided the block into three portions and tried to make three different dishes. Since frozen yellowfin tuna is not the best quality tuna, I made thick slices and marinated all of them in concentrated Japanese noodle sauce (from the bottle) or "mentsuyu" 麺つゆ. I used to make the marinade myself but I am getting lazy. Grated nagaimo 長芋 (or yamaimo if you can get it) with tuna sashimi "Yamakake" is a "golden" combination.  This variation is based on a recipe I saw on line. I made a sauce (dissolving wasabi in soy sauce) separately and placed it in a small squeeze bottle so that I could add any amount I liked after the dish was assembled.

For greenery, the recipe called for "Daikon" sprouts which I did not have so I just used thinly sliced American mini-cucumber.

Instead of grating nagaimo, I made small chunks by crushing it in a Ziploc bag using a meat pounder. This is called "Tataku". Most frequently, this is done to cucumber called "tataki kyuri" 叩き胡瓜 so that the seasoning will cling better to the irregular surface. For nagaimo, this process gives a nice crunchy texture (chunks) with a grated texture along the edges of the chunks.  We like this combination of the textures very much.

One more additional step was called for in preparing the tuna. After a few hours of marinading, I sandwiched it between hydrated kelp which is called "Kobujime" 昆布締め. This is usually done for white meat fish but as per the recipe I added this step.  I did this for 1 hour. Before cutting the tuna in into smaller cubes.

We really liked this version of yamakake. We are not sure "kobujime" process really added much though. In any case, this was definitely wroth trying again (hopefully with better quality tuna sashimi).

Salmon and avocado cubes and Yamahai sake 鮭とアボカドの角切と山廃純米酒

Most of the mid-West and Eastern U.S. are having very hot and humid summer days. One of these very hot weekends, I decided to go grocery shopping early in the day to avoid the mid-day heat. At our gourmet grocery store, which opened up just before I arrived, the sushi case had only a few items prepared. One of them was tuna and salmon sashimi. So I got a package intending to serve it for the evening. Both sashimi were rather thickly sliced. Since I happened to have Japanese nagaimo 長芋, I decided make "Yamakake" 山かけ from the tuna (left in the picture below)  and make  a variation of tuna and avocado cubes using salmon cubes (which would make it salmon and avocado cubes) (right in the picture below).

Since the tuna was yellowfin tuna キハダマグロ, I marinated it after I cut it into  small cubes in concentrated Japanese "men-tsuyu" noodle sauce 麺つゆ for several hours in the refrigerator to make it taste better.  I seasoned grated nagaimo or "tororo" とろろ with wasabi dissolved in soy sauce,  and placed the tuna on top after draining the excess marinade. I garnished it with strips of nori (I served more nori on the side). This is, of course, is a very common way to serve tuna and nagaimo and we both really like it. We added more nori as we enjoyed this dish.

Since I had limes, after I cut avocado into small cubes, I dressed the cubes with lime juice to prevent discoloration. Cubes of salmon were also marinated in Japanese concentrated noodle sauce in exactly same way as the tuna. I dressed them with finely chopped garlic, dark sesame oil and soy sauce and garnished it with chiffonade of perilla and finely chopped scallion. Since the salmon was much fattier than the tuna, it did not absorb the marinade as much but, over all, this dish really worked. Both the salmon and avocado had a similar oily texture.

As a third dish, I served  4 items on the small plate. Only one that is slightly new is the chicken tenderloin dressed in soy sauce, yuzu-kosho 柚子胡椒 and finely chopped edible chrysanthemum 春菊 (blanched, which I happened to have). The chicken tenderloin was removed from sous vide chicken breast. This was very good. The chrysanthemum gave a slightly bitter taste and went well with the moist tenderloin and yuzu-kosho flavor.

The remaining three items are "our usual suspects", Japanese dashi-maki omelet 青海苔入りだし巻きwith aonori, sugar snap blanched and soaked in salt-seasoned Japanese dashi broth スナップ豌豆の塩びたし, and simmered taro 里芋の煮付け.

This evening, we tried a new sake (although we had it before in Japan). It is Tengumai but not "daiginjo". This is Yamahai Junmai 山廃純米天狗舞. The label has a formal name of this old way of making sake 山卸廃止酛仕込(やまおろしはいしもとしこみ). Compared to our new house sake Tengumai daiginjo 天狗舞大吟醸, this is a quite different sake. I think we had this for the first time when we visited Kanazawa 4 years ago. This sake is savory/rich and dry and has earthy/mushroomy background flavor. Some sake expert suggested that this sake should not be served refrigerator cold but at room temperature and suggested the taste will change as it warms up. I took this bottle out a few hours prior to tasting for that reason. It has a nice golden hue (as opposed to clear as in daiginjo). In general, we prefer clean, fruity and dry sake (daiginjo profile), but we liked this sake. It has much more characters and is not too yeasty like other jumai sake can be. We got this sake from a new sake-specialized internet merchant called "Tippsy sake". I will post more about this place in more details in the near future.

Poke, sort of, and Champagne マグロとサーモンのポケもどき

We had something to celebrate but did not have a chance to get anything special and did not feel like going to a restaurant, either. So I got filet mignon and sashimi (salmon and yellowfin tuna) from a local gourmet grocery store. The quality of the sashimi was not great so I decided to make a "poke" like dish. The sashimi was in rather thick slices. I marinated it with Japanese concentrated noodle sauce for several hours in the refrigerator and then cut it into small cubes. In addition, I served some chicken tenderloin which I removed from a sous-vide cooked chicken breast I made earlier in the day. From right to left are tuna, salmon and chicken.

For the tuna, I used soy sauce, wasabi and perilla as dressing.

For the salmon, I used soy sauce, red pepper paste (from a tube) and dill.

For the sous vide chicken tenderloin, I used soy sauce and yuzu-kosho 柚胡椒 (from a tube) and garnished with sesame seeds.

These three starters borrowed from the concept of  "poke" which is getting popular here. Some fast food "poke" chains have even opened up. Instead of our usual cold sake, we started with champagne.

This was among the ones we happened to have on hand. I am not sure when and where I got this one but it is called Philippe Fourrier Cuvée Millésime Brut Champagne 2008. We made an ice bucket to keep the champagne cold. My wife somehow dug up a special cloth/towel we had tucked away somewhere with a representative champagne bottle depicted on it, to absorb the condensation from the champagne ice bucket.

This was vintaged (2008) and had a nice slightly yeasty/beady aroma with subtle melon and green apple taste with fine bubbles and went quite well with this appetizer I prepared.

After this, we had a filet mignon steak, green asparagus and some kind of potato. We switched to 2006 "the Maiden". This was one of the old wines we had stored in our basement. The conditions there, however, are is not really great for the enhancement of wine over time. We were afraid that the wine may have been way past its prime. I carefully decanted it and let it breathe for one hour before serving. There was a definitive brown hue indicating age/oxidization. As it had more contact with air, this wine opened up and we could taste good black  fruit, vanilla and chocolate. The tannin was quite mellow. We would have preferred to taste this wine a bit earlier but it did age quite well and went well with our impromptu celebratory steak dinner.

Seared Tuna with soy sauce and Balsamic vinegar レアマグロステーキのバルサミコ醤油ソース

This was an on-the-fly recipe I came up with one evening. We had our usual frozen yellow fin tuna block thawed. Although I have made quite a few dishes designed to make this low-quality tuna sashimi palatable, I was pressed with time and came up with this quick dish. 

This is "shimo-furi" 霜降りor very rare tuna steak with the surface seared in with a small amount of oil in a frying pan. I made a sauce which was mixture of aged balsamic vinegar and soy sauce in the same pan.

This was not bad and went well with the red wine (I am sure it was California cab) rather well.