Chicken Tender Fry with Salted Plum Sauce and Perilla ささ身の梅大葉揚げ

We were trying to use up frozen items hidden deep in the freezer. At one time, we bought chicken from a special poultry on-line store. We were not particularly impressed with the quality of the chicken we got. One of items was chicken the tenders. We decided they had matured long enough in the freezer so it was time to use them up. This is a variation on the chicken tender yakitori with perilla and salted plum sauce and is  based on a recipe posted on line. This time I shallow fried (picture #2) instead of cooking in the toaster oven.

Because it was fried with a batter coating, it has a crispy outside and soft inside with flavors of perilla and umeboshi 梅干 salted plum (picture #1). This combination works well. This heated up nicely in the toaster oven as well.

Ingredients:
10 chicken tenders, tendons removed and bi-valved (not cut through, just make a pocket)
10 perilla leaves

For Umeboshi  梅干しsauce or “Bainiki 梅肉 sauce
3 umeboshi salted plumes, meat cut off and finely chopped
1tsp mirin
1 tsp sake
1 tsp soy sauce
1 small pack of “kezuri-bushi” 削り節 bonito flakes 

For Batter
Equal amount of ”katakuri-ko” potato starch

Peanut oil for frying

Directions:
Umeboshi sauce
Add the chopped umeboshi fresh into a Japanese “suribachi” mortar, add the mirin, sake and soy sauce. Mix and grind using a pestle until smooth. Add the bonito flakes and mix to incorporate.

Smear the umeboshi sauce inside the bi-valved chicken tenders, close the tender and put the batter on one side of the perilla and encase the cut side, coat it with the batter and fry in the 180F oil, 1-2 minutes per side turning once (picture #2). Drain, cut in half and serve.

The umebishi sauce and perilla flavors are a very nice combination and frying makes it better. So there is no argument this is a good small dish to have.

Eggplant Prosciutto and Ham Rolls 茄子の生ハム巻き

I was trying to come up some new eggplant recipes since we still had two large eggplants we got from Weee. I saw two recipes on-line using thinly sliced pork or prosciutto wrapped around a baton shaped piece of eggplant. Actually, these types of roll-ups are very popular in Japan. The most common ones use vegetables such as scallion or asparagus in the center rolled up in various kinds of thinly slices meat. Since we had slices of prosciutto and honey-baked ham, these two recipes inspired me to make roll-ups using batons of eggplant with one kind wrapped in prosciutto and the other with ham. I did not add any sauce as suggested in one of the recipes. This is a good snack-y dish. Salted “umeboshi” plum paste gave a nice salty sour flavor that went well with the eggplant. We definitely liked the prosciutto one best.

Ingredients (made 12 roll-ups):
For salted plum sauce (“bainiku” 梅肉)
Two “umeboshi” 梅干し salted plums, meat removed from the stone, chopped.
1/2 tsp mirin

One asian/Japanese eggplant (long slender one which is not quite a Japanese eggplant), quartered length-wise, then cut across about 2 inch long or the width of the ham and prosciutto.
10 perilla “aojiso” 青紫蘇 leaves
12 slices total of prosciutto and ham.
1 tbs potato starch or “katakuriko”片栗粉
2-3 tbs light olive oil or vegetable oil

Directions:
Place the meat of the salted plum in a Japanese “suribachi” mortar. Add the mirin and grind into a smooth paste (#1)
Spread out a slice of the prosciutto or ham on a cutting board, place the perilla leaf on the ham, smear the plum sauce, place a baton of the eggplant and roll to make 12 roll-ups (#2 and #3).
Thinly coat the surface with potato starch
Seam-side down, fry in a non-stick frying pan with the olive oil in medium heat, turning occasionally to brown all sides (#4). Once all sides are brown, turn the heat down put the lid on, to complete cooking of the eggplant (about 5 more minutes).
Serve hot or re-heated in the toaster oven before serving.

As mentioned before, the ones made with prosciutto were much better largely because the ham didn’t have any flavor. The outside was crispy with some saltiness. The eggplant was creamy, soft and permeated with the major flavors that came from the salted plum paste and the perilla leaves. Very good combination of the textures and flavors. Perfect snack for either sake or wine.

Lily Bulb 百合根

I keep finding Japanese groceries at Weee  which previously were just not available or difficult to get. This time, it was “edible lily bulb”*. The package states “this is a product of China”. So, initially, I was not sure this item would be the same as Japanese “Yuri-ne” 百合根 but decided to try it anyway. Growing up in Hokkaido 北海道, Japan, which is the major producer of edible lily bulbs in Japan, my family enjoyed “yuri-ne” often. Most commonly, my mother made chawan-mushi 茶碗蒸し or Japanese steamed savory egg custard with yuri-ne lily bulb. I remember the nice texture and sweet flavor of yuri-ne. So it is a very nostalgic flavor for me that I have not tasted in a very long time. It arrived fresh in a vacuum packed container. It looked exactly like Japanese “yuri-ne and (better yet) tasted the same.

Although the package indicated “slices”, the lily bulbs are made of petal-like multiple layers which can come apart especially after blanching (see below). I would have preferred a whole intact bulb since that would have given me more choices in how to prepare it but this will do for sure.

*Digression alert: There is a myth that all lily bulbs are toxic which apparently may be based on the fact that any part of lily is highly toxic to cats (inducing renal failure). Also, the name “lily” is attached to many plants/flowers which are not “true” lily.  Some of these certainly would be toxic to humans. In any case, Japanese and Chinese (reportedly also native American Indians) enjoy eating lily bulbs.

I made three dishes; “chawan-mushi” 百合根入り茶碗蒸し(center bottom), bainiku-ae 百合根の梅肉和え (dressed in pickled plum sauce, upper left) and goma-ae 百合根の胡麻和え (dressed in sesame sauce, upper right). I also served lotus root kimpira “renkon-no-kimpira 蓮根のきんぴら(left bottom) and “ohitashi” edible chrysanthemum or “shungiku-no-ohitashi” 春菊のお浸し (right bottom). The fresh lotus root and edible chrysanthemum both came from Weee.

The picture below shows the chawan-mushi made with yuri-ne, topped with ikura salmon roe and blanched sugar snap. You cannot see the yuri-ne well but two are peaking out on either side of the ikura.

The next picture shows the chawan-mushi before the toppings were put on. I put the yuri-ne on the bottom as well as on the top. Other items included fresh shiitake mushroom, and shrimp as usual. The egg and dashi mixture was my usual 1 to 3 ratio. There is no difference in how to make it from standard other chawan-mushi.

For next two dishes, I quickly blanched the yuri-ne, drained it and let it cool before proceeding.

One pickled “umeboshi” plum, meat removed and then chopped fine with  a knife, then placed in a Japanese “suri-bachi” mortal, 1/2 tsp mirin added, 1/2 soy sauce and ground to make a smooth paste. I added “kezuri bushi” bonito flakes (the amount arbitrary). I added more bonito flakes on the top.

The below picture shows yuri-ne with sesame dressing.

For sesame dressing:
1tsp white roasted sesame, dry roasted in a dry frying pan and then ground in a suri-bachi
2 tsp white sesame paste or “shiro neri-goma” 白ねりごま
1 tsp rice vinegar
1 tsp sugar

I garnished it with blanched sugar snap

These small dishes were nice and Weee made it possible for me to make these. These were quite filling but we also had a small serving of blue-fine tuna sashimi (frozen Australian from Great Alaska Seafood). The chawan-mushi was particularly special since it brought back good memories of the chawan-mushi my mother used to make.

Daikon and Cheese dressed in umeboshi 大根とチーズの梅肉和え

I saw this dish on one of the YouTube episodes by the first Iron chef Japanese Rokusabuto Michiba 道場六三郎. Although he is now 91 he has a YouTube channel. In that episode, he oversaw the production of ultimate sake and, while visiting the brewery, made two dishes that go well with sake. This one is very simple and I had all ingredients so I decided to make it. This is essentially cubes of daikon and cheese dressed in salted “Umeboshi” sauce. I served it with cold sake and it surprisingly went very well.  

Ingredients:
Daikon, peeled and cut into small (5mm) cubes, amount arbitrary
Cheese (I used smoked gouda) cut into small (5mm) cubes, amount arbitrary
Two umeboshi, fresh (“bainiku” 梅肉) and skin removed and cut into paste, add a small mount of sugar (I sometimes add mirin but Michiba-san suggested to add sugar.

Directions:
Simply dress the cubes of cheese and daikon.

I kept this in the fridge for a few hours. This was a very simple dish to make and as Michiba-san suggested it went well with cold sake.

Small salted plums カリカリ小梅

We planted a ume fruit 梅 bearing plum tree (prunus mume) about 30 years ago. While ornamental plum trees are quite common, we had to spend some time and effort to find one that bore the plum known in Japanese as ume. (We subsequently found out it is actually an apricot tree and the Japanese green ume is basically an unripe apricot from which plum wine or "umeshu"梅 is made. Standard "Umeboshi" pickled plum 梅干し is made from yellow ripe "ume".) It arrived in the spring in an envelop as a mere twig mailed from a nursery in Oregon. It spent the summer in a flower pot on the deck but in the fall we didn't know what to do with it so in the absence of any other plan we toed it into our vegetable garden never expecting it to survive the winter. To our surprise it not only survived but thrived producing bumper crops and providing us with the basic ingredient to make some mighty fine plum wine. The last bumper crop was in 2008.  Around that time, a fungal disease (black knot galls) started spreading among plum trees in our neighborhood. Many of the beautiful ornamental plum trees lining the street leading to our house became diseased and many subsequently succumbed. Unfortunately, our plum tree did not escape this fungal disease. The branches became deformed, coated in black cankers. It stopped producing fruit. Many of the branches died. In 2012 we had a Japanese master landscaper redo our backyard. As a result, the tree was moved to a different location and the diseased branches were severely pruned back.  It struggled for several years and I had to further prune out the affected branches several times. Frankly, there was not much of it left. We thought this tree was basically lost and even discussed whether we should have it removed. Surprisingly, although it still shows residual signs of the disease, it seems to have overcome the worst of it. It miraculously survived and even started putting out new growth. This year, for the first time since getting sick and since being transplanted, it bore a large number of fruit. One of the branches had so much fruit on it that it broke during a thunderstorm and fell to the ground. The branch is pictured below. 

Although the fruit was still rather small and unripe, we decided to harvest it since the branch was already off the tree. In total, the fruit was over 1kg (Below picture on the left). I knew immediately how I could use the fruit because we happened to watch (for the second time) one of the episodes of "Midnight diner" 深夜食堂 on Netflix. This episode was about "Karikari-koume" カリカリ小梅 which is crunchy small salted plums.

Ingredients:
1kg small green plums (left in the picture below).
100g salt (10% of the plum)
2tbs white liquor (I used vodka instead).

Directions
Cull plums with any blemishes, wash, and soak it in cold water for a few hours (right in the picture below).

Remove the remnant of flower (#1) using a bamboo skewers and dry the plum. 

Put the plums in a Ziploc bag,  add the salt and vodka. 

Remove as much of the air as you can and close the bag. Distribute the salt so that all the plums are coated and make a single layer of the plums (#2 in he picture below) 

I sandwiched the plums in the Ziploc bag between two sheet pans then placed weight (about 1kg, water filled jars) (#3, in the picture below) 

Leave it for 3 days. The color of the plum will change from green to light brown and water will come out (#4 in the picture below).

I moved it to the refrigerator and  after several days, placed the liquid and plums in the glass jar with air-tight lid (I used a small amount of Vodka to "sterilized" the jar before adding the plums)  (left in the picture below). The liquid (called "Umesu" 梅酢) came 2/3 of the jar (right in the picture below).

The recipe I am following said keep it in the refrigerator 3-4 weeks before eating. I had a taste when I moved the plum to the jar. It was salty and "karikari" meaning crunchy in texture but had a slight bitter aftertaste. Hope this will disappear in a few weeks. We will let you how it goes.

Chicken breast wrapped in perilla 鶏胸肉の青じそ巻き

This is inspired by a recipe in one of the food blogs I follow. I have previously posted yakitori 焼き鳥 dishes made with a combination of chicken meat, perilla and "umeboshi" 梅干し salted plum paste (this is a classic combination). One such dish used chicken tenderloin  another used chicken made into a roll with shiso and umeboshi paste, cut into medallions and skewered. This is the same combination of flavors with some different twists.   I cut the chicken into bite sized pieces, pound the pieces to break down the fibers, and marinate them before making the skewers as the recipe suggested. This preparation really made the chicken breast much more moist and tender. (My wife asked if this was sous vide chicken breast). I served the pieces un-skewered and instead of adding plum paste in the marinade as suggested in the recipe I put it on the top which has a more direct impact.

Ingredients (For the three skewers seen here):
One half of boneless and skinless chicken breast, cut into bite sized pieces, pounded with a meat mallet to break down the fibers.
Perilla leaves (We have a forest of perilla in our herb garden, 4 feet tall!)
Light olive oil for cooking.

For marinade
2 tbs sake
1tbs light colored soy sauce
1 tsp potato starch (katakuri-ko)

Directions:
I placed the chicken in a Ziplock bag with the marinade ingredients. I kneaded the bag to mix the meat and the marinade. I removed the air as much as I could before closing the bag. I refrigerated it for a few hours.
I cut the perilla leaves to the width of the meat and long enough that it wrapped the meat all the way around (some of our perilla leaves were quite large and had to cut them into several pieces). I wrapped the chicken pieces and put them on a skewer. (Althouhg I cooked the chicken in a frying pan rather than over charcoal, it was much easier to flip the skewers and keep the perilla leaves on the meat) (#1).
I added a small amount of light olive oil to a non-stick frying pan on low flame (#2), Put on the lid and cooked it for several minutes and then turned them over (#3). I used an instant thermometer to make sure it read 165F and the chicken was done before taking the skewers off the heat.  (#4).

I was going to use a tube of salted plum paste but it was near-empty and looked old. So, I made plum sauce or "Bainiku" 梅肉 sauce from "umeboshi" 梅干し salted plums (my mother's last batch sent to us a few years ago) (#5). I removed the meat from the stones and chopped it finely and put it in a Japanese "suribachi" すり鉢 mortar (#6). I gradually added mirin みりん until the ground plum became a thick saucy consistency. I smeared the sauce over the chicken (the first picture).

Although this is a variation of a "golden" combination of chicken meat, perilla, and salted plum sauce, this variation was really good because of the tender and moist texture of the chicken.

Pacific saury simmered with picked "umeboshi" plums 秋刀魚の梅煮

My wife pointed out that a package of frozen Pacific saury or ”Sanma" 秋刀魚 was in the freezer and had been there for some time. I must have bought it last autumn and it certainly required my immediate attention.   I have posted quite a few sanma dishes including classic "shio-yaki", salted and then grilled 塩焼き, "kaba-yaki" 蒲焼, "fry" 秋刀魚のフライ, and "fried rolls" 秋刀魚の巻き揚げ. I thought I had not posted sanma cooked with "umeboshi" 梅干し pickled plum or 秋刀魚の梅煮 but, when I searched my blog, I apparently already posted it some time ago. It was 7 years ago and this time, I cooked it a bit differently, which is my excuse for posting this dish again. This was a weekend and the weather was glorious and the mosquitoes were on vacation somewhere else so we enjoyed this dish outside on the deck with cold sake.

For greens, I added blanched and trimmed green beans. I also included the "umeboshi" plum which was used in the cooking liquid.

This fish is known for its numerous fine bones. Since I cooked this bone in, it took some chopstick dexterity to remove the bone before eating. The tail portion was easy because the meat had contracted exposing the bone, but the belly potion was more difficult. I demonstrated my chopstick prowess but my wife took a direct hands-on (literally) approach. This was OK with me. I would rather have her remove all the bones even if she has to use her fingers rather than have me remove a bone she missed from her throat using a needle nose pliers (This actually happened many years ago). If the removal of fish bones with fingers lacks finesse, it is completely superseded by the needle nose pliers technique.

Ingredients:
Pacific saury "sanma", three, thawed (#2)
Umeboshi pickled plums, 4, (#1, these are last batch my mother made and sent to us several years ago)
Ginger, several slices
Sake 180ml
Water, enough to cover the fish (90-180ml)
Sugar 1tsp
Soy sauce, 1 tbs
Mirin, 1 tbs

Directions:
Press the umeboshi to separate the stones and the meat. Then tear the meat into a few chunks
Wash and clean the surface of the sanma to make sure no scales remain (scales fall off easily and usually no scales remain)
Cut the head off behind the front fins, remove the dorsal and ventral fins, and cut into three pieces.
Squeeze out the innards and wash it with a running cold water.
Place the fish in a colander and pour hot water over it turning once (this will remove some fishiness and keep the skin from breaking easily during the cooking) (#3).
Put the water, sake, pickled plum, sugar  and slices of ginger in a sauce pan on medium-high flame (#4). If needed add more water so that the fish is covered.
Once it starts boiling, turn down the heat and put an "otsohis-buta" on top (#5), I used the pink silicon one.  One can use a parchment paper or aluminum foil, instead.
After 5-7 minutes, I removed the otoshibuta and added the soy sauce and mirin and put back the otoshibuta and a lid and cooked it for 20 minutes.
I let it cool down in the cooking liquid.

The pickled plums added a nice salty and slightly sour tastes and the reaming plum meat add refreshing note. We really like this dish. My wife said next time she would remove the bone with her fingers in the kitchen ahead of time rather than at the dinner table.

Two appetizers 酒のつまみ ２種類

These are not new but one evening we had these two small dishes with sake.

We got a pound of salmon filet. When we get salmon filet, I always ask for the head portion because it includes the belly meat  or "harasu" はらす (thin and oily). I usually separate this portion from the rest of the salmon so the two sections are of even thickness. Besides, the belly portion makes a good small appetizer. We had the rest of the salmon for dinner. (Diversion alert: for some reason the fish fillets sold here are not scaled. Maybe people don’t eat the skin? So however I cook the fish my first step in preparation is scaling them.)

I marinated the belly portion in  "Yuuan-ji" 祐庵地  (soy sauce, mirin and sake in equal amounts) in a Ziploc bag for 30 minutes. I cut the belly into two pieces (one for me and the other for my wife) and skewered them using long flat metal skewers for Yakitori we got from Kappabashi 合羽橋 on our recent trip to Japan. The new skewers made my job much easier since they are long enough to span the length of the baking dish I use in the toaster oven (the ones we had before were too short). I grilled the meat side first and then the skin side to make the skin really crispy. I served this with daikon namasu 大根なます garnished with tobiko roe and slices of my Japanese cucumber pickles.



The second dish shown below is also grilled in the toaster oven. Whenever we get bone-in split chicken breast, I separate the tenderloins from the breast meat. I used two tenderloins for this appetizer (I used the rest of the breasts for chicken paillard). The tenderloins were soaked in sake (mostly to help preserve the meat). I skewered and lightly salted the tenderloins. Then, using the same type of flat metal skewers I used to grill the fish. I grilled the chicken on both sides in the toaster oven. When the meat was almost done, I smeared on some umeboshi  梅干し sauce (I removed the meat of umeboshi - I still have my mother's home made - placed it in a Japanese Suribachi 擂鉢 mortar added mirin and ground it to paste). I grilled for 30 seconds more (mostly to warm up the sauce). I served it garnished it with chopped perilla from our herb garden.



These are nothing new but they are really good appetizers for sake. We had the rest of the salmon (pan fried and then finished in the oven with crispy skin) and rice for dinner.

Steamed potato and pork tenderloin with pickled plum sauce ジャガイモと豚肉の梅が香蒸し

Whenever we cook pork tenderloin, we have trimmings left. From the trimmings, I make many other dishes such as gyoza, pork scallopini etc. I then saw this recipe in Asahi shinbun on line and decide to try it. This is potato and pork tenderloin in a pickled plum (or umeboshi 梅干) sauce which is steamed. This is in a category similar to our steamed lemon chicken with shiitake mushrooms. This is a rather healthy dish and it turned out to be very nice. This dish definitely will join in our teiban 定番 or regular dishes.

I made some modifications to the dish but they were not intentional; they just happened. Otherwise, I followed the recipe. The above is the final product and this will probably serve 4.

Pork tenderloin: These were the trimmings from 2 pork tenderloins. I did not weigh them but I estimate it was about 4-500 grams (about 1 lb). I sliced them into 1/3 inch medallions.

Potato: We used white potatoes (4 medium). Peeled and cut it in 1/3 inch wide batons like for French fries.  I soaked them in cold water to remove the excess starch on the surface and then dried them using a paper towel. I seasoned them with salt and coated with olive oil (2 tbs).

Plum sauce: I removed the meat from umeboshi or pickled plum (2) and minced it to make a paste. I mixed in soy sauce (2 tbs), mirin (1tbs), sake (1 tbs), sugar (2 tsp), dark sesame oil (2 tbs) and potato starch (2 tbs). I also added grated ginger (1/4 tsp) and grated garlic (1/2 tsp). The grated garlic was my addition, I thought I had grabbed a tube of ginger but discovered after I had put it in that it was garlic. Turns out that it added a very interesting dimension that really added to the dish. 

I placed the pork tenderloin from above and mixed and marinated it in the sauce for few minutes.

Assembly: I used a deep pasta dish and made alternate layers of the potato and the pork with potato layers on the bottom and top with two pork layers. 

I steamed it on medium high flame for about 30 minutes. At the last few minutes, I added haricot verts (we happened to have ones already steamed from the other night). I think any greens will do here.

We served portions as shown in the picture. This is a very good dish that could quickly enter the "comfort food" category. The pork is very tender and potato and the sauce which forms during the steaming goes so well together. The sauce has a subtle sourness from the pickled plum. My (inadvertent) addition of garlic was also good. The only problem we had was that the potato cooked a bit unevenly.

Stewed sardines with pickled plums イワシの梅煮

Did I happen to mention that fresh sardines at our new grocery store often look like they just came out of a bar fight the night before? Well, today, they looked slightly better and I decided to go with the sardines. I got six and made two dishes. This is one of them.

Sardines and herrings are related but slightly different. For one, herrings can be rather large but sardines are usually smaller. The sardines we got today were larger than we see canned. So I decided to treat the sardines as though they were small herrings.

The first dish I made from four sardines is called "Umeni" 梅煮 meaning "stewed with plum". Since herrings/sardines are rather oily blue fish with a strong taste,  adding some sourness helps to cut the oiliness. This is very similar to the simmered Pacific saury or "sanma" which I posted before.

Cleaning sardines: The fishmonger at the grocery store was a bit surprised when I said I would do the cleaning myself--"so just give me the sardines as is." Scaling was rather easy since they have large, easy-to-remove scales. For this dish, I wanted to keep the shape of the fish. So I did not want to open the underbelly and gut it. Instead, I cut off the head first and from that opening, extracted the guts using a narrow blade boning knife (being careful not break the belly) and my fingers.

Pre-cooking: Some kind of preparation is in order to reduce oily fishiness of the sardines before the actual stewing. Some would just pour hot water over the fish and then washed in cold water. But I went further. I boiled them in vinegared water first. In about 1 cup of water I added rice vinegar (2 tbs) and placed the cleaned sardines. When it came to boil, I turned the flame down and simmered it for 5-7 minutes without a lid on. I poured the simmering liquid out and gently washed them in cold running water. The skin is very fragile as you can see image below (#1).

Simmering liquid: There are many variations but essentially soy sauce with some sweetness either from mirin, sugar or both. I used water (300ml), soy sauce (3 tbs), mirin (2 tbs) and sugar (1 tsp). I added two "umeboshi" pickled plums and several thin slivers of ginger root (#2) in a Pyrex pan in which 4 sardines snuggly fit (#3). I placed my favorite silicon "otoshi-buta" on the top. Since this is made of silicon, it conformed to even a square pan (#4). I put a reguar lid slightly askew over it on a medium flame. As soon as it started boiling, I turned it down to a gentle simmer and cooked it for about 40 minutes.

After 40 minutes, I removed the both lids and turned up the heat and let it boil gently so that the simmering liquid reduced a bit. I removed it from the heat and let it cool down with a lid back on for several hours to room temperature before serving.

As you can see in the first picture, I garnished it with thinly julienned ginger ("Harishouga" 針ショウガ) and perilla. If you do not like a strong ginger taste, you could soak the julienned ginger in cold water for 5 minutes or so and ring out the moisture before using. I also removed the meat of the Umeboshi and draped it over the fish.

This is another homey dish, probably only served at home, in a "taishu shokudou" 大衆食堂 (eatery for the public) or izakaya. This is a perfect side dish with rice or its liquified form, i.e. sake. We had this with the latter. To enjoy this dish, you need to be a chopstick jedi since the fish has  lot of small bones (remember the "herring-bone pattern"). My wife was not expecting so many bones. She described her first bite as like chomping into a toothbrush and having all the bristles come off the handle into her mouth. But once she realized the situation, she was an expert at removing all available meat from the bones. I admit this is a very labor intensive dish (both preparing and eating) but it is worth it especially if you do not have a neighborhood Izakaya or "taishu shokudou" to visit.

Spoon tofu with green tea salt and salted plum topping 掬い豆腐の抹茶塩と梅肉かけ

I have posted similar dishes before but this one is rather good. Tofu comes in various degrees of firmness such as momenkoshi 木綿ごし (firm) and kinugoshi 絹ごし (soft or silken), the softest kind of tofu is called "zarutofu" ざる豆腐 (tofu scoped up by a basket or "zaru" in Japanese but not pressed) and "sukuitofu" すくい豆腐 or spoon tofu. I happened to get a package of sukuitofu at the Japanese grocery store.

Since this tofu is so soft, you just spoon it into a small bowl. I topped this with green tea salt (a mixture of powdered green tea and kosher salt which I make in batches and keep in the freezer in a sealed container). To make this dish more interesting, I added umeboshi 梅干し or Japanese salted plum. This was from the last batch of home made that my mother sent me. I removed the meat of the umeboshi from the stone. I also included the red perilla leaves from the umeboshi container (salted red perilla adds the color and flavor to umeboshi) . I chopped finely both umeboshi and red perilla together and mixed in a small amount of sake (or mirin if you prefer some sweetness). For good measure, I also added a chiffonade of perilla.

Since the tofu is very soft, you just mix the toppings with the tofu using a spoon and enjoy. It had a perfect amount of saltiness and flavor. You have to have this with sake. We had this with chilled G-sake. 

P.S. I noticed that the taste of leftover G-sake deteriorates after a few days--losing its fresh clean taste and becoming very cloying, even if the the bottle is tightly sealed and kept in a refrigerator. This means that if we open the bottle, we have to finish it in one sitting. What a hardship!

"Nametake" cooked and seasoned enoki mushroom ナメタケ

Enoki and Nametake mushroom are the same mushroom but enoki is cultivated and grown in the dark causing it to grow long and white. Nametake, is grown wild in the light and therefore larger than the enoki in size and brownish in color. Confusingly, commercial products made from enoki mushroom is widely sold as "Nametake" in a jar as a condiment．In any case, I had a package of enoki mushrooms that I had to cook before they went bad. I posted enoki cooked in butter and miso, so this time, I made enoki mushroom cooked in soy sauce and mirin (or nametake in the second meaning described above). I added dried nori seaweed 海苔 and meat of umeboshi 梅肉 or pickled plum for make it slightly more interesting.

Making this is simple. I first made a mixture of mirin and soy sauce (about 1 to 1,  or reduce soy sauce for milder, sweeter variety. For one package of enoki, I used 2 tsp each. If you do not like it sweet, use sake or a sake and mirin mixture). I cut off the bottom 1/3 of the enoki mushroom and combined the mushrooms with the above seasoning in a small pan and let it simmer. I also added about 1/2 of the umeboshi cut up in small pieces. I also added a half sheet of dried nori torn up in small pieces (by hand). The dish can become salty very quickly depending on the how salty your umeboshi is and how much soy sauce you use. I cooked it for 5 minutes or so on simmer or until most of the liquid is gone. I served this as a small dish that goes with sake but you can use it as a rice condiment as well. This came out a bit on the salty side but it is perfect for sipping cold sake--encouraging you to drink more sake than you intended

Scallop sashimi three ways ホタテ貝の刺身

We can not easily get "sashimi" grade scallops. I make a scallop sashimi-like dish from regular frozen and thawed scallops from a nearby gourmet market by poaching the scallops in a dashi broth and sake mixture gently for 5 minutes until the scallops just become opaque throughout. I chill the scallops and serve with a pickled plum "bainiku" 梅肉 sauce like sashimi. This is not bad but does not have the texture and sweetness of the real thing. Fortunately, we got sashimi-grade sea scallops from Catalina Offshore Products along with other goodies. The only problem was that we had to eat them fairly quickly. Since we had guests who appreciate scallop sashimi, I made three different scallop sashimis.

I washed the scallops and patted them dry. I removed the small hard muscle attached to the side of the scallops. I sliced one large scallop into 4-5 thin rounds. I salted them very lightly and squeezed lemon over them. The verions shown in the picture are: 1. Straight forward sashimi (upper right) with real grated wasabi (see below) and soy sauce, 2. scallops with salsa sauce (upper left), and 3. Scallops with pickled plum sauce ("bainiku" 梅肉) (below). Garnishes are lemon sclices, chopped chives and perilla leaves.

For the salsa sauce: Chop tomatoes, shallots, Jalapeno peper (seeded and de-veined) finely and add olive oil, lemon or lime juice, salt and pepper. Pour over the scallop. Sometimes I also use balsamic vinegar and soy sauce (no lemon juice in that case).

For the bainiku sauce: Remove the meat from "umeboshi: chop it finely and mix in a small amount of mirin and rice vinegar. Pour over the scallop.

Regrading "wasabi" 山葵; I mentioned a bit about this in the previous post. There are two companies which sell "real" wasabi"; one is called "Real Wasabi" another is called "Pacific Farm". You could buy; 1. wasabi daikon 山葵大根 or rhizomes, 2. frozen grated real wasabi in a tube, or 3. wasabi powders made from real wasabi not from western horseradish. Last time we tried rhizomes from Real Wasabi. This time I tried "the grated frozen real wasabi in a tube from Pacific Farm" (left image). I think this is very good and probably more cost effective than buying a wasabi rhizome, although it has some additives like artificial coloring. The other problem is packaging. Initially, the water and wasabi appeared to seperate and then it becomes difficult to squeeze out from the tube but the flavor and heat are very similar to the freshly grated wasabi. It is probably best to smear a small dab on the sashimi itself before dipping in soy sauce but this may be bit too strong for some. In that case, dissolve wasabi in soy sauce. It will keep a long time frozen and, reportedly, for 30 days after opening the tube. In my experience, however, at 3 weeks after opening, the remaining wasabi (about 1/8 of the tube) became almost impossible to squeeze out.  By cutting open the tube, I found that the wasabi became bit dry and chalky in texture. The flavor was still there, though. Some of sushi bars in Washington, DC started offering "real" wasabi with an extra charge but I think it is worth it.

Yakitori 焼き鳥 Part 2

Ume-Shiso Rolled Chiken 梅しそ巻き

This is from the recipe in Mark's Izakaya Cookbook, page 130. "Shiso" or more precisely "Aoziso" or green shiso (Perilla) can be grown very easily in most of US or can be bought in a Japanese grocery store. It has a very distinctive flavor; not quite mint but somewhat similar. The sauce is "Umeboshi" paste ("Bainiku' 梅肉). Umeboshi is salted plum (actually Japanese apricot). They are salted togerther with "Akaziso" or red perilla. The red perilla imparts a red to pink color to the end products. This salty and slightly sour condiment is a very basic Japanese taste. The simplest form of lunch box or  "Bento" consists of a bed of white rice with red umeboshi in the center. Since this looks a bit like the Japanese flag it is called "Hinomaru bento" (Japanese flag lunch box). In any case, I made this paste from my mother's homemade umeboshi by cutting fruit from the stone and putting it into a Japanese mortar and pestle ("Suribachi") with a little bit of sweet cooking wine "mirin" to make a paste. You can buy commercial umebosh paste in a tube as well. This combination is very classic and excellent. Another recipe I often use is chicken tenders tempura with umeboshi paste. I cut a small slit in the meat, put umeboshi paste in the slit and then wrap everything in perilla. I then coat the packet in tempura batter and deep fry. The result is as good as this yakitori.