Grilled mackerel salad with “Yuzu” mayonnaise 柚子マヨあえ焼き鯖のサラダ

 This is a small salad made of leftover salted and grilled mackerel 鯖の塩焼き. I just came up with this and did not have any recipe.

One interesting thing about this salad is the mayonnaise I used. This is Japanese “yuzu” mayonnaise which I got from one of the gourmet markets through “Instacart”. I added thinly sliced Videlia onion, sliced mini cucumber (both are salted. I let them stand for 5 minutes and then squeezed out the excess moisture). I also added skinned Campari tomato thinly sliced. I dressed the vegetables with the “Yuzu” mayonnaise.  I warmed up the mackerel in the toaster oven. I broke it into bite-size chunks and topped it with a bit more mayo.

I also served 4 additional small dishes. From left to right are blanched green asparagus with sesame dressing, グリーンアスパラガスの胡麻和え simmered Kabocha pumpkin かぼちゃの煮物,  salt broth soaked sugar snap スナップ豌豆の塩びたし and miso-simmered mackerel 鯖の味噌煮.

The salad was really good mainly because of this Japanese “yuzu” mayonnaise. I’ve used up almost half of this mayo already. I took pictures showing the container upside-down. I store it this way so that the contents would come out more easily from the opening.

This is a Japanese style mayonnaise similar in flavors and texture to Kewpie mayonnaise but it contains Japanese “yuzu” citrus juice. This gives a uniquely refreshing flavor. Although fresh Yuzu fruit is difficult to come by, frozen zest and bottled yuzu juice are readily available. I added a bit more yuzu juice to accentuate the flavor.

At first, we are skeptical about this mayonnaise but now we are sold. I even used in our sandwiches with great result.

I think using this with fish like I did here is a great combination. I am thinking of making tartar sauce with this. It should go well with breaded fried fish or Japanese “furai” dish 魚のフライ.

Harvest “Juugo-ya” moon gazing 10-1-2020 十五夜月見団子

This year "Harvest moon" was October 1 which is also Japanese "Juugoya" or 15th nights* for moon gazing. Unfortunately the evening of October 1 was raining and we could not see the moon but the next night, it was clear with some haze in the sky and we took these pictures.

*something to do with 15th night of the month in Luna calendar.

Since October 1 was a Thursday and a week day I  couldn’t make tuskimi-dango 月見団子 that day,  so I made them the weekend before. (Using the exact same recipe as last year). I also made the same mitarashi みたらしsauce. 

Here are 15 spherical "dango" piled up in a 9-4-2 configuration.

Since I made this a week ago and even though they were kept in a sealable container in the refrigerator, they dried up and got hard.

Using a microwave safe silicon container, I added the sauce and “dango” and microwaved it for 30 seconds or so. It became as soft as when I made it and the sauce also got warmed up.

We enjoyed this as an ending “shime” dish or dessert, whichever applies. The dango had a very pleasing soft creaminess and the sauce added some additional sweet saltiness. Very nice. 

Eggplant gyoza 茄子餃子

Last weekend I made gyoza 餃子. As usual, I used the trimmings from pork tenderloin. I made up a batch using wonton skins but I had more gyoza stuffing leftover. Then, I saw a Japanese recipe using thin slices of eggplant instead of Wonton or Gyoza skin. Since I happened to have a Japanese eggplant (one we can get here is a small diameter elongated eggplant. I only rarely see the other varieties of eggplant available in Japan such as "Kamo-nasu" 賀茂茄子 or "Mizu-nasu" 水茄子).  So, I made gyoza with this eggplant. A small amount of gyoza stuffing still remained after I made this dish so I stuffed a fresh shiitake mushroom to finish it up. I served this with some veggies as a starter one evening.

Since only enough leftover stuffing for one shiitake mushroom, I served three eggplant gyoza and half each of the shiitake gyoza. The veggies are sliced cucumber dressed in sushi vinegar 胡瓜の酢の物, skinned Campari tomato with sesame dressing トマトの胡麻和え, braised crunchy cauliflower モンパルナスのカリフラワー and sugar snap in salt broth スナップ豌豆の塩びたし.

Ingredients:

Gyoza stuffing is my usual. Hand chopped pork tenderloins trimmings, boiled and chopped cabbage, chopped scallions, garlic, ginger, seasoned with sesame oil, salt, and soy sauce. As I mentioned this was the leftovers after making regular gyoza.
One Japanese eggplant (one with small diameter and very long),
Potato starch (Katakuri-ko 片栗粉).
Peanut oils and sesame oil for frying

Directions:
Skin the eggplant using a peeler on both sides lengthwise, cut crosswise into 2 inch long pieces and then slice lengthwise into 3mm thick pieces and soak in about 5% salted water (#1) until the eggplant pieces get soft/limp (It took more that 30 minutes).
Drain in a colander and press using the back of a ladle to press out excess moisture and line them up on paper towels (#2) and press with another sheet of paper towel to blot.
Sprinkle potato starch or Katakuri-ko (#3)
Wrap the gyoza stuffing by folding the eggplant in half (#4).
Since I still had some gyoza stuffing left, I stuffed one fresh shiitake mushroom (#5)
Add 1tbs peanut oil and splashes of dark sesame oil in a frying pan on medium flame and place in the eggplant gyoza (#6).
After a few minutes when the eggplant is browned, turn it over and put on the lid for several minutes and finish with the lid off for 1 more minute (#8).

This time, the stuffing was well-seasoned and did not need any dipping sauce. This is not bad but both my wife and I prefer regular gyoza. We both missed the lovely crunch of the crispy wonton skin.

No knead pizza dough 捏ねないピザ生地

Since we are into "no knead" breads, when my wife found a recipe for "No knead pizza dough", I had to try it. Using this dough, I made my usual version of Pizza Margherita.

The pizza shown below was my wife's suggestion including several cheeses (mozzarella,  Monterey jack and smoked gouda) with baby artichoke herts, black and green olives (Devina brand).

No knead pizza dough recipe came from King Arthur flour web site.

Ingredients: (this makes two pizzas like above)
250gram AP flour
1/8 tsp instant yeast
1/2 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
185gram lukewarm water

Directions: (only making dough part was quoted here)
1. Stir all of the ingredients together. Cover the rough, sticky dough and let it rise at room temperature for 24 hours. After this first rise, you may choose to refrigerate the dough for up to 6 days, which will help develop its flavor.
2. Divide the dough in half. Shape each piece into a ball. Place each ball seam-side down into a floured bowl.
3. Cover the bowl and allow the dough to proof (rise) for 45 minutes to an hour, while your oven preheats.
4. Scoop the dough onto a well-floured work surface and dust the top with flour. Using your fingertips, gently depress the dough, being careful not to touch the outer edge of the crust; you want it to remain thick.
5. Lift up the pizza and use your knuckles to gently stretch the dough into a circle about 10" to 12" in diameter. Move it to a well-floured pizza peel (I use yellow corn meal).

The topping and baking parts I followed my usual way. Although I cooked the pizza the usual 5 minutes, because of the high water content of the dough, retrospectively, I would have cooked the pizza longer maybe 7-8 minutes.

This pizza crust was a bit more flavorful but not that much different from my usual crust. Handling the dough was much more tricky since it was so wet. I may try it again with a longer cooking time.

Salted and grilled mackerel 鯖の塩焼き

 Come to think of it, I never cooked mackerel this basic way. When I got two whole Spanish mackerels from HMart via Instacart, there was too much to make it all into the miso-simmered dish 鯖の味噌煮 I usually make. So, I took two filets I prepared from the smaller of the two fish and made this salted and grilled mackerel. I filleted the fish and removed the small pin bones. Then I cut one filet into two and salted both sides. I let it stand for 10 minutes and blotted the surfaces using a paper towel. I made shallow cuts on the skin and re-salted it. Since I do not have a Japanese style fish grill and I did not want to cook fish in the toaster oven, I sautéed the fillets in a frying pan with a small amount of olive oil.

This is a basic simple way of cooking mackerel but it was good. On the side, I added sliced mini-cucumber (salted and moisture squeezed out) dressed in sushi vinegar. Since we had just harvested and pickled myoga, I added it too. This could have gone very well with rice. We had it as a drinking snack with cold sake.