Grilled potato with butter じゃがバタ

Hokkaido 北海道 where I am originally from is the Northernmost island of Japan and the climate is more like New England.  Many cold weather crops and non-traditional Japanese (i.e Western) crops are produced. Two of these are potatoes and corn. One potato cultivar "May Queen" is particularly famous in Hokkaido. We do not see this variety in North America. In addition, Hokkaido is also different from the rest of Japan in that dairy farming is a major agricultural activity. As such, both potatoes (called "jagaimo" ジャガイモ) and butter are speciality products in Hokkaido. The combination is simply called "jagabata" ジャガバタ in which the whole potato is cooked (boiled, steamed, microwaved) and eaten with butter. People in the U.S. may think 'nothing unusual about that' but in Japan, it is, at least it was, a rather exotic local food. In the downtown park in Sapporo 札幌, called "Odori koen" 大通公園, during the tourist season which starts in the early summer, you can buy "jagabata" and grilled corn on the cob or "yaki toukibi" 焼きとうきび from food carts. Since the crop is not harvested until July, the corn and potatoes available in the early tourist season are from the previous year. Besides being a favorite tourist snack, "Jagabata" has now become a popular Izakaya food in Hokkaido and elsewhere. In terms of salty seasonings for your potato, you usually have three choices; salt, soy sauce, or shiokara 塩 辛 (squid and guts), for which  "Hakodate" 函館, the Southernmost large port city of Hokkaido, is famous. Our version of "jagabata" is a cross between this and French fries and modeled after "jagabata" at Tako Grill and served with salt. Until you add butter, this is a much healthier food than French fries but you have to have the butter.

I first microwaved whole white potatoes (skin on, washed, with the "eyes" removed) in a microwave oven-proof vessel with a lid on until I can insert a bamboo skewer easily to the center. Be careful not to over zap it. I cut it into quarters. You could do this step a few hours or, maybe, a day ahead. Just grill the potato on the charcoal fire until all the surfaces are nicely brown/crunchy and heated through (about 5 minutes). Add pats of butter and let them melt, dip it in salt and enjoy. Extremely simple but satisfying dish.....!!MM!!!MmmmmmmmMMmmMMMM!!. (hope Jon did not trade mark this).

Miso grilled chicken thigh 鶏のももの味噌焼き

We had a few very nice days in June so we fired up our Konro grill on our deck. This time, I marinated chickens thigh in miso and grilled them. I did not follow any recipe but this is sort of the standard way (along with Teriyaki) to grill marinated chicken in a Japanese style.

Chicken thigh: In Japan, chicken parts are usually sold as whole legs--the thigh and drumstick are usually attached together 骨付きもも鶏肉 which is often grilled such as "Teriyaki" 照り焼き. Here I just used the thigh without the drumstick (4 for 2 servings). Debone and remove excess fat and excess skin. Butter fly one side of the thigh meat since it is thicker that the other side so that the entire thigh will have an uniform thickness. This preparation will shorten the cooking time significantly. It ensures even cooking and also prevents the surface from charring too much (which I managed to do despite these preparations).

Marinade: Mix red miso (4 tbs) and mirin (3-4 tbs) with splashes of Yuzu juice (from the bottle) to a saucy consistency. Add sake or mirin to adjust the consistency (more mirin will make it sweeter). Coat the surface of the thigh meat with the miso marinade and then put it in a Ziploc bag. Massage the meat in the bag to make sure the meat is evenly coated and let it marinate 2-3 hours in a refrigerator.

Take the meat out of the bag and, using your fingers, remove the excess marinade (see above image). I grill the skin side first. Because of the miso and mirin, it is easy to burn. (which is what I immediately did). It will take 3-4 minutes per side. The meat comes out very moist and flavorful. The skin gets crispy and despite the fact I got it a little too "high done" and it looked very dark it still tasted very good. For serving this in Izakaya style, I cut into strips and serve with a wedge of lemon. I could have done a better job of presenting this but it is too late.

Cold ramen noodle 冷やしラーメン

Regional name differences and variations of this and similar dishes and who invented this dish etc are quite complicated. In Hokkaido 北海道 where I grew up, this dish is called “hiyashi ra-men” 冷やしラーメン.  The rest of Japan including Tokyo, this dish is usually called “hiyashi chuka” 冷やし中華 which is short for “hiyashi chuka-soba” 冷やし中華そば. “Hiyashi” means cold and “chuka-soba” means Chinese “soba” or noodle. Although this is more of a summer lunch item and not an Izakaya food, Izakayas in Hokkaido often serve “ra-sara” ラーサラ which is short for “ramen salad” throughout the seasons. This is a variation with some more vegetable toppings resembling a salad more than a noodle dish. It is said to have been invented by the chef at the Sapporo Grand Hotel for their Beer Hall (Bierhalle) when it was opened for the first time in the 1980s. I have not made this dish for a long time. An intrepid Japanese food and culture explorer I know announced his intention to thoroughly explore cheap Chinese food and “hiyashi chuka” in the Kanda 神田 area during hot summer days in Tokyo. This combined with the unseasonably hot weather we are having here in the DC area made me think of this dish. In contrast to regular ramen, which appears to invoke profound emotions among “rameniacs" out there, this dish is very low-key and cool-as-a-cucumber--no high emotion required.



Ramen noodle: The dried ramen noodle I had in my pantry this time is made in Yamagata prefecture 山形県, which is located in a northern part of the mainland Japan. It is rather thin and straight but has a nice firm texture, I have no idea what style of a ramen noodle this is (Yamagata style??). I prepared it as per the package instruction and washed it in cold water and drained (Do not ask me how many times I have to shake a “spider” strainer or a flat “zaru” strainer, I just use a good American colander.)

Sauce: Again, there is no complicated preparation for the sauce (you need not to boil whole birds, pig heads, bones, and other secret ingredients for days and months in a cauldron while saying secret mantras). It is essentially a vinegar, soy sauce, mirin with some sesame oil; so I just used a bottled good quality ponzu (shoyu) sauce (this one specifically said “with Hokkaido kelp broth”--my kind of ponzu). I dressed the noodles with a small splash of dark roasted sesame oil before plating it and added the ponzu sauce over it (not too much). All the topping should be cut into thin match stick strips (or “julienned” as Julia[n] Child used to say) and top the noodle with the individual toppings arranged in a radial fashion rather than randomly scattering them (just a tradition). You can mix it up yourself before eating. I had a leftover miso-marinated grilled chicken thigh, so I used that. I also used cucumber, scallion, perilla, pickled ginger root, and golden thread egg (kinshiran 金糸卵). You could add strips of nori sheet, sprouts, carrot, corn, etc but now you are getting dangerously close to  the “ra-sara” territory.

I garnished it with Campari tomato and served it with a dab of Japaneses hot mustard. This was a lunch and we ate it on our back deck which is perfect especially in this rather hot and muggy weather.

Hijiki and chicken salad and Stewed Hijiki ひじきと鶏肉のサラダ、ひじきの煮物

Hijiki ひじき is one of the several "kaiso" 海藻 or sea vegetables (sounds better than "seaweed") which has been a part of Japanese cuisine for a long time. Japanese consider hijiki to be a healthy food with high fibers and minerals. As I was growning up, we had hijiki occasionally, but it was, by no means, my favorite dish as a kid. It does make a nice small dish for a drink, however, and as such, I like hijiki now. (Regarding arsenic contained in Hijiki, please refer to the footnote.)

Hijiki comes dried and usually has two different kinds; "Me-hijiki" 芽ひじき consisting of the buds or tips of hijiki, and "Naga-hijiki" 長ひじき consisting of the stalks of hijiki. I happened to get dried "Naga-hijiki" and decided to make two dishes. In dried form, hijiki is very hard and black like tangles of black metal wires. To prepare, after washing in cold running water in a colander, I soak it in large amount of cold water initially for 30 minutes. At the end of the 30 minutes, the volume of hijiki increases something like 10 fold and you can see the dark brown shapes of the original hijiki plant with the fresh smell of the ocean. I drain and wash in cold running water in a colander.  I then soak again in fresh water. I repeat this several times over the period of about 2 hours (you do not really need this long soak and changes of water but I like to leach out as much of the small amount of arsenic as possible, see the footnote). If I am not ready to cook this immediately I keep it in a container with water and place it in the refrigerator.

1. Hijiki and chicken salad ひじきと鶏肉のサラダ

Since I had some leftover cooked (barbecued) whole chicken, I used the breast meat for this dish. If you are making this from scratch, you should either steam in sake or "sakamushi*" 酒蒸し or microwave the chicken breasts.

*add 2-3 tbs of sake in a small frying pan and add a chicken breast (skin removed). Put on a tight fitting lid and braise/steam for 4-5 minutes or until the chicken is done in a low flame.

In a small frying pan, add olive oil with a dash of dark roasted sesame oil. When the oil is hot, add a desired amount of hydrated and drained hijiki and saute for 1-2 minutes and then add coarsely shredded (by hand) cooked chicken breast and saute for aother minute and season with salt and pepper.  Tip them out in a bowl and add soy sauce with dissolved yuzukosho 柚子胡椒 (from the tube) or wasabi. You could also use ponzu (soy sauce) ポン酢醤油 with or without the spicy stuff. Here, I made a half and half mixture of soy sauce and yuzukosho and added the mixture in several increments as I tasted it to my liking. I garnished it with cooked and shelled edamame. I serve this at a room temperature. This is a good dish. Mild zing and flavors of the yuzukosho is very nice.

2. Stewed Hijiki ひじきの煮物

This is as classic as hijiki dishes go. There are many variations to this. Some add cooked (yellow or ripe) soy beans "mizuni daizu" 水煮大豆 and other vegetables. Carrot and deep-fried tofu pouch "abura-age" 油揚げ are most common ingredients in this dish. I used carrot, sweet potato, edamame  枝豆 and deep fried tofu pouch in mine.

I made a large batch with the remaining prepared hijiki which is about 3 cups after hydration. I added broth (I used granulated instant "dashi" dissolved in water) (1 cup) add small cubes of carrot (one large) and sweet potato (1/2 large) and simmered for 10 minutes or until vegetables were cooked (not too soft) and set it aside in a bowl with the liquid. I added peanut oil (1tbs) with a dash of dark sesame oil in a sauce pan on a medium flame and saute the prepared hijiki and thin strips of abura-age (2 small squares or "koage" 小揚げ, blanched, squeezed of water and cut into thin strips) for 1-2 minutes and add the cooked vegetables with its liquid. Simmer for 5 minutes and I season it with sake, mirin and soy sauce (1:1:2 parts), I will go easy on soy sauce at first since it will cook until the liquid is almost all gone. I taste when the dish is almost done and add more soy sauce if needed (I did not). After turning off the heat, I mixed in cooked and shelled edamame and let it sit and come to the room temperature before serving. This has a classic taste of hijiki "nimono" dish.  I found  old "ichi-go Masu" 一合升 in the back of the kitchen cabinet and used it to serve this dish.

We had both hijiki dishes at one sitting. Both dishes are quite different in taste and texture (although it may look similar) and went well with cold sake.

*Footnote regrading arsenic in Hijiki:

I did not know this until I read Hiroyuki's blog some time ago. It appears that the amount of inorganic arsenic is not high enough to have a serous health concern if you consume hijiki in moderation (meaning not eat tons of hijiki everyday). There is no known case of arsenic health effects even in Japan where people tend to eat more seaweed than anywhere else including hijiki. It is also reported that If you soak hijiki for 1 hour and if you boil it for 5 minutes after hydration, . This time, I soaked much longer than needed with multiple changes of water which, I am surmising, reasonably reduced the arsenic content. So it appears that consuming hijiki cooked this way is not to be of any health concern. A (professional) well-informed Japanese food blogger appears to take a similar position.

Grilled rosemary lamb chops with barley risotto ラムチョップと大麦のリソト

Well, I am, again, deviating from the Izakaya theme. This is a type of a Bistro cuisine but apparently some Japanese bars serve this type of dish. I used a rack of lamb and cut it into individual chops. This rack was not as well prepared as the ones we usually get and I had to remove some silver skin and excess fat but I left some fat just above the chop since the fat imparts a good lamb flavor (if you like lamb flavor).

I marinated the lamb chops in fresh rosemary (chopped up, 1 tbs, from our herb garden), crushed garlic (4-5 cloves), olive oil (3-4 tbs) and cracked pepper (1/2 tsp) in a Ziploc bag overnight in the refrigerator. Just before cooking, I removed the meat leaving the garlic and marinade in the bag (I noticed that one of the garlic cloves went with the meat to the grill judging from the picture below). I then salted the meat. I was too lazy to fire up the charcoal grill so I used an electric grill outside (see below left).

I cooked the chops 2-3 minutes for medium doneness (this grill cooks from both sides). I turned the chops 90 degree in the middle of the cooking time to make nice grill marks. This dish had a more assertive lamb flavor than the oven roasted rack of lamb but if you like lamb this is a very straightforward nice dish.

Barley risotto: My wife made this dish and I assisted by chopping up the ingredients. I finely chopped onion (large, half), shiitake mushroom (5 medium, stem removed), and garlic (3 cloves). In a small pot, add olive oil (1 tbs) and saute the above vegetables for 2-3 minutes on a medium flame, season with salt and pepper. Add one cup of pearled barley and saute to coat the grains with the oil. Add 2/3 cup white wine (we used sake) and cook until the wine is completely absorbed. Add 3 and 1/2 cups of chicken broth (our usual Swanson reduced salt no-fat version). After it comes to a boil, cover and turn the heat down to simmer and cook for 30 minutes or more, stirring once or twice during cooking, until done. (It should be creamy but all the liquid should be absorbed). Add crumbled fresh goat cheese (2 tbs) and fresh thyme (from our herb garden) to taste. Adjust seasoning if needed. We also added small cubes of oven roasted root vegetables (this was leftover from a previous dish. sweet potato, onion and carrot were tossed with olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper, roasted with garlic and onion at 350F for 45 minutes to one hour).

As an accompaniment, we served barley risotto and oven roasted green beans. This was a very satisfying "comfort" food type dish. The barley has a nutty flavor with a rich mouth feel and a slight "al dente" crunch. Of course, a good red wine is called for. We had a nice Spanish Temperanillo, Caro Dorum 2005.

"Hanpen" fish cake stuffed with perilla and cheese はんぺんのシソとチーズ挟み焼き

This is another quick dish and variation of a sauteed "Hanpen" fish cake. This time, I used butter instead of olive oil and stuffed it with perilla and Raclette cheese.

I thawed the "hanpen" and cut it into 4 equal squares. I then cut into the middle of the thickness to make a deep pocket taking care not to cut through. I cut the slice of Raclette cheese to the size of the pocket. I wrapped the piece of cheese with a leaf of perilla and inserted the wrapped cheese into the pocket. I sauteed the packet in butter over a medium flame for a few minutes on each side until the cheese melted and the hanpen nicely browned. I served it with a dab of grated ginger and soy sauce for dipping. It is another simple but good dish which will go with any drink.

"Mozuku" and "Nagaimo" in sweet vinegar モズクと長芋の甘酢

The Japanese eat anything which comes out from the sea and also like combining slimy food with slimy food (double slim or, sometimes, triple slim). I got inspired (??) from the reportedly mediocre dish I saw in Jon's posting. I occasionally get a type of slimy sea vegetable called "Mozuku" もずく, which is already prepared in sweet vinegar and packaged in a plastic cup, which I get frozen. The southernmost archipelago of Japan, Okinawa 沖縄, is famous for Mozuku. Since I had an end piece of "Nagaimo" 長芋 left over, I simply peeled, sliced and made it into match stick shaped pieces. I used sushi vinegar to lightly dress it and placed it over the mozuku and garnished with another type of aquatic vegetable called "aonori" 青のり which is dried and comes as small flakes.

 It was an exceptionally nice day for mid June and we fired up the Konro grill outside and this was a part of the starter dishes pictured below. I already had stewed "hijiki" which I had made previously (middle). The cut glass tumbler from Kitaichi glass (on the right) is tall and a bit unstable so I used "masu" 升, a square wooden Japanese measuring cup, to stabilize it.  This happens to be the common way in which sake is served in an Izakaya. They intentionally pour sake to overflow the cup and let the sake spill over into the "masu" underneath as a gesture of generosity. Although we need not to do that since we are quite generous to ourselves when it comes to sake, I recall Dave was not too happy at Shuto-an 酒徒庵 since they did not serve sake this way.

The nagaimo has a nice crispy texture with some sliminess (but nothing compared to grated nagaimo) and mozuku has a bit similar characteristic and is the perfect match. The sweet vinegar is very gentle and we slurped whatever was left in the cup. Actually, I served this in a crystal sake cup "guinomi" ぐいのみ also from Kitaichi glass, so this was a very natural thing to do.