Egg plant and tofu braised in miso and pork 茄子と豆腐の肉味噌風味

This is a very tamed-down variation of Mapo doufu 麻婆豆腐. Mapo doufu is originally a Szechuan (Sichuan) dish but it has been modified and adapted to different tastes and countries. Japan has its own adaptation which is not all that spicy. It has been a very popular Sino-Japanese dish. More recently, Japanese are trying to make it more authentic (and spicy). I used to make semi-authentic one using both black bean garlic sauce 蒜蓉豆鼓醤, chili garlic sauce 蒜蓉辣椒醬 but my wife and Mapo doufu did not get along that well and I have not made this for a long time. I decided to remake this classic Szechuan dish in a non-authentic Japanese way.

I used to make two different version of Mapo doufu; One is with tofu and egg plant, which can be made as a vegetarian dish, and another, similar to the authentic recipe, with tofu and ground pork. This version is combination of these two; I used Italian eggplant, ground pork, and fresh shiitake mushroom in addition to tofu. If I get small Japanese eggplants, I will leave the skin on but, for Italian egg plant, I peel the skin.

For any Chinese-style stir fry, everything should be ready to go before starting.

Ground pork: As ususal, I hand chopped the trimming of pork tenderloins (about 1/2 lb). I sauteed in a wok with small amount of vegetable oil and dash of dark sesami oil on a high flame, so that it will cook quickly without exuding too much liquid and set aside.

Egg plant: I peeled and diced Italian egg plant (1/2 inch cubes, one medium).

Tofu: I diced firm tofu (one package, 1/2 inch cubes) and blanched, drained and set aside.

Additional vegetables: I sliced fresh shiitake mushrooms (6-7 medium) and blanched snap peas (8). 

Seasoning: I chopped scallion (3-4 tbs, with some set aside for garnish), garlic (1 tsp or one fat clove) and ginger (1 tsp). I used a Japanese miso* (2 tbs), mirin (3 tbs) and chicken broth (about 1/2 cup), soy sauce (1/2 tbs). As a thickener, I dissolved potato starch (1 tbs) in sake (3 tbs) in small container and set aside. (* I could have used Chinese fermented black bean garlic sauce but I am making this in a Japanese style.)

Stir frying: I added vegetable oil (3 tbs) with a dash of dark sesame oil in a hot wok on a high flame and add scallion, garlic and ginger. When they were fragrant, added miso, then the egg plant and stir fried for several minutes and added mirin. After the alcohol has evaporated, add the cooked ground pork, tofu, and mushroom. Use your fancy "Iron Chef" moves to stir and flip (optional). I added the chicken broth and put on the lid, turned down the heat and let it simmer for 5 minutes. I stirred in soy sauce and the potato starch slurry to thicken the sauce. I taste it and adjust seasoning (you could add sugar or more soy sauce). I added a small amount of freshly ground white pepper at this point (I had to remember the whole exercise here is to not make it spicy). I splash a little bit of sesame oil on the surface, garnished it with chopped scallion (or chopped cilantro if you prefer) and arranged the blanched snap peas (or any green such as blanched broccoli or no green).

This is a totally Japanized version and is very mild in taste but still very good as is or over hot white rice. This one gets along better with my wife.

Chicken Paillard with tomato, fennel, and olive 鶏胸肉パイヤードのオーブン焼き, トマト, フェネルとオリーブのせ

We saw this on one of the episodes of "Avec Eric" and thought this was a perfect small dish to go with wine. I mostly followed his recipe. This dish requires a lots of ingredients and chopping but is relatively easy to cook and tastes great. One chicken breast (picture below) will be perfect as a main dish per person. You could cut it into wedges like a pizza and that will be the perfect as "Otsumami" おつまみ or drinking snack. Fresh fennel may be a difficult ingredient to get in Japan. We like its unique anise-like flavor.

I did not really measure each ingredient as usual and the amounts are guesstimates for two chicken breasts. Please refer to Eric Ripert's original recipe for more precise instructions.

Chicken breast: I used boneless skinless breasts. I butterflied them and then pounded the thicker parts with a meat pounder to make the thickness even as well as sort of round in shape. I seasoned it salt and pepper.

Toppings: Place all the ingredients in a bowl; fennel (1/2 cups, sliced paper thin. I used a Japanese mandolin called "Benriner"), shallots (2 small, thinly sliced), garlic (one fat clove, finely chopped), caper (1 tbs, packed in oil), tomato (4 Campari, skinned and thinly sliced), pine nuts (2 tbs, dry roasted on a frying pan), fresh thyme (very small amount from our garden, finely chopped), green olives (10 small pitted and sliced) and raisins (2 tbs, plumped up by soaking in sake, the original recipe uses, more appropriately, white wine). Season with salt and pepper and good olive oil (few tbs) and mix.

Baking: I placed two chicken paillards in a 12 inch non-stick flying pan (or a large baking dish), put the toppings on, drizzled good olive oil over and around the paillards. I placed the pan in a convection oven (top rack) preheated to 450F for about 15-17 minutes or until the chicken is done.

I placed the paillard on the plate, spooned the pan juice over and drizzled good extra-virgin olive oil and garnished with finely chopped parsley and basil (very pitiful looking basil --the last of the season from our herb garden).

Au jus from the chicken and vegetable mixed with olive oil makes a wonderful sauce. We mopped up the sauce with my wife's home baked rye and whole wheat boule.  Although white wines such as Chardonnay or lighter reds (Rhone, Languedoc or Pinot noir either from new or old worlds) may have been a better pairing, we had this with William Knuttel Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 2005. This is a very decent California cab, if not spectacular but medium bodied, and went very well with this dish. Despite so many ingredients, all the individual flavors came through with a nice rounding taste of fresh fruity olive oil. The veggies on top kept the chicken moist and succulent. Overall this is a very nice dish. Although I have not tried it, if you can not get fresh fennel, I think, celery may be used instead. The flavors will be different but it may work.

Bitter melon "chanpuru" stir-fry with tofu, pork and egg ゴーヤチャンプルー

This is based on a recipe from "Otsumami Yokocho" Volume 1, page 71. "Chanpuru" has many recipe variations. "Chanpuru" in Okinawan means "to mix or mixed" as I understand it. The one with bitter melon (or goya ゴーヤ), "Goya Chanpuru", appears to be the most popular type of Chanpuru. This dish was not at all known outside Okinawa 沖縄 when I lived in Japan (especially in Hokkaido which is the other end country) but now it has become a very popular dish all over Japan. It even made an appearance in "Otsumami Yokocho". I made a few changes in the recipe; for one thing, I refuse to use Spam in my dish, as instructed by the original recipe.

Bitter melon or "goya" (in Okinawan language, "nigauri" 苦瓜 in Japanese but "goya" ゴーヤ is how this vegetable is called all over Japan now) has been available in Chinese markets here in the U.S. I found this one of the regular supermarket and decided to make this dish.

For two small servings to accompany sake, I used bitter melon (1/2), firm tofu (1/3), and egg (1, beaten). I did not use Spam as called for in the recipe (my wife absolutely prohibits me from even mentioning the name because of her childhood experience while at summer camp where they served spam literally for breakfast, lunch and dinner--too much of a good thing). Instead I used another pork product; thinly sliced leftover roasted pork tenderloin (5-6 slices). I suppose, in an authentic Okinawan recipe, some kind of salt preserved pork is used but Spam has been also popular there (due to American military influences).

Bitter melon: I cut it in half lengthwise and scoped out the inner "guts" (seeds and whatever around them) using a teaspoon. I sliced the halves into 2-3 mm (1/8 inch) thickness (It can be thicker if you like). I salted, mixed and let stand for 30 minutes. I washed them in water and squeezed out the excess moisture by wringing the pieces in a paper towel. This process reduces the bitterness but if you like the bitter taste skip this step.

Tofu: I wrapped it in a paper towel with a small plate on the top as a weight and let it sit on the cutting board for 30 minutes, so that the water content is reduced. I cut the tofu in half to increase the surface areas.

In a non-stick frying pan on a medium flame, I added dark roasted sesame oil (1 tbs) and the tofu cubes without crumbling them. I fried them for 5 minutes on each side or until the surface browned. I moved the tofu to the side of the frying pan and added the bitter melon slices and stir fried for 2-3 minutes. Then I added the pork. I took the tofu I just browned, crumbled it and continued to stir fry it together with the other ingredients for another minute or two. I seasoned with salt, pepper, and soy sauce (1/2 tsp, optional). I added the beaten egg next and stirred. When the egg was cooked, I remove the dish from the heat.

This is a very homey comforting dish and the slight bitter taste of "goya" is rather unique. This will go well with any drink but especially with sake or maybe with "awamori" 泡盛 (not for us though).

Flat iron steak with wasabi butter sauce 和風ステーキのわさびバターソース

This is another variation of Japanese style steak. It is simple to make since it does not require marinading and we like it very much. The sauce is made of soy sauce, sake, butter and wasabi and this combination is wonderful. Any cuts of steak will work but here I used a flat iron steak. Fillet mignon is another cut very much suited for this type of preparation but when I use FM, I make the slices thicker. I simply seasoned the steak with salt and black pepper and browned it in a frying pan for few minutes each side and finished it in a 400F oven for 5-8 minutes. Let it rest on a plate loosely covered with aluminum foil for medium rare. After 5 minutes of resting, I sliced into thin strips. The sauce is made by degrazing the pan with sake (2-3 tbs), dislodging all the brown bits and reducing so that only a thin layer covers the bottom of the pan. Then, add soy sauce (1-2 tsp). Finish with butter (3-4 thin pats of butter, about 1 tbs). Shut down the flame and desolve real wasabi (as much as you like). The side dish shown here is blanched "bok choy" which was dressed with karashi-jouyu 芥子醤油 or Mustard-soy sauce (Japanese hot mustard, a bit of sugar and soy sauce). To make sure, I also added a small dab of wasabi on the side. The sauce is very nice and this can go with red wine or sake very well.

Izakaya cookbooks

I added a short description of the Izakaya cookbooks that I find useful. You can access the description using the tab third from the left located above. Unfortunately only one of the cookbooks is in English. Other Japanese cookbooks written in English also contain some dishes appropriate for Izakaya and I may be able to list them in the future.

Egg miso 卵味噌

Flavored Miso is perfect to "nibble/lick" as you sip sake. It also works well as a condiment for hot rice. This one is based on a condiment for rice I ate as breakfast when I was a kid. This is also a perfect Izakaya food. My mother made this using a large scallop shell as the pan. She told us that this was the way her father used to cook this dish. The miso and egg were well cooked, even a bit burned at the periphery but loose in the middle. I recall that I enjoyed the different tastes, textures and degrees of doneness of this dish. I do not have any idea what the recipe was except that it was made from egg and miso. Since the scallop shells I have are too small to use as the cooking vessel, I made this in a small frying pan. As a result the end product may not be that similar to what I had as a child. Without a specific recipe I made it according to my whim.

I first finely chopped garlic, ginger, and shallot  (I am sure scallion or onion will also do but I happened to have a half of a large shallot). I added a small amount of light olive oil and a dash of dark sesame oil to a small frying pan and sauteed the garlic, ginger and shallot mixture until fragrant and the shallot was soft (2-3 minutes). I added miso, mirin and sake and mixed well on a low flame (amounts are all arbitrary). After everything was combined, I kept stirring until the mixture became somewhat thick (not to the original miso consistency but softer). I then added one beaten egg and mixed until the egg was just cooked.

This was not too bad but it wasn't like the one I remembered. Maybe I should have added more eggs and I will have to be on the look-out for a really big scallop in the shell. It went well with cold sake, however. As a shime 締め or finishing dish,  we used this as a condiment when we had leftover and microwaved chestnut rice. That was also quite good. The only problem is that this dish is rather salty. As a result over indulgence in sake may occur. I may have to experiment a bit more to make this dish better.

Oyster and tofu "nabe" in miso broth 牡蛎の味噌鍋

It is getting cold especially in the morning and evening here in DC. We even had snow. We are definitely getting into "Nabe"  鍋 season. When I posted "Nabemono" 鍋物, I mentioned "Dotenabe" 土手鍋, which is famous in the Hiroshima 広島 region. It uses miso smeared (or "schmeared" in NY and NJ) around the rim of a pot (resembling a "bank" made of soil, "dote" 土手 in Japanese, along the river)  with dashi broth poured in the center of the pot. You dissolve the miso into the broth as you cook. Oysters, for which Hiroshima is famous, among other ingredients, have to be included, in this nabe dish. I found a variation of this dish in the 1st volume of "Otsumami Yokocho" おつまみ横町 P149, I decided to make this nabe dish. When I was choosing which vessel I was going to use for this dish, I found this one (below). I completely forgot that we had it. It is a miniature (about 7-8 inches), imitation cast iron (I guess it is made of cast aluminum with anonized surface) "nabe" with a wooden lid. It is a perfect vessel for this dish.

Here it is when the lid was lifted and the oysters were revealed. When I read the recipe, I immediately thought I had to modify this. The seasoning broth, as instructed, would be too salty and way too sweet for our taste. Besides, I needed some green.

Oyster: The oysters we got were not the best. I bought some already shucked and in a plastic container (I am no sure if they had been pasteurized, probably not). There were a total of 10-12 medium to small oysters. I washed them in salted water, drained and put them on layers of paper towels.

Tofu: I used 3/4 leftover tofu from when I made other dish. I cut it into cubes as seen above.

Miso broth: This is where I deviated from the recipe. I mixed sake (1/2 cup), miso (1.5 tbs or a bit more), and sugar (0.5 tbs). The original calls for sake (1/4 cup), miso (3 tbs) and sugar (1 tbs). In addition, imitating the traditional "dotenabe" flavor, I char the surface of the miso lightly using a small kitchen blow torch (every home cook should have one) to enhance the fragrant flavor of miso before dissolving it in sake.

After the miso broth came to a simmer, I added the tofu and when it was warmed through, I added the oysters and scallions and cooked for a few minutes or until the oysters are just cooked. Although this may not be enough even for one (you big eaters out there), we shared this. I served this in small individual bowls and, before eating, we sprinkled "sansho" 山椒 powder. You have to have sake with this. The broth was surprisingly good. Even though I reduced the amount of sugar, the broth was slightly sweet but also very delicate and excellent. Although this dish was wonderful and we enjoyed it, we could have had better quality oysters. Especially when you use oysters which can be eaten raw, slightly undercooking oysters is the best way to enjoy this nabe.