Grilled soft shell crab ソフトシェルクラブの炭焼き

One nice sunny weekend, we stumbled onto a new farmer's market set up in the parking lot of a near-by strip mall. We bought some herbs to plant in our herb garden, nicely sweet and ripe strawberries, hot-house tomatoes (not as good as true summer tomatoes) and a few more items. One of the vendors was a fish monger selling fish from a refrigerated truck. Since they had soft-shell crabs, we could not resist and bought two.

Since it was such a nice sunny day, not too cold not too hot and no overt signs of mosquitos, we really wanted to stay outside. So, we decided to grill the soft-shell crabs instead of cooking them in our usual tempura method.

I somehow forgot to put my camera on "macro" mode and all the pictures I took except for the one (above) were out of focus and I cannot show you what the final servings looked like.

As usual, I started lump charcoal in a chimney starter and use our "Yakitori" grill for this. For basting, I made a mixture of melted butter (non-salted) and olive oil (about 1:1). I heated up the butter and olive oil for a few minutes and added finely chopped shallot. I then seasoned it with black pepper, salt, lemon zest and lemon juice and let it cool down to room temperature.

I brushed the butter mixture on the top side of the crabs and started grilling with the top side down (left in the above picture). After 4-5 minutes when the skin of the crabs turned red and blackend in spots, I basted the underside with the butter mixture and turned it over and cooked another 4-5 minutes (right in the above picture).

Although my picture did not turn out and I cannot show what the final servings looked like, I precut the cooked crabs and served it with grilled asparagus (using the same basting mixture) and grilled tomato halves (skinned, salted and coated with the same butter mixture) and a wedge of lemon. As usual, I also made grilled rice balls as an ending dish with cucumber slices in vinegar dressing with "jako" 胡瓜と雑魚の酢の物.

Although grilled soft-shell crabs are not bad, the skin does not get as crispy as in tempura and we both agreed tempura is the best way to enjoy soft-shell crabs. While edible, the crabs did not entirely meet my wife's standard of freshness, so we will probably not be buying anything else from that vendor. But, at least, we were outside cooking and enjoying the food and wine al fresco.

Shredded carrot salad with Italian chicken tenderloin 人参のサラダ、鶏の笹身イタリアンソテー

This post is not for the chicken tenders but for the carrot salad which was made by my wife. She made it in a rather large quantity so that we could eat it as a "side" with our lunches during the week at work. She is known to have made shredded carrot salad in the past. It was one of the dishes she served when she first invited me for dinner to her apartment ions ago. Back then she used a blender with a bit of water to shred carrots but now she uses a food processor. As a accompaniment for her carrot salad, I made Italian style chicken tenderloin.

Chicken tenderloin: I used three tenderloins for two small servings. I just seasoned them with salt, pepper, dried basel and oregano. I then dredged in yellow corn meal and fried them in olive oil.

I have to ask my wife to fill in for this quite nice shredded carrot salad.

Again this is a recipe based on the one for spiced carrot salad found in the "500 appetizers" cookbook. As usual we could not resist making variations. I shredded a large bag of carrots in the food processor. (Cook the carrots in batches in the micro wave for 30 seconds, stir and cook about another 30 seconds until the carrots get a bit tender but still have crunch).  Then I made a dressing of: 1/2 tsp. ground ginger, 1 tsp. cumin, 1/2 tsp ground coriander, 1/2 tsp paprika, 1/8 tsp cayenne pepper, finely chopped candied ginger to taste, 4 tsp. sushi vinegar, 3 Tbs. olive oil, 2 tsp. chopped mint. I also added about 1 cup of raisins and the juice from 2 limes. I mixed all the spices together with the liquid ingredients and poured the dressing over the carrots and raisins. I let it sit for several hours for the flavors to marry (as a matter-of-fact the salad gets better every day). 

The sweetness of the carrots combined with the raisins and the dressing make a very sweet/savory combination. Over time the carrots exude juice which blends with the dressing. It is a great way to eat your veggies. 

Anchovy and black pepper cookies アンチョビ黒胡椒クッキー

One weekend, my wife was looking through a cookbook titled "500 appetizers". She disappeared into the kitchen and came back with "Anchovy and olive tepanade cheese dip". I asked how many anchovies she used knowing how hard it is to use up an entire tin of anchovies. She said the can was empty but I had to wait until tomorrow. The result is shown below. It looks like a perfectly innocent sweet butter cookie but it delivers quite a surprise. It has the texture and crumb of a sugar cookie but it is savory; with the pleasant salty taste of anchovy, pepper and Parmesan cheese. This is certainly not for desert or an afternoon snack but goes surprisingly well with red wine.

I asked my wife for the recipe.

The cookie dough: 1/2 cup all-purpose flour, 1/4 cup butter chilled, 1/3 cup freshly ground Parmesan cheese, 3 anchovies drained, 1/2 tsp. ground black pepper. Process in a food processor until the ingredients come together into a dough. Make into a ball, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate (my wife chilled it over night). Roll out the dough to about 1/2 inch thick (picture 1) and cut into various shapes with a cookie cutter (picture 2). Put on a lightly greased cookie sheet (picture 3) and bake in a 400 degree oven for about 6 minutes until golden brown (picture 4). 

These are not the cookies to serve with coffee to the bridge club, but as an hors o'dourve accompanied with a full bodied red wine they are very special.

Cheese dip with anchovy and olive tanpenade アンチョビとオリーブ タンペナーデ ディップ

When I made salt kelp cream cheese dip, we were quite impressed with how well the salty kelp flavor went with the cream cheese. When my wife saw the recipe for this cream cheese based olive tanpenade in the "500 Appetizers" cookbook, she must have thought this would compete well with the salt kelp cream cheese.

I asked my wife to fill in here. 

This is based on the recipe in the book but I made some modifications.  Unlike my husband, I followed the recipe. Turned out the initial concoction was too salty to our taste. My husband suggested I add more cream cheese which I did. In addition, I found a log of fresh goat cheese and threw that in too. This made the spread better--his cooking technique tends to be more successful than mine. 

This is the recipe I ended up with. The tepanade: 1 cup of mixed black and green olives, 1 garlic clove, 3 anchovies, 2tsp capers, 1-2 tbsp olive oil, black pepper (to taste), lemon juice (to taste), 1 package of 1/3 fat Philadelphia Cream cheese, 1-13 oz. log of goat cheese. Put all the ingredients in a food processor and blend until it forms a smooth puree. 

The olive and anchovy's saltiness was diluted by the cheese but we could still taste both the olive and anchovy flavors with just enough saltiness. On a cracker, this goes so well with wine. Of course we were drinking reds with this but probably any white wine would work as well.

Sunset at the restaurant on the beach

We were recently on an island in the Caribbean which has achieved notoriety for the notable disappearance of several young ladies. We are pleased to say that we returned after one week of sun, surf, warm weather and cobalt blue water. It was almost like a real life "ground hog day" experience. Every day much the same as the previous day--same weather, same cobalt blue sea, same fellow in white shorts and tennies greeting us to place our same 4 allotted towels under our allotted palapas (grass huts that provide shade). Having said that, there is no doubt that the beaches are spectacular. 

We had dinner at a restaurant that was literally on the beach. The restaurant specialized in fish--fresh fish to be exact (what other kind would a restaurant advertise?) During the day it is a beach much like any other on the island; with palapas and sun bathers lounging under them. In the evening the lounge chairs are removed and the dining tables and chairs are brought out.  As a matter of fact as we were being seated at our ocean side table another waiter was surreptitiously removing the towels and swimming paraphernalia of a guest who had left them behind unaware of the transformation that occurred to the beach at sunset. There is little that can describe the freedom of sitting at a table with your bare feet planted in cool fine white sand watching the sun sink into the ocean in a display of pastel pinks and blues. The dinner did not disappoint. The appetizer of shrimp kabob on lemon grass  was flavorful and the shrimp were impeccably fresh and succulent. One dish was local grouper, the other was chilean sea bass. The grouper was the better of the two dishes. Chilean sea bass?? We don't entirely understand the dearth of local fish available on Caribbean islands where fish are literally swimming with the guests just off the beach. But local markets or restaurants do not appear to have any local fish to sell--somehow salmon and tuna do not strike us as local fish.  Someone told us that if we went to a nearby dock in the late afternoon when the fishing boats came in we could buy fish right off the boat. We went to the dock but there were no boats, no fishermen, no fish. Joke on us? We noticed this absence of fish as pervasive to almost all Caribbean islands we have visited (an N of 4). We speculate that fishing may not pay as well as working in the tourism industry, to which we are contributors. In any case, the fish at this restaurant was good and with our bare feet firmly planted in sand not even Anthony Bourdain could not say food served under these conditions "sucks". Aaaah, the joy of a vacation on a tropical island!

Garlic chive omelet ニラ玉

Japanese really like garic chives or nira ニラ. I see garlic chives rarely in the regular grocery store but, fortunately, we have garlic chives growing in our herb garden and they just emerged for spring. When I told our Japanese landscaper that our garlic chives tend to be tough, he told me to cut them off frequently even if you do not eat what you cut. That way, new teder shoots will keep coming up. So, I am harvesting occasionally even if I do not use it.

Japanese think the combination of garlic chives and eggs is particularly good. This dish, "Nira-tama",  "nira" means garlic chives and "tama" is short for "tamago" meaning eggs, is one of these dishes and must have a root in a chinese dish.

As long as you have fresh garlic chives, this is an easy dish. There appears to be two basic styles; for one the eggs just get scrambled with the garlic chives and in the other is to mix the chives and eggs to make a round omelet. The difference may seem subtle but the end result is different in consistency--the round one is almost like a Spanish tortilla. I chose the latter and also made a sauce or "an" 餡.

Fresh garlic chives (one small bunch) chopped into small pieces. I mixed the pieces into the beaten eggs (2 large) and seasoned with salt and pepper (left). In a small no-stick frying pan, I added vegetable oil and sesame oil (1:1 total of about 3 tsp) and cooked it on medum low flame for a few minutes and flipped over (right)

For the sauce, I simply mixed dashi (1/4 cup), soy sauce (1 tbs) and mirin (1 tbs). When it came to a boil, I added a potato starch slurry made with sake (2 tsp) to thicken the sauce. You could add vinegar to make it a sweet and sour sauce or add hot sauce to make it spicy.

I served this as a drinkng snack. This late spring/early summer garlic chives were tender but did not have a strong flavor--it was a classic taste of the season. I served this with asazuke of cucumber, daikon and carrot, blanched broccolini with mustard soy sauce dressing or "Karashi souyu" 芥子醤油.

Pan fried shad roe with bacon シャド 魚卵のベーコン焼き

My understanding is that shad is type of fish which lives in the ocean (Atlantic in the U.S.) but swims up the river to spawn in spring. I do not think a similar fish exists in Japan. The roe of this fish is more valuable than the fish itself. It is also very seasonal and only appears in fish markets, in March and April. The first time I saw shad roe, I was a bit surprised to learn that Americans eat "fish eggs".  As I mentioned before, when I made shrimp roe with scrambled eggs, the classic way to cook shad roe is scrambled with hen's eggs as a breakfast, which was also surprising to me since "fish" or "fishy" food are usually not eaten for breakfast in the U.S.. I mentioned in passing, when I posted simmered cod roe "Tarako", that I could make a similar dish with shad roe.  

Speaking of seasonal food or shun 旬 (which is mostly lost since almost everything is available year around), it also applies to "soft shell crab" season. So one evening, on the way home from work, we stopped at the near-by gourmet grocery store and got live (until it was cleaned) soft shell crabs (which was consumed as "tempura" immediately that evening) and shad roe (which was prepared for the next evening and is the subject of this post).

I asked my wife how she likes shad roe to be prepared. She was not keen on the idea of simmering it in the broth in a Japanese style. She told me of how her grandparents looked forward to shad roe season and brought them home with much fan fare mostly to be served with eggs at breakfast but also in the traditional way with bacon. She mentioned that aside from caviar, shad roe were the only fish eggs she had ever eaten before she met me.  So in honor of her nostalgia,  I cooked these roe American style as you see in the picture above. Shad roe is similar to tarako or cod roe but the eggs are a bit coarser.  I panfried it in browned butter and bacon fat and finished it in an oven. As a side I made sautéed shimeji mushrooms and baby spinatch using the remaining bacon fat and butter.

Shad roe: I removed the membrane connecting two roe sacks first and then soaked them in cold salted water (taste just salty, 3%??) in a sealable container which can hold the roe sacks comfortably in a refrigerator for over night. You could skip this step but since we were having soft shell crabs that evening, this was a perfect step for us. It removes some of the fishy taste/smell and also brines or seasons it. Next day, I removed them from the salt water and patted them dry using paper towels. I then seasoned them with salt and pepper (left in the picture below). I then dredged with flour.

Cooking: I first slowly cooked one strip of bacon in a frying pan (for 7-10 minutes) until the bacon fat was rendered and the bacon became crispy. I set aside the bacon and added a pat of butter (1/2 tbs) and turned up the flame to medium. When the butter melted and started browning, I put the shad roe in and cooked for 2 minutes.Then carefully turned them over (the roe was still soft) and cooked it for another minutes or so until the surface get brown and crispy (another 2-3 minutes). I finished cooking in a 350F oven for 5 minutes. It is important not to over cook. I was aiming for, when pressed, soft but somewhat elastic texture (I read somewhere that this was described as "like a ripe avocado").

For the sides, after I removed the roe and set it aside, I put, in the same frying pan on medium flame, the mushrooms and sautéed them for several minutes seasoned with salt and pepper. I pushed the mushrooms aside and sautéed baby spinach next until wilted (less than 1 minute), again, seasoned with salt and pepper.　

I sliced the shad roe and garnished with crispy bacon bits and chopped parsley and served with wedges of lemon. I think that any Japanese would like this dish and it will sell in Izakaya. The shad roe has a just slightly fishy taste with a nice consistency (like that of a meatball) and browned butter and bacon fat combination cannot go wrong.