Sweet potato croquet さつまいものコロッケ

When we barbecue chicken in the Weber grill, we often make baked sweet potato. My wife mashes it and seasons it with butter and soy sauce. We had some of this mashed sweet potato and barbecued chicken left over from our last barbecue. I came up with  this dish as leftover control.

I served these croquets with Montparnasse cauliflower,blanched broccoli, shredded cabbage and skinned thinly sliced  tomato arranged  to look like a rose flower. I served Tonkatsu sauce and Japanese hot mustard on the side.



The amount below makes about 4 croquets.

Mashed sweet potato: about 1 cup
Onion: small or half of a medium, finely chopped
Chicken: cooked thigh meat, finely chopped about 1/2 cup
Panko bread crumbs:
Egg:
Curry powder (optional)

I sautéed the onion until soft in light olive oil, added the chicken, curry powder. I let it cool down a bit and mixed it with the mashed sweet potato. I made 4 flat oval shaped discs. I dredged them in flour, egg water and Panko bread crumbs.  I placed them in the refrigerator for several hours before frying.

This time I deep fried the croquets in 350F vegetable oil, for 2-3 minutes turning once (all the ingredients are cooked so you just want to make a crunchy crust). I could also have "shallow" fried them.

For leftover control, this is not bad at all.

Venison tenderloin with juniper berry, rosemary red wine sauce 鹿肉のワインソース添え

One of my friends went deer hunting and bagged a "Bambi" (or more likely a yearling. He said it did not have white spots) and gave me a small piece of tender loin. Since the meat was small  and irregular in shape rather a medallion, I made this quick small dish with a crushed Juniper berry and fresh rosemary wine sauce as an appetizer. I did not follow any particular recipe for this. (By-the-way the red liquid in the picture, is the sauce).


Venison: I just seasoned it with salt and pepper and cooked it in a frying pan with olive oil for few minutes and let it rest on a plate covered loosely in aluminum foil. Just before serving, I cut it into bite sized pieces. The center was slightly pink.

Sauce: Since we had a half open bottle of an unusual (for Spanish wine) red blend called Pago de Larrainzar Navarra Red blend 2005 (blend of Merlot, Cab, and Tempranillo), I decided to use this for my wine sauce. This wine (appears to have some problems with corks) did not taste great to our palate but we deemed it good enough for a wine sauce. I did not have any shallots, so I used a small onion instead, finely diced. I sautéed it in melted butter using the same pan in which the venison was cooked. After the onion got soft, I added crushed juniper berries (2) and finely chopped fresh rosemary (one small sprig). I added about 1/2 cup of the afore-mentioned red wine and reduced it to just coating the bottom of the pan. I finished the sauce with pats of butter. I seasoned it with salt and pepper and poured it over the meat thorough a fine meshed strainer.

The venison was very tender and not too gamy. The wine sauce went very well. Of course, for this dish, we needed to open a decent red. B cellars Blend 25 2006 from Napa was a bit usual from Napa since it is a blend of Cab (68%) and syrah (32%) like some Aussie wines. This one got 91 from WA. We liked this wine and it was a perfect match for the venison.

Blackened Brussels sprouts and chestnut salad 黒焼き芽キャベツと栗のサラダ

Although I posted blackened Brussels sprouts salad before, we made some variations after Thanksgiving when we made blackened Brussels sprouts. This was also inspired by the dish we had recently at Nojo restaurant.

The first picture below is a combination of baked chestnuts and blackened Brussels sprout seasoned with a bit of syrupy balsamic vinegar and Japanese red pepper flakes (Ichimi tougarashi 一味唐辛子). The addition of chestnuts is my wife's idea. We took a short cut and used whole roasted chestnuts in a jar.



This one is placed on the bed of baby arugula and dressed with a mixture of soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, Japanese red pepper flakes.



Making blackened Brussels sprout cannot be easier except for the preparation of the Brussels sprouts which is a bit tedious.

Wash and cut the bottom to remove outer (blemished) layers. If large, I cut them into half or quarters (to increased the surface which can get blackened).
Place the prepared Brussels sprouts in the bowl, add enough olive oil to coat the Brussels sprouts.  Then sprinkle on salt and pepper and toss to coat. Spread the Brussels sprouts on the cookie sheet with cut side down and bake it for 45 minutes in a preheated 375F oven (#1).
Add the prepared chestnuts (cut in half or quarters) for the last 15 minutes or bake the chestnuts for 15 minutes separately (#2) then mix into the blackened Brussels sprouts  (#4).

I made the dressing (#3) which is a mixture of balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, honey and olive oil. Later we tried just a small drizzle of a good syrupy Balsamic vinegar and red pepper flakes. The latter was as good or even better. So I would not bother to make a dressing.



This dish is very good cold or room temperature, although hot out of the oven is the best. It does heat up nicely in a microwave oven as well.

I did not imagine I would say "I love Brussels sprouts" but I do now.

"Nuta" salad from frozen yellow fin tuna 冷凍キハダマグロのぬた

Although I have posted a similar dish before, I made a slight variation from my usual recipe when I recently thawed a block of frozen yellow fin tuna. (As I mentioned this frozen tuna is my emergency tuna supply which I keep in the freezer). The quality of the tuna is not good and requires some effort to make palatable. Here I made “nuta” salad with “yubiki” tuna, blanched greens of scallion, wakame seaweed, cucumber and nagaimo with vinegar miso dressing.


One of the reasons I made this dish was that we had a similar dish (made with better quality tuna) at Kappa in San Francisco.

Block of yellow fin tuna: I used about 1/3 of the block. After thawing, I put the block in boiling water with a dash of sake for 10-15 seconds until the surface turned white all over. I then put it in ice water. After 30 seconds, I fished the tuna block out of the water and patted it dry with a paper towel. I cut the tuna into bite size cubes.
Scallion: I only used the green part of the scallion (4-5 stalks), I cut them into 1 inch segments and blanched them for 1 minute, then soaked them in ice water and drained.
Wakame seaweed: I used salted and frozen wakame (not dry one). I washed it to remove the salt and soaked it in cold water for 10-15 minutes to hydrate. I cut it into short segments.
Cucumber and Nagaimo: Both were cut into small dices (skin peeled from nagaimo).
Dressing: This is my usual karashi sumiso dressing.
This low- quality frozen yellow fin tuna tasted quite decent in this dish.

I also made “Namerou” of tuna with garlic, ginger, scallion and miso (above) which was quite palatable with sips of cold sake.

I also made “Yamakake” using the remaining block of tuna. I marinated the small cubes of tuna in a mixture of sake and soy sauce in the refrigerator for a few hours prior to serving.

With these three dishes, we finished the entire block of yellow fin tuna.

"Yuba" tofu 湯葉豆腐

I saw this recipe on the Internet. Since my attempt at making tofu from store bought soy milk was somewhat less than successful and a bit more work than warranted by the end product.  The idea of making a tofu-like dish using gelatin and soy milk appealed to me. This was very simple to make and the texture was great. The original recipe called for thinly sliced fresh okra as a garnish. Since I did not have fresh okra, I used "pickled" okra instead (below).

Here is another version of the garnish; finely chopped scallion, nori strips and a dab of yuzukosho and Ponzu sauce.

I am just translating from the original recipe. This will make very generous servings for two.

Water 2 Tbs
Gelatin powder 4grams
Soy milk (unsweetened and un-flavored) 360ml
Salt a small pinch

I mixed water and gelatin in a small cup and let it sit for a few minutes. I put the store bought non-sweetened and non-flavored soy milk and salt in a small sauce pan on a low flame until it started just gently boiling. I cut the flame and mixed in the gelatin bloomed in water. I mixed well and dissolved the gelatin. I poured the mixture into a small Pyrex baking dish. When the mixture cooled to room temperature, I covered it with plastic wrap and placed it in the refrigerator overnight.
The next day, I scooped it out into a serving bowl and garnished with sliced pickled okra and poured Ponzu sauce (from a bottle) on top.


This has a nice smooth mouth feel and is quite good. The first few bites had a subtle almost vanilla flavor (even though the soy milk was supposedly unflavored). Probably I should use fresh instead of pickled okra. The pickle was a bit too strong relative to the very delicate soybean flavor of the dish. The dish I garnished with scallion and nori strips and yuzukosho was better. I think this is almost like silken tofu (the texture is subtly  different, though) and much easier to make than real tofu from store bought soy milk.

Chicken breast, pickled myouga salad 鶏肉、冥加甘酢サラダ

This is a small starter dish I made from leftovers and it was not bad.

I made a sautéed chicken breast a few days ago using a technique I saw on-line which results in a very moist chicken breast when cooked. Essentially, the chicken breast was cut into bite sized pieces. It is then pounded to break some of the muscle fiber and then kneaded with a small amount of "shiro-dashi" 白出し, sake and potato starch. It is left to sit for 10-15 minutes. I then pan fried both sides. It appears the chicken breast was more flavorful and more moist than when cooked by other methods but any cooked chicken will do for the salad I am describing here..



For this small salad, I added the cooked chicken. I also cut American mimi-cucumber in snake belly or Jabara 蛇腹 and then cut into 1 inch chunks. I finely chopped pickled myouga 茗荷. I mixed the chicken, cucumber and pickled myouga and dressed them with  some pickling sweet vinegar. I placed baby arugula on the bottom of a shallow glass bowl, I placed the mixture of  the chicken, cucumber and myouga on top. I also placed a dab of "moromi-miso" 諸味味噌 and garnished it with a pickled myouga.

Each items has its own flavor and the gentle taste of sweet vinegar was complimented by the nutty, sweet and slightly salty flavor of moromi miso.

Nojo restaurant in San Francisco 農場レストラン

 Yakitori 焼き鳥 or grilled chicken (plus pork and vegetables) on a skewer is one of our favorite Izakaya-style food. When we visited New York, we went to "Torishin" 鳥心 which tried to reproduce an authentic (albeit cleaned-up or up-scale) Japanese Yakitori place or Yakitori-ya 焼き鳥屋 in New York. In contrast, "Nojo" 農場 (meaning "farm") in the Mission district of San Francisco is not trying to be an authentic Yakitori-ya but more of an American eatery which serves Yakitori (very authentic and good) as well as Japanese-inspired dishes not served on a stick. The story of how chef/owner Greg Dunmore decided to open a Yakitori restaurant is posted on their web site.
When we arrived, the restaurant was quite busy and noisy. There were a number of tables as well as a counter along the front of an open kitchen (main kitchen behind the wall). In the center of the open kitchen, was the grilling station or "Yakidai" 焼き台 which appears to be using gas rather than charcoal or electricity as a heat source. As you can see in the picture below the decor had some Japanese touches but over all the atmosphere was that of an American neighborhood eatery. The clientele did not appear to be Japanese (while we were there I was the only representative of that group). They were mostly young, local residents.



The tables for two were very close together. We had to be careful when being seated to not knock something over on the table next to us.  Conversation was almost impossible because of the high noise level. We sat for quite some time before someone acknowledged our existence. (It is torture to sit, hungry, in a restaurant and watch delicious looking food being delivered to other tables). Once we got on the wait staff’s radar screen, however, service improved. We started by choosing sake. They had a short but decent sake list (and beer, wine and chochu) and we settled for Wakatake Onigoroshi Junmai ginjo 若竹鬼殺し純米吟醸 from Shizuoka 静岡 (a safe choice). Because the service appeared slow, we decided to order most of what we wanted to try all at once and up front to avoid long waits between deliveries. Although we ordered everything in a jumble, we were impressed by how they sorted out the meal by grouping our orders. They did not serve everything at once. Dishes came out in an orderly progression that showed careful consideration to combining tastes and textures that went well together.
First came blackened Brussels sprouts. We have tried many recipes for Brussels sprouts and until we stumbled on blackened sprouts my wife was the only Brussels sprouts fan in the family.  So, among the salads and vegetable dishes they offered, we chose this dish. It was a nice size for us to share. It had a nice sauce (soy sauce and balsamic vinegar?) and some heat (Japanese Ichimi tougarashi 一味唐辛子?) with thin strips of what appeared to be cabbage but later we realized it was "Yuba" 湯葉.  We both liked this dish and it was a perfect starter.



We love Yakitori chicken wings but the yakitori menu did not contain wings. Instead, we found "crispy deep fried wings" on the not-on-a-stick menu and decided to try them. They served a generous amount (probably 6 wings and drummets)  but we started eating before we remembered to take a picture. So the below  picture shows just one each of wing and drummet. This was also a big hit. Very nice crispy skin and seasoning was just great. It was marinated first and deep dried with flour (rice flour?) and additional seasoning (some kind of flavored salt?).



Then the Yakitori started appearing. We had, neck meat ("seseri" せせり), skin ("kawa", かわ), and pork jowl ("kashira" かしら). Neck and Skin were rather small skewers but were excellent.  Pork jowl is fatty meat from the head/neck areas of the pig(I learned that bacon made from jowl was very popular in the South). It is also delectably “deadly” as our favorite pork belly (picture below).



Then came what was probably the best dish of the evening--candied duck liver (picture below). It was a good sized portion; perfect for us to share (again we had eaten most of it before the picture was taken), deep fried coated in some type of batter and then seasoned in sweet sticky sauce served on the bed of lettuce and radons of bacon.

The duck liver was not gamy and had a nice texture (especially if you like the texture of cooked liver). The lettuce was a good cool contract to this rich liver dish.

We ordered few more items which were "tsukune" つくね with egg yolk sauce, bacon wrapped mochi 餅のベーコン巻き and "automnal tsukemono" 漬物. Tsukune was good, served with a soy sauce based sauce and a raw egg yolk (hope the egg came from a near-by "farm" and was safe). We loved the bacon wrapped mochi (it instantly converted my wife to an ardent mochi fan. How can you go wrong with bacon wrapped anything?) We’d like to try something similar at home later. The only disappointment of the evening was  the "Tsukemono". They tasted almost like regular pickles out of a jar and did not have the subtle taste and crunch we would expect from such a dish.

Although we were quite full,  my wife wanted to try "Black sesame ice cream"as a desert.  It was quite good and interesting. For some reason, they gave us the dessert gratis (Thank you). We liked this place and will come again if we have a chance. After eating there we can see why it is so popular and forgive them the initial lapse in service. Next time, we will try the counter which will be easier for us to talk, although I am not sue if we can make a reservation at the counter.

Information on "Nojo"
Nojo restaurant 農場レストラン

231 Franklin Street, San Francisco

415-896-4587

http://www.nojosf.com/