New Year "Osechi" from sushi Taro 寿司太郎のおせち料理

 We have been feasting on Sushi Taro Osechi Boxes おせち料理 for three days and there is still some left. As usual we picked it up the boxes on the afternoon of December 31. We received two boxes or "Ju-bako" 重箱 neatly wrapped in "Furoshiki" 風呂敷 Japanese wrapping cloth as you can see below. Although this is the 3rd year we've gotten the Sushi Taro Osechi, it was still exciting to peek into the boxes to see what treats are inside.



This is a view of the upper box. Black beans (kuro-mame 黒豆) are in the jar (left upper corner) and steamed sea urchin is in the right upper corner. In the center is a small grilled red fish or "Tai" 小鯛の姿焼き and the right to that is beef tongue, Some items are hidden underneath.



This is the lower box. We love "ankimo" monkfish liver terrine (left upper) and this year, we got more of our favorite "karasumi" からすみ or Japanese bottarga (in the upper center). With these two items alone we can consume a lot of sake. The center row includes sake steamed prawns and chestnuts. The 3rd row contains simmered vegetables, duck breast and simmered octopus.


On New Year's Day, I made a plate with the combination of my dishes and the ones from Sushi Taro Osechi. Although, "Datemaki" 伊達巻き (yellow roll) was also in the box, I served the one I made from "Hanpen" はんぺん fish cake and eggs. Besides "matsukaze yaki" 松風焼き (left lower), salmon kelp roll 鮭の昆布巻き (behind Datemaki) and Kazunoko herring roe 数の子 (below Datemaki, the rest of the items are from the box. I added decorative cuts on the red and white fish cake 紅白蒲鉾. A big prawn was sake steamed and delicious.



Daikon Namatsu 大根なます was also included in the box but I served mine with Ikura salmon eggs and sweet vinear marinated octopus.



This is marinated "Russian" salmon with lemon and onion I made as usual from my mother's recipe.



The below are drinking snacks on January 2. These are all from the box. We had this with red wine. From the left, beef tongue, marinated egg yolk with Brasilian nuts (wonderful!), Sweet potato, Datemaki, Chestnut (shibukawa-ni 渋皮煮), Ankimo terrine (right upper), Daifuki mame beans 大福豆 and cherry petal nagaimo. All went well with the wine.



This could have been a lunch on the second. The left is small molded sushi with cured snapper, the front is my salmon kelp roll.



This could have been the 3rd day appetizers. Duck breast, marinated egg yolk, mustard stuffed burdock root, burdock root with sesame sauce, cumquat simmered in syrup, three rolled items on the right (from the top) are cod roe wrapped in kelp, shrimp cake "shinjo" 海老しんじょう wrapped in "yuba" 湯葉 tofu skin, cured snapper with center of vinegared young ginger "gari" wrapped in kelp. All are excellent but the mustard (mixed with egg yolk??) stuffed burdock root is exceptional and only a "pro" could make the items wrapped in the nori sheets (I think).



I have not mentioned all the nice simmered vegetables and several kinds of marinated grilled fish and other goodies. For the past three days of the New Year, we have been indulging in so many small nice dishes. This is better than Christmas feast (at least for me).

This is January 4th. I again combined items from the box with the ones I made. The marinated grilled fish was best served heated up in the toaster oven.



Although this was a lunch, this type of food begs for sake and we succumbed. For starch, we had grilled mochi Izobemaki 磯辺巻き.



I think we have to stop this sometime soon. We are definitely over indulging. The items below were the ultimate snacks for drinking sake including karasumi, ankimo terrine, cod roe wrapped in kelp, sweet fish with its roe and sake steamed prawn.

With these, we finished a bottle of rather dry but very agreeable Suigei 酔鯨 from Kochi 高知.

Again the boxes from Sushi Taro were fabulous. They make a good New Year an even better New Year. We could get used to this life style!

Boiled Gyoza dumpling 水餃子

Gyoza are very popular in Japan. There are even chain restaurants specializing in gyoza as well as ramen noodle restaurants serving them. There are three main ways to cook gyoza; (1) fry-steam-fry (most common), (2) steam or boil, (3)deep fry. Some time ago I posted pork gyoza which was first browned and then steamed by adding water (and covering with a lid). After the water evaporates, it again browns and crisps up. This time, I decided to boil the dumpling in chicken broth. This type of gyoza is called "Mizu gyoza" 水餃子 ("mizu" means water).

I served boiled gyoza with a dab of yuzukoshou 柚子胡椒 and ponzu sauce ポン酢.

In this version, I added slices of ginger, soy sauce and mirin to the chicken broth in which the gyoza were cooked and used it as a sauce.

Stuffing: This is same as before. I mixed  ground pork (I hand cut the trimming of the pork tenderloins as usual) with sautéed finely chopped onion and shiitake mushroom, boiled and finely chopped cabbage (after they cooled down to the room temperature). The amounts are all arbitrary (if you are “rich” of course use more meat). I seasoned with a small amount of soy sauce, roasted sesame oil, ground ginger and garlic, salt and pepper. I mixed well using my hand until the meat became sticky and the ingredients were bound together.

Gyoza skin: I used American wonton skin (square in shape). I moistened the two adjacent edges of the wonton skin with water. After I placed a teaspoonful of the stuffing in the center, I folded the skin diagonally, pressed it together, and then made a few pleats. This time in order to make the gyoza into pleasing shapes, I used a round cookie cutter to cut off the the edges of the skin after folding it to make a perfect half moon shape but this is optional.

I added chicken broth (my usual low-salt no fat version from Swanson) to a sauce pan and let it come to a boil, I added slices of fresh ginger, soy sauce (I used light-colored soy sauce  or "Usukuchi" 薄口醤油), mirin and sake. I dropped the gyoza into the boiling broth and cooked it for several minutes until the skin became semitransparent and the stuffing was cooked.

I scooped them out using a slotted spoon, placed them on the plate without overlapping. Although we could eat them immediately, I prepared this on a weekend morning when I had some free time. So, I let it cool and covered it with plastic wrap and put in the refrigerator for the evening meal.  In the evening, I warmed them up by dropping them in the warm broth and served as seen in the two pictures above.

By boiling, the skin attained a slightly slippery texture which is quite different from either steam-fried or deep fried gyoza. It seemed reminiscent of ravioli somehow. We still like gyoza made in a traditional fry-steam method but the boiled one could be made in large numbers and even can be frozen. This was a perfect small snack to start the evening.

Happy New Year 2014 明けましておめでとう ２０１４

Happy New Year! It is 2014 and the year of the horse. Last year was eventful with the sad departure of some relatives and some dear friends. Nonetheless we had a memorable visit to Japan in the fall visiting family and friends such as Tako grill in Kuorishi. In addition, we finally got to meet Dave デイブちゃん and Tobias とびちゃん.

On our trip to Japan this year we added white and red horses from Kyoto and a brown one from Asakusa to our collection of zodiac animals.

Beside some new year dishes I made, we again got "Osechi" boxes おせち料理 from Sushi taro 寿司太郎 (more details to come). As usual, we had the New Year's day brunch/feast in our "tea room".

The dishes I made were my mother's "famous" marinated "Russian" salmon ロシア漬け (left lower) and Daikon namasu  なます with vinegared octopus 酢蛸 (left upper), datemami 伊達巻 (yellow roll), Matsukaze-yaki 松風焼き (left of the prawn) and herring roe 数の子 from Hokkaido sent in this year's "care package" by my mother.

We also had our usual "Ozouni" お雑煮 with deep fried tofu pouch-wrapped mochi 餅巾着 (my wife's preference. She claims it is the only way to keep mochi under control and "on a leash"...It tastes good too.)

The sake we had was from Miyagi prefecture, "Uragasumi Zen" Junmai Ginjo 浦霞『禅』純米吟醸. The day was nothing too different from any other year. But still a very nice quiet enjoyable New Year's day. (Details to follow). Happy New Year to all of you and yours!!

"Toba" salmon from Hokkaido 北海道から鮭のとば

My mother, as usual, sent us a “care package” of food for the New Year. Among the items she sent was dried salmon called "Toba". Although I posted about "Toba" before, this batch is much better than what we had before and the shape is also correct. Quoting from my previous post
"Toba とば, written in kanji ideograms as 冬葉 which means "winter leaves". This is a famous item on my home island of Hokkaido. The name, I suppose, comes from the way the strips of salted salmon drying in the cold winter wind resembles brown leaves on the bare branches of trees. Traditional toba is usually very chewy, or sometimes hard like a strip of leather, and very salty. It is sort of the Hokkaido version of beef jerky. This version is considerably "tamed". The skin has been removed and it is cut into smaller pieces. In addition, somehow it has been made much softer, although it is still quite salty."

As you can see below it’s resemblance to narrow blades of a leaf is unmistakable.

This one is also a modern version and is not too salty or too hard like traditional ones. Eating this brought back nostalgic memories of my youth. I remembered that when I was young and bar-hopped in Susukino すすきの,  these were usually served with mayonnaise, soy sauce and tougarashi (Japanese red pepper flakes) mixture as shown below. They were often even delivered to your mouth by an obliging hostess—although I am not sure that improved the flavor in any way.

This and other items came in a box proclaiming "True authentic gifts that only Hokkaidians* can give".

*I am not sure this is a correct Demonym for people of Hokkaido but people in Arcadia is Ardadians, people in Hokkaido could be Hokkaidians or other choice may be Hokkaidoites.

Last time, I succumbed to having this with scotch and water but this time we stayed with red wine. Although I have to admit it probably goes better with the scotch.

Baby octopus braised in garlic butter and soy sauce 飯蛸のバター醤油いため

This was only the second time I saw raw wild caught baby octopus or "Iidako" 飯蛸 in the market and I bought them without hesitation. Although I call it "baby" octopus, it is not a baby or even the young of a large octopus species but just a variety of small octopus. We happened to stop by this market after work on the way home since we had some business to take care of at a near-by location. The last time I found small or baby octopus was at the same market. At that time, I posted grilled baby octopus which was good but a bit on the chewy side. To avoid letting squid or octopus get chewy, I need to cook it either very quickly or for a very long time. Since this was a weekday evening and I didn’t think they would last until the weekend, I did not have much time and I chose the quick approach.

Pictures of the baby octopus, raw, are shown below. (1 lb of which is more than enough for 2 servings as an appetizer). Luckily they were already cleaned and the "beaks" removed (It was a good thing. See this post - in Japanese- to learn how to clean it). After I salted and "kneaded" them in a bowl, I washed them several times with cold running water. Since the first picture (#1) does not show the individual octopus well, I fished one out and placed placed it on top for its portrait (#2). This was one of the larger specimens.

I first parboiled the octopus in rapidly boiling water with a dash of sake (to reduce the "fishy" odor) for 30 seconds (#3). I drained them and cut the larger ones in half or quarters and left the small ones whole. I set them aside.

I melted butter (2 tbs, unsalted) on medium heat and when the butter melted added finely chopped garlic (2 fat cloves). I sautéed for 1 minutes or so until the garlic was fragrant but not browned. I increased the heat and added the parboiled octopus and quickly sautéed for 30-40 seconds and added chopped scallions (3 stalks). I finished the dish with a soy sauce (1/2 tbs) and mirin (1/2 tbs) and cut the heat (#4).

I served them with a sprinkling of Japanese red pepper flakes or ichimi tougarashi 一味唐辛子 (the first picture). This time, the octopus were not tough or chewy at all. They were plump and pleasantly springy in texture which was very nice. They were remarkably fresh and the combinations of butter, garlic and soy sauce cannot go wrong. The mirin added just a slight sweetness to round up the dish. This was a perfect small dish for sake and we had new G-sake from SakeOne with this dish.

Proscuitto wrapped fig イチジクの生ハムまき

This dish was inspired by the menu at Suiko 酔香 in Tokyo. Although we did not order the dish, one of the items listed on the menu was "ichijiku no namahamu maki" イチジクの生ハム巻き or "Prosciutto wrapped fig"*. The group who sat next to us ordered this and I thought of making a similar dish.

* When we lived in California fig trees were all over the place and we could just help ourselves to the nice ripe sweet figs from the trees in our backyard. Probably because of better packaging, figs are now readily available, even on the East coast. But, once we ate figs in Japan, we realized we had not really tasted figs. On our last visit to Tokyo, we bought figs that were mostly from Aichi prefecture 愛知県. They were huge, almost the size of a small baseball. They were also juicy and delicious. One fig per person made a breakfast. We had never seen anything like it and bought them whenever we could. Although the mission figs in the US are quite good, we have never seen the equivalent of the Japanese figs here.

I made two versions of figs and prosciutto. The one shown below is the second one I made. It was better than the first one (the second picture).


Figs: I used Mission figs; one per serving. I peeled the skin and quartered it. Using a half length of Prosciutto, I wrapped the fig. I placed fresh goat cheese on top and put a toothpick through (to hold it together). I drizzled good fruity olive oil and aged (syrupy) Balsamic vinegar over it. I also added freshly cracked black pepper. These additions definitely improved the dish.

The picture shown below was the fist version in which I wrapped half of the peeled fig with a full length of Prosciutto.



The first version was a bit too large to eat in one bite. This particular  prosciutto was not the best--a bit tasteless, although the almost sweet tasting balsamic vinegar combined with the sweetness of the fig was nice. The goat cheese, black pepper, olive oil plus the smaller size of the second version made the dish easy to eat and gave it more flavor dimensions.

This dish went particularly well with the California red (Robert Storey Cab 2007 from Napa) we were drinking.

Potato salad with pickled myouga and rakkyo らっきょうとミョウガ入りのポテトサラダ

You may not think potato salad is  Izakaya cuisine but it is one of the most popular items especially as "Otoushi" おとうし. The Japanese version of potato salad is a bit different from the usual American versions, however. For example, the potato salad served in Suiko 酔香 had smoked picked daikon called "Iburi-gakko" いぶりがっこ which gave a unique smoky flavor and crunch. The last time we were back in Sapporo visiting my mother, she added rakkyo らっきょう to her potato salad saying she usually did not have cucumber pickles. We really liked the addition of rakkyo. Rakkyo is cross between scallion and small onion and is usually served as a condiment for a Japanese curry.

For the version below, I added chopped pickled myouga and rakkyo (in sweet vinegar from a jar) to my usual potato salad instead of cornichon. I also added fresh cucumber sliced, salted and dressed with sushi vinegar just before serving. Although thinly sliced fresh cucumber is often included in Japanese potato salad,  I usually do not add it because I am concerned that the cucumber could go bad before the other items in the salad.

I added skinned and sliced tomato arranged in rose shape with seasoned with salt and pepper and a dab of mayonnaise.

In an other version I garnished it with pickled myouga and rakkyo.

Or, served just as is.

We rather like these variations. Both rakkyo and myouga add unique flavor and texture to my potato salad, a perfect small dish to start the evening.