Pork Curry buns カレー肉まん

One of my food memories growing up in Japan is "Nikuman" 肉まん. It was sold in many small neighborhood stores displayed in a tall white square steam case with glass walls on three sides. (This was long before "Konbini" コンビニ or convenience stores made their appearance and became wide spread in Japan. Now-a-days, "nikuman" and many "unique" variations specific to the particular Konbini-chains are popular in convenience stores). Nikuman is a Japanese variation of Chinese baozi (包子). It is modified to better appeal to the Japanese palate. I remember as a kid, the steaming hot round white bun filled with seasoned pork meat was definitely a comfort food especially on cold winter days in Sapporo. Over the years we tried various frozen nikuman here in US. They were edible but a pale shadow in comparison to the ones from my childhood. We even tried some recently at a small Chinese bakery/eatery in San Francisco Chinatown but it was not what I remembered. Recently one of my friends (Chinese) gave me home-made baozi made by her mother. (I greatly appreciate her sacrifice in parting with some so I could taste them). They were by far the best I’ve had.  The flavor, however, was the original Chinese flavor not the Japanese flavor matching my childhood memory. So, I decided to make my own "Nikuman" using my wife's Indian-style pork curry for the filling as a test. (Curry flavored nikuman is definitely a common variation in Japan).



This is mystery to me but my steamed buns came out brown like baked bread (above). Besides, I did not do a great job to sealing the top of the buns as you can see.



I have to assume that the spices in the curry especially the turmeric and mustard must have caused the brown color but as you can see below only surface is brown and the inside is more yellow which is the color of turmeric and mustard.



In any case, my version of "curry nikuman" was pretty good. Although obviously biased, my wife thought this was the best nikuman she has had.

I adapted my version from this recipe. I reduced this recipe in half but the proportion of ingredients especially water in the original recipe was off and ended up using much more water than the previous recipe specified.

Ingredients for buns (made four good sized ones):
Flour: all purpose, 250grams
Dry yeast: 1 tsp
Sugar: 25 grams (I reduced sugar in half)
Baking powder: 1 tsp (I just realized the original asks for baking powder but I used baking soda—they still puffed up).
Water: nearly 2 cups

I combined the dry ingredients in a Kitchen-aid mixer using a dough hook. I mixed at speed 2 and gradually added water until a ball of dough formed on the hook as well as the center of the bottom of the bowl. I removed the dough onto the floured surface and hand kneaded it until it was nicely elastic. I placed the dough in a Ziploc bag (1 gallon) sprayed with Pam, removed the air, sealed, wrapped with towels and let it rise in a warm place for 1 hour or more (until the bulk doubled). I divided the dough into equal sized pieces (I weighed them), formed the pieces into balls and flattened it to a disk. I covered it with a towel and let it rest for 10 minutes (to relax the gluten).

Filling: I used the pork curry my wife made. I just removed the cubes of pork, shredded it by hand and using a fork, I added enough sauce to make it stick together but not too wet.

I flattened the dough and placed the stuffing in the middle on my left hand (#1), Then I stretched the dough and brought the edge to the center and repeated the process until the stuffing was covered and the surface of the buns were sealed (#2 and 3). I placed the buns on a square of parchment paper and put them in a steamer (preheated, #4). I placed on the lid and steamed for 15 minutes (#5 and 6).

To my surprise, The surface of the buns turned brown looking like baked bread. Again, I have to assume this is due to the color of the stuffing leaching out to the surface of the buns but it is not "yellow" like colors of turmeric and mustard.

In any case, the buns were soft and hot. The curry flavored pork stuffing went very well. This is not quite my childhood "nikuman" but good enough for me and my wife really liked it. The left over buns microwaved very well the next day.

Egg in a pouch 卵の袋煮

In general Japanese are fond of hen's eggs (or for that matter any kind of eggs either bird or fish). This ranges from "raw" eggs on rice 卵かけ御飯, omelet (either Western style or Japanese "Dashimaki" 出し巻き卵),  onsen egg 温泉卵, "tamago-toji" 卵とじ (binding topping items with beaten eggs which was lightly cooked like in Donburi どんぶり) and so on.  We like eggs but try not to eat too many. When it comes to eggs the one thing we do not like is hard boiled eggs which have been boiled to the point where a green layer of sulfur appears around a very hard egg yolk. One way to avoid this is to make a soft- or medium boiled egg, peel it and then simmer it in a broth such as in oden おでん. The yolk gets totally cooked and becomes creamy with no sulfa-rings. The same thing happens with this dish "egg-in-a-pouch" or "Tanago no fukuro-ni" 卵の袋煮.

"Fukuro" means "pouch" which in this case is made of deep fried tofu or abra-age. It is made by cracking a raw egg into the deep fried tofu pouch, sealing it with a tooth pick and simmering it in broth. The result is a creamy egg yolk without the sulfur ring but with the added texture and flavor of the deep dried tofu. Besides, busting into it is like opening a surprise package particularly if you do not know what is inside the pouch.



This dish is usually cooked in "nitsuke" 煮付け but I made  it as part of oden this time. The above are daikon, carrots, "chikuwa" 竹輪 fish cake and the "egg in a pouch" served with Japanese hot mustard.



When you cut into it, you can see the totally cooked and creamy yolk without the green sulfa ring. My wife said, that, although this is very good, she prefers a simple boiled egg in oden.

Samosa with pork 豚肉入りサモサ

On a recent weekend we had dinner guests and my wife decide to serve two different Indian-style curries with rice. As an appetizer, in keeping with the “curry” theme, I proposed making samosa. Including pork is not traditional, but I had left over baked pork tenderloin so I minced it up and added it to the filling. Instead of making the skin from scratch we took a “short cut” and used store bought "egg roll" wraps which worked well.



Here are the samosa hot out of the oil but when we served them to our guests we re-heated them in the toaster oven, which actually made the skin crispier and better.



Ingredients: (this made about 30 samosas with a fair amount of stuffing leftover.)
Potato: white potato, 4 large mashed, boiled whole until done, skin removed while hot.
Onion: 1 medium, finely chopped.
Spices:
Ginger, 1 Tbs. finely chopped fresh
Jalapeno pepper, one,  finely chopped
3 tbs finely chopped cilantro
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp garam masara,
1 tsp ground roasted cumin seeds
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
2 tbs lemon juice
Pork:
I had previously cooked the pork tenderloin. I used a dry rub of smoked Spanish paprika, cumin, cinnamon, nutmeg, black pepper and salt, and baked it at 350F for 30 minutes). I just chopped one tenderloin (#1 below). This is totally optional.
Egg roll skin (one package) (see #5 below).

My wife first sautéed the onion in vegetable oil (1 tbs) until the edges got slightly brown and the added the spice mixture to bloom (#2), The minced pork was added and further sautéed (#3), If using uncooked ground meat, it may have to be cook in a separate frying pan and then combined with the spices. #3 The meat/spice mixture was mixed into the mashed potatoes. I tasted the mixture and it was highly spiced and seasoned (#4).




as a wrapper, I used egg roll wraps (skin) as seen in #5 above. This is almost square but one end is slightly longer (#6). I cut this in half (I layered several of them) using a sharp long knife. I then removed the narrower strips from each halves so that resulting sheets have a proportion of 1:4 (#7).

The diagram on the left is from http://masalanmagic.blogspot.com/2012/02/patti-samosa-folding-techniques.html. There are many YouTube videos you can watch as well.

We made about 30 of these with the loose ends of the egg roll wraps secured by painting them with a "glue" made of water and potato starch or flour (#8).

I deep fried them in 320-340F vegetable oil for several minutes per side until golden (#9). I drained them first on a metal cooling rack #9 with a cookie sheet underneath) and then on sheets of paper towel (#10).

These reheated very well in the toaster oven (turning once during the reheating), we used the highest "toast" mode. They were actually more crisp after the reheating.

As you know "fried" starch tastes good. The egg roll wraps worked very well and after reheating they tasted even better than when they just came out of the oil. The stuffing was very hot (temperature) and flavorful but not too "hot" (spicy). This was great hit among our guests.

Indian-style Lamb curry インド風ラムカレー

We bought butter flied lamb leg last weekend to be barbecued but the weather was not co-operative and we could not cook it outside in our Weber grill. We were planning a dinner party so we had to cook it somehow. My wife suggested we make an Indian-style lamb curry. This is more like ragout than a saucy curry but it was very good.



I was a sous chef and did all the prepping and my wife made the dish.

Ingredients:
Lamb, butterflied leg of lamb (about 3lb), sliver skin, visible fat removed and cubed (#1).
Garlic (3 fat cloves, finely chopped),
Jalapeno pepper (two, seeded and deveined and finely chopped),
Ginger root, half inch, skin removed and finely chopped (#2)
Spices; (#4)
Curry leaves, dried,15 (#3).
2 tsp garam masala,
1 tsp ground cumin.
1/4 tsp ground turmeric.
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper.
1/2 tsp salt (#4).
2 tsp sushi vinegar (original recipe calls for lemon juice but I used the vinegar



My wife first sautéed or bloomed all the spices (#2, #3 and $4) in vegetable oil (3 tbs). Once the spices became fragrant, she added the lamb (Our philosophy is that "searing" the meat before adding is not important or necessary) (#5). She put the lid on and simmered it for an hour. Although, my wife did not add any liquid, enough liquid came out of the meat that the dish looked like a soup. She removed the lid and reduced the liquid until it just formed a thick coating of  'sauce" on the meat (#6). We reheated this before serving to our guests by adding a small amount of liquid (we used chicken broth but water would have done it).

This was a great hit. We served it “family style” with rice so the quests could take what they wanted. The meat was tender, very flavorful and a bit "spicy". When served with rice, it was just right. We provided yogurt as a condiment. In addition of tasting good with the meat the yogurt also calmed the spiciness for anyone who felt it was still a bit too much for them. (One of our guests did that but the rest of us were OK with the spiciness). This dish did not stay around long enough to get cold.

Frozen fatty tuna from "Fish-for-Sushi" 冷凍大トロ

This was a continuing feast with "Juyondai" sake 十四代. We ususally order sashimi fish from Catalina Offshore Products but this time, I ordered from "Fish-for-Sushi"; frozen "Ootoro" 大トロ (new item) along with "akami" 赤身 of Big eye tuna, 目鉢鮪 and Kanpachi カンパチ or amberjack.



As you can see, this otoro had a large potion of pure fat attached which was a bit chewy; this was not the best otoro.



The picture below shows how the frozen sashimi was packaged. The upper right is akami tuna, below that is kanpachi, and upper left encased in a separate container is otoro.



The next picture was taken after the fish were thawed (following the instructions in the packages). To my surprise, the otoro block still had skin attached as well as a large amount of "pure" fat (see below).



The package said this was aqua cultured and from Japan. The portion is very small to begin with. Once you removed the skin and fat it was even smaller. Paying the otoro price per pound, the inclusion of the unusable skin and less than desirable fat made the useable meat from this piece very expensive (much more expensive than having toro at Tako Grill per unit weight). When my wife saw what had to be discarded she said her grandmother had an expression for this type of situation; “butcher putting a finger on the scale.” We could at least eat the fatty part (I haven’t come up with a recipe for tuna skin yet, however). I suspected the fat would be chewy, so I sliced it into rather thin pieces of otoro with the fat attached and served.



Next day, I removed the pure fat portions, cut it into small cubes and dressed the "karshi sumiso" sauce からし酢味噌 with chopped scallion. It was much better eating the otoro and fat separately than in the same piece as I had done the previous day. These otoro pieces don’t look anything like what was depicted on  the "Fish-for-Sushi" web site. Nine ounces at $65 sounded like a good price but once the large portion of pure fat and skin are factored in, this is not a good buy.

“Atsuage” tofu 厚揚げ

"Atsu-age" 厚揚げ or "Nama-age" 生揚げ is deep fried thick ("atsu" 厚 means "thick") tofu. But this is not like "Abura-age" 油揚げ in which only the surface is fried, because the center portion of this tofu retains the look and texture of the original “raw” tofu or "nama" 生. In the case of ”abra-age", thin slices of tofu are deep fried until completely cooked. Although frozen abra-age was readily available at the Japanese grocery store in our neighborhood, atsu-age is more difficult to come by since it cannot be frozen. (When frozen, the raw tofu portion totally changes its consistency). I have not seen atsu-age in our grocery store before. We used to have grilled atsu-age occasionally at Tako Grill.  Recently I saw a package (from Japan) in the refrigerator case and bought it.

The way I served it is in the classic Izakaya-style. Since we had sashimi items including "Ootoro" from "Fish-for -Sushi" we splurged and opened the last bottle of "14th generation sake"  (十四代）which we have had in our refrigerator for more than 3 years.



Atsu-age could be a part of "nimono" 煮物 or simmered dish, or served grilled or heated up in a frying pan. At Izakaya, it is usually simply grilled. I just heated it up in a frying pan with a bit of vegetable oil for a few minutes on each side until the skin got crispy and the center was warm. I cut it into 2 blocks and topped it with graded daikon and thinly sliced scallion (below).



In this angle, you can see that the center is "raw" tofu.



Add just a little bit of soy sauce and we are ready.



As you can easily imagine, the quality of atsu-age really determines how good this dish is. This was fresh and very good. If this is not fresh, the only way you could possibly choke it down is simmered in broth with other items. I am glad I chose this simple way of serving. "Juyondai" sake was as good as when I first tasted it even after 3 years probably because it was kept under refrigeration all that time.

Kinpira lotus root レンコンのキンピラ

One evening, I opened a package of cleaned and boiled lotus root or renkon レンコン.  I used a portion of the package for another dish but I had some left over. I decided to make kinpira of lotus root. レンコンの金平.  Although I have posted lotus root kinpira before, this one is cut differently and cooked for a much shorter time which gave it a different texture from the other one I posted. I also have posted many variations of kinpira with burdock root or gobo 牛蒡 as the most popular. "Kinpira" is a Japanese style of braising. First the food is sautéed in vegetable oil with dark sesame oil added, then seasoned with mirin and soy sauce.



To retain a nice crunchy texture, I cut the lotus root (2/3 package) in half length wise first and then sliced rather thinly in half moon shapes. Since this packaged lotus root has already been cleaned and boiled, I did not have to do any other preparation such as soaking in water with vinegar. I removed the excess moisture from the slices by spreading them on a sheet of paper towel and blotting them dry. I put vegetable oil (1 tbs) and dark sesame oil and red pepper flakes (amount arbitrary) in a wok and then added the sliced lotus root and sautéed for a few minutes until the oil coated the surface (see below).



I then add mirin (1 tbs) and soy sauce (1 tbs) and braised it until liquid was almost all evaporated.

This is quite different from burdock root or daikon kinpira especially in texture. The lotus root had a nice crunchy texture. This was a good small dish to have it with sake. If I seasoned it more strongly, this would go well with white rice as well.