Spanish Mackerel dishes, two kinds サバの味噌煮と竜田揚げ

We bought a whole Spanish mackerel from our nearby gourmet grocery store. Again, the exact Japanese name for Spanish Mackerel is unclear but  I will just call it "saba" 鯖 さば. Certainly it looks and taste like one. I asked the fishmonger to just gut the fish. I made miso-ni 味噌煮 simmered in miso sauce (left) and tatsuta-fry 竜田揚げ.

I made the miso simmered mackerel in the morning and reheated it just before serving. Then I fried up the marinated tatsuta mackerel. This one was well seasoned and did not require any sauce just a bit of lemon juice.

I garnished the miso simmered mackerel with thin julienne of ginger or "hari shouga" 針生姜 and thinly sliced scallion.

Preparation of the fish:

This was a rather large mackerel. I filleted it "sanmai-ni-orosu" or sliced it into three layers (two layers of fillets and one layer of backbone and head). I removed the belly portion and also removed the meat under the fins since there are many small bones under the fins. Using a Japanese bone tweezer, I removed any small bones which remained.

I cut the pieces into rectangles and scored the skin so it wouldn't break during cooking. I divided the pieces into two groups. I simmered one group in miso sauce and the other I fried into tatsuta.

1. Mackerel braised in miso sauce サバの味噌煮

Ingredients:

Mackerel, one fillet, cut into rectangles with the skin shallowly scored. 

300 ml water

100 ml sake

5tbs miso

3tbs sugar

4 slices of ginger

Directions:

I placed the water and sake with the ginger slices in a frying pan and brought it to a boil. I placed the mackerel in with skin side up. I removed some liquid and used it to dissolve a mixture of miso and sugar. Once dissolved I added it back to the pan (#1) and turned down the flame to simmer. I placed the otoshibuta (my usual silicone lid) on top (#2).

I simmered it until the sauce became thick and clung to the fish (for about 45 minutes to 1 hour) (#3).

2. Mackrel tatsuta fry 鯖の竜田揚げ

Ingredients:

Mackerel, one fillet, cut into rectangles.

Soy sauce and mirin (1:1 ratio)

1 tsp grated ginger

Potato starch for dredging

Oil for deep frying

Directions:

In a Ziploc bag, I marinated the mackerel for several hours in the refrigerator. 

I blotted the excess marinade using paper towels and dredged the pieces in the potato starch (#4).

I deep fried it in 350F oil for a few minutes turning once (#6).

Both dishes were quite good but we liked the miso flavored one best. Although these two dishes are good drinking snacks, we had them with rice. Especially the miso-ni was best on the rice (OTR). We were pleasantly surprised that the Spanish mackerel we got was very fresh and the resulting dishes were great.

Chilli cheese shortbread 唐辛子とチーズのショートブレッド

This is my wife's savory cookie/shortbread which belongs to a similar category as the anchovy black pepper cookie she made before. This is seasoned with red pepper and worchestershire sauce.

This is not sweet at all and clearly calls for wine or some other drink to accompany it.

Ingredients:

2 cups AP flour

12 Tbs. butter

2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

1 tsp  red pepper flakes

1 1/2 cup shredded cheese (cheddar and gruyere)

Blend all the ingredients in a food processor. (Word of advice: This is a very dry flaky dough. Don't panic if it looks like it is not coming together. We had to dump it as crumbs out of the food processor and my wife worked at it diligently. Eventually she was able to make the ball shown in #1 below.) Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and put in the refrigerator for 15 minutes. Roll out dough as shown in #2. Cut out cookies whatever shape you want and put on a cookie sheet #3. Preheat oven to 325 degrees and cook for 15 to 18 minutes until golden. Put on a rack to cool #4. 

This is an ethereal cookie. It dissolves on your tongue leaving behind a slight saltiness (from the Worcestershire sauce) followed by a pleasant buzz from the red pepper that slowly kicks in and builds. Although anchovy is the main ingredient for Worcestershire sauce, this version of savory shortbread is much more subtle compared to the anchovy black pepper cookie.  Despite all the butter in this shortbread the texture is somewhat grainy and some libation helps nicely to wash it down. We had it with Spanish red wine which went really well.  

Negitoro-don ネギトロ丼

I (again) made negitoro (or more precisely pseudo-negitoro ネギトロもどき) from frozen yellowfin tuna sashimi block and decided to make "donburi" 丼 as a shime 〆 dish. Besides negitro, I added Japanese style scrambled eggs or "iritamago" 炒り卵, strips of nori sea weed and perilla.

I made the negitoro as before (#1). I also made scrambled eggs seasoned with sugar and light colored soy sauce (#2). For garnishes, I prepared a chiffonade of perilla leaves (#3). I placed sushi rice in the bowl first (#4) and added strips of nori (#5) which was followed by negitoro and eggs (#6).

This combination cannot go wrong. This was a quite nice small donburi perfect to complete the evening.

Pocket stuffed with chicken and craisin チキン、チーズと干しクランベリーのポケットパイ

This is a continuation of my wife's "pocket" dishes. This started out as a question about what to do with the extra barbecued chicken from the previous weekend. I am not sure where she found this recipe. My contribution was chopping Jalapeno pepper and leftover barbecued chicken. Here is the end result pocket just out of the oven.

Nice buttery pie crust and smokey and cheesy stuffing.

I asked my wife to fill in the rest.

Ingredients:

1 cup chopped cooked chicken

2-3 Tbs. Mayonnaise

salt and pepper to taste

1/4 cup craisins

2 diced jalapenos (or to taste)

1/2 cup grated smoked mozzarella

Directions:

Mix ingredients together using just enough mayo to blend then stuff pockets. Cook stuffed pockets at 400 degrees for 18 minutes or until golden brown. 

We found this type of dish perfect starters when we come home. The smokiness comes from both barbecued chicken and  smoked mozzarella cheese and craisin add sweet and sour taste. Just pop in the pockets in the toaster oven and heat it up. This tastes great and fills the hollow in your stomach just long enough for dinner to arrive.

New Macro lens, Broccoli, tomato and white asparagus マクロレンズとリングLEDライト、ホワイトアスパラ

I just got a new sony macro lens E 30mm F3.5 Macro (SEL30M35) for my Sony Alpha a6000. Before this, I was taking my foodie pictures mostly using a kit lens (16-50mm zoom) which I bought with the camera body.  Real close ups were difficult with the kit lens. I also get an LED ring light for macro lens. The below are the first pictures I took with this set up. I happened to have blanched broccoli and took this picture.

The LED ring light has a bluish color temperature and unless, you are taking really a really tight shot, the periphery gets dim and only the center gets well lit. But I am happy with the close up I took.

For these two pictures, I adjusted the color and exposure using a Mac photo program. The below are taken with natural light from the windows.

I also made white asparagus with a Bearnaise sauce variation. Instead of tarragon, I used concentrated  white asparagus broth.

The sauce is another variation of Beanaise-like sauce.

As before I peeled and cooked white asparagus in water with all the peels until soft and cooked. I then removed the asparagus but left the peels and further simmered it until only a very small amount of liquid was left which has a concentrated flavor of white asparagus. I added rice vinegar and reduced it further (2 tbs of liquid left). In the double boiler, I then added two egg yolks to the concentrated liquid and whisked. Since the sauce appeared a bit runny, I decided to add pats of cold butter while whisking (about 1-2 tbs). I seasoned it with salt and white pepper.  For color, I garnished it with chopped chives. 

Hope I can take better pictures in the future but since I do not spend enough time to set up the lighting or to compose good pictures (after all, we need to eat), the quality may not really improve but I am having fun with my new toy.

Dashimaki with tarako wrapped in nori 海苔巻きたらこのだし巻き

Although I have posted similar dishes. this one came out rather nicely (visually). This is an example of stuffed Japanese "dashimaki" omelet だし巻き. The most famous/popular is stuffed with eel called "U-maki" 鰻巻き. This time, I stuffed it with tarako cod roe which was wrapped in a nori sheet. I bought this "tarako" たらこ code roe, to make "tarako" spaghetti たらこスパゲッティ (actually using thin udon). I had one sac left over so and few days later, I made tarako dashimaki for the evening.

I removed the tarako roe from its sac (by cutting the sac open and scraping the content using a knife blade leaving the membrane) and wrapped it with a nori sheet (cut to match the width of the rectangular Japanese omelet pan). I just rolled this into the center of the dashimaki omelet.

The tarako was just barely cooked underneath the nori.

Salty cod roe, nori and sweet omelet went so well together. This type of dish really calls for sake.

Curry filled pocket カレー入りパイポケット

I stopped making a Japanese curry (from a package of curry roux) for some time because my wife took an interest in making more authentic Indian style curries. But, one weekend, I just had a hankering for the taste of classic Japanese curry.  So I made some using a package of "medium hot" curry roux and added chicken thighs, potatoes, carrots and onions, the usual suspects used in a Japanese curry. We ate a few curry dinners but we had some leftovers curry but not enough for another dinner. I mentioned in passing to my wife that another Japanese favorite is a fried bread stuffed with curry or カレーパン. She immediately came up with the idea of stuffing her "baked pocket" with the leftover curry. Here is the end results. The shell is made of a pie crust and baked.

You can't see much but it is filled with curry (she mashed the vegetables, particularly the potatoes to make it thicker in consistency and cut the chicken into smaller pieces so they would fit).

The original curry was made in the classic Japanese way with chicken thigh meat, sauteed onion, potato and carrot with a Japanese medium hot curry roux. She shredded the chicken and mashed vegetables to make more homogenous and thicker sauce (#1).  Using her pocket making gadget, she cut the rounds of pie crust (frozen packaged, thawed and rolled) and filled with the curry stuffinfg using a medium size ice cream scoop (#2). The edges were painted with a mixture of flour and water (sort of edible glue) and the pocket maker closed and pressed (#3) making perfect stuffed pie pockets (#4).

She baked this in a preheated 350F oven for 15 minutes. 

This is a great snack for weekdays when we came back from work and needed something to fill the holes in your stomach quickly. It heats up well in a toaster oven. Although it was a bit spicy, it was very satisfying almost like a comfort food. It also went well with a glass of cab.