Rapini and scrambled egg 菜の花と卵のからし醤油あえ

I have posted a similar item before. When spring comes, one of the items many Japanese associate with the season would be "nanohana"菜の花  or rapeseed flower which I discussed to some extent before. Around here, nanohana is not available so we have to turn to two possible substitutes; rapini or broccoli rabe and broccolini. Broccolini looks similar to nanohana but does not have its bitter taste. While rapini does not quite look like nanohana, it does have a similar bitterness. This time I prepared rapini in the style of nanohana and served it with scrambled eggs.

The contrast of green and yellow feels like spring to me. The rapini is dressed in mustard soy sauce and the scrambled eggs have a slightly sweet seasoning.

For this dish, I cut off only the blossom end and blanched it in salted water, then shocked it in ice water to fix the green color. This process also tames the bitterness (since a lot of people don't particularly like the taste if it is too strong). I then squeezed out the moisture.

The dressing is a mixture of prepared Japanese mustard (from the tube), sugar and soy sauce. After tasting, I diluted it with Japanese "dashi" broth but that is optional.

Scrambled eggs were seasoned with sugar and salt.

This combination is a good one. The rapini has a sharp  mustard taste and a bitterness muted by the addition of sugar which was also carried by the scrambled eggs.

Udon with spicy miso sauce 肉味噌うどん

This is a re-purposed spicy red miso sauce with pork (niku-miso with red miso and pork 肉味噌) I made a few days ago. Since I made it a bit too spicy (I am not sure if it was due to the Sriracha sauce or the jalapeno pepper), but it was a bit much for my wife. So we added yogurt like we often do for Indian curry which made it much milder. That led me to come up with this dish as a final "shime" 締め one evening. I made the sauce for the udon noodles from the spicy red miso sauce with pork and yogurt.

Although adding yogurt may be somewhat unusual for more traditional Japanese recipe of "Niki-miso udon 肉味噌うどん", it went well. I also added spinach which my wife prepared from fresh spinach for spinach soufflé (which we did not make because we ran out of time and energy and were too full to eat it anyway).

For a impromptu dish made from re-purposed ingredients, as leftover control, this was quite good.

I warmed up my spicy pork red-miso sauce, added yogurt (did not measure, plain non flavored) and mixed. When it was warmed up, I mixed in the cooked spinach.

We used dried thin udon noodles, Sanuki undon 讃岐うどん, cooked as per the package directions and rinsed in cold running water after it was cooked and drained.

The addition of yogurt made the sauce mild and creamy without adding much additional taste but a nice smooth texture. It easily clung to the noodles and was a perfect small ending dish for us.

Chicken and pork miso sauces 肉味噌2種類

Nikumiso 肉味噌 is a rather common Japanese condiment meaning "meat and miso". It is used to top simmered daikon or furofuki daikon 風呂吹き大根 or warn cubes of tofu. I had leftover barbecued pork and chicken and decided to make two different kinds of miku-miso; one was spicy with Jalapeno pepper (left) and the other with Yuzu ginger flavor.

I topped simmered daikon (cooked in water with a pinch of raw rice to 20 minutes and then simmered with water and a piece of kelp for another 30 minutes) with a side of broccolini (we can not get "nanohana" in the US).  This version was made with white miso and chicken and had a gentle Yuzu citrus and ginger flavor.

The second one is much more assertive with red miso and pork and spiced with Jalapeno pepper, garlic and Sriracha hot sauce.

Niku-miso is usually made of uncooked ground meat but I used cooked pork and chicken since this was leftover control.

Ingredients:

Niki-miso with white miso and chicken:
Barbecued chicken breast, finely chopped, 1/2 cup
White miso, 2 tbs
Sugar, 1tbs
Mirin, 1 tbs
Sake, 2 tbs
Grated ginger, 1/2 tsp
Sesame oil, 1 tsp
Yuzu skin, frozen, 1/4 tsp (or orange or lemon zest)

Niku-miso with red miso and pork:
Barbecued pork, finely chopped, 1/2 cup
Red miso, 2tbs
Sugar 2 tbs
Mirin 1 tbs
Sake 2 tbs
Garlic, 2 cloves, either pressed or finely chopped
Sesame oil, 1tsp
Jalapeno pepper, 1, seeded and veined, finely chopped
Sriracha hot sauce, to taste

Directions:

Both are made similarly. Combine all the ingredients (except for Yuzu skin in the chicken version) in a small sauce pan and mix and stir until the mixture develops the consistency of miso. Add sesame oil and mix. For the one with chicken, take the pan off the heat and the add  theYuzu skin.

The white miso one was very gentle with nice ginger Yuzu flavor. The red miso one was much stronger and I made this a bit too spicy (especially for my wife). She mixed in yogurt which calmed the spiciness down. Both sauces went well with simmered daikon.

Figgy Cranberry sauce イチジク、クランベリーソース

I usually make some type of cranberry sauce during the Holiday season, although we no longer cook turkey. My first encounter with cranberry sauce was the "canned and jelled" kind. Later I learned it is very easy to make cranberry sauce from fresh cranberries and it is much better than the canned stuff. Last year, I made "figgy cranbery sauce" from a recipe I saw in the Washington Post. I did not post this and we finished eating it several months ago. It was a pretty versatile  sauce, however, and went well with chicken or even pork. My wife asked me to make some more even though it was not the Holiday season. It may not be the Holiday season but it is also not the season for cranberries--none were to be had. My wife suggested I make a similar sauce using just dried figs and balsamic vinegar. But I thought it was essential to have cranberries in cranberry sauce and made this using dried mission figs and "Craisins", which are sweetened/flavored dried cranberries. I served the sauce with my "Matsukaze" chicken patties 鳥の松風焼き as an appetizer with a glass of red wine.

Despite using only dried fruit, the sauce came out pretty well and went perfectly with this chicken dish.

Ingredients:
Dried mission figs, coarsely chopped, about 1/2 cup (left below).
Craisins, about 1 cup (right below)
Japanese Yuzu citrus skin (frozen) about 1 tsp (or orange peel or zest)
Orange liquor (I used triple sec), 2 tbs
Sake (or white wine), 1/2 cup.

Directions:
Soak the figs and Craisins in hot but not boiling water (I used hot water from our InstaHot) and let them sit for 20-30 minutes. I drained the liquid reserving 1/4 cup.
In a sauce pan, I added sake and when it came to a boil added the drained figs and Craisins. I stirred and mashed the fruit. During this process I thought it may need more liquid and added the reserved soaking liquid. After 10 minutes or so, the sauce thickened. I tasted it and decided no sugar was needed (Craisins are rather sweet). Off the heat, I added the triple sec and Yuzu skin and mixed well.

This was a success! Without using any additional sugar, it was just right. The yuzu and triple sec added a nice burst of citrus flavor. Now I can make my figgy cranberry sauce any time of the year.

Mayonnaise cake マヨネーズケーキ

This is a very moist and chocolaty cake and the ingredients include a surprising item--mayonnaise!. This is a Pennsylvania Dutch recipe that my wife got, from a neighbor on a recent visit to the town in Pennsylvania where she grew up. Many Pennsylvania Dutch cakes and pies are unique and a bit unusual. My wife loves collecting these old recipes as nostalgia for tastes of her childhood and admiration for the creativity of the cooks who invented them. My wife made a few of them such as crumb cake, wacky cake, shoofly pie and funny cake. But, as far as I am concerned, the mayo cake is the most unusual. My wife also admitted that she never had this cake before. It came together very quickly and it was really good. If you happened to be a "mayoler*" マヨラー, this is a "must" recipe.

*"Mayo-ler" is a Japanglish word meaning "somebody-who-really-(really)-likes-mayonnaise". Apparently mayonnaise is quite the craze in Japan. We have seen TV reviews of restaurants in Japan for Mayolers in which all items are made with mayo even including mayo drinks! While we certainly appreciate mayo as a condiment on sandwiches or in salad dressing we have never gone to one of these restaurants. (And in all honesty, since we are not that crazy about mayonnaise, I doubt we ever will).

This is a small serving and, just for pics, we decorated it with whipped cream and Maraschino cherry.

Ingredients:
Dry:
2 cups flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
5 tbs. Hershey's cocoa (being a PA dutch recipe, it has to be Hershey's chocolate of course).

Wet:
1 cup mayonnaise
1 cup hot water

Directions:
Sift dry ingredients together 3 times (#1). combine the mayo and water until smooth (#2).  Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix until incorporated (#3 and #4). bake in a greased 13 X 9 inch pan at 350 degrees for about 25-30 minutes (#5 and #6).

It doesn't get any easier than this. This cake is lusciously moist and chocolaty. Truly amazing!!  Oh! I just realized we did not post shoo-fly pie, wacky cake or funny cake. Maybe, my wife would like to make these so that we can post them (hint, hint).

Cabbage rolls with "gomoku" tofu 五目豆腐の春キャベツ包み

This is another vegan recipe from the Buddhist monk who appears regularly on a Japanese newspaper site.  Since I do not subscribe to this newspaper, I cannot get all parts of the recipe but I could watch a short video accompanying the recipe. It gave enough information for me to make, at least, a similar dish. This is a variation of Japanese cabbage rolls or rolled cabbage ロールキャベツ. This is, however, totally vegan. This is a Japanese-Western fusion and uses a interestingly different type of tomato sauce.

To carry on the Japanese-Western fusion 和洋折衷 theme, I garnished with fresh basil leaf and chiffonade.

Inside the roll is tofu and a combination of vegetables. Using a combination of many food items is sometimes called "Gomoku" 五目. "Gomoku" literally means "five items" but, in Japanese culinary parlance, it just means many items. I took the liberty of coming up with my own vegetable combination for this dish.

Ingredients (4 rolls):
1. Spring cabbage leaves, four, separated and boiled for 10 minutes until pliable. Shave off the thickest part of the veins and set aside.
2. Vegetables for stuffing: I chose white and brown "shimeji" しめじ mushrooms (white and brown beech mushrooms), separated and the bottom cut off, thin rectangles of carrots, thin squares of daikon (I happened to have simply simmered daikon in kelp broth) and julienne of hydrated and cooked kelp (again this was a byproduct of making simmered daikon). The amount was arbitrary (#1 picture below).
3. Firm (momen-goshi 木綿漉し) tofu 1/4, parboiled
4. Soy sauce (2 tbs), Kelp broth (1/4 cup), sake (2 tbs), vegetable oil and dark sesame oil for sautéing.
5. Tomato juice (I used V8 juice for more interesting flavors), 5.5oz
6. Campari tomato, skinned, and cut into quoters, 5. 7. Potato starch, 1 tsp

Directions.
1. In a small sauce pan, I added a small amount of vegetable oil and a splash of sesame oil and sautéed the vegetables. I added a small amount of kelp broth, soy sauce and mirin and braised (#2) until the liquid was almost evaporated.
2. Meanwhile, I parboiled the firm tofu for 2-3 minutes. When both the vegetables and the tofu cooled down enough to handle, I added the tofu to the vegetables crushing it into chunks by hand (#3). 3. I divided the filling into 4 portions and placed each portion in one of the four base cabbage leaves (#4) and rolled (#5).
4. In a pan in which the cabbage rolls could snugly fit, I added 5-6 oz of kelp broth and V8 juice (1 can or 5.5oz) and seasoned with soy sauce and sake (regular V8 or tomato juice contain a good amount of salt, so I adjusted the soy sauce by tasting.) (#6).
5. I put the cabbage rolls into the sauce, put on the lid and cooked on simmer for 15-20 minutes (#7).
6. I took out the rolls and kept them warm. Meanwhile, I added the cut-up tomato to the sauce and cooked on medium flame for  5-10 minutes reducing the sauce slightly (#8).
7. I added a potato starch slurry (with sake or water) and thickened the sauce. 8. I tasted  it and added a pinch of sugar (optional).

Since this is vegan, it does not have an impact of meat containing cabbage rolls but the tomato sauce was very gentle and not too acidic (may be the benefit of using fresh and skinned Campari tomatoes). This is a very good and healthy way to enjoy spring cabbage.

Buttermilk panna cotta バーターミルクパンナコッタ

My wife likes to use buttermilk for many dishes. She even likes to drink it (especially the high-octane kind from Harrisburg farms in Pennsylvania). We have never seen buttermilk in Japan. Originally buttermilk was leftover from churning butter out of cream and as a result had some small chunks of butter floating in it. This type is known as traditional buttermilk. The buttermilk used today is known as cultured buttermilk and is produced from cows milk fermented using one of two species of bacteria; Lactococcus lactis or Lactobacilliu bulgaricus. The fermentation creates lactic acid which is what gives buttermilk its characteristic tart taste.  The fermentation also means it lasts a long time. (My wife found, for example, that buttermilk marked with a due date of Jan 30 was perfectly good in April of the same year). In any case, one day, she decided to make this buttermilk panna cotta (She first called this "pudding" but since there is no egg involved this is more like panna cotta).

I myself would never like to "drink" buttermilk by itself, even though I have tasted it,  but using in baking or this type of dish it is quite good.

Ingredients:
2 tsp. powdered gelatin
2 tbs. water
1/2 cup half and half plus 1/2 cup milk (or you could use 1 cup of heavy cream instead for a really luxurious pudding).
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
2 cups buttermilk

1/2 recipe ingredients:

1 tsp. gelatin

1 Tbs. water

1/4 cup 4% milk

1/4 cup heavy cream

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 tsp. vanilla

1 cup buttermilk 

Directions:
Bloom the gelatin in the water. Put the half & half, milk and sugar in a sauce pan and heat until the sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat and add the gelatin stirring until it is dissolved. When the milk mixture has cooled to room temperature add the vanilla and the buttermilk. Mix thoroughly. Pour into small ramekins or Pyrex dessert bowls. Put into the refrigerator until set.

This is a lovely panna cotta. It is not too sour or too sweet. It has a nice fresh tangy taste and smooth texture. It is also fairly easy to make.