Hamburger steak Japanese style ハンバーグ

Hamburgers are the archetypical American food and they are popular in Japan too. I am not sure when was the last time we had hamburgers, probably 30 or so years ago. Hamburgers in Japan can be authentic American or a Japanese modification (again, I admit we have not tried hamburgers in Japan). For one thing, hamburg or ハンバーグor 煮込みハンバーグ is served without buns and with demi-glace sauce.  In the US, the equivalent would be "Salisbury steak".

I ended up making this dish one day. The reason I made this was because I found, to my surprise I have purchased two tail portions of filet mignon when I thought I had purchased a beef roast. One weekend I was looking for meat to barbecue. For some reason, the grocery store was out of the type of pork roast I wanted and I did not feel like doing a chicken again. Although we usually do not do roast beef, it appeared that beef was inevitable that weekend. Then, I found a small roast, just about the right size. It was labeled "tenderloin roast" which was about twice the diameter size of a filet mignon. I have never seen this type of roast before and decided to try it (mistake!).

I usually re-truss these meats once I get them home since I do not trust "plastic truss". When I removed the truss on this "supposed" tenderloin roast, it turned out to be the tail portions of two filet mignon put together to look like one piece of meat. Since these pieces are very thin, they are generally not used for fillet mignon steaks; they are generally a less than optimal part of the cut. (a bit of a cheating punt dear local grocery store!!) (We won't be buying that again).

I certainly did not want to cook this as a trussed "roast" medium rare since the inner portion of the meat was facing outside increasing the possibility of contamination. So, I decided to make just regular filet mignon steaks the best I could out of the thicker portion of the tails. But the tail portions were too small to be cooked as steak so I decided to hand chop the pieces into ground beef and make "hamburg" in a Japanese style (sort of).

 This is what I came up with. I served it as a small ending dish one evening with the gnocchi my wife made earlier and sautéed asparagus.

Pre-made demi-glace in a jar is not as easily available in US as compared to Japan for some reason, so I made my quick sauce instead.

Ingredients (for two):
Two tails of filet mignon, hand chopped
One medium onion, finely diced
two-three shiitake mushroom, bottom of the stems cut off, torn longitudinally in think strips and cut across in small pieces and the caps cut into small pieces.
Freshly ground nutmeg, salt and pepper
Olive oil for sateing

For sauce:
1 cup Ruby port wine, reduced in half
Ketchup 2 tbs
Tonkatsu sauce 2 tbs
Mustard 1tsp

Directions:
Sautee the onion and mushroom in olive oil until cooked, season with salt and pepper and let it cool to room temperature. Mix the above with the beef and make oval disks. Cook in the frying pan with olive oil turn once for the donees you like.

For sauce:
Mix reduced port wine, ketchup, tonkatus sauce and mustard and cook until the sauce heated up and attained saucy consistency.

For a impromptu hamburger steak, this was quite edible. The sauce was not demi-glace but good enough and the hamburger came out very delicate and nice. Of course, the shiitake mushroom really added "umami" flavor. The gnocchi my wife made was a perfect accompaniment as well.

Calamari salad カラマリサラダ

I like squid and octopus. So, when I see squid at the grocery store, I tend to buy it without thinking about what I will make from it. The kind of squid we can get here is small, pre-cleaned, and previously frozen. In the past, I have posted so many ways I cook squid. This time, I bought 1 lb. I made half my usual way sautéed squid with celery and cucumber イカと胡瓜、セロリの炒めのもの. The next day, I asked my wife how she would like to have the remaining boiled squid. I offered two selections: one was Japanese style with cucumber and wakame seaweed dressed in karashi-miso sauce イカとワカメの酢味噌和え, the other was  some kind of salad in Western-style (details not specified since I had no idea what I would do at the time I made the offer). She, of course, opted for the salad. 

So, I just whipped this up without any recipe using what I had available on hand.

I had just bought oil-cured black olives so I threw them in as well.

Ingredients (for two servings):
1/2 lb squid, cleaned, The tubes cut into 1/2 inch wide rings and the tentacles cut into two.
1 American mini-cucumber, quartered and seeds removed, and cut into small cubes
6 Oil-cured black olives, stone removed
Fresh basil, cut into chiffonade
Baby arugula, skinned Campari tomato
Lemon juice from one lemon
Olive oil, 1-2 tbs
Salt and pepper

Directions:
Boil squid 30 seconds in boiling water with salt and sake added, drain, let cool, then refrigerate until serving (up to one day)
In a bowl, add the squid, cucumber, basil, lemon juice and olive oil and mix. Season with pepper and salt
I served the calamari on a bed of baby arugula leaves (stems removed). I topped the salad with black olives and added a side of sliced Campari tomato. I then sprinkled the salad with our favorite Spanish olive oil.

Since it was a rather hot and humid day, for a change, we enjoyed chilled (a bit unusual) white Rioja called Fernandez Gomez Seleccion Familia White Rioja 2015. It is a blend of Viura 70%, Grenache White 20%, Malvasia 10% and was aged in barrels for 6 months with its lees. We never had white Rioja before. This is rather a pleasant white with some peaches and apricots and a hint of vanilla. We could also sense slight oak and crisp acidity. This went perfectly with this calamari salad.

Gnocchi ニョキ

When we barbecue chicken, we often bake potatoes. Since we had fairly large Russet potatoes, my wife just wrapped them in aluminum foil and we put them into the Weber next to the chicken. By the time the chicken was done (about 1 hour and 15-30 minutes), the potatoes were perfectly cooked. She made them to mashed potatoes with a Japanese touch i.e. liberal applications of soy sauce and butter. We love the crispy skin of barbecued chicken particularly when it just comes out of the Weber.  So, we immediately started snacking by making small rolls of mashed potatoes sprinkled with chopped chives wrapped in the crispy skin of the barbecued chicken. By the time we were ready to carve the chicken, we had mostly finished the dinner standing up eating the potato rolls with our fingers. In any case, my wife made gnocchi from the leftover mashed potatoes a few days later. As an ending dish of the evening, I served gnocchi with sage butter, meatballs I made that day and asparagus.

This gnocchi was more like sautéed in sage butter rather than swimming in sage brown butter. Although we grow sage in our herb garden, we used dried sage this time.

I made the meatballs from the trimmings of pork tenderloin. This time, I made my marinara sauce from skinned and diced Campari tomatoes instead of canned tomatoes.

Gnocchi
Ingredients:
16 oz. of mashed potatoes (3 cups)
4 oz. of AP flour (3/4 cup)
1 egg
1 tsp. salt

Ingredients X 1 1/2
24 oz. (1 lb. 8 oz.) of mashed potatoes 
1 1/8 cup of AP flour (may need more to make a workable dough)
2 eggs
1 1/2  tsp. salt

Ingredients X 2
32 oz. (2 lb.) of mashed potatoes 
1 1/2  cup of AP flour (may need more to make a workable dough) (I actually used 2 1/4 and it worked out        OK)
3 eggs
2  tsp. salt




Directions:
Press the mashed potatoes through a sieve. Add the flour and gently mix with a fork. Add the egg and salt and again gently mix with a fork until everything comes together into a dough.
Gently roll into 1/2 inch diameter logs. Cut into the desired size.
The pieces can be rolled on the back of a fork to make ridges to better hold the sauce but that didn't work out so well so our pieces generally didn't have any ridges.
Fill the dutch oven with water. Add 1 Tbs. Salt and several bay leaves. Bring the water to a boil. Lower the heat and gently add the gnocchi to the water. Heat just below the boil  for a few minutes in salted water until they float to the surface. Then remove from the water and put into the sauce.  Or for use later put in a bowl and coat with olive oil to prevent them from sticking together. 

This was really very good. They had a lovely light texture and the potato taste really came through. These were so easy to make and were so good they will definitely appear on the menu again. 

Savory Bread pudding 甘くないブッレドプディング

Bread pudding is a classic way to use up stale bread. Sweet bread pudding is most commonly served with caramel sauce as a dessert.  My wife saw a recipe for savory bread pudding in a Williams-Sonoma catalog. We like savory variations on usually sweet dishes. She made this with some significant modifications especially since we did not have any stale bread and none of our home made bread lasts long enough to become stale. My wife used Pepperidge farm bread stuffing leftover from last Xmas instead. We tasted it when it was baked but did not take a picture. So, a few days later, we pan fried the pudding and served it with skinned Campari tomato (seasoned with Kosher salt and spicy Spanish olive oil), fried eggs with runny yolk, cold cauliflower and broccoli. This was a lunch one weekend.

The pudding, eggs, and broccoli were heated up in the same frying pan. I first melted the butter on medium flame and started with the bread pudding (just to warm it up and give it a slight crust), when I turned it over, I added blanched broccoli and eggs. I put on the lid and cooked it for 30 seconds and let it stand for 1 minute with a lid on which made perfect fried eggs (of course, I used Pasteurized eggs).

We liked the bread pudding served this way better than immediately when it came out of the oven.

Ingredients:
1/4 bag of Pepperidge Farm herb stuffing
2 strips of bacon (#2)
2 small onions diced (#1)
olive oil, as needed
3 shitake mushrooms diced including stem (#1)
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/3 cup (7 g) fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped (#1)
1 tsp. fresh thyme leaves
1/4 tsp. Kosher salt
3 large eggs
1  cups (480 ml) whole milk
1/2 cup (240 ml) cream
1/4 cup (25 g) grated Gruyère cheese
Freshly ground pepper

Directions:
Preheat an oven to 350°F (180°C).
Butter a small baking dish (we used one that was 5 1/2 x 7 1/2 ).
Prepare the onions, mushrooms and parsley (#1).
In a fry pan over medium-high heat, cook the bacon until crisp (#2). Transfer to a large bowl. Add the onion to the pan and cook over medium-high heat, stirring often, until caramelized, 3 to 5 minutes. Transfer the onions to the bowl with the bacon.
Add the mushrooms to the pan and sauté. Transfer the mushrooms to the bowl and let cool. Add the Parmesan, parsley, thyme and salt to the cooked mushroom mixture and mix well.
In another bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk and cream until well blended. Pour over the mushroom mixture and stir to combine  (#3). Gently mix in the bread stuffing.
Carefully pour the bread mixture into the prepared baking dish.  (If you have extra, fill a buttered ramekin and make an additional tiny bread pudding.) Scatter the Gruyère evenly over the pudding and grind a light dusting of pepper on top.
Bake until the custard is no longer runny but still a bit wobbly in the center, 40 minutes to 1 hour (and about 25 minutes for a ramekin) (#4).
It will continue to cook as it sits before serving. Serve the bread pudding hot or at room temperature. Any leftovers can be stored, well wrapped, in the refrigerator for up to 3 days and reheated, covered with aluminum foil, in a 350°F (180°C) oven.

With all the cheese, bacon and cream this is a rather rich dish. We found only a small piece at a time was plenty. Nonetheless it is a nice dish. Cutting it into small slabs and frying it in melted butter made it more interesting by adding a slight crust. Next time, we may use "stale" bread instead of bread stuffing but probably not our home baked bread.

Marinated Bonito bowl with poached egg カツオのツケ丼温玉のせ

This was a lunch we had one weekend some time ago. At our Japanese grocery store, we can get a package of frozen Katsuo-no-Tataki 鰹のタタキ or Bonito sashimi that has been precooked on the surface using a flame fueled by straw. This is the typical way of preparing bonito.  This piece of bonito was marinated over night. I made a small donburi or rice bowl and served it with scallion and wakame sea weed miso soup ワカメとネギの味噌汁 and "asazuke" 浅漬け pickled (salted) cucumber and daikon.

I topped the marinated bonito slices with blanched broccolini and poached egg with runny yolk (I used Pasteurized eggs).

For this dish, I quickly mixed soy sauce, mirin and sake in 2:1:1 ratio and marinated the bonito tataki slices and kept it in the refrigerator until lunch time the next day.

This was a very satisfying lunch. "Zuke" ずけ or the marinating process added flavors as well as changes the texture of the raw fish. Marinated tuna マグロのずけ being most popular. The combination of sushi rice, marinated bonito and warm runny egg yolk went very well indeed and felt like a "comfort" food.

Pork tenderloin with sautéed peaches 豚ヒレ肉と白桃のソーテー

We frequently cook pork tenderloin. I usually make some kind of dry-rub and cook it at 350 F for 30 minutes in our toaster oven on convection mode which is easy to do even on weekdays especially if I have already prepared the tenderloins. This was one of these quick weekday dinners. Since peaches were in season, I added sautéed  peaches as a side.

The meat was just slightly pink but properly cooked.

The peaches added sweet and sour tastes which are perfect for the pork. I also served blanched green beans which were sautéed in butter and seasoned with salt and pepper.

For sautéed peach:
Ingredients (for two servings):
2 white peaches, skin and stone removed and cut into small wedges
3 tbs of port wine (I used Taylor ruby port which I keep for cooking)
1 tsp honey
1 tsp Balsamic vinegar
1 tbs of butter, unsalted, for sautéing  and additional several tbs of butter for the sauce

Directions:
Melt the butter and sauté  the peaches turning several times until the surface caramelizes, remove from the pan and set aside.
In the same pan, add port wine and reduce in half, add honey and Balsamic vinegar and reduce it again in half.
Finish by adding butter in small increments until a saucy consistency is reached.
Return the cooked peaches and coat them with the sauce and serve warm.

The sauce is also  perfect for the pork.

For pork tenderloins.
Ingredients:
Dry rub: (I do not measure, sometimes I add other spices)
Roasted cumin powder
Paprika powder
Cinnamon powder
Ground black pepper
Kosher salt
(Instead of dry rub, sometimes I use minced fresh rosemary, salt and pepper.)

Directions:
I trim both ends and remove the silver skin (I use the trimmings for other dishes).
Coat the surface with olive oil and coat the surface with the dry rub.
Roast it in a 350F toaster oven on convection mode for 30 minutes and let it rest for 5-10 minutes before slicing.

Pork and fruit are a good combination. The peaches were not mushy and added a nice texture and sweetness which combined well with the sour taste of Balsamic vinegar. This was a quick and satisfying dinner.

Crispy Roasted Potato with thyme クリスピイローストポテト

This is a variation of Hasselback potato. We were having filet mignon steak for dinner. My wife likes to have some kind of potato side dish with steak to maintain her "meat and potato" aficionado credentials.  We felt a bit too lazy, however, to make oven fried potatoes. She came up with this recipe from Wililams-Sonoma web site.

It looks a bit "over-crisped" but it was quite good.

Ingredients:
4 small/medium Yukon Gold potato, skinned and thinly sliced (2 -3 mm thick).
1 stick (4oz) butter, melted (we used non-salted)
1/2 tsp dried Thyme (we did not have fresh thyme 1 tbs, chopped)
1 tbs Kosher salt

Directions:
Preheat oven 374F (we used convection toaster oven).
Bush melted butter on the bottom of the baking pan, arrange the sliced potato and pour the remaining melted butter.

Sprinkle with thyme and salt.

Bake it for 1 hour and let it stand for 10 minutes before serving.

It appears that our toaster oven has a bit uneven temperature and a portion of the dish got a bit over crisped but this was a good, easy potato dish to make. Our steak was cooked to perfect medium rare.

Since this was a rare occasion to have steak, we opened 2011 Joseph Phelps Insignia. This is a very elegant and complex red wine. We enjoyed a simple steak dinner with crispy baked potato with thyme and sautéed green beans with this wonderful California red. We equate this wine to the good left bank Bordeaux without any funkiness. We continue to be impressed with this wine.