Kamo eggplant with pork miso stuffing 賀茂茄子の肉味噌詰め

The other day, I found a round Japanese eggplant at our Japanese grocery store. This was either Kamo-nasu 加茂茄子 or Mizu-nasu 水茄子  but it had no label. I asked the cashier and was told it was "Kamo-nasu". Kamo-nasu is often used in Kyoto cuisine 京都料理 and has a nice firm flesh. Dengaku 田楽 is the most common way to serve this vegetable. (While I am writing this I realized I never posted eggplant "dengaku". When I made this, I thought I must have already posted the usual miso-dengaku and decided to make this variation using pork meat).

It is miso flavored but I also added ground pork and white sesame paste. I garnished it with roasted white sesame seeds.

I served this one evening with pork belly "Kakuni" 豚の角煮 I made recently.

Ingredients:
One Kamo-nasu (#1) (or you can use regular American eggplant), cut into four disks after removing the skin in an alternate pattern. I removed some of the flesh of the eggplant to make space for the stuffing (#2).
Light olive oil, as need, to bake the eggplant (or you could deep fry).

For stuffing:
1/4 lb of ground pork (I used trimming from pork tenderloins and hand chopped)
1/4 tsp finely chopped ginger
1/4 tsp finely chopped garlic
2 tbs miso (I used white miso)
2 tbs mirin
2 tbs sake
1 tsp roasted white sesame paste "nerigoma" 練りゴマ.
1/2 tsp of dark roasted sesame oil
1 tsp vegetable oil
Finely chopped flesh removed from the eggplant as discussed above.
1 tsp potato starch slurry (potato starch and sake in equal amount)

Directions:
For eggplant,
I decided to bake rather than either cook in a frying pan with oil or deep fry.
I lined the baking sheet with aluminum foil and coated with the olive oil.
I painted all the surfaces of the eggplant slices with the oil and baked at 350F for 30 minutes in the toaster oven (convection mode) (#3 and 4 above).

For stuffing:
In a non-stick frying pan, I added the vegetable and sesame oil on low flame and sautéed the ginger and garlic until fragrant. I added the finely diced flesh of eggplant, pork and turned up the flame and cooked the meat until cooked and separated.
I first loosened the miso with sake and mirin by adding the liquid in increments while mixing in a separate container. I added the sugar and mixed well. (If the consistency was not liquid enough, add water or more sake).
I added the sauce into the cooked meat mixture and cooked until the liquid was reduced in half about 10 minutes.
I added the sesame paste and a splash of sesame oil and mixed well.
I tasted the stuffing (you can adjust sweetness by adding more sugar or mirin at this point).
I finished with the potato starch slurry to thicken the stuffing. Make sure to cook for about one minute before cutting off the flame.

Assembly:
I kept both the baked eggplant and the stuffing in the refrigerator until just before serving.
I layered the miso-pork stuffing on the top of the eggplant slices and placed in a preheated 350F toaster oven for 15 minutes or until warmed up completely.
I garnished with sesame seeds and served hot.

This was very good. The eggplant was soft and sweet which was well complemented by the ginger miso and pork flavors of the stuffing. The only problem was the skin of the eggplant--it was tough. I could probably leave the skin alone rather than making an alternate peeling pattern since we had to remove the skin to eat the eggplant anyway. This combination of the pork belly dish and the miso-pork stuffing dish went very well together.

Corn Buttermilk bread コーンバターミルクブレッド

Right now, it is peak local corn and blueberry season. Occasionally we get fresh local corn. The quality can be hit or miss but this week we found some decent fresh corn. My wife decided to incorporate the fresh corn in her baking and made this corn buttermilk bread.

Beside using cornmeal, she added fresh corn on the top.

The fresh corn stayed on the top and didn't sink to the bottom of the batter.

Ingredients:
1 cup cornmeal (or corn flour)

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/3 cup white sugar
1 Tbs. baking powder
1 Tsp salt
2/3 vegetable oil
1/3 cup butter melted
2 Tbs. honey
4 eggs beaten
2 1/2 cup buttermilk
1 cup of fresh uncooked corn cut off the cob

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350F and grease a 9 x 13 inch baking dish.
Picture #1 shows the ingredients. In a bowl combine the vegetable oil, melted butter, honey, beaten eggs and buttermilk (#2).
In a separate bowl stir together the cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt(#3).
Pour the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir until just moistened (#4).
Pour the batter into the prepared baking dish and sprinkle the fresh corn kernels on top(#5).
Cook in the oven for 45 minutes until the top of the cornbread starts to brown and show cracks (#6)

This bread has nice fresh corn flavors and a lovely moist texture. The fresh corn kernels got a bit chewy. Next time, my wife said, she will mix the corn kernels into the batter.

Chicken livers simmered in red wine 鶏レバーの赤ワイン煮

Although chicken livers may not be a very healthy food, both my wife and I like them. So sometimes we buy a small plastic tub full of chicken livers when it is available at the local grocery store. I was thinking of making a re-match of country pate with pork and chicken liver but when I examined the livers, they were pretty good quality without any broken pieces. I changed my mind and decided to make "Yakitori" style with my tare sauce 鶏レバーの焼き鳥. I made this dish from the livers that remained after I made the yakitori. It looks very dark almost black and reminded us of whole truffles, but the inside was still the color of liver. I added freshly ground black pepper just before serving.

The white specks on the surface is ground pepper.

Ingredients:
230 grams (0.5 lb) fresh chicken livers, cleaned, soaked in cold water, cut into bite size.
130 ml red wine (I used Tempranillo since I happened have an already open bottle)
1 tbs Mirin
1 tbs Soy sauce
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp ginger, finely julienned

Directions:
In a sauce pan, add all simmering liquid ingredients and let it come to a simmer.
In a large amount of boiling water, add the livers and wait until the water comes to a boil again. Remove the livers and place them in the simmering liquid (see below).

Cook/reduce the liquid to a small amount 30 minutes or more (see below).

I did not add freshly ground black pepper while cooking but added it just before serving. I served this dish cold next day with a glass of red wine. This liver had very pleasing dense texture; almost pate-like with some sweetness and nice red wine/tannin flavors. It went perfectly well with a good sturdy red wine. We both really liked this dish.

Fresh Corn Risotto 新鮮トウモロコシリソト

This risotto was my wife's idea. I just made it. We were heavily indulging in fresh corn since it was local fresh corn season. We enjoyed corn souffle, corn rice, corn pudding, and corn "cob" soup. We posted all previously. So, my wife suggested we make corn risotto using leftover corn rice and corn "cob" broth. We also added fresh corn kernels to make sure all the corn flavors were concentrated in this dish. I suggested adding jalapeno pepper or parsley (mostly for color), but my wife vetoed the suggestion; she wanted "pure" corn flavors. We did not even use shallots or onion.

So, it does look a bit monochromatic but this is the ultimate fresh corn experience.

Ingredients:
About one cup Corn rice made from fresh corn kernels and corn "cob" broth.
Corn "cob" broth, as needed (probably close to 1 cup).
Fresh corn kernels, about half a cup
Butter, unsalted, 1 tbs
Salt to taste

Directions:
Since our leftover corn rice was frozen, we thawed it by microwaving for 30-45 seconds.
In a non-stick frying pan, I melted the butter and cooked the rice and fresh corn kernels until coated.
I added the corn broth in increments as I stirred until each addition of the liquid got absorbed.
I repeated this until I reached the desired creamy consistency.
I added a few more pats of butter and seasoned it with Kosher salt.

This is indeed the ultimate corn experience. It was a very comforting dish with lots of fresh corn flavors. I thought that we had made too much and there would be left-overs...but it did not happen. Both my wife and I were members of the "clean plate" club. This was the perfect dish to finish the evening.

Appetizer snacks 4 kinds酒の肴4種類

We have been enjoying Izakaya food as appetizers but I have not posted them since I have not made anything new for a while. Although nothing shown here was new, this was the starting lineup one evening . From left to right are Spanish mackerel simmered in miso sauce 鯖の味噌煮, cold silken tofu cube 冷奴 and cold simmered Japanese eggplant and shishi tougrashi 茄子とシシトウの揚げ浸し. Since we harvested myouga 茗荷 from our backyard a few weeks ago and made sweet vinegar pickled myouga 茗荷の甘酢ずけ, I used it to garnish the tofu and eggplant dishes.

The fresh Spanish mackerel came from Whole Foods.

You can have so many garnish variations for cold tofu cubes. This time I used perilla leaves, pickled myouga and chives with wasabi. After the picture, we added soy sauce.

This eggplant dish is usually deep fried first and then simmered in broth. I sautéed the eggplant in light olive oil, instead. Since I had Japanese "shishito" green pepper, I also cooked it in the same manner. I garnished it with pickled myouga and threads of ginger root.

Here is another view with a better look at the eggplant. The skin is scored so it is easy to eat. Even the myouga has the back cut into strips for easy eating.

The 4th snack was my regular "teiban" 定番 pork belly simmered in soy sauce and sugar 豚の角煮. The pork belly also came from Whole Foods. This time, I bought almost 3 lbs. Although I did not change the way I cooked it, this batch came out extremely well. Even the red meat layers were extremely tender and not dry at all. Making a bit larger quantity is more efficient in terms of my effort and we can enjoy this dish longer.

This was served warm (microwaved) with green beans (previously blanched) and a dab of Japanese mustard.

I think we had our house sake Daiginjo sake "Mu" 大吟醸　”無” with the first three dishes and then switched to Cabernet for the pork (I don't remember which red wine we had). This was a mighty good start of the evening.

Hasselback potato with flat iron steak ハッセルバックポテト

One weekend, my wife assumed my usual duty of foraging for food and went to the grocery store in my place. She came back with, among other things, a bag of Russet potatoes and a flat iron steak. Another "meat and potato" dinner was inevitable. Since my wife had just recently made crispy roasted potatoes, we wanted to try something different and decided to make "Hasselback" potatoes.

They came out nice. A whole potato, however, is more than we could handle, so we shared one. This was cooked in olive oil and bacon drippings.

Since we had not made this dish before, I consulted several recipes on line and came up with this one.

Ingredients:
Russet potato (we cooked two at a time)
Olive oil and bacon dripping (optional)
Salt and pepper
Herbs of your choice (may be rosemary), we used parsley in the end.

Directions:
To open up the leaves of potato, it appears the secret is to cut off the bottom (#1).
Placing two chop sticks (disposable) one front and one in back of the potato, I cut 1/4 inch multiple slices without cutting completely through the potato (apparently gadgets to cut Hasselback potatoes are available). I used the small cut piece as a small pillow (#3).
I brushed olive oil between the leaves of potatoes and seasoned it with salt and pepper.
I baked it for 1 hour at 425 F in a convection oven (we used our toaster oven on convection mode).
I basted the potatoes a few times. The last 30 minutes I based the potatoes with bacon drippings (#3 and 4).
I garnished it with chopped parsley.

For the flat iron steak, I seasoned with with salt and pepper, slices of garlic and fresh rosemary (see below) and let it warm up to room temperature for 1 hour. I removed the garlic slices before cooking the steak in a frying pan to medium rare doneness.

The meat and potatoes were good but the Hasselback potato is mostly for show. It tasted like a good potato. The flat iron steak was good with rosemary and garlic flavors.

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.