Warm sake and oden on a cold winter's evening 厳寒の冬の夕燗酒とおでん

Since we had some very cold wintery days recently, we enjoyed warm sake several times. One such evening, we had the Japanese classic of hot sake with oden. After I found Hakushika junmai and junmai ginjo 白鹿純米、純米吟醸 (sake in a box) at our Japanese grocery store, these have become our favorite sake served warm or "kanzake" 燗酒. The sake sold this way is usually not the best sake but is still good quality as is the case with these two. Also sake sold in a box costs significantly less than the same sake sold in a bottle. For these reasons, we think these are a good buy. (Other packaging variations may include "cup-sake" or "sake-in-a-can". Cup-sake could be even daiginjo class).

Of course on a cold winter evenings, warm sake is best paired with either oden おでん or nabe 鍋dishes. This time, I made oden. Usually boiled eggs in oden end up hardboiled even if they are soft boiled when put in the broth. So this time I made soft boiled eggs with runny yolks which I kept separate from the rest of the oden, then just 5 minutes before serving I warmed them in the broth.  I put mochi in the deep fried tofu pouches or "abura-age" 油揚げ. Instead of regular potato I used "sato imo" 里芋 or taro.

Although the eggs did not absorb the broth's flavor, the runny yolks were nice for a change. The cylindrical item is fish cake stuffed with burdock root or "Kobo-ten" ごぼう天.  The rest of the items were tofu, shitake mushroom, blanched broccoli and carrot.

On a cold winter evening, this is very warming and comforting.

Stollen Bread Version 2

This was my wife's baking project for Christmas. She has baked versions of stollen and even panettone  before but we both agreed that the store-bought Panettone are really quite good and its not really worth baking it yourself. My wife thinks (and I agree) that her stollen is better than store-bought. It differs from traditional stollen in that the dough is nut based and made with baking powder instead of yeast. So, this year (2019), she improved on her original.

Later she admitted that she went a bit overboard with the candied cherries. As a result this was a bit sweet. But it looks very festive and tasted really good. She calls it "Stollen version 2". For several breakfasts around the holidays we feasted on this stollen and two kinds of store-bought Panettone. I asked my wife to fill in the details below.

Ingredients:
5 cups AP flour
4 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cardamon
2 cups blanched almonds toasted
1 cup butter (2 sticks)
2 cups ricotta cheese
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp almond extract
4 tbs dark rum
1 cup raisins
the zest of 2 lemons
Candied cherries (amount to taste) some left whole to put on top  (#1) and some chopped (#2) to go into the center of the stollen.

Ingredients and directions for rivels.
(Crumbs for topping and to put into the center with the chopped cherries). Mix together 1/4 cup sugar, 1/4 cup flour and 2 tbs. butter softened until the ingredients are completely combined and look like fine crumbs. In addition melt 3 tbs. butter to brush onto the top of the stollen.

Directions:
In a food processor combine the flour, baking powder, granulated sugar, salt, nutmeg, cardamom, and almonds. Slice the butter into the mixture and pulse until the entire mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Set aside. In another bowel mix the ricotta, egg, vanilla, almond extract, rum, raisins, and lemon zest. Stir the wet mixture into the flour mixture until ingredients are combined.

Turn dough (which will be quite crumbly) out onto a floured board and knead a few times to bring the dough together into a smooth ball. Divide the dough into two portions, weighing them to make sure they are equal size. Roll one of the portions out into a square on a piece of parchment paper. Use the rolling pin to crease the dough just off center. Put half the chopped cherries (or to taste) on half of the square. Top the cherries with 1/4 of the rivels (#3). Fold the other half of the square over the cherry covered portion and seal by pressing the edges (#4). Brush the top of the stollen with butter and cover with 1/4 of the remaining rivals. Put as many whole cherries on top as you would like (#5) (Repeat with the other portion.) Place on baking sheet and bake in 350 degree oven for about 45 minutes or until golden brown and tests for done (#6).

This stollen has a nice nutty flavor and the texture almost of a big soft cookie. The cherries made it fun but the amount I used might be bordering on "too much of a good thing". The rivels were a nice addition particularly on the top where they added a crunch and pleasing sweetness. Now Christmas is over but we will continue enjoying the holiday by eating the stollen bread for breakfast,

Potato salad topped with squid "shiokara" イカの塩辛のせポテトサラダ

In one of the Izakaya blogs I follow, I saw a recipe to put squid "shiokara"イカの塩辛 ( or as my wife will say "squid and guts") on either mashed potatoes or potato salad. This recipe came to mind one evening after I came back from the Japanese grocery store with a package of shiokara (comes frozen in a plastic pouch) and one package containing 2 small boiled octopus legs. Since I already had potato salad in the fridge I decided to make a small dish of the potato salad topped it the shiokara as per the recipe. As another small dish, I sliced the octopus and served it on top of some daikon namasu 大根なます I had made for the new year. These two small items (shown in the picture below) were starter dishes for the evening meal.

The picture below shows the shiokara topped potato salad.  The idea here is that the salty and umami flavors of the shiokara will enhance the flavor of the potato.

The below is the octopus dish.  I just sliced the octopus leg thinly on the diagonal in a wavy pattern. I put the daikon namsu on the bottom of the small bowl and put the cut octopus on top.  I have been making a few Japanese sauces and storing them in the fridge in small squeeze bottles.  I squeezed some sumiso sauce that I made few days ago on top of the octopus. (Having these pre-made sauces ready in squeeze bottles is very convenient).

The potato salad shiokara combination is not bad but we both felt enjoying the potato salad and shiokara separately may be better. As my wife put it, "the purity of the shiokara flavor and the purity of the potato flavor are best experienced individually and in their own right." Thus sayeth a shiokara purist.

Persimmon, smoked oyster shira-ae 薫製牡蠣と柿の白和え

Actually, this was inspired by a dish we had at Sushi Taro Omakase and then by a variation that was in the 2020 osechi box and was called "kaki kaki kunsei" (Smoked oyster and persimmon). In Japanese, persimmon is "Kaki" with flat intonation and oyster is "Kaki" with an accent on "ki", so this was a sort of play on words. The quality of the smoked oysters and persimmon are important. The oysters used by Sushi Taro were smoked in-house and were wonderful. The persimmon was perfection. The osechi version of this dish (picture below) had a light olive oil-based dressing and was also extremely good. In the case of the dish I made, the importance of the quality of ingredients was driven home in spades. Both the oysters and the persimmon were not really great but the basic recipe is good so after several iterations we finally came up with a dish that was not bad.

We found a package of "kaki" persimmon 柿 from California at Whole Foods. It looked like "Shibu-gaki" 渋柿 meaning "puckering persimmon". But these must have been treated. There are multiple ways this could have been done. For example it could have been treated with carbon dioxide since this was apparently commercially done. (The "at-home" treatment to reduce the puckering effect is usually to wait until the persimmon is completely ripe and becomes somewhat gelatinous). The advertisement on the package stated "you can eat it as it is" and showed a cherub of a boy eating it like an apple.

Since the persimmon we bought were supposedly ready to eat, we tried it. It was still hard. Although it was not puckering, the "persimmon" flavor was not as pronounced as we would have liked. As the first iteration of trying this persimmon,  I made "shira-ae" 白和え a very common small dish which I blogged previously.

For the next iteration I served the persimmon with canned smoked oysters as my attempt to emulate what we had at Sushi Taro. Unfortunately, the canned smoked oysters which came from China and were bought at our local grocery store (shown as the bottom can in the picture below) were, as far as we were concerned, not suitable for human consumption. The oysters were fragmented, almost black in color and tasted terrible. They completely ruined the dish.

For the third iteration I used smoked canned oysters in olive oil from Whole Foods (shown as the top can in the picture above). (We didn't look to see where they came from). These were infinitely better than the previous batch. They were plump, whole and had a nice smokey flavor. This dish is shown below.

The strong smokey taste of the oysters and the sweetness of the persimmon' with the gentle sesame punctuated flavored dressing of tofu worked well.

This was one of three small starter dishes I served one evening with cold sake.

Of the other two dishes, the left most is fried salmon in sweet vinegar 鮭の南蛮漬け. I garnished it with sushi vinegar dressed cucumber キュウリの酢の物.

The center dish is my usual mackerel simmered in miso サバの味噌煮.

Ingredients:
One persimmon peeled and cut into bite sized pieces (below left).
One can of smoked oysters in olive oil.

For the Shira-ae dressing 白和え (below right)
1/4 silken tofu, wrapped in paper towel and weighted down to remove extra moisture.
1 tsp miso (or to taste)
1/4 tsp roasted sesame seeds, ground in a Japanese suri-bachi すり鉢 mortar.
1/4 tsp of light colored soy sauce

Directions:
Add all the shira-ae ingredients to a Japanese suribachi mortar and grind them until smooth (above right). Taste and if need adjust the seasoning.
Dress the persimmon pieces and top with the oysters. (I blotted off any excess oil and cut the oysters into two pieces.

Compared to the first try with oysters, this second try was much better. (As good as it was it did not hold a candle to the Sushi Taro version).  I do not think this type of persimmon is particularly good for this dish. I prefer another kind of non-puckering persimmon called  "ama-gaki"甘柿. It has a better texture, is sweeter, and has a stronger distinctive persimmon flavor. In any case, the contrast of the flavor of the persimmon with tofu dressing and smokey oyster flavors worked well enough.

Tippsy sake; Best sake website

Buying Japanese sake has not been easy in the U.S., that was, however, until recently. Surely any wine/liquor store, either brick-and-mortar or on-line, carries some sake but if you are looking for a certain sake, you will not find it most of the time. Since turnover is usually low in regular liquor or wine  stores, your chances of getting old sake is high. Our Japanese grocery store carries a better collection of sake which is still limited and the prices tend to be on the high side. I regularly get cooking sake (Ozeki brewed in California) at a near-by liquor store but that is about it. Our house sake has been "Mu" daiginjo sake ”無” 大吟醸. To get a case of "Mu" on line or from brick-and-mortar stores required some efforts and wait time.  When we added  "Tengumai" daiginjo 天狗舞 大吟醸 to our house sake, it was more difficult still.

This was all solved when I came across the "Tippsy sake"  website last March (disclaimer: I am not associated with or getting any benefits from them except that I can now buy the sake I want on line). I guess when you get "tipsy", your finger hits "p" twice. I have bought 5-6 cases by now and I am happy to tell you that I am very satisfied with their selections, services and prices.

The below is the "sake shop" page. It has excellent collections of sake although some "cult" breweries are missing (which is not a negative by any means especially since these almost never get out of Japan and if they did probably would not be worth the price). You can search and filter the results in many ways. The below is "junmai" sake listed from low to high price.  The lowest price sake happens to be my go-to sake when we want warm sake; "Hakutsuru" junmai 白鶴純米.

The below is daiginjo listed from low to high price. I think the frist three are good ones with high CP (cost/performance) ratio. Tengumai "50" and Yaegaki "Mu" are, as I mentioned, our house cold sakes. Actually Nihon Sakari 日本盛 大吟醸,  which is the lowest priced daigiinjo, is not bad at all. Mu and Nihon Sakari are similar; very  clean, fruity but a bit on the  simple side, Tengumai has more complex flavor. Of course, Dassai "45" 獺祭４５ is a classic very fruity and popular daiginjo.

When choosing a particular sake,  one advantage of the web site is the detailed information concerning the sake that is available, such as the information shown below. I think this is for "Tengumai 50". Beside the flavor profile, you get more technical information like %alcohol, RPR (Rice  polishing ratio or "seimai-do" 精米度, for example daiginjo has to be more than 50%), SMV (Sake Meter value or "Nihonshu-do" 日本酒度 , +3 is neutral, the larger the number drier) etc. Appropriate serving temperatures and food pairing are also listed.

I am also impressed with their service. The sake is shipped from California, and took more than one week in the beginning but their processing has been getting better and takes 5-6 days to the East coast. During the summer months, they are careful to make sure the sake is handled appropriately and does not undergo a "hot soak" in the summer heat while being shipped cross country.  They ship it in a refrigerated truck/train to somewhere in NJ and then ship it to the customer using FedEx ground which is same as over-night shipping. This adds a few more days and the FedEx notification gets a bit screwed up but once the sake arrives in NJ, the notification is accurate. With all this service, shipping is free if you buy half a case or more. One time, the package was damage during shipping on the day it was supposedly to be delivered. I got a notification from FedEx that they were shipping it back to the sender. I contacted (emailed)  "Tippsy" and the customer service was wonderful  and re-shipped the order.

For me, this is the best place to buy sake. I recommend this site for anybody interested in buying sake. They also has the "sake box" subscription which I have not tried. Hope they will continued to be successful.

January 2 evening with osechi 正月2日の夕

This was January 2nd. We finished the lovely soba noodle from Sushi Taro as a lunch  and in the evening, we hit the Sushi Taro osechi box in a big way. This plate is the collection what goes well with sake. All except for two items came from the osechi box.

This is a lot of food and also encourages sipping sake.
1. Red and white fish cake, 2. Steamed Uni sea urchin, 3. Vinegar cured flounder kelp roll, 4. Smoked oyster and persimmon, 5. Salt-broth soaked sugar snap (my contribution), 6. Miso marinated herring roe, 7. Caramelized crispy baby shrimp, 8. "Karasumi" cured sun-dried mullet roe, 7. Braised "ayu"  sweet fish with roe in sweet soy sauce, 10. Koji pickled  herring with daikon or could be turnip, 11. Salmon kelp roll (my contribution), 12. Squid ink coated mustard stuffed burdock root, 13. Monkfish liver terrine, 14. Russian marinated salmon with ikura salmon roe (my contribution), 15. Grilled sweet miso marinated Spanish Mackerel, 16. Slow cooked miso marinated Wagyu beef tongue.

Everything was fabulous. Several items are highlighted below. This is persimmon and smoked oyster which is new and great.

More daikon (or could be turnip) than herring but marinated in malted "koji" rice is also good. This is the first time I used these miniature square plates we got in Kyoto last time we were in Japan.

I warmed the mackerel and beef tongue in the toaster oven but I got distracted and they got a bit overcooked/warmed it but they were still great.

After cold sake and these 16 different delicacies, we switched to red wine and several dishes I made: chicken liver simmered in red wine, pork belly "kaku-ni", and two variations of chicken squares (one with pine nuts and miso flavor and the other with blue-cheese and dried fig). This was more than enough for us for the evening. We indulged adequately for the January 2nd feasting.

New Year Soba お正月蕎麦

Chef Kitayama of Sushi Taro is passionate about making hand-cut "teuchi" soba 手打ちそば. This year, "Toshikoshi soba" 年越し蕎麦 was an option with  the Osechi box and we got one order (for two people). It also included "Soba dare" 蕎麦だれ in a plastic botttle. We knew we could not eat the soba on New Year eve as "toshikoshi soba" since we would be too full. As in other years, we enjoyed it as "New Year soba" (if such a word exists, お正月蕎麦). We had this as a lunch on the second day of the New Year.

I asked my wife if she wanted the soba cold or warm. She chose warm. So I made "Kakesoba" かけそば.  I topped it with all "osechi" items to make it "New Year soba". Some came from the Sushi Taro osechi box some are what I made.

We used one portion in a plastic wrap for two of us.

How to cook "raw" 生そば or "teuchi" soba 手打ちそば:
Since most of us including me usually have commercially made dried soba, it may be worthwhile to mention how "teuchi soba" should be cooked (mostly for my own reminder).

1, Large amount of rapidly boiling water.
2. Add soba by separating and distributing in the water.
3. Gently move the soba in slow circular motion with a pair of long cooking chopsticks to prevent the soba from sticking to each other but not to break the soba. I cooked about 1 minute and half.
4. Scoop up the soba using a wire-meshed ladle, if you want "Sobayu" 蕎麦湯 (which is the water in which soba was cooked) to dilute the dipping sauce for drinking (applicable to cold soba).  Otherwise, just drain it in a colander and gently wash it in running cold water (this process is important to remove the cooked flour on the surface of the noodles (if left on, the flour would make it a bit slimy) and to cool down the soba to make it firm.
5. For warm soba, either you could warm it up again by dipping it in hot water or briefly warming it in the soup broth. Since my wife has a "cat's tongue" (her own words) she does not like very hot soup so I chose to just to put the cooled and washed noodles in the bowl directly (see below).

These are the toppings I used for the New Year soba. The sake-steamed shrimp, ume-fu (flower or more specifically plum blossom-shaped gluten cake), and white and red fish cakes are from the osechi box. Chopped chives (I could have used "Mitsu-ba" since I had it but I forgot), sugar snaps in salted broth, and the datemaki are what I prepared. I prepared bonito and kelp broth using a dashi pack and added Chef Kitayama's tare sauce to taste (not quite 1:1) and kept warm on a low flame.

I warmed these toppings (except for the chives) briefly in the simmering broth and assembled the final bowls (see the first and second pictures). I then poured in the hot soup. This was quite good. I could have gone with a "volcanic" hot soup but my wife was happy with this since it was safer to eat without burning your mouth. I do not know if soba eaten in the 2nd day of New Year will bring any luck and  longevity but we enjoyed it nonetheless.