Eggplant Prosciutto and Ham Rolls 茄子の生ハム巻き

I was trying to come up some new eggplant recipes since we still had two large eggplants we got from Weee. I saw two recipes on-line using thinly sliced pork or prosciutto wrapped around a baton shaped piece of eggplant. Actually, these types of roll-ups are very popular in Japan. The most common ones use vegetables such as scallion or asparagus in the center rolled up in various kinds of thinly slices meat. Since we had slices of prosciutto and honey-baked ham, these two recipes inspired me to make roll-ups using batons of eggplant with one kind wrapped in prosciutto and the other with ham. I did not add any sauce as suggested in one of the recipes. This is a good snack-y dish. Salted “umeboshi” plum paste gave a nice salty sour flavor that went well with the eggplant. We definitely liked the prosciutto one best.

Ingredients (made 12 roll-ups):
For salted plum sauce (“bainiku” 梅肉)
Two “umeboshi” 梅干し salted plums, meat removed from the stone, chopped.
1/2 tsp mirin

One asian/Japanese eggplant (long slender one which is not quite a Japanese eggplant), quartered length-wise, then cut across about 2 inch long or the width of the ham and prosciutto.
10 perilla “aojiso” 青紫蘇 leaves
12 slices total of prosciutto and ham.
1 tbs potato starch or “katakuriko”片栗粉
2-3 tbs light olive oil or vegetable oil

Directions:
Place the meat of the salted plum in a Japanese “suribachi” mortar. Add the mirin and grind into a smooth paste (#1)
Spread out a slice of the prosciutto or ham on a cutting board, place the perilla leaf on the ham, smear the plum sauce, place a baton of the eggplant and roll to make 12 roll-ups (#2 and #3).
Thinly coat the surface with potato starch
Seam-side down, fry in a non-stick frying pan with the olive oil in medium heat, turning occasionally to brown all sides (#4). Once all sides are brown, turn the heat down put the lid on, to complete cooking of the eggplant (about 5 more minutes).
Serve hot or re-heated in the toaster oven before serving.

As mentioned before, the ones made with prosciutto were much better largely because the ham didn’t have any flavor. The outside was crispy with some saltiness. The eggplant was creamy, soft and permeated with the major flavors that came from the salted plum paste and the perilla leaves. Very good combination of the textures and flavors. Perfect snack for either sake or wine.

Simmered Pork and Nappa Cabbage 豚肉と白菜の煮物

When we get a large bone-in skin-on piece of pork (either fore- or hind-quarter), I do secondary butchering to remove the skin and bone. With the meat I usually make one large roast for barbecuing in our Weber grill, and one smaller roast for making simmered pork or “Nibuta” 煮豚 in the Instant pot. I usually hand-chop the remaining trimmings into ground pork which I use to make “mapo tofu” 麻婆豆腐, “niku-miso” 肉味噌 or other dishes.  This time the pork came from the fore-quarter and after I did all my usual preparations additional small blocks of pork remained. So I sliced them very thinly and made two dishes; one was a classic homey dish of meat and potato stew or “nikujaga” 肉じゃが and the other was this nappa cabbage dish. I made this dish since I had quite a good amount of left-over nappa cabbage or “hakusai” 白菜 and also brown shimeji mushroom or “bunashimeji” ぶなしめじ.

I added sugar snaps スナップ豌豆の塩びたし for color.

This is based on a recipe I saw on-line but because of the ingredients I had (or didn’t have), I had to make some modifications.

Ingredients:
4 leaves of nappa cabbage, bottom trimmed, cut in half lengthwise. I cut the bottom half thick portion on a slant (45 degree against the cutting board surface) 1 inch long (called “sogi-giri” 削ぎ切). This makes a slightly thin segment). The leafy tops were cut into 1 inch long pieces.
120 grams of thinly sliced pork (the amount is arbitrary. More the better?)
1 package (150 grams) of brown shimeji mushroom, bottoms removed and separated
400ml Japanese dashi broth
1 tbs each of sake and soy sauce (to marinade the pork)

Seasoning
2 tbs sake
2 tbs x4 Japanese noodle sauce (or 1 tbs each of mirin and soy sauce)
1/2 tsp ginger juice (from grated ginger root)

Direction:
Marinate the pork in the mixture of sake and soy sauce for 5-10 minutes.
Put the dashi broth in a pan on medium heat. When it boils add the marinated pork. When the meat changes color, add the nappa cabbage and mushrooms. Cook for a few minutes and add the seasoning. Cook for 10-15 minutes or until the hard part of the nappa cabbage is cooked through.
Serve warm with topping of blanched green beans or sugar snap or chopped scallion (optional).

Although this dish uses the combination of seasoning similar to “niku-jaga”, this dish came out much more mildly flavored and gentle. This is a good dish for drinking snack or the accompaniment for rice.

Duck Egg アヒルの卵

While I was browsing Weee Asian grocery website, I noticed that in addition to the quail eggs which we like to get regularly, they also have duck eggs. I asked my wife if she had ever eaten a duck egg. She replied, “Have I ever eaten a duck egg?” Then reminded me that duck eggs were a regular by-product of raising ducks as a child in rural Pennsylvania even if the ducks were just pets. “So yes she had eaten a number of duck eggs in her past.” She also mentioned that, to her recollection, they were extremely rich with a rather strong/gamy flavor. In fact, to her juvenile palate they were almost inedible. (Her sister emphatically confirmed my wife’s description of the duck eggs).  Her family used to cook scrambled eggs in the ratio of one duck egg with several hens eggs to somewhat blunt the gaminess of the duck eggs. This peaked my interest and ordered half a dozen.

The picture below is a comparison of a hen’s egg (left) to a duck egg (right). Although we read that duck eggs can be as much as 50 to 100% larger than chicken eggs, in this particular example, the duck egg is only about 20-30% larger than the chicken egg. 

Upon cracking it open, the duck egg has a thicker and sturdier shell and the inner membrane appears stronger. The duck egg yolk (right) are larger and brighter orange in color. 

For a taste comparison, we decided to simply scramble the two eggs. This preparation would also be the closest to the tastes my wife experienced as a child. Since this was a lunch, I served slices of barbecued pork cooked our Weber, celery feta cheese with shiitake mushroom salad, “drunken” Campari tomato and a half slice of home-baked English muffin bread.

The scrambled duck egg has much brighter yellow in color (shown on the right). We tasted to compare. Based on my wife’s recollection, we were expecting the duck egg to be much stronger and gamier in flavor but it was quite similar to the hen’s egg. If we were not told, we would not have been able to tell the difference. My wife initially was hesitant to eat the duck egg fully expecting what she experienced as a child. Then she was very surprised and even a little disappointed at how similar it tasted to the chicken egg. (So she was left with a quandary. What had changed since her childhood—the duck egg or her palate?)

This was very interesting and we will try various preparations such as boiling, poaching or frying the duck eggs for comparison to the hen’s egg.

Eggplant Stir-fry with Perilla and Ginger 大葉ナス

Again we got some Japanese groceries delivered from Weee which included some Asian eggplants. Since the delivery included quite a good number of eggplants, I had to come up with a number of different dishes to use them before they go bad. I made this dish which is new to me. I was inspired by looking at a YouTube episode. This was a perfect dish since in addition to eggplant, it uses green perilla which is growing quite well in our herb garden. As usual I treated the recipe as “advisory” and made some modifications. This is slightly sweet due to the oyster sauce and added sugar but it is also somewhat spicy from the ginger. It has a nice perilla taste as well. I think this is good served warm or cold. It’s also another item that goes well with cold sake.

Ingredients:
One asian eggplant (this was a slender long one, which is equivalent to two small Japanese eggplants), cut into quarters lengthwise and then cut on the bias into bite sized pieces.
10 green perilla leaves, finely chopped (left in the picture below).
1 tbs julienne of ginger (center in the picture below).
2 tbs oil (I used light olive oil with a splash of dark sesame oil) (divided 1 tbs each).
1 tbs soy sauce
1 tbs oyster sauce
1 tsp ponzu
1 tbs chicken broth (the original recipe calls for granulated chicken broth or 鶏がらスープの素 which is freeze dried granules of chicken and vegetable broth. This is an ingredient that often appears in Japanese recipes)
2 tsp salt and 1 tbs potato starch (for preparation of the eggplant)

Directions:
Salt the eggplant pieces, mix well and and let it stand for 5 minutes or more (until some moisture comes out)
Wash with cold water to remove excess salt, ring out moisture from the eggplant (left in the picture below), lightly coat with the potato starch

Add the oil to the frying pan on medium flame. When the oil is hot add the eggplant pieces turning until both sides are cooked and browned (3-4 minutes), set it aside (picture below)

Add the remaining oil to the pan on low flame add the ginger and sauté for one minute or until fragrant.
Add the perilla and sauté for one more minute. Add the soy sauce, oyster sauce, chicken broth and mix.
Add back the eggplant and stir and the sauce slightly reduced (1-2 minutes).

This is another flavorful rendition of “eggplant”. I was very careful not to overcook it and have the eggplant dissolve as a result the skin had a slight crunch while the white interior was soft and creamy. It had a surprising bite of hot spiciness which took us a little while to figure out was coming from the ginger. But it added another positive note to the dish.

Keema curry Japanese Version キーマカレー

Keema (meaning ground meat) curry and its variation dry curry are popular in Japan. I posted  some variations of these dishes before. This is not a genuine Indian or Pakistani keema curry but a Japanese variation. One of the reasons I made this dish was to use up left-over ground pork. I am sure pork is not the kind of meat usually used in genuine keema curry. Also, it’s usually made with a premixed Japanese curry powder (I used S&B brand*) which has a taste distinctive from Indian curry flavoring. I would characterize Japanese curry powder as milder, not hot, somewhat sweeter with a somewhat different range of spices. I thought I added a good amount of Japanese curry powder to the keema and it had plenty of flavor that could described as “spicy” but it was not really hot. The dish also included many vegetables (onion, celery, carrot—almost a myripoix), garlic and ginger plus the addition of garam masala. The addition of tonkatsu sauce toward the end of the cooking was a distinctly Japanese touch that would not be found in an Indian curry. It did add to the nice complexity in flavors. We like this curry very much. I served it over rice with a sunny-side-up fried egg, rakkyo らっきょう and fukushin-zuke 福神漬け pickels and (home-pasteurized) egg with runny yolk, which are classic accompaniment for Japanese curry.

*Reportedly it contains Turmeric, Coriander, Fenugreek, Cumin, Red Pepper, Black Pepper, Cinnamon, Ginger, Star Anise, Cloves, Cardamon, Fennel, Nutmeg, Laurel Leaves, Allspice and Garlic.

Similar to what I posted before and also I consulted the recipe on-line. Instead of tomato I used Ketchup.

Ingredients:
1 lb ground pork
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 medium carrot, finely chopped
2 stalks celery, finely chopped
1 Jalapeño pepper, seeded deveined and finely chopped
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground garlic
I package brown shimeji mushroom, bottom cut off and separated (optional, I just had a package and wanted to use it up)
2 tsp or more curry powder (I used Japanese S&B brand)
1 tsp Garam Masala
salt and black pepper to taste
1 tbs ketchup
1 tbs tonkatsu sauce
1 tbs unsalted butter
1 cup chicken broth (or more if too thick)
2 tbs olive or vegetable oil

Directions:
In a pot on medium flame, add the oil. When hot, add the onion, carrot, celery, Jalapeño pepper, garlic and ginger. Sauté for 2-3 minutes, add the curry powder, salt and pepper and stir for several more minutes. Push the vegetables to one side of the pan, add the ketchup in the exposed bottom of the pan and sauté until color changes to dark red/brown (Maillard reaction).
Add the pork and stir and cook until the pork separated and color turns. Add the chicken stock and simmer for 10-20 minutes. Add the gram masala, butter and tonkatsu sauce and simmer for 5 more minutes. If needed add more curry powder (or cayenne pepper powder).

This was a very nice refreshing change from Indian inspired curries we have been making recently. It is nicely spicy in a mild almost sweet manner. Served over rice with the accompaniment of Japanese pickles used for curries this was a very Japanese interpretation of the spicy dish known as curry.

Lily Bulb and Wood Ear Scrambled Egg 百合根とキクラゲの卵炒め

I made this dish to use up some left over lily bulb and fresh wood ear mushrooms I had. I did not follow any recipe but wood ear and eggs is a common combination in Japanese Chinese dishes. I just added the lily bulb.  This turned out to be a quite good combination. Wood ear does not have much flavor but has a nice crunchy texture. Lily bulb has nice sweetness and softer texture.

Ingredients (two small servings)
2 eggs, beaten
Wood ear mushroom, cut into bite size (I used fresh), amount arbitrary
lily bulb, separated and blanched, amount arbitrary
Vegetable (or light olive) oil and dark sesame oil
Salt and pepper

Directions:
Add the oil with a splash of dark sesame oil in a non-stick frying pan on medium heat
Add the wood ear and lily bulb, stir for 1 minute
Add the egg and mix
Season it with salt and pepper

This is a simple quick dish and perfect if you have wood ear mushroom and lily bulb (which may not be usual items one may have often).

Chicken Quesadilla チキンケサデア

This is a dish we made for lunch one day. We were inspired by the recipe called “Smashed burger taco” which appeared in the Washington Post. We really did not follow the recipe at all except for the idea of spreading the meat thinly over the tortilla. Since we had  about 3-4 oz of ground chicken, we used chicken instead of beef. For the rest we made it like a quesadilla. We topped it with our usual, guacamole and sour cream. Although I seasoned the meat with cumin, salt, black pepper and freshly ground nutmeg, the meat did not have a really strong flavor. I also added finely chopped Vidalia onion and mayonnaise (to compensate for the lean chicken meat).

We made two sets and cut it into wedges. We ate three slices which was more than enough for us. The rest is a snack for later.

Ingredients (made two sets of quesadilla)
4 soft wheat tortillas
4oz ground chicken
1/2 small sweet (Vidalia) onion, finely chopped
1 tsp mayonnaise (optional)
Salt, black ground pepper, cumin, and nutmeg to taste
Cheeses (we used cheddar, fresh goat, and smoked gouda), the amount is arbitrary
1-2 tbs light olive oil

Directions:
Mix the chicken, onion, seasonings and mayonnaise in a bowl and mix well. Spread half of the meat mixture on the each tortilla and spread to the edge (#1)
Heat up frying pans (I used two pans to cook them simultaneously) on medium heat and add the olive oil.
When the oil is hot, add the tortilla with meat side down (#2) and cook for 1-2 minutes then flip over (#3)
Add cheeses (#4)
Place another tortilla on the top. Press gently with spatula (#5)
When the cheeses have melted (1-2 minutes) flip and cook the other side for 1-2 more minutes (#6)

Served it hot with topping of guacamole and sour cream (first picture). Since the meat layer is thin, it adds subtle umami but if you do not pay attention, you may not notice of the meat (especially since we used the chicken). We added a lots of cheeses which made this very cheesy. The tortilla added a nice crunch. Very satisfying lunch.

P.S. We had this later as a snack after heating up in the toaster oven. It tasted better with the chicken flavor more pronounced. Also, the shape was better kept and easier to pick up and eat.