Miso flavored silken tofu with green beans 味噌味の豆腐とインゲン

At our Japanese grocery store, I bought this silken tofu called "Sincere silken tofu, just right firmness" 誠実の絹 from "Otokomae tofu" 男前豆腐. This is made from Hokkaido soybeans called "Pride of snow" or "Yukihomare" ユキホマレ. Since I am originally from Hokkaido, I am partial to a product like this. Since good tofu is impossible to get at the regular grocery store (the tofu we get there is pretty bad by Japanese standards but I still make some dishes from it). In any case, I had this tofu from the Japanese grocery store for a few days in the refrigerator. I thought about what kind of dish I could make to enjoy this good tofu. Cold cubes (hiyayakko 冷や奴), warm cubes in kelp broth (yudoufu 湯豆腐) or tofu miso soup (tofu-no-misoshiru 豆腐の味噌汁) came to mind but I ended up making this impromptu tofu and green bean dish with ground pork and miso. This happened because I had blanched green beans and hand chopped pork which was a by-product of when I prepared bone-in pork shoulder for pork roast. It is remotely similar to "mapo tofu" but this is not spicy at all which suites my wife better.

The quality of green beans is really hit or miss but these were especially good. They had a nice firmness and crunch but were not tough at all.

Since the flavor was very gentle, I added Japanese red pepper flakes (iccimi tougarashi 一味唐辛子) to add some zing.

Ingredients (this made 6 small servings):
Silken tofu (320 gram), Cut into cubes
2 tbs white miso
3 tbs sake and mirin
1 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp vegetable oil (or dark sesame oil for stronger flavor)
Ground pork (amount arbitrary but I probably used about 100 grams)
1/2 tsp Ginger root, skinned and finely chopped
Blanched green beans, cut in half, about 10

Directions:
In a frying pan, add the oil and when heated, add ginger and then the pork.
Stir until the pork changes color
Add the miso, sake, mirin and soy sauce. Dissolve the miso and stir until the sauce comes to a boil.
Add the tofu and gently toss until the tofu gets warm and the sauce gets somewhat thick
Taste and add more soy sauce or salt if needed.
Serve warm with a sprinkle of Japanese red pepper flakes.

The tofu was really good. The flavoring was very gentle and really highlighted the texture and taste of the tofu. This is a good first drinking snack of the evening. The leftovers warmed up nicely in the microwave oven (requires only short time 20 seconds for two small serving together in our 600W microwave oven).

Beef Tongue stew 牛タンシチュー

Using the bottom portion of boiled beef tongue (called "tanshita" たん下) I prepared this beef tongue stew. I looked through Japanese recipes and came up with this stew. In Japan, beef tongue stew or "tan-shichu" タンシチュー is one of the dishes for "Yoshoku" 洋食 or "Western-style Japanese cuisine". It is rather popular. I happened to have blanched rapini on hand. I thought the slightly bitter taste would go well with the stew so I added it to the dish. To re-enforce the beef tongue theme to the meal, I also added a slice of the middle portion of boiled tongue (called "tan-naka" たん中), briefly sautéed in butter and seasoned with salt and pepper.

It appears, that it is customary in Japan to make lines of cream on the surface for this stew before serving so I followed suit as shown below.

Adding rapini was my idea.

Nice thick stew with very tender chunks of tongue is extremely satisfying.

We like tongue slices cooked this way much better than tongue sliced and grilled in the Japanese way. The tongue was so tender and flavorful. I served a slice of tongue in another dish with my cucumber onion salad and Campari tomato.

Ingredients:
Deep posterior portion of prepared beef tongue (tan-shita), cut into 1 inch cubes
One large onion, peeled and coarsely chopped
Three ribs of celery, cut into small cubes
Two cloves of garlic, skin removed and finely chopped
Four Campari tomatoes, skinned, cut into quarters (or two small tomatoes).
Three medium carrots, peeled and cut into small cubes
Two bay leaves
2 tbs olive oil
3 tbs AP flour
1 cup dry red wine
1-2  cup reserved boiling liquid from preparing the tongue, solids removed
Salt and pepper for seasoning
Cream for garnish

Blanched rapini (optional)

Directions:
Add the olive oil to a pot and sauté the onion, garlic, and celery for several minutes, add the carrot and keep stirring for another minute or two.
Add the flour and mix until the flour coats the vegetables and the flour coating the bottom of the pan becomes slightly brown.
Add the red wine and the boiling liquid from preparing the tongue.
Add the tomato and bay leaves and keep stirring until the flour amalgamates.
Add the beef tongue and simmer for 30-40 minutes (#1).
Remove the cubes of tongue and set aside (#3)
Remove the bay leaves. Using an immersion blender, blend the vegetables and the liquid (#2). If it is too thick, add more liquid to the appropriate consistency.
Add back the tongue and simmer for 30 minutes (#4).
Taste and seasoned it with salt and pepper.
Garnished with the blanched rapini (optional) and drizzle cream on the top.

OMG this stew was something else--very flavorful! The tongue was very tender but did not disintegrate. The stew had a very unique and pleasant texture. The flavor was rich, unctuous, full of umami.  This was so good there is no way it could be good for you.

My wife mentioned that the cold cut tongue she remembered was square in shape. We realized that if you slice the mid portion of the tongue, it is indeed square. The sautéed tongue was also very tender and excellent. My wife was more than quite satisfied with both tongue dishes; especially the stew. Now she wants to have this as a sandwich--with mayo and mustard on pumpernickel.

Beef tongue 牛タン

Beef tongue is not a very popular food in the U.S. It is more popular in Europe, South America including Mexico ("Lengua"). It is also much more popular in Japan where it is served thinly sliced and grilled. This dish called "Gyuu-tan" 牛タン is famous in the city of Sendai 仙台 located in northern Japan. My wife having grown up in PA dutch country, said she really liked the beef tongue she ate as a child, served as cold cuts particularly in sandwiches. Her favorite was tongue lunch meat that came from the local Ma&Pa grocery store down the street. She just remembers it as a sort of square shaped loaf that was a very tender and tasty meat.

Several years ago while we were in Sendai, we had the famous local delicacy grilled "Gyuu-tan" 牛タンの塩焼き which was served with "Ox-tail soup" or "te-ru su-pu" テールスープ. The meat was kind of chewy. My wife said it was nothing like what she had growing up and we did not like it. I have seen beef tongue from time to time at our regular grocery store. (Based on the labeling I'm assuming it is directed toward the "latino" clientele). I mentioned it to my wife and she was enthusiastic to get it so that we could recreate the beef tongue she remembered as a kid. The other day, I found a rather small tongue and got it. The below is sort of taste test. This appears to be very close to what she remebered.

This is basic preparation and other dishes can be made from this.

Ingredients:
Whole beef tongue (#1), washed well and bottom fat removed (#2).
One medium onion, coarsely cut up
2 bay leaves
Several whole black pepper corns

Direction:
In a duch oven, add enough water to cover the tongue
Add the onion, bay leaves and pepper corns and boil gently for several hours (#3).
Take it out and let it cool for few minutes (#4)
Using a tong or fingers peel off the skin (#4 and #5). It comes off rather easily.
I sliced it thinly for the taste test (#6).
After testing, I separated the bottom of the tongue (which has more fat and other structures) for stew and the tongue proper for sandwiches.

This was simply boiled but the meat had a very nice soft texture and the flavor from the black pepper I used came through strongly. My wife said this is very close to what she remembered. She commented that if you could have beef tongue like this why would you eat the stuff served in Sendai?

Octopus and avocado salad たことアボカドのサラダ

When we buy a boiled leg of octopus, it takes at least 3 separate sittings for us to finish it. So, beside the usual sashimi, I usually come up with a few variations. Since we had a ripe avocado, I decided to make something similar to tuna and avocado cubes. I garnished this with chiffonade of perilla.

I used both slices and small chunks of the octopus to finish up the remaining octopus leg.

For the tuna and avocado dish, I used minced garlic and dark sesame oil, for this I used finely diced red onion and olive oil, instead. I was aiming for a more gentle tasting dressing.

Ingredients (2 servings):
Boiled octopus leg, cut thinly as well as in small chunks, amount arbitrary but I used about the half of the leg.
Ripe avocado, half, skin and some removed and cut into small cubes
Red or sweet onion, half, small, finely diced

For dressing:
1/2 tbs light olive oil
1 tbs soy sauce
1/2 tbs rice vinegar or Yuzu juice

For garnish
2 perilla leaves, cut into thin chiffonade

Directions:
I mixed the ingredients for the dressing.
Mixed the octopus, avocado, onion and the dressing.
Garnish with the perilla.

This was a good salad. Since octopus does not have a strong flavor, I toned down the dressing and replaced the garlic with red onion which worked well. This was a good drinking snack and also we finished the boiled octopus leg in time before it went bad.

Unexpected early Hanami 予定外の早めの花見

A Nor'Easter (winter hurricane) tore through our area recently. Winds gusted in the range of 40 to 60 MPH. My wife was standing in the kitchen making a cup of coffee when a branch the size of a small tree split off our neighbor's white pine and crashed into our 30 plus year old cherry tree splintering the trunk in half. My wife who observed the whole thing said the branch did not fall but flew into our tree--it was airborne. The cherry tree died heroically. I would like to think it gave its life to narrowly divert the white pine from crashing directly into our house causing even more damage. Nonetheless this was very heartbreaking. Later in the day our neighbor's 60 foot Leland cypress joined it's collegue by crashing into our backyard taking out our back fence which like the cherry tree gave its life to keep the massive tree from hitting the house with even greater velocity than it did. At the end of the day; death toll--3 huge trees and a backyard so full of dead trees it was almost impossible to move in it.

We tried to see if we could save the cherry tree--it was such an important part of our backyard. It was central to out yearly hanami and shaded the deck from the sun in summer. But it was too severely damaged. We had no choice but to take it down and replace it with a 6 foot tall "young sprout". This was particularly sad because the tree would have bloomed in only a few weeks. We gathered up some branches and placed the cuttings in vases with the hope that some would bloom and they did.

These blooms were a much earlier hanami than we were expecting.

Since this was the last Hanami for this cherry tree, in its honor, we decide to do an unexpected early hanami. I quickly put together six kinds of otoshi dishes for the occasion. They were octopus sashimi タコの刺身 (upper left), cube of silken tofu with garnish of perilla and salmon "Ikura" roe or "hiyayakko" 冷奴 (upper center) and store-bought "Chinese-style" squid  salad (イカの中華風サラダ). On the plate (all heated up in the toaster oven) were store-bought fish cake, spicy tofu cubes, and chicken liver simmered in wine.

In addition, we had just recently received a very thin "usuhari" うすはり glass sake carafe and sake cups from Japan sold by ”Sake-talk"  through Amazon. Several years ago when we visited Japan, we got "usuhari" tumblers and we really like these thin glass vessels. In any case, we opened American brew Shochikubai Yamadanishki Daijinjou and poured it into the carafe.

It was a bit sad to see the remaining few twigs blooming in one last gasp of this valiant tree. We still have two cherry trees in our backyard which were there when we moved in. When they bloom in a few weeks it will provide some solice for the loss our beautiful tree. We will raise a cup of sake to its memory (and maybe pour a cup at the base of the young tree we planted as a replacement, just for good luck).

Update: My wife got the idea that we might be able to root some of twigs we salvaged from the downed cherry tree. We got some rooting medium and set up 5 pots (shown below) in the hope one of them would form roots. We know it is a "long shot" but how sentimentally satisfying it would be to propagate another tree from one of the twigs...we would have to name it Phoenix.

Flash un Kas (pastry rolls) appetizers

My wife was flipping through her old PA Dutch cookbooks looking for Fastnacht recipes when this one caught her eye. She was intrigued by the combination of cream cheese and butter and wanted to see what it tasted like so she came up with these pastry rolls called "Flash un Kas".

Ingredients for the flash un kas (pastry)
1/2 lb. butter
1/2 lb cream cheese
2 cups flour

Filling:
First roll up:
Lebanon Bologna
Smoked mozzarella cheese
double glouster cheese

Second roll up:
mashed potatoes
gorgonzolla cheese

Directions:
for the pastry: cream the butter and cream cheese together until well blended mix in the flour until the dough is smooth. Roll out the dough and put it in a square gallon size storage bag and push the dough until it fills the entire bag. (This will make the dough square in shape and easier to roll out). Chill thoroughly; overnight is not too long.

Roll out the dough into rectangles about 8 x 10.  In the first roll-up the filling can be placed several ways.

#1 put the bologna topped with cheese on the bottom edge of the rectangle and roll it up. Seal the edge and using a sharp knife cut into rounds #2. Put on cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. (We found that with this type of roll-up there is nothing to support the cheese at it melts and a lot of it ran out).

#3 spread the bologna over the entire rectangle and top with the cheeses grated. Roll up and again cut into rounds #4. Place rounds on cookie sheet. (With this type of roll-up the cheese is less likely to run out as it melts)

#5 blend the mashed potatoes and gorgonzolla cheese until it forms a smooth paste. Spread over the entire rectangle. Roll up the dough cut into rounds #6 and put rounds on the cookie sheet

Cook at 400 degrees until golden about 15 to 20 minutes. Pictures #7 to #10 show the rounds after they have been cooked.

All of these were very good. The potato and gorgonzolla ones were a surprise. They were probably the best of the lot. The potatoes absorbed the cheese flavor and made a nice texture with the pastry. The bologna had a nice strong smokey flavor that went very well with the mild taste of the pastry. This pastry is very versatile. It is easy to work with and has a mild almost sweet flavor.

PA Dutch Fastnacht cake ペンシルバニアダッチ ”ファストナハト” ケーキ

Although my wife is not Pennsylvania Dutch, she grew up in rural PA Dutch country and has many food memories associated with traditional PA Dutch dishes. Fastnachts or donuts were ubiquitous and taken for granted in her childhood. As a kid and until just this year, she always thought  "fastnachts day" just meant donut day. She never realized that "Fastnachts day", was the same as Shrove Tuesday, Fat Tuesday or Mardi Gras i.e. the day before Ash Wednesday. Fastnachts were a way to use up the previous year's fat and sugar before lent.

(Digression alert: My wife told me, that while out "doing the rounds" with her father, he would occasionally stop at one of the old houses on main street of a nearby town for fastnachts. The residence was the local bakery. The living room of the house was the store front from which the baked goods were sold. The room was empty except for steel racks displaying the bake goods available that day. The kitchen of the house was where the magic happened. There was no counter or cash register. The baker, a portly man sporting a flour covered apron, would come out of the kitchen when they entered. They would point to the items on the shelves that they wanted and he would put them in a plain paper bag, take the payment and bid them a good day as they left with the goodies. And the donuts he made were certainly something for a kid to remember; particularly the creme donuts made with sweet rolls the size hamburger buns, cut in half with a full inch of sweet whipped cream filling and don't even get her started on the sticky buns).

My wife became sentimental about the fastnachts of her childhood and wanted to make some. She consulted her old PA Dutch cookbooks. The traditional fastnacht is a fried, potato based, yeast donut.  In our household division of cooking labor, I am chief-in-charge of frying. Although I am the one who introduced my wife, many years ago, to the concept, that you can make deep fried donuts at home, I was not keen on the idea of frying up two dozen large donuts which was the quantity the old recipes she consulted yielded. So, she compromised and in the same old cookbook found a recipe for "Fastnacht cake" and made that instead.

I forgot to take pictures when she removed the cake from the pan. So the cake was already cut by the time I took this pic. It has PA Dutch hallmarks of "crumb" topping.

The cake has yeast and potato in it. It is a cross between bread and cake.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup HOT mashed potato (please note the recipe specifies HOT)
1 1/2 cup potato water. (my wife used 1/2 cup potato water and the rest milk)
1/2 cup butter
1 egg
1/2 cup sugar
2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1 pkg active dry yeast
1/4 cup warm water
4 cups of AP flour to start, adding more as needed to make velvety dough.

Ingredients and directions for rivels (Crumb topping)
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.

Directions:
Put the hot mashed potatoes into the bowl of a mixer.
Beat in the butter, then the egg and a mixture of sugar, salt and nutmeg. Beat until fluffy. Bloom the yeast in warm water.
Beat the yeast into the potato mixture. Alternately add the flour and potato water/milk beating well after each addition (#1). (While adding the flour my wife accidentally dropped the mixing cup into the mixing bowl while the mixer was on. The result is shown in #2; bent mixing cup and a shower of flour all over everything...not recommended).
If necessary add more flour to make a soft dough.
Knead the dough on a floured surface until smooth and satiny(#3).
Put into a greased bowl. Grease the top of the dough, cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled (#4).
Punch down the dough and divide into two portions. Fit each portion into a greased 8 x 8 x 2 in cake pan (#5).
Brush with melted butter and sprinkle with rivels (#6). Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes (#7). Final product (#8).

This is typical of PA Dutch cakes-- baked like a pie with crumb topping. The texture, however, is unique and extremely pleasing. It is not really like a cake. It is moist and dense-- more like a pleasantly, not too, sweet bread. Despite the large amount of fresh nutmeg my wife used, it does not have a strong nutmeg flavor. My wife has never had this kind of cake before but we both really like it and are glad she "discovered" it. It is a perfect cake for breakfast.