Moon gazing and "Tsuki-mi" dango 2019 月見と月見団子

This year's "15th night moon" or "Jugoya" 十五夜, which corresponds to the "Harvest moon" in the U.S., occurred on September 13 which was a Friday--Friday the 13th (!). Since it was a work day there was no time to make ”tsukimi dango" 月見団子  to celebrate the beauty of the moon. In addition it was cloudy, and the moon did not make an appearance so "tsukimi" or "moon gazing" was not happening. The next day,  I made the tsukimi dango in the morning so it was ready. In anticipation, we waited for moon rise. As you can see from the picture below the sky was crystal clear and the moon rose like a large round silver platter, even though it was a 1 day waning moon...Tsukimi was on.

We had our "tsukimi dango" with "mitarashi" みたらし sauce as a desert. I never thought (especially when I was in Japan), I would ever make this dish myself but this is very good and the sauce really makes it.

Speaking of moons, in addition to the real moon, this year we had the pleasure of viewing moon flowers blooming, after a long absence, in our garden--the white flower shown on the right in the picture below. They bloom in the evening and glow softly in the ambient light as it gets dark withering in the morning light. In contrast this year we also had morning glories called "asa-gaoa" 朝顔 (morning faces) in Japanese, (shown on the left in the picture below). The morning glories and moon flowers have a counter cyclical blooming cycle. The morning glories bloom in the morning when the moon flower is fading and fade in the evening when the moon flower is blooming. The result is that there is always a flower in bloom.

Digression alert: Many years ago we used to grow moon flowers and morning glories in our side yard. We planted the seeds in the ground and the plants climbed up strings reaching the trellis which screened one side of the deck from sight of our neighbor's backyard. We had enough sun for these plants to cover the entire side of the deck trellis. As shown in the picture below we had a glorious wall of morning glories providing a beautiful privacy screen.  

Even more impressive were the large moon flowers, some as large as small plates, which mysteriously opened in the evening.  Some survived until morning so we could see both flowers at the same time as shown in the picture below. While enjoying the soft glow of the moon flowers one evening we saw something big flying and sounding like a hummingbird feeding on the nectar of the moonflower. It was way too late for a hummingbird to be about so what in the world was this creature? Turns out it was something call a hummingbird moth. They fly like a hummingbird and drink nectar like a hummingbird. What a treat! We had no idea something like this even existed but we were privileged to have the opportunity of see one.

For various reasons we have not been able to plant these flowers for many years. This year my wife found a space along the fence that she thought might work. So we planted the seeds, strung the string and waited and waited and waited. Finally in late August the first moon flower made its appearance. The picture above is of this year's crops. They were rather pathetic compared to the our old morning glory and moon flower display, but this is quite an improvement especially since we did not have them for many years.

So back to the subject at hand; tsukimi. It may be difficult to celebrate tsukimi on the exact day of "Jugoya", but this was certainly a fine second best. The homemade dango were much better than the ones that we have bought commercially. They are very tender in texture with a pleasant rice flavor. The absolutely crucial ingredient to this dish is the sauce. It adds a burst of salty sweetness that is irresistible.

Mackerel ceviche しめ鯖のサビーチェ

In our household, once an item goes into the freezer, it tends to "fall off the radar screen" and gets lost. When my wife digs deep into the freezer in search of something, she always finds some very old item. On one such occasion, she pointed out a package of pickled mackerel or "shime-saba" しめ鯖. I knew it was old but I had no idea how old. I defrosted it one weekend and it was not edible. So, on a subsequent weekend, I bought some "fresh" frozen pickled mackerel. I did not take any chances this time and, the next day, I made this dish. I got this idea from a recipe on line.

This is a good dish. Perfect with cold sake.

The addition of vegetables added more volume.

Ingredients:
One package frozen "shime saba" pickled mackerel (#2), Thin skin peeled off and cut into a
bite sized pieces (#3).
1/2 sweet  onion (I used Vidalia), cut into thin slices (#1)
2 skinned Campari tomatoes, cut into thin wedges (#1)
1 Jalapeño pepper, seeded, veined and cut into fine dice (#1)
lime juice (from 1 lime) or lemon juice
Salt and ground black pepper to taste
1-2 tsp olive oil (I used our favorite Spanish olive oil)
1/2 cucumber (I used American mini cucumber), thinly sliced for garnish

Directions:
Just mix it all up (#4) and dress with the lime juice, and olive oil. Season it with salt and black pepper (#4). Let it stand in the refrigerator for 10 minutes.
I garnished with the cucumber

This is better than just eating the mackerel like sashimi with soy sauce, wasabi or ginger. Since the shime-saba had just been bought, it was nice and not overly pickled. This is indeed a very good way to serve shime-saba. This dish is not as challenging to people who are not into sashimi and mackerel in particular.

Avocado prosciutto muffin アボカド プロシュート マフィン

I had an excess of ripe avocados. I asked my wife if she could use some. As she is a devotee of muffins, she found this avocado bacon recipe on-line. Since we also had an excess prosciutto, she modified the recipe to avocado prosciutto muffin. This turned out to be a great and unique muffin, a complete breakfast.

This is the cut surface just cooled down to room temperature after coming out of the oven, You can see the melting cheese, avocado and prosciutto. Unfortunately, this is a rather rich muffin with eggs and cheese as well.

Ingredients (makes 12 muffins):
3 cups flour (#1)
2 tbs baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
4 1/2  tsp sugar
1 pinch cayenne pepper (#1)
1  1/2 cup grated cheese; we used a mixture of smoked gouda, sharp cheddar and pepper jack cheeses (#2).
2 tbs chopped chives
4 slices prosciutto, cut into small pieces and cooked until crispy (#3).
113 grams (whole stick) of unsalted butter melted
2 eggs
1 1/2 cup milk
1 avocado, stone and skin removed and cut into small cubes (coated with lemon juice to prevent discoloration) (#4)

Directions:
Combine the flour, baking powder, salt, sugar and cayenne in a bowl. Shred the cheeses. Cook the prosciutto until crispy. Cut up the avocado and coat with lemon juice so it doesn't discolor.
In another bowl combine the egg, butter and milk. Add the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix until combined. Fold in the prosciutto and avocado #5. Scoop into a heavily greased muffin tin. Cook in a 400 degree oven for 18 to 20 minutes #6. Let cool for 5 minutes and remove from the muffin tin.

These muffins are a meal in themselves. They are decadently delicious. We would never have considered adding avocado to a baked good but it maintains it's shape and consistency. It adds a nice moist texture element. The smoked cheese did not melt completely while the other cheeses amalgamated into the bread. This added yet another texture element and burst of flavor. We will be making these again.

Maitake and chikuwa kinpira 舞茸と竹輪のきんぴら

Since I got maitake 舞茸 (hen of the woods) when I got matsutake 松茸 from Oregon mushrooms, this is the second dish I made from the maitake. This is loosely based on a recipe on-line. I made this as a first "otoshi" appetizer of the evening. I also served dried and seasoned squid strips or "saki-ika" さきいか.

This is a perfect  dish for sake. Fish cake and maitake are a good combination with contrasting texture.

Saki-ika is the last remaining from the package I opened a few days ago. This is a good very popular drinking snack in Japan. We think this goes best with Bourbon and water but sake will do as well.

Ingredients:
One package (1/4 lb) maitake, torn into bite sized pieces, rinsed in water and excess water removed by a salad spinner (#1).
One medium carrot, peeled, sliced on the bias and cut into julienne (#2)
One package (six) small yaki-chikuwa 焼き竹輪 fish cakes, thawed, one cut into 4 long strips (#3)
1 tsp of peanut oil and a splash of dark roasted sesame oil
A pinch of  dried red pepper flakes (as much as you like)
1 tbs mirin
1 tbs soy sauce
Roasted white sesame for garnish

Direction:
In a non-stick frying pan on medium flame, add the peanut oil with a dash of sesame oil and add the red pepper flakes and let it cook a little until fragrant.
Add the carrot and the mushroom and sauté for several minutes until the mushrooms start showing few brown spots (#2).
Add the chikuwa fish cake (#3) and keep sautéing for a few more minutes.
Add the mirin and then soy sauce and braise until the liquid is almost gone. Taste and adjust the seasonings (I added a bit more soy sauce).
Serve immediately or at room temperature with a garnish of roasted white sesame.

The maitake has a meaty texture and earthy flavor. The chiku-wa is soft and slightly sweet. The contrast in textures is very intriguing.The red pepper flakes gave a slight heat to the basic "kinpira" flavor of soy sauce and mirin. Everything comes together. This is a good starter. We had this cold later and it was still quite good.

Nori and butter fried noodles 海苔とバターの焼うどん

This was sort of our (mostly my wife's) invention. One evening, we needed something to finish the meal (shime〆). We found leftover precooked very thin udon noodles or "Ito udon" 播州糸うどん, which we happened to have since we had "cold pasta with fresh tomato sauce" earlier. My wife suggested that we simply fry it in butter and soy sauce (reminiscent of how she adds butter and soy sauce to her rice). The reasoning being 'if butter and soy sauce taste good on rice why not noodles?' I also added strips of seasoned nori. I added the nori as the noodles were cooking not as garnish.

The garnish I used was finely chopped chives.

The udon is extra thin and the nori is well incorporated into the noodles.

This is not a recipe. Just add a thin pat of unsalted butter to a non-stick frying pan on medium flame, add cooked udon noodle, fry for a few minutes, add strips or hand-crushed seasoned nori or "ajituske nori" 味つけのり and keep frying. then add a small amount of soy sauce to finish. The amount of the ingredients and seasoning is totally arbitrary.

This is a simple and very satisfying dish. Perfect for the shime at the end of the meal. This has become our "go-to" dish whenever we have left over udon. As a variation, I also used "nori tuskudani" 海苔佃 which was ok but did not particularly add much.

Baked maitake オーブン舞茸

When I ordered fresh matsutake from Oregon mushrooms, the shipping was almost the same as the price of the matsutake. So I decided to include some "mai-take" 舞茸 or "Hen of the woods" to better even out the costs between the product I was buying and the shipping. One evening, I came up with this dish which is not particularly based on any recipe. We like this mushroom. Especially the large ones. The stem or base part almost tastes like meat when cooked. I separated/tore one large bunch into small bite sized pieces and cooked them in an aluminum foil pouch in the toaster oven.

To add some charred taste after it cooked/steamed in the pouch, I opened the pouch and put the mushroom on the surface and broiled it for 10 minutes so that the edges of the maitake got charred a bit.

This is quite good and nice meaty taste and texture. I used whatever was available when I made this. Since I just winged it the ingredients shown below are my guess.

Ingredients:
One package of fresh maitake (1/4 lb), torn by hand into bite size pieces.
Onion, previously cooked in the Weber cut into small pieces (this was cooked by taking a whole onion with the skin still on, piercing it several times to prevent the onion from exploding as it cooked and wrapping it in aluminum foil), (I think raw onion will do as well)
Previously baked garlic, one clove (or thinly sliced raw garlic)
Salt to taste
Butter, unsalted, two pats
Chives for garnish

Directions:
Place all ingredients except for the salt and butter in the middle of a sheet of aluminum foil. Top it with the butter and sprinkle salt.
By folding four ends, make a pouch and crimp the opening.
Place the pouch in the 350F convection toaster oven for 30 minutes.
Open the pouch, mix, and expose the maitake pieces and broil (500F) for 10 minutes or until the surface of the maitake charrs a bit.
Garnish with finely chopped chive.

For an instant dish, this was very good. I could have made a mixture of butter, miso and mirin and added that as another possible variation. The maitake especially the stem parts have a good meaty texture and earthy "umami" flavor. This may be perfect for serving to our vegetarian friends.

Sashimi salmon four ways 刺身用のサーモン

We found frozen salmon for sashimi and boiled octopus legs in our freezer. I bought these items from Catalina offshore products last December for the 2019 New Year's celebration. At that time we also got frozen tuna sashimi which we ate soon after it was purchased for New Year. The piece of salmon was quite large and we had enough other food for the New Year. It ended up uneaten and stored in the freezer. In addition, I had purchased the frozen octopus legs as a kind of "insurance policy" in case, as has happened some years, we could not get the octopus legs for New Year from our Japanese grocery store. This year we were able to get it, however. So, the extra octopus joined the huge piece of salmon in the freezer. As my wife so aptly pointed out 'frozen fish, unlike wine does not improve with age', we decided to enjoy the salmon and octopus while we could. Since the salmon sashimi was 1 lb (which is a lot of sashimi salmon for the two of us), I  had to come up with a plan on how to use it up. These are the several dishes I came up with. The first dish was a no brainer; sashimi. I added some Japanese dashimaki omelet だし巻き卵, which I had made earlier, and green beans with sesame dressing.

This salmon was not fatty but was quite good. I arranged it into the shape of a rose.

The boiled octopus was sliced thinly in a wavy cut as usual. I made sumiso sauce to my wife's specification (not too vinegary). I thought it was a bit more chewy than the octopus we usually get from the Japanese grocery store but it tasted very fresh (not fishy at all).

The second salmon sashimi dish was very similar to what I posted before. Just in case we needed some spiciness, I served it with Japanese red pepper paste (from a tube).

The dressing was a mixture of lemon juice, sesame oil, soy sauce and garlic. I mixed in finely chopped chives as well.

The third dish was instant Gravlax. Instead of vodka I used gin this time. It added, of course, a gin-flavor. I thought this might be too strong but my wife liked it. Since we ate it all before I remembered to take a picture I am using "stock footage" by posting a previously posted old picture.

The fourth dish was Russian  marinated salmon. Since I was using sashimi-grade salmon, I served it partially cooked, after only one day in the refrigerator. (I usually leave it three days in the marinade to make sure the salmon is fully ”chemically” cooked). The center of this salmon was still raw which added a more delicate fresh flavor. (Again I did not take pictures and I'm posting an old one here).

Since the gravlax and Russian marinated salmon stayed eatable longer than sashimi, we enjoyed these two items for a few days and finally  finished the salmon sashimi block. This was a tough job but somebody had to do it.