Uni shutou with salmon roe 雲丹酒盗いくら入り

The last time we bought fresh uni from Maruhide 丸秀, we also got a few “uni shutou” 雲丹酒盗including one with salmon roe 雲丹酒盗いくら入り which was a new choice for us. So, one weekend evening, I served this with our usual squid shiokara イカの塩辛. I also served chawanmushi 茶碗蒸し and simmered Kabocha squash カボチャの煮物. These were nice starters.

Left in the picture below is uni shutou with ikura. Obviously, this is a great combination and we, especially my wife, loves uni-ikura donburi ウニいくら丼. Right is our usual squid shiokara. Both are perfect for sipping sake, although you do not need much, just a bit of taste to go with sake.

I served this chawanmushi cold. I often top this with ikura or uni or both but not this time. I made the dish with shrimp and chicken in addition to shiitake. I added scallion and sugar-snap towards the end of cooking.

The picture below shows simmered Japanese kabocha squash カボチャの煮物. It’s a classic.

This was great start of the evening and the combination of uni and ikura shutou is definitely a favorite.

Shelled ginko nuts 殻付き銀杏

Because of Covid, it is not possible to go to a restaurant for a “sit down” meal so, instead, we are doing “take-out” sashimi and sushi from Tako Grill regularly. Since Mr. Segawa’s restaurant is essentially closed for  sit down customers, he expanded his business into groceries by adding frozen and refrigerated cabinets stocked with many Japanese grocery items. Every time I go there, I get some of  these in addition to the take-out. One such time, Mr. Segawa was kind enough to include some matsutake soup that he made. It was really good. Besides all the lovely ingredients such as matsutake  松茸,  chicken,  "edamame"  it also included "ginnan" ginko nuts. We love ginko nuts! Having them in the soup reminded us that we used to get canned  boiled "gin-nan" 銀杏 ginko nuts. For some reason they have totally disappeared and we have not had ginko nuts for quite some time. I asked Mr. Segawa, if we could buy ginko nuts as groceries from him. He was good enough to provide some with the shells on (see below). We were delighted but, to be honest, I have never dealt with ginko nuts in the shell.

So I quickly searched on-line and found three ways to prepare them: 1. Place the ginko nuts in a paper envelope and microwave it until the shell cracks. 2. Dry roast them in a frying pan until the shell cracks, 3. Crack the shell remove the nuts and gently boil for few minutes making sure the nuts are submerged all the time and then remove the brown inner skin while hot. I tried the 2nd method on some of the nuts, i.e. dry roasting them in a frying pan.  The shells did not crack (although one did "explode"—quite impressive). I cracked open the remaining un-cracked nuts but they were over cooked, dry, with burned spots and taste. So, I decided to try the third method.

I cracked the shells using the kitchen scissors which has a nut cracking device near the handles. It was not too difficult but I had to be careful not to damage the nuts inside. Some of the brown inner skin came off when the shell was remove but, for many, the brown skin remained (picture below).

I then placed the nuts in salted gently boiling water. They stayed submerged without much intervention.

After few minutes, I drained the nuts and using a sheet of paper towel, removed the inner brown skin.

This was a success. Here I used them to top cold chawanmushi 茶碗蒸し along with edamame 枝豆 and ikura.

 We really enjoyed this. Definitely the taste of autumn.

Easter breakfast; whole wheat cross bun and scrambled egg イスーターの朝ごはん

Although this is obviously not Izakaya item, the creamy scrambled egg with shiitake mushroom and asparagus is a perfect dish as a drinking snack. My wife is into making all kinds of bread (taking over most of what I used to bake and going further) especially whole wheat breads. She baked hot cross buns for Easter breakfast this time. Instead of the usual sweet sugar-laden icing, she made it from cream cheese and milk with much reduced sugar.

I have to ask my wife to provide recipes for the whole wheat hot cross buns and icing. 

The recipe comes from Laurel Robertson's cookbook "The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book". Of course the recipe I used varied somewhat from the one in the book. For the bread: Raisins and chopped dates (2 cups total), 1 cup walnuts toasted and then rubbed in a towel to remove the bitter tasting brown skin. 2 Tsp dry yeast, 1/2 cup warm water (to proof the yeast), 6 cups whole wheat flour, 2 tsp salt, 2 large eggs, 3 tbs honey, 1 cup hot water, 1 cup cold buttermilk. I added the salt, the honey and hot water to dissolved the honey and salt. I let it cool down. I proofed the yeast. Using a mixer (Kitchen Aid - Professional 5 - with a dough hook), I then I added the yeast, honey and salt mixture and cold buttermilk to 4 cups of the wheat flour. I then added more wheat flour 1/2 cup at a time until the mixture started to form a dough. Then I added the eggs. I continued to add more flour 1/2 cup at a time until the dough formed on the dough hook and pulled away from the sides. I then added 1/4 cup butter cut into small slices. I continued kneading after the butter was fully incorporated for another 7 to 10 minutes. For the last few minutes of kneading I added the dried fruits and nuts. I removed the dough from the bowel did a few rounds of hand kneading and then put into a bowel coated with about 1/2 teaspoon of oil to keep the surface moist during the first proofing. I deflated the dough and let it rise again. After it doubled in size I deflated it again and formed it into small round balls. I put the balls in a heavily greased glass Pyrex baking dish slightly separated but close enough so that the buns would touch after rising (I'm not wild about a lot of crust on these types of buns). After they doubled in size I put them into a 400 degree oven for 20 minutes.  

Icing: I used one block of 1/3 less fat Philadelphia cream cheese, 1 tsp butter, 3 tsp honey 1/2 tsp cinnamon, and 2 tsp of milk. Using a mixer, I softened the cream cheese and butter. When it was creamy I added the honey and cinnamon and kept mixing. I added just enough milk to make the mixture a spreadable consistency.  

She asked me to make something goes with the hot cross buns for breakfast. I made creamy scrambled egg with shiitake mushrooms garnished with asparagus tips. If I had, I would have made this with black truffle but no such luck this time. I made the scrambled eggs very soft and creamy by using a double boiler or "bain marie". Since I will not totally cook and harden the eggs, I used pasturized eggs with the addition of cream.

For two servings;

 I sautéed fresh shiitake mushroom (4, medium sized stem removed and finely chopped) and shallot (1, medium, finely chopped) in butter (2 tsp) until soft (several minutes) seasoned with salt and freshly cracked white pepper and set aside to cool.

I beat the eggs well and strained them to remove any clumps of egg white and chalaza (3, pasteurized eggs) which will make an unpleasant congealed hard spot in an otherwise creamy scrambled eggs; situation similar to making "chawanmushi" 茶碗蒸し.

On a bain marie (gently simmering hot water), I melted butter (1 thin pat, less than1 tsp) and when the butter melted, I added the beaten eggs and the sautéed shallot and shiitake mushroom. I gently mixed it with a silicon spatula while scraping the bottom and the sides. After few minutes, eggs started to congeal. I added salt and freshly cracked white pepper and mixed more vigorously until it was cooked but nicely creamy. I took the pan from the bain marie just before it reached the desired doneness and kept stirring.

I used egg-shaped small glass containers as you see on the left of the above image. On the right of the image above, the lid was open revealing the contents. I garnished it with slices of shiitake mushroom (sautéed) and asparagus tips (microwaved and cut in half lengthwise).

The creamy scrambled eggs were infused with the shiitake flavor. The slow cooking over the bain marie and the addition of cream and butter made the scrambled eggs like soft custard. The hot cross buns were also excellent. They had the nice nutty flavor of whole wheat that combined well with the roasted walnuts, dates and raisins. The icing was not too sweet but had rich flavor that complemented the buns--a great combination. 

New Year's day feast; Osechi from Sushi Taro 寿司太郎のおせち料理重箱

We started New Year's day evening with cold chawanmushi topped with uni and ikura which was followed by a small sashimi of tuna (akami and chutoro) and uni.

We finally started feasting on Sushi Taro's osechi juubako. The picture below is the first or upper box. It includes all the special, traditional foods eaten on New Year's day to bring good luck for the rest of the year and then some. As we started removing food we found many items hidden underneath. So the top box included several layers artfully packed one on top of the other. 

This is the second or lower box.

For those who may be interested what in the boxes, the below are the links for the menu in Japanese and English.

Menu in Japanese

Menu in English

Like kids in a candy shop we "oohhed" and "ahhed" and couldn't decide what to eat first. We tried a little of this and a little of that and ended up filling the plate shown here. But after eating this we were too full to go back for more.

Everything was very good. Many of the items can only be made by a professional chef; for example, the monkfish liver terrine 鮟肝豆腐--which was exquisite. The fish especially the sweet fish or "ayu" with roe 子持ち鮎 was a stand out. With something like this available, I have the perfect excuse for not making Osechi myself.

The fish pictured below was the highlight of the Jan 2nd feast from the box. This is a grilled small celebratory red fish or "tai" 鯛. After posing for the photo, he was deboned by my wife the resident deboning expert. (She claims I don't debone a fish I just take a mouthful and separate the meat from the bones in my mouth, spitting out bones and swallowing the meat.) She says she can't do that so for safety's sake she meticulously debones fish. She even recovered the cheeks from this fellow. 

We hit the box again but still did not finish it on the 2nd day.

Hanami 2021 with healthy 4 Japanese appetizers 花見 ２０２１

This year the cherry blossoms were early. We read it was the earliest full bloom of cherry blossom in Kyoto in 1,200 years. We have three cherry trees in our backyard; two were here when we moved in and one we planted 30 some years ago which was destroyed by a Nor'Easter in 2018. We replace this with a small cherry tree and it has grown but is still small. Usually these trees bloom sequentially rather than simultaneously but this year all three bloomed with some overlap in timing. So we had a few days when all three trees were at various stages of blossom and we enjoyed "Hanami" 花見. One day was warm enough for us to sit outside on the deck. Other days were cold or rainy so we enjoyed Hanami from inside. 

In the early morning on March 28 it was still a bit dark but through the cherry blossoms I spotted the full moon in the sky. This was the "Paschal moon"; the first full moon after the spring equinox. It is the moon on which the date for Easter is based i.e. Easter is the first Sunday after the Paschal Moon. True to form, Easter is next Sunday 4/4/2021. This moon is also known as "Worm moon". So named, supposedly, because worms start to emerge as the ground warms up. 

The picture below is of the cherry tree we planted in 2018 to replace the one that was destroyed in the nor’easter. It has grown a lot in the last 3 years but another 3 years will add to its role for hanami. Still it provided viewing enjoyment.

These are four appetizers I served one hanami evening. Before these dishes, we had Tuna sashimi made with frozen yellow fin tuna block from Great Alaska Seafood キハダマグロ.  As usual, I served it in marinated "Zuke" style ズケ; the surface charred with a kitchn blow torch in "Tataki" style たたき. I also  made a portion of it into imitation  “negitoro” ネギトロ,  We then had cold chawanmushi with marinated Ikura salmon roe 冷製茶碗蒸し. The four dishes shown below are the last dishes I served. They are vegetable rich and, hopefully, healthy items. 

This is a sort of salad made with dried persimmon 干し柿と大根の甘酢和え.  A recipe online was the inspiration of this dish but I did not follow the recipe. Besides the dried persimmon, which is cut into small bite sized pieces, I added daikon, carrot, sweet onion in sweet vinegar with added ground sesame and a splash of sesame oil. I garnished with roasted cashew nuts (or walnuts but the cashew happened to be available). The sweetness of the dried persimmon and the sweet vinegar dressing went well together. The dried persimmon got really soft and over time basically dissolved into the dressing.

This dish was a variation of the dish I made before from canned mackerel 鯖の水煮缶詰と大根. But in addition to daikon, I added cabbage and tofu and blanched broccoli just before serving.

This is “Hijiki” seaweed with carrot and deep fried tofu ひじきの炒め煮, exactly the same as I made before.

The last is a classic “mishime” 煮〆. It is simmered vegetables seasoned with soy sauce, mirin, and dashi broth. It includes shiitake, carrot, gluten cake “hanabu” 花麩. The rectangular pieces are freeze dried tofu or “shimidoufu” 凍み豆腐. I cooked this separately with much sweeter broth (I guess in Kyoto style). You cannot see it but there is renkon  on the bottom.

At this point, we were well fed and watered and gazing at the beautiful cherry blossoms. We were just enjoying existence.

Grilled miso marinated yellowtail ハマチの味噌漬け焼き

This is a continuation of our weekend indulgence which started with enjoying our egg custard "chawanmushi". Since I ordered a fairly large amount of yellow tail or hamachi sashimi from Catalina I discovered that there is such a thing as too much good sashimi. I decided to make miso-marinated and grilled Hamachi from one of the fillets. As a accompaniment, I also made simmered daikon, baby red potato and carrot.



After marinading the piece of fish for 10 hours in the refrigerator, I grilled it over a charcoal fire. The surface was nicely charred but the meat was just cooked (I could have under cooked it a bit since this was originally for sashimi).



Initially, I planned to broil this inside in the toaster oven. At my wife's objection (saying even if the kitchen remained odor free, the toaster oven would smell like fish afterwards), however, we decided to cook it outside using a Weber grill and a charcoal fire. By the time I was ready to grill, it had started snowing (this was the start of a large late season nasty snow storm which resulted in significant accumulations by the next day). In any case, rather than placing the fish directly on the grill (risking its sticking and losing the crispy skin) I used two long metal skewers so that the fish filet was suspended over the fire and grill without touching anything. I cooked it less than 3-4 minutes on each side (about 7-8 inch above the hot charcoal fire).



Miso marinade: Since I was out of sweet "Saikyo" miso 西京味噌, I used regular miso (3 tbs), sugar (2 tbs) and mirin (just to loosen the mixture to the right consistency). I also added splashes of Yuzu juice (from the bottle).

I wrapped the hamachi filet in one layer of moistened cheese cloth and placed it in a Ziploc bag and spooned in the miso marinade. I massaged it to make sure all the sides of the fish fillet were covered with the miso. I pressed out any air and sealed the bag. I placed it in the refrigerator for 10 hours before cooking.



Of course, we also had tuna and hamachi sashimi. Since the "Premium" uni was a bit soft, I placed it in a tiny bowl garnished with nori and chopped perilla aojiso 青じそ and splashed on some Yuzu juice (from the bottle).



Everything was quite good. The simmered daikon was very soft and flavorful (I cooked it first in water with several raw rice grains for 30 minutes and then simmered it in kelp dashi seasoned with salt, light colored soy sauce and mirin for another 30 minutes). The grilled miso-marinated hamachi was moist with a lovely oiliness. The miso marinade added a nutty sweetness. We started with our house sake "Mu" 無 and switched to "Dassai 50" 獺祭５０. Both sakes were good but we still like "Mu" best.

Myouga pickled in sweet vinegar 冥加の甘酢漬 Myouga asazuke 冥加の浅漬

This is probably the last installment of my "myouga" series. This year's crop was not as good as other years but we had enough myouga to enjoy.

The picture below is myouga in sweet vinegar. This is a rather common preparation of myouga and I was told you could get this as a commercial product (in Japan). The recipe is rather simple. I first make sweet vinegar by dissolving sugar in Japanese rice vinegar (I used about 100m of vinegar with 4 tbs of sugar but the proportion is to your taste. I thought this was a bit too sweet but my wife thought it was just fine). I just microwaved it for 30-40 seconds or until the vinegar is warm enough to dissolve the sugar completely. Do not boil, it will make the vinegar less potent. (On the other hand, you may want to gently boil it in a pan to make the sweet vinegar more mellow). I then blanched the cleaned myouga, drained and added it to the sweet vinegar while the myouga are still hot. I keep this in a refrigerator for at least 3 days before eating. The one shown here is about a week old and still nicely crunchy with a sweet vinegar flavor mixed with the distinctive myouga taste. I do not know how long this will keep but I am sure, at least, several weeks. This is perfect for sipping sake or with rice.

This is an assortment of asazuke 浅漬け (cucumber, carrot, daikon, in the back from left to right) and beer marinated daikon (front left) but the main item is, of course, myouga. I made the other vegetables exactly the same way as I posted before but I did not add ginger or hot pepper flakes. In addition to the nice myouga buds, I also added the chopped up stalk of myouga as well. This one has a purely myouga flavor with nice crisp texture.

I think I am running out of myouga recipes. You could of course use finely chopped myouga as a condiment for anything including cold tofu 冷や奴, miso or clear soup, chawanmushi 茶碗蒸し, noodle dishes, sunomono 酢の物 dishes etc.

Matsutake 松茸

We got a shipment of North American Matsutake from Oregon mushrooms the last week of September. Among the North American matsutake, the ones from Mexico are the most similar to the ones in Japan but, for us, the ones from Oregon are a good balance between flavor and price. I have posted many matsutake dishes previous so  this time I just made one composite post to signify the fall season.

Unlike Japanese matsutake, these Oregon matsutake are covered with dirt which is difficult to remove using just wet paper towels. So, I usually end up scraping the surface of the mushroom with a sharp paring knife. It is the pretty unpleasant to bite into grit either sand or dirt while eating matsutake.

We started with a few small dishes before we delved into feasting on the matsutake this evening. As shown below we had stir fried cabbage with abura-age similar to stir fried beef and cabbage I post before. I served this with spicy marinated tofu but instead of baking the tofu as I did previously, I cooked it in a frying pan. I first browned the pieces without sauce and then poured in the sauce and cook until the sauce was reduced. We found this is much better preparation than when they are baked. The tofu maintains its moisture with nice "piri-kara" spicy hot and salty flavor. I served this after a brief microwaving.

The cabbage dish is classic Japanese home cooking. Instead of meat, deep dried tofu pouch or abura-age is used cut into small strips and sauteed with vegetable oil and a splash of dark sesame oil and red pepper flakes. I then braised it in mirin and soy sauce. I garnished it with blanched broccoli.

The second small dish was made from something I usually discard. In preparation for making the matsutake dishes, I made a broth from kelp and dried bonito flakes (katsuo-bushi). I made two kinds of broths; Ichi-ban (#1) dashi and ni-ban (#2) dashi (一番だし、２番だし)*.  I decided to make the leftover spent kelp and bonito flakes to a dish by braising  them in mirin and soy sauce until the moisture was almost all gone. This is a type of "Tsukudani" 佃煮. Although these items were "spent" by making broth, they are still full of "umami". My wife was pleasantly surprised this dish went well with the Napa Cab we were drinking.

* #1 broth: After simmering the kelp for 10 minutes in water, I added dried bonito flakes and let it simmer for 30 seconds then cut the flame. I let it steep for another 5 minutes and then strained it without pressing. #2 broth: I put the kelp and the bonito used to make #1 broth back into the pan and added water. I let this mixture simmer for 30 minutes and then strained it. #1 dashi is the premier extraction of dashi flavors. The best analogy would be to say it is like cold pressed extra virgin olive oil while #2 dashi is like second press with heat light olive oil. #1 dashi is best used in clear soups or chawan-mushi and #2 broth is good for simmered dishes.

This is the first matsutake dish of the evening. I made matsutake touban-yaki. This time I did not add sake to steam it.

Even off the flame, the touban or ceramic disc retained heat. Upon opening the dome, the subtle but rather distinct aroma of matsutake wafted up. The steam rising from it is just visible in the picture below. We simply enjoyed this with lime (in leu of "kabosu" カボス) and Kosher salt. Of course we switched to cold sake at this point. Since we were drinking sake from Yamagata, we used "Tsugaru-nuri" sake cups we got from the Aomori prefecture (both are northern prefectures in the mainland).

The second matsutake dish I made was chawanmushi. Since I did not have any special ingredients, I made this with what I had on hand. I put in some shrimp (thawed, shelled, deveined, and cut  into small chunks), ginko nuts (from a can), and boiled North American chestnuts I had prepared previously. On the top were slices of matsutake, hana-fu 花麩 (decorative gluten cake, hydrated), the green part of scallion and yuzu skin (frozen).

Although there is a good amount of matsutake is in this dish, it is difficult to see in the picture. This is another of our favorite ways of enjoying matsutake. The egg custard was silky smooth. (I used #1 dashi broth for this dish seasoned with mirin, light colored soy sauce and salt).

At this point, we were getting filled up, so I skipped the matsutake clear soup 松茸のも吸い物  I had planned and went to the last dish of matsutake rice  松茸御飯. As usual, I used the "Kamado-san" かまどさん donabe 土鍋 rice cooker. I used a mixture of #1 and #2 broth, lightly seasoned with sake and light colored soy sauce. I also added small pieces of kelp.

This time I did not intentionally make browned crust or "okoge" おこげ to maintain the delicate flavor of the matustake. The rice developed a very nice sheen. 

I ate my serving as is; enjoying the subtle flavor and aroma of the matsutake and rice. But when I wasn't looking my wife added pats of butter to hers. (She confessed it was sublime)

The sake we had was called "kudoki jouzu" or pick-up artist, Junmai Ginjou くどき上手  純米吟醸 from Kamenoi shuzou 亀の井酒造 in Yamagata prefecture 山形県. Yamagata has many good sake breweries including "Juyondai sake" 十四代 of Takagi shuzou  高木酒造. This is made from 美山錦 miyama-nishiki which is the sake rice adapted to colder climate as I understand it. This is a nice clean sake with crisp acidity and the floral quality of Daiginjou. Ture sake website describes this sake as follows; "Great name and a great nose on this sake with hints of pear, apple, and purple plum aromas. Ahhhhh! A brew that gets it. A terrific feeling sake that fills the mouth with fat and gooey flavors but stays super smooth. The brilliant acidity-balancing act takes the sweetness out of the gambit of fruit flavors including pineapple and mango. Plump and complex this "sexy beast" is layered and luxurious with attitude and swagger. Drink closer to room temp if you want even more fruit tones, but chilled is happening." which we agree for the most part. We enjoyed matsutake this evening. Only regret I have is that I could not arrange to have some nice sashimi with this.