Rescued green bean soup グリーンビーンズスープ

We like green beans but only when they are good i.e. crunchy but not fibrous with an almost sweet fresh flavor. Good green beans either steamed or boiled a short period of time can be crunchy but not fibrous and they are wonderful. But some green beans no matter how long you cook them remain so fibrous no amount of chewing will get through them. There is no way of knowing ahead of time (before you buy them) which category the green beans belong to. We mostly gave up getting green beans and sugar snap beans from our regular grocery store for this reason. We have had a much better chance of getting good ones from our gourmet grocery stores. But even that fails sometimes. This was such an occasion. The green beans were still unpleasantly fibrous after they were cooked. Since we had our Vita-mix out for another reason, we decided to give the beans a whir in the Vita-mix to see what would happen. It turned out the resulting paste/puree no longer classified as fibrous and it had a very nice green bean flavor. We kept the puree in a plastic container in the fridge but did not quite know how to use it. My wife suggested making a soup/potage. I obliged. We ate it for lunch one day. It turned out it was quite a decent soup. We will call it “green bean rescued soup”

My wife had just baked some muffins as an “apricot muffins rescue”; the fresh apricots were too mushy to eat. As part of what is turning out to be standard food rescue protocal she introduced the offending apricots to the Vita-mix and viola, she had apricot puree which she added to the muffin batter. So we had a lunch of the apricot muffin, green bean soup, sous vide chicken salad with mango, sugar snap in salt broth, corn, roasted pepper, edamame and bacon salad.

There is no recipe for green bean soup but just for the record.

Ingredients:
1 bag (32oz) fresh green beans, boiled for few minutes  in salted  water
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 tbs olive oil
1 tbs butter
1 cup whey (since we had it after my wife made cheese curd) (or chicken broth)
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
Puree the green beans in the Vita-mix or other high-power blender adding a small mount of liquid and puree until smooth
Sauté the onion in the oil and butter on medium flame until cooked but not browned
Add the green bean puree and the whey and cook for 20-30 minutes.
Using an immersion blender, blend until smooth and no onion bits remain.
Season with salt and pepper

I served this hot initially but for the left overs, I diluted it with milk and served cold which was also quite nice. This is a great way to salvage green beans that otherwise because they are too fibrous would have been thrown out.

Corn Sage Muffin Variation コーン、セージ、マフィンバリエーション

It is getting to be the season for fresh corn and we have gotten quite few ears of it recently. We (mostly my wife) love corn and we’re making quite a few corn dishes. This particular baking project started out as one of my wife’s regular sage corn bread (in muffin form) but she realized the recipe called for 1 1/2 cups of corn puree and she only had a cup; not quire enough of the corn puree required to make the batch of muffins. Then she remembered we had left-over corn, roasted red pepper, edamame and bacon salad that we had made a few days ago. She thought, ‘That salad included corn. If I substitute the salad for the missing corn, wouldn’t that make up the shortfall?’ She first contemplated pureeing the salad and adding it to the corn puree but in the end, she decided to just put a cup of the salad into the batter to add some additional texture.   I will never fathom how my wife (the queen of substitutions in recipes) comes up with these things but this substitution happened to result in a very good muffin. The red in the picture is the roasted red pepper. The green is the jalapeños pepper and boiled edamame. The flavors of these ingredients, particularly the roasted red pepper really comes through and went beautifully with the over all corn sage flavor of the muffin. This is a variation well worth repeating.

The picture below shows the salad she added.

The ingredients and directions for the two recipes she combine are shown below for convenience

Ingredients: For the muffin
1 cup grated corn
1 stick butter
6 large sage leaves (or several sprigs of rosemary)
1 cup of corn salad (this is the current variation in the recipe) (Salad recipe below)
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 large eggs
1 cup buttermilk
3/4 corn flour (or corn meal)
2 cups All Purpose (AP) flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup sugar (or more for a slightly sweeter muffin)

Directions:
Grate the ears of corn on a stand grater. Scrape the ears with the back of the knife to get the remaining "corn milk" . Melt the butter in a saucepan (do not allow it to boil or brown). Mix in the grated corn, salt, and sage leaves. Cook until creamy and thickened, making a kind of polenta. Remove the sage leaves. To achieve a really smooth emersion blend it further in a “motor boat” blender. Allow the mixture to cool. Add the buttermilk and eggs and mix until blended.

In a large bowl sift together the corn flour (or corn meal), AP flour, baking soda, baking powder, and sugar. Add the 1 cup of corn salad and mix in the dry ingredients to coat with a bit of the flour. Add the liquid ingredients and stir until blended. Scoop into the prepared muffin tin. Cook in 400F degree oven for 18 to 20 minutes for muffins, or until a skewer comes out clean and the muffins are nicely browned.

Ingredients: For the corn salad
1 roasted red pepper, skin, ribs and seeds removed and cut into small squares
2 ears of fresh corn on cob, microwaved wrapped in wet paper towel for 2 minutes or more until cooked
1 sweet (Vidalia) onion, finely chopped
2 strips of bacon, cooked to crisp and crumbled
1 large jalapeño pepper, seeded, deveined and finely chopped
1 cup of boiled edamame, shelled (or lima beans)

For dressing:
1 tbs Dijon mustard
1 tbs honey
2 tbs rice vinegar (or any vinegar)
8 tbs or more fruity olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
For roasted red pepper
I roasted them at 450F in the toaster oven on convection mode for 20 minutes turning a few times so that all the surface was cooked/charred. I then put them in Ziploc bags to steam for 30 minutes. Once cooled down, remove the stem end, skin, ribs, seeds and peel. (The skin will come off easily).

Combine all the ingredients, add the dressing and stir well.

Sous Vide Chicken Breast with Red Pepper Sauce 低温調理鶏胸肉のロースト赤パプリカソース添え

In my book, the best way to cook chicken breast is using the sous vide method. As I posted before, skin-on and bone-in split chicken breast appears to work best. Sometimes this type of chicken breast is hard to come by since most people seem to prefer skin-less and bone-less chicken breast. So when skin-on bone-in chicken breast is available, we like to stock-up. This time we got a “family” pack which contained 4 large chicken breasts. I sous vide all of them and froze three. I prepared one of the sous vide breasts into three dishes. I hand shredded the tenderloin and dressed it with sesame/mayo sauce. I made half of the main breast meat into curry-flavored chicken salad and I served the rest sliced with roasted red pepper sauce.  I served this dish at lunch with two salad sides; celery mushroom feta salad (right upper) and corn, red pepper, edamame and bacon salad (right lower).

When we made corn, red pepper, edamame and bacon salad, we had an excess of roasted red peppers since we got a bag of 6 red peppers. So, I made a roasted red pepper sauce. The sauce went well with sous vide chicken shown here with mayo and blanched broccoli added to the plate.

I am sure there are many ways to make roasted red pepper sauce, but the one shown below is my improvised sauce.

Ingredients:
Two roasted red peppers, stem end and skin removed, seeds and ribs removed, cut into small size (for pureeing)
1/2 sweet (Vidalia) onion, finely chopped
1 tbs caper
1 tbs lemon juice
3-4 tbs olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
Add all the ingredients except the salt and pepper in a cylindrical container for an emersion blender.
Puree on high-speed until smooth. Taste and add salt and pepper

This sauce went very well with the sous vide chicken breast. The chicken cooked this way is very moist and tender but can taste a bit bland. The sauce really added a nice slightly tangy flavor. We still have a lot of sauce left so there will be more to come.

Corn, Roasted Ped Pepper, Edamame and Jalapeño Pepper Salad 玉蜀黍、ロースト赤パプリカ、枝豆とべーコンサラダ

Although it is not quite local corn season, fresh corn is available and on our last trip to Whole Foods my wife celebrated the season by stocking up on corn. She used it for various dishes and this is one of them. In addition, we got a bag of 6 red peppers. (Turns out it was much cheaper to buy the bag of peppers than to buy several peppers individually). My wife looked up corn salad recipes which used roasted red pepper on the internet. This dish is an amalgamation of the various ingredients used in those recipes with our own ideas mixed in. It has a nice color combination and tasted great.

Ingredients:
1 roasted red pepper, skin, ribs and seeds removed and cut into small squares
2 ears of fresh corn on cob, microwaved wrapped in wet paper towel for 2 minutes or more until cooked
1 sweet (Vidalia) onion, finely chopped
2 strips of bacon, cooked to crisp and crumbled
1 large jalapeño pepper, seeded, deveined and finely chopped
1 cup of boiled edamame, shelled (or lima beans)

For dressing:
1 tbs Dijon mustard
1 tbs honey
2 tbs rice vinegar (or any vinegar)
8 tbs or more fruity olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

For roasted red pepper
I roasted them at 450F in the toaster oven on convection mode for 20 minutes turning a few times so that all the surface was cooked/charred. I then put them in Ziploc bags to steam for 30 minutes. Once cooled down, remove the stem end, skin, ribs, seeds and peel. (The skin will come off easily).

Combine all the ingredients, add the dressing and stir well.

This is a great salad. The corn adds and lovely sweetness and crunch. Although I initially protested when my wife suggested using bacon, it adds a salty, smokiness and crunch which is really a great addition and a “must-have” for this salad. In addition to adding to the color the roasted red peppers adds a slightly spicy bite. The edamame yields yet another crunch dimension. The dressing adds a bright tart note. We will be making this one again.

“Canned mackerel and hanpen” Satsuma-age like fish cake 鯖缶とはんぺんの薩摩揚げ

Canned mackerel or “saba-kan” 鯖缶 is a very popular canned fish item in Japan and is readily available in the U.S. Upon inspection, of the canned mackerel in our pantry, I realized that the “Best used by” date had just passed on one of the cans. (I thought canned food lasted forever but that is apparently not the case). I needed to use this can fast and I then saw a perfect  recipe of fried fishcake on the Japanese website I follow using canned mackerel and “Hanpen” fishcake はんぺん.  This type of fishcake is called “Satsuma-age” さつま揚げ, which is a very common dish served grilled in Izakaya. Although I attempted to make Satusma-age from scratch, it was not quite authentic due to the lack of appropriate kinds of fish. The current version is interesting because instead of using ground fish meat “surimi” すり身 which is the authentic way to make Satuma-age this recipe used a mixture of canned mackerel and hanpen.  I served this with the usual grated ginger and soy sauce. It does not have the texture of authentic Sastuma-age but this was good; crispy outside and tender inside with the firmer texture of edamame and carrot. It all worked. The inclusion of ginger and deep frying toned down the otherwise strong flavor of the mackerel. This is a perfect dish with sake.

Ingredients:
One can of boiled (Mizu-ni 水煮) mackerel (190 grams with the liquid, about 150 grams fish meat), drained and crumbled
2 hanpen steamed fish cakes, frozen, thawed (240 grams), cut into small pieces.
1 tbs potato starch
1 tsp sugar
30 grams julienned carrot(1/3 of medium carrot), boiled or microwaved for 30 seconds
60 grams cooked and shelled edamame
1/2 tsp grated ginger

Peanut oil for shallow frying

Directions:
Mix all the ingredients until completely incorporated (The original recipe placed everything in a plastic bag and hand massaged it to make the dough, I did not have the patience to do that so I used an immersion blender, #1).
Mix in the edamame and carrot and make flat ovals (I made 8) (#2)
Add the oil to the frying pan to the depth of 5mm and heat to around 350F and shallow fry for 3 minutes (#3)
Turn over and fry the other side for 3 minutes (#4)
Drain and serve immediately (or once refrigerated, toaster-oven to warm).

This is not Satsuma-age but it is a nice fishcake and we really like it. Since the ingredients (hanpen and canned mackerel) are easy to get, this is a good and easy dish to make.

Edamame hummus 枝豆フムス

 We usually stock frozen edamame since it is a good and healthy snack. Recently, we found the frozen edamame from a frozen case at Tako Grill to be the best. My wife, found a recipe for "edamame hummus" in the cookbook called "Smoke and Pickles" by Edward Lee which we recently acquired. It used shelled edamame. My wife wanted to make this dish but she thought rather than using our stash of edamame which was in the shell and would have to be shelled it would be better to order some frozen edamame that was already out of the shell.  So we ordered some from our regular grocery store. When deciding what to order we could not figure out if the packages available were edamame shelled or in pods. We took a chance and ordered one anyway and it turned out they were in the pods so they had to be shelled anyway. My wife cooked up the package and shelled them making about 1 cup. She turned the prepared edamame over to me to make the hummus. I diverted from the original recipe a bit but the resulting dip/hummus was quite good.

Ingredients:
1 cup edamame, cooked and shelled
1/2 shallot, finely chopped
3 garlic cloves,
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/2 tbs soy sauce
1/4 cup smooth peanut butter (or tahini or Japanese nerigoma sesame paste)
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1tsp salt
1/2 cup water (I did not add the water but I added hot water -may be 1-2 tsp to the peanut butter mixutre to make it looser)
2 tbs olive oil (1/2 tbs to sautee shallot and the remaining mixed into the final product)

Directions:
Mix the peanut butter, soy sauce and hot water to make smooth loose paste.
Heat the olive oil and sauté the shallot and then garlic, add the peanut butter mixture, the edamame and heat up (below).
Using a beaker and emersion blender, process the above mixture. I added additional olive oil to make the mixture a bit smoother. Add lemon juice and cumin. Taste and add a small amount of salt to taste.

This is a unique dip/hummus. The edamame flavor really comes through. Substituting, peanut butter for the tahini (we did this before) worked well. We really like this as a hummus variation. 

 

Matsutake from Maine メイン州からの松茸

We have been getting fresh Matsutake from the Oregon mushroom for many years and I have made all the dishes I can think of. This year when I looked on their web site matsutake was listed “out of stock”. So I decided to look into alternatives sources. I found fresh matsutake available from Maine at a site called  “Foraged”. It appears this is the web hub for individual foragers. I ordered some matsutake from the site and ours came from a forager in Bangor, ME. One of the forager’s ad even states “Picked to order”. I did not know Maine has matsutake (I know Oregon and Colorado produced North American Matsutake). Oregon mushroom has different grades for matustake and I have been getting “grade #1” which has unopened caps. “The Foraged” did not have different grades.  As shown in the picture below what arrived were large with opened caps (These are after I cleaned). 

Because of the open caps and gills, it is a bit more difficult to clean and also had more “worm holes” than the ones from the Oregon mushroom.

I had posted all matsutake dishes I can think of as I mentioned earlier. I prepared the classic dishes from the Maine matsutake such as “Matsutake rice” and “Grilled matustake on a toban yaki grill”.

This Maine matutake had good flavor and we had a "Matsutake feast" one evening which included  "Matsutake toban-grill” 松茸の陶板焼き, "chawan-mushi" 松茸の茶碗蒸し, "Dobinmushi-like soup" 松茸の土瓶蒸しもどき and ended with "Matsutake rice" 松茸ご飯 . 

The below are the first group of matsutake dishes. Since I could not get a Japanese citrus called “Sudachi” スダチ, which is typically used with matsutake dishes, I used wedges of lime which is closest among the readily available citrus.

I cooked touban-yaki on the stove with the lid on so the matsutake grilled and steamed at the same time keeping the aroma in. I happended to get shell-on ginko nuts or “ginnan” 銀杏 from Tako Grill, which I prepared a few days before, I coated the nuts with salt and grilled them with the matsutake. 

This chawan-mushi is mostly matsutake and a few ginko nuts and shelled edamame, and small chunks of shrimp. I also added chopped chives since I had it.

I also served edamame.

Then, I served the matsutake soup somewhat like a traditional “dobin-mishi” but since I do not have proper "dobin" 土瓶 I made dobin-mushi -like soup in a mini-donabe.

For the broth, I made #1 broth or "ichiban dashi" using kelp and bonito flakes. I also added steamed renkon ball, shrimp, daikon, carrot, shelled edamame and ginko nuts.

The matsutake-rice was prepared the night before. So I just microwave but it came back really nicely. So we think this feast did justice to the celebration of autumnal dishes ushering in the new season. 

Tako Grill Take-out タコグリルからテイクアウト

Our Izakaya substitute "Tako Grill" has been close for dining-in for some time. Mr. Terry Segawa indicated that they would operate in a take-out rather than sit-in format. He also added a Japanese grocery section. Although we will miss being able to  interact with the sushi chefs and Mr and Mrs Segawa, we have been enjoying Omakase sushi and take-out all during covid. One of the pluses of take-out is that we do not have to worry about driving home afterwards. To make the experience more enjoyable, I usually re-plate the food. An example of which is shown in the next picture. Using the garnish they provided, I rearranged the sashimi into two servings; one for me and one for my wife instead of sharing the plate (which is what we used to do at Tako Grill at the sushi counter).

Today, we got nicely marbled “toro tuna” almost looking like Wagyu beef, in the center is “hamachi” and on the right is “aji” horse mackerel. Since aji sashimi is best eaten with grated ginger and soy sauce, I used sauce bowl which had two wells and served both wasabi (using Tako Grill provided one) and added grated ginger (from tube) soysauce

 

I rearranged “uni” sea urchin and squid sashimi into a small bowl and added a garnish of nori strips and wasabi dissolved in soy sauce.

Whenever, we get “Aji” sashimi, Sushi Chef  Santos always serves us deep fried aji skeleton. Even for the take-out, this is included. We heated it up in the toaster oven on toasting  mode. It comes out hot and crispy almost like just out of hot oil. Since there is only one, we share it. We essentially eat everything including the head.

Like we are dining in, we finish with some sushi. Today, we got Japanese “tai” red snapper, toro and eel sushi and our usual California roll made of real lump crab meat and addition of  tobiko roe.

Although someday, we may be able to dine-in again, we are quite happy with this arrangement. We also get some Japanese groceries which is definitively a big plus. We are regularly getting frozen edamame (they have the best quality edamame), Japanese crackers (especially my wife likes them), Tonkotsu ramen, and green tea ice cream daifuku among others.  We hope this new format will work for Tako Grill as a business. We are certainly very happy with this format.

Big eye tuna sashimi 4 ways めばち鮪刺身 四通り

When we got firefly squid from Regalis food, we also got 3 lbs. of fresh bigeye tuna sashimi メバチマグロ (akami 赤身). Since this was too much tuna sashimi for us to finish in one sitting, I divided it into 4 portions. We finished one portion fresh. The remaining three portions were vacuum packed and frozen.  Over time we have been enjoying the frozen portions and finally we came to the last one. Although this tuna tasted fairly good, certain portions, including this last one, were very “sinewy”.  So I had to tailor the dishes I made to make the sinew less noticeable. The dishes I made are shown in the next picture. The upper row from left to right are “yamakake” やまかけ, “sashimi” 赤身刺身, tuna with avocado cubes マグロとアボカドの角切りand the lower row is imitation “negitoro” 擬制ネギトロ. I did a similar combination of dishes using frozen yellowtail tuna but these made with big eye tuna were much better.

 

For the yamakake, I marinated  cubes of tuna for several hours in concentrated (x4) Japanese noodle sauce and also added soy sauce with dissolved wasabi to the grated nagaimo. I topped it with thin strips of nori. This is a classic and also sort of filling because of the grated nagaimo.

I chose the portion with the least sinew and made a small serving of straight sashimi. It was quite good.

This is another dish I make often. The dressing contains chopped garlic, soy sauce, sake, and dark sesame oil. The similarity of textures of tuna sashimi cubes and avocado works well. Since I did not have fresh chives, I used the green part of scallion for garnish.

Finally, imitaion negitoro. The combination of mayonise and tuna cannot go wrong. As usual, I left a half portion of tuna in small cubes and mixed it with the more finely chopped tuna with mayo, Japanese noodle sauce and chopped scallion. I served this with slices of cucumber (American minicucues) and small rectangular  sheets of Korean nori 韓国海苔. We made small nori rolls with the cucumber and negitoro. This is really great and also filling.

After finishing these 4 tuna sashimi dishes, we enjoyed  “edamame” 枝豆 and assortment of Japanese rice crackers and few more cups of cold sake and we were quite full.

Steamed renkon balls 蒸し蓮根まんじゅう

This is on the theme of fresh renkon lotus root. This is another renkon ball 蓮根まんじゅう but instead of deep frying, this was steamed/microwaved (hence healthier). The original recipe calls for "ginnan" 銀杏 ginko nuts but we did not have it. So I used shelled edamame 枝豆.

I added gentle broth made of kelp-bonito dashi pack and shirodashi 白だし seasoning. I garnished it with more edamame and blanched snow peas.

Ingredients:
200 grams grated fresh renkon, skin peeled, excess moisture drained
1 tbs potato starch
4 shrimp, thawed, shelled and cut into bit size chunks
20 shelled edamame, cooked

For broth.
200 ml kelp and bonito dashi (made from dashi pack), heated
2-3 tbs shirodashi 白だし or 1tbs mirin and 1 tbs light colored soy sauce

you could thicken the broth by adding potato starch slurries (optional)

Direction:
Mix all ingredients in a bowl.
Made 6 small balls.
Using a microwave safe silicon container, I microwaved for about 2 minutes or until done.

Place one ball in a small bowl, add hot broth and garnish.

The texture is very different from the deep fried version. Much softer and gentler. We like this variation and it is easier to make. Some recipes suggest wrapping the balls in plastic wrap and microwave but I did not like the idea of microwaving in plastic wrap. That’s why I used a microwave safe silicon container instead.

Renkon balls レンコンまんじゅう

This dish is the result of an unexpected “silver lining” derived from the Covid epidemic. Because of Covid, we decided as a safety precaution, not to go to the grocery store but rather have groceries delivered. This forced us out of our usual routines and by necessity introduced us to new options. One of which was buying groceries from HMart Korean grocery store via the Instacart. As a benefit, we are now getting items which were not available from our usual grocery stores. One such item is fresh “reckon” 蓮根 or lotus root. (It is the floating stalk, not the root of a water lily). Even at our Japanese grocery store, the only reckon we could get was cleaned, boiled and sold in a package. It is easier to use than fresh renkon but it limits the dishes that can be made from it. For example, I could not have made this renkon ball or dumpling  dish レンコンまんじゅう shown below from packaged prepared renkon. But with fresh renkon available I could. I served the dumplings in a very gentle broth, with garnishes of edamame 枝豆, and simply fried reckon slices.

Reckon is an interesting vegetable. Even after cooking, it remains crunchy but grated and made into dumplings, the consistency changes completely into the consistency of “mochi-mochi” もちもち or like-fresh rice cake. I added shrimp and edamame to the dumpling. As a garnish I added simply fried renkon  which gave a nice contrasting  crunchy texture.

The other evening, I served three renkon dishes. From the left, Nitsuke 煮付け, the center is this renkon ball or dumpling dish but I added one fish ball made from blue fish, the right is renkon salad れんこんサラダ. 

In this nitsuke dish, renkon remains crunchy.

Boiled  renkon (again remains crunchy), blanched broccoli and skinned Campari tomato dressed in Yuzu mayonnaise. Since we used up the store bought Yuzu mayonnaise, I made my version by mixing Hellman’s mayo, yuzu juice (from the bottle) and a pinch of sugar . This really emulated the commercial Yuzu mayonnaise we got earlier.

Instructions for the renkon balls

Ingredients:
One segment of fresh renkon (#1) (after grated, #4, it was slightly more than 700grams)
2 tbs potato starch
3 large shrimp, thawed, shell removed and cut into small chunks then salted
10-15 shelled edamame

For broth
1 cup kelp and bonito broth (I used a dashi pack)
1 tbs of white dashi “shirt-dashi” 白だし seasoning or 1tbs each mirin and light colored soy sauce (or to taste).

Directions:
One segment of fresh renkon (#1).
Remove the ends of the segment of renkon and peel the skin (#2 and #3)
Finely grate the renkon and drain to remove excess moisture (#4)
Mix in the corn starch, shrimp and edamame. Make small balls about one inch in diameter.
Deep fry at 300-320 F for 7-10 minutes (#5)

I also fried sliced and quartered renkon
Drain (#6)

Assembly:
I cut one renkon ball in half and placed the halves in a bowl. I added the fried renkon and edamame and poured in the hot broth. You can also reheat everything in the broth and serve.

This is a very good dish. The contrast of elastic texture of the renkon balls and crunchy fried renkon is wonderful. The shrimp has similar texture to the renkon ball and since it was salted, it imparts briny salty burst of flavors. I made the broth very gentle and light which also went well.

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.

Takoyaki variation with tofu and nagaimo 長芋豆腐たこ焼き

This is a takoyaki たこ焼き ("tako grill") variation made without "tako" (octopus). This recipe is from "The real Japanese Izakaya Cookbook". We made takoyaki (octopus inclusive) using an electric ebelskiver maker before. An ebelskiver maker is the closest we could come to a traditional takoyaki grill.  This recipe deviates significantly from the traditional approach because it uses grated nagaimo 長芋 and tofu 豆腐 instead of flour. Instead of tako is uses hijiki ひじき sea weed and edamame 枝豆 . Continuing on the innovative theme, instead of the usual "Takoyaki sauce", this recipe used "Gin-an" 銀餡 which is a milder and "more sophisticated" sauce.

The surface was nicely brown and crunchy.

The inside was soft and hot showing hijiki (black stringy below) and edamame (green).

Ingredients: (I tried to halve the amount of the original recipe. I ended up making some changes inadvertently, since I just did not want to use "half egg" and I did not want to leave a small portion of nagaimo).

The original recipe is as follows;

1 firm silken tofu 12oz (350g)
Handful dried Hijiki seaweed
8 oz (225g) unshelled edamame pods (then, cooked and shelled)
1 egg
4oz (125g) yamaimo
1/2 tbs sugar
1/2 tsp salt

The amount below are what I think I used. It made 6 balls using the Ebelskiver cooker (the balls were larger than regular takoyaki) as below.

1 small package of silken tofu, about 125gram, wrapped in paper towel with a weight (I used wooden cutting board) to drain for 1 hour.
Nagaimo, skin removed and grated, about 120g (I used up what I had left)
1 egg
Hijiki seaweed, hydrated, arbitrary amount
Edamame, frozen, cooked and shelled, arbitrary amount
Pinch of salt and sugar
"Katakuri-ko" potato Starch (because, proportionally I used more nagaimo and egg than the original recipe which made the batter runnier, I added potato starch to adjust the consistency of the batter).

For the dipping sauce; (this is the original, again, I halved the recipe when I made it)
2 tbs potato starch
2 cup (500ml) dashi
1 tbs soy sauce
1/2 sugar
1/2 tbs mirin
1/4 tsp salt

Directions:
Using a small food processor, I mixed the tofu, grated nagaimo, egg, salt and sugar until the batter was smooth. I then added the potato starch in small increments to adjust the consistency (it was the consistency of a bit runny pancake batter).
I added the hijiki, edamame and mixed (#1)
I preheated my electric ebelskiver to medium high (#2)
I poured the batter filling 6 wells (#3)
After the bottom got set and browned (it took a few minutes, I was too inpatient and started flipping too early)
After several flipping, the surface started getting evenly brown (#4)
I kept flipping until the surface is all cooked and browned about 5-6 minutes (#5 and 6).

This version of takoyaki was good and the dipping sauce went well with it but this is not really takoyaki (I am sure people from Osaka would agree). It is a dish in-and-of its own just resembling the shape of takoyaki. Making  this requires some steps and effort and I would rather make  regular takoyaki which is much easier to make.

Succotash soup with chicken salad サカタッシュ コーンスープ

This is my wife's corn soup made from corncobs. Since we had extra fresh corn and frozen edamame soybean leftover from when we made shrimp balls, we added them to her "corncob" soup and called it "succotash" soup. We had this cold as a weekend lunch (it was a hot day) and served with curry flavored chicken salad with cantaloupe.

This curry flavored chicken salad was served on a bed of baby arugula

 and topping of roasted walnuts. We also had my baguette.

There was a little bit of soup left so the next day, we made some modifications and finished it. We added corn pudding (again leftover) and cream.

This was also served it cold with garnish of soy beans and paprika for color.

Both of these dishes were quite a corn "festival". It's amazing what an intense corn flavor can come from just boiling some corncobs (with the corn removed) in water with onion. Adding the corn kernels back into the corn broth along with the edamame also added to the flavor and made it a very filling dish. The nice corn flavor of  the soup also went well with the sweet corn taste of the corn pudding.