Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Matsutake rice 松茸ご飯
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Matsutake Tempura 松茸の天ぷら
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Matsutake "chawanmushi" savory egg custard 松茸の茶碗蒸し
Monday, October 15, 2012
Matsutake on "touban" grill 松茸の陶板酒蒸し焼き
Friday, October 30, 2020
Grilled bluefish and matsutake lunch
We used to get a whole fresh Spanish mackerel at Whole foods, but it has not been available for a long time. Since we started buying groceries from the Korean grocery store HMart through Instacart, we have found they have more variety of whole fresh fish available. We got whole Spanish mackerel from them a few times. This time, however, mackerel was not available but bluefish was. We have used bluefish* in place of Spanish mackerel in the past and decided to go with it. I am not sure how I ordered it (by weight or by the numbers) but I ended up with two rather large bluefish not cleaned at all. So, I had to scale, gut, remove head and make filets. It was a bit of work but the fish was really fresh. As before, I made bluefish simmered in miso sauce ブルーフィシュの味噌煮 from the filets and "tsumire" fish balls soup つみれ汁 from the fish meat scraped off the bones. I set the fish ball soup and miso simmered fish aside for another meal. The remaining filets, I salted and grilled. We happened to have matsutake 松茸 from Oregon mushroom and matsutake rice 松茸ご飯 rice leftover from dinner the previous night. So I made matsutake soup 松茸のお吸い物, warmed up the rice and served with the bluefish for our lunch on Sunday.
* I am not sure of its Japanese name but it appears to be "Oki-suzuki" オキスズキ. I have not seen or eaten it while I lived in Japan.
I first salted the fillet and let it sit in the refrigerator for a few hours. I cooked the bluefish filet with a small amount of olive oil in a frying pan on low flame with skin side down until the skin got brown (6-7 minutes, I also applied decorative cuts on the skin to prevent the skin breaking during the cooking). I cooked 80% on the skin side, flipped it and completed the cooking. I served this with pickled myoga 冥加の甘酢漬け, salt picked cucumber and nappa cabbage きゅうりと白菜の浅漬け and thinly sliced cucumber dressed in sushi vinegar 胡瓜の酢の物. Since the fish was well-salted, we did not need additional sauce such as soy sauce for this.
For the matsutake soup 松茸のお吸い物, I made bonito "dashi" カツオの出汁 from a dash pack seasoned with mirin and light colored soy sauce and salt, added thinly sliced matsutake, silken tofu, "kyoubu" 京麩 decorative gluten cake (dried, hydrate before adding to the soup), freeze dried "mitsuba" 三つ葉 and yuzu zest ゆず (frozen).
The bluefish prepared this way was very good. The flesh was pleasingly oily, soft and had a nice flavor. The skin did not get crispy but stayed soft. It may have been a bit strong tasting fish to accompany the delicate matsutake but we really enjoyed this lunch.
Friday, October 3, 2014
Matsutake, chestnuts and tuna sashimi 秋の味覚とマグロの刺身
I used the fresh matustake from Oregon, by cooking them steamed with sake in a touban grill . We like this way of cooking matustake best (after trying many other dishes). The wafting smell of the matsutake when I remove the dome-shaped lid is the best and one of the pure enjoyments of the experience. I simply served with kosher salt and a wedge of lemon.
I also served a small sashimi of amaebi and uni. The amaebi was very fresh and sweet (some were still alive when they arrived). The uni was "premium uni" and, to be truthful, not that great. Since I had boiled chestnuts, I also served one.
We also had chestnut rice as shime dish with a miso soup with heads of anaebi.
Here are the matsutake from Oregon mushroom. As you can see they were quite dirty. This time many stalks were left with knife gashes indicating they were not carefully harvested.
Most of instructions for cleaning matsutake indicate that after shaving off the stem ends with embedded dirt as you would if sharpening a pencil, gently rub off the dirt using a wet dish towel. I didn’t think this would work well. Nothing is worse than biting into sand and dirt when eating matsutake. So after cleaning as above, I use a sharp paring knife and cut off or scraped off the thin surface layers to make sure no sand or dirt remained (see below).
These are the “colossal” chestnuts we received.
I used the chestnuts to make chestnut rice. In previous years I used a mixture of “glutenous” “mochi gome” rice 餅米 and regular short grain rice, this year, I used all imported Koshihikari コシヒカリ rice from Niigata. I cooked it using “Kamadosan” earthenかまどさん pot rice cooker (see below).
For libation, we had junmaishu 純米酒 called “Kurosawa” くろさわ from Kurosawas shuzou 黒澤酒造 in Nagano 長野. This was made by an old process called “Kimoto” 生酛 in which naturally occurring lactic fermentation is used instead of inoculation with lactobacillus. Although, Ginjou and Daiginjou sake are elegant and clean and crisp, sometimes we like to taste a more down-to-earth sake flavor and “Junmai” class is the best bet for this. This one is not overly yeasty (which often happens in this class of sake) and had a slight sweet note with distinctive honey suckle after taste. We really liked it although a bit more acidity may have been better. In any case, sipping Kurosawa with all these autumn tastes, we feel we did justice to the celebration of the arrival of autumn.
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Matsutake and chestnut Japanese Egg custard 松茸と栗の茶碗蒸し
Egg mixture: As usual, I used “dashi pack” (bonito flakes ad kelp) and made dashi broth. After I measured two eggs, I added a bit less than 3 times of the volume of dashi broth and seasoned it with light colored soy sauce (1 tbs), mirin (2 tsp) and salt (1/2 tsp, kosher). I added more dashi to make it to exactly 3 times of the voluvme of the eggs.
I placed, slices of chicken breast (this time I used sakamushi 酒蒸し chicken breast), slices of matsutake and boiled and peeled chestnuts (see below). I poured the egg mixture through a fine mesh strainer into two bowls.
I used an electric wok and steamed the bowls for 5 minutes in medium-high continuous steam and then reduced it to low-continuous steam. After 6-7 minutes when the surface of the egg mixture was congealed enough, I placed shrimp, more sliced matsutake, and scallion slices (picture below). I continued steaming for another 7-8 minutes until the egg mixture became firm.
I served this with a dab of real wasabi and a wedge of lime.
Despite the large amount of matsutake slices, the matsutake flavor was very subtle (i.e. almost nonexistent). Next year, I will go back to Oregon mushrooms to get my matsutake. Otherwise, the chawan mushi was quite good with the nice sweet taste of the chestnuts and rather filling because of the size.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Matasutake "Dobin-mushi" style clear soup 松茸の土瓶蒸し風
Saturday, October 29, 2022
Tako rice and Matsutake soup for lunch タコ飯と松茸のお吸い物昼食
This was a lunch we had one day. We had leftover frozen octopus rice or “Tako meshi” たこめし made from a kit we got from the Rice factory. Although the original was not bad, the amount of octopus was rather small. Since I made tender simmered octopus タコの柔らか煮 a few days ago, I added slices of octopus legs to the previously made rice. Also we had matsutake mushroom 松茸 from Maine and made clear matsutake soup 松茸のお吸い物. I added a dish of salted vegetable or “asazule” 浅漬け and simmered root vegetables and chicken similar to “Chikuzen-ni” 筑前煮.
Tuesday, October 27, 2020
Special Kaiseki box from Sushi Taro v2 寿司太郎特別会席弁当二回目
We had the second take-out special kaiseki box from Sushi Taro. Again, this was amazing. We just wanted to record what we enjoyed.
Monday, October 21, 2013
Matsutake grilled on ceramic plate 松茸の陶板焼き
I placed the mastutake on the heated touban on low heat without any oil or liquid. After the matustake grilled enough to develop some brown spots (appearing in about 2 minutes), I put the lid on and let it continue cooking for another minute.
The dome-shaped lid really does a good job of retaining the matustake flavor yet you do not feel like you are eating “raw” matsutake. Since we do not have “Kabosu”, we used wedges of lime and Kosher salt.
Tuesday, October 13, 2020
Special take-out Kaiseki box from Sushi Taro 寿司太郎のテイクアウト特製会席弁当
Prior to COVID the omakase counter at Sushi Taro was our special-occasion-go-to place. As a matter of fact, we had a reservation in March this year but because of COVID, that got canceled. I knew for some time that, although the restaurant was closed, Sushi Taro has been doing take-out. But getting there either from home or work for the pick-up was impractical. Since I started thinking about the NewYear “Osechi” 御節 from Sushi Taro, I contacted them. I was delighted to find out that they are going to do Osechi for the next New Year and I quickly placed an order. During that interaction, I learned that they do special omakase kaiseki boxes-to-go and that they can deliver. I quickly placed an order. Delivery was scheduled for Friday at 5pm. We were like little kids in anticipation. I even "just happened" to come home from work a bit early for the delivery. It arrived in two, two-tiered (bento or modified jubako?) boxes. (a total of four boxes with three compartments each). We initially thought we got two identical sets but when we opened the second box, surprise! We were totally blown away. All compartments contained many wonderful different dishes. The first one had some cooked dishes, two different kinds of sushi. The cooked dishes in the top tier were still warm.