Watermelon ribbon salad with wasabi スイカのワサビ入りリボンサラダ

Because of Covid-19, we are having groceries delivered. This creates some problems because we can't inspect the items before we receive them as we would if we were picking them out at the store. In addition, because of substitutions, what we actually receive can sometimes be unexpected such as getting cilantro as a substitution for celery, which occurred in a recent delivery. One such case occurred this week. We ordered a small seedless baby watermelon but instead we got two quarters (actually 1/2) of a full sized melon. This was much much more watermelon than we were expecting. So, besides eating the watermelon as is, my wife made watermelon soup スイカの冷製スープ, pickled watermelon rind, スイカの皮のピクルス and watermelon ribbon salad スイカのリボンサラダ.　Although the recipe for the watermelon ribbon salad shown here is basically the same as the one we posted before, my wife changed the amounts to make a smaller portion (using a 5x7 inch casserole dish instead of the usual 6x10) and wanted to record the recipe. The white layer is made of cottage cheese with a good amount of wasabi added which really makes the dish giving it a nice "zing". We served it as a first appetizer of the evening on a crane plate we got in Kyoto sometime ago.

These are the layers of the ribbon salad. Looks like nice pink and white ribbon.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/8 cup milk or cream
3/4 + 1/8 cup cottage cheese mashed
1/8 cup mayonnaise
1/8 tsp salt
1 lime or lemon squeezed
2 tsp. wasabi (or to taste)

Directions:
Puree the watermelon. Add the buttermilk and lime. Take 1/4 cup of the puree and use it to bloom the gelatin. Heat the bloomed gelatin in the microwave for 30 seconds. Add the gelatin to the rest of the puree. Pour 3/4 cup of the puree mixture into the bottom of the 5x7casserole dish and let it jell in the refrigerator until solid. (Keep the remaining puree at room temperature and it will stay liquid.)

Mash the cottage cheese using an immersion blender. Add the mayo and salt. Take some of the cottage cheese mixture, add it to a small bowl and use it to soften the wasabi. The amount of wasabi is basically to taste. I found that the cottage cheese tends to calm it down so I end up putting in a fairly large amount. Once it has been homogenized into the amount in the small bowl add it to the large bowl and stir until it is incorporated. Bloom the gelatin in the lime juice. Heat in the microwave for 30 seconds until melted. Add to the bowl of cottage cheese. Pour the cottage cheese over the watermelon layer and cool until solid.  Add the remaining 3/4 cup watermelon puree on top of the cottage cheese layer and cool until solidified.

This is a very summery refreshing salad. The wasabi in the white cottage cheese layer really works well.  The sharpness of the wasabi flavor somehow complements and accentuates the sweetness of the pink melon layer. Without the wasabi this dish would be pretty bland. We had this with chilled pink wine (always good to color coordinate whenever possible), Aix Rose 2019, Rosé from Coteaux d'Aix-en-Provence, Provence, South of France. It went perfectly.

Watermelon ribbon salad スイカのリボンサラダ

This is a variation of my wife's ribbon salad.  We bought a regular size watermelon last weekend. I "processed" it so that it was all cut up and ready to go as fruit to take to work in small containers. But a whole regular sized water melon (as opposed to a mini-water melon) was too much for us to finish in one week. My wife remembered that she used to make a variation on ribbon salad using watermelon.  I served it with cucumber salad and broccoli as one of the small dishes for the evening.

The center layer is "wasabi" flavored cottage cheese.

Ingredients:

Red layer

3/4 cup buttermilk

1 lime squeezed

2 3/4 cup watermelon puree

2 envelopes unflavored gelatin

White layer

1 envelop gelatin

1/4 cup milk or cream

1 3/4 cup cottage cheese mashed

1/4 cup mayonnaise

1/4 tsp salt 

2 limes squeezed

1 tbs wasabi (or to taste) 

Puree the watermelon. Take 1/2 cup of the puree and use it to bloom the gelatin. Heat the bloomed gelatin in the microwave for 30 seconds. Add the gelatin to the rest of the puree. Pour half the puree into the bottom of the casserole dish and let it jell in the refrigerator until solid. (Keep the remaining puree at room temperature and it will stay liquid.) 

Mash the cottage cheese. Add the mayo, salt, lime juice. Take some of the cottage cheese mixture, add it to a small bowl and use it to soften the wasabi. The amount of wasabi is basically to taste. I found that the cottage cheese tends to calm it down so I end up putting in a fairly large amount. Once it has been homogenized into the amount in the small bowl add it to the large bowl and stir until it is incorporated. Bloom the gelatin in the milk. Heat in the microwave for 30 seconds until melted. Add to the bowl of cottage cheese. Pour the cottage cheese over the watermelon layer and cool until solid. 

Add the remaining watermelon puree on top of the cottage cheese layer and cool until solidified. 

This is a refreshing summer side dish. The watermelon flavor comes through and goes very well with the cottage cheese layer. The wasabi really makes this dish. Because of the cottage cheese and mayo the wasabi is not "clean out your sinuses" intense.  Instead it adds a nice little bite that goes well with watermelon and adds to the refreshing flavor. Also mayo and wasabi are another surprisingly good flavor combination. This is a good variation for my wife's historic ribbon salad. 

BTW the pureed watermelon served with wasabi cream makes a very nice cold melon soup. 

Tomato ribbon salad version 2 トマトリボンサラダ V2

This is another variation of my wife’s famous ribbon salad. The red layers are tomato juice based aspic but  the cream cheese-based white layers are a bit more complex than the previous version. I helped by chopping up and slicing the ingredients. Initially, my wife was dissapointed since she expected the white layer to be more flavorful. But a few days later when we had this again, the ingredients had melded together and we could taste much more flavor.

Ingredients for Tomato aspic:
3 cups tomato juice (we used V-8)
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. sugar
2 tsp. Sushi vinegar
1 Tbs. Worcestershire sauce
Onion juice to taste (About 3 Tbs.
2 envelopes gelatin

Ingredients for white section
1 envelope of gelatin
1/4 cup cream
1 tub (8 oz.) or 1 block (8 oz.) Philadelphia cream cheese
1/4 cup sour cream
3 tbsp. mayonnaise
2-3 ribs celery, minced
1 med. green pepper, (jalapeño) finely chopped
2 med. onion, finely chopped
1/4-1/2 cup pimento stuffed olives, sliced
1/4-1/2 cup ripe (black) olives, sliced (we didn’t use because we didn’t have) 
(Optional) 1 ripe avocado, peeled & sliced (we did not use) 

Directions:
Soften gelatin in 1/2 cup of the tomato juice. Add mixture to the top of a double boiler. Heat until the gelatin melts. Put the rest of the tomato juice in a pan. Heat until all ingredients dissolved. Add the gelatin that has been melted in the double boiler. Chill 1/2 of the tomato aspic until set, in a 9 x 13 inch pyrex dish (below).

 

Soften the gelatin in the cream. Add mixture to the top of a double boiler. Heat until the gelatin melts. Mix cream cheese, sour cream and mayonnaise until smooth. Add the melted gelatin then the chopped celery, jalapeño, and onion. Spread cheese mixture over the congealed aspic. Add the olives on top of the cheese mixture. (Next time it would be better that the olives are finely diced.  Cut like this they made it hard to slice the ribbon salad into servings). (If using avocado lay the slices on top of the cheese mixture.) Refrigerate until firm (below).

Pour the second half of the tomato aspic gently over the avocado slices, to cover all. Cover with saran wrap and refrigerate until set.

Although this is a variation on the previous tomato ribbon salad, it is clearly in the same tradition. The red layer is much the same. The white layer is much softer. The olives are a great addition. They add a burst of saltiness. The flavors get much more pronounced after a day or two when the ingredients have had a chance to meld together. In general, this salad and its precursor are a light cool refreshing addition to a meal on a hot summer day.

Ribbon salad リボンサラダ

This is an historic recipe with a story behind it.  Even though my wife had been cooking for her family since her early teens, she didn't enjoy cooking and it showed. She herself used to say nobody would starve while she was at the stove but there were better ways to enjoy life than eating something she put on a plate. She was infamous for her gelatin based creative concoctions so much so that when she was asked what to bring to pot luck dinners, she was usually told napkins would be just find.  She claims she became a much better cook after we got married (whether my influence or not, I am pleased to say that she did).

This recipe was one of her favorites from way way back (early 1970's?). She found it recently after going through a collection of old papers. She couldn't remember where it came from but it was printed on an old newspaper with references to addresses in Ontario, Canada. While she was wildly enthusiastic about making this recipe for me, I remembered some of the dishes for which she achieved her previous dubious fame (I believe a type of tomato-y jello was involved) and was somewhat less enthusiastic. It was fairly complicated involving a number of steps and my wife claimed that when she first made this dish, it sorely tested her culinary skills but this time she seemed well within her comfort zone. Despite my initial hesitancy, I was quite please with how well it turned out.  Unlike other ribbon salads which use flavored and artificially colored gelatin and tend to be sweet, this one is savory and can definitely play a legitimate role in any meal. Here we just served it alone (picture above). Bottom layer looks dark but top and bottom layers are the same savory tomato flavor separated by a creamy cottage cheese based center layer. (below).

This was a weekend light lunch and I served it with my salmon salad and baguette and a wedge of tomato seasoned with salt and olive oil. 

The ribbon salad was a perfect accompaniment for this cold salad on a hot day (we were hitting 90F).

Here you can see both top and bottom layers are the same with a nice white smooth cottage cheese layer.

Ingredients:

Red layer

2 envelopes unflavored gelatin

3 1/2 cup tomato juice

2 tsp sugar

1 tsp salt1 tsp onion juice (we used grated onion).

1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

2 tbs vinegar (we used rice vinegar).

White layer

1 envelope of unflavored gelatin

1/4 cup cold water

1 1/2 cups cottage cheese, mashed (We used small curd and pureed it with other ingredients in a blender).

1/2 cup mayonnaise

1/4 cup finely diced celery

2 tbs finely chopped onion

1/2 tsp salt

1/8 tsp pepper

1 tsp lemon juice

Directions:

To make red layer soak gelatin in 1/2 cup tomato juice 5 minutes. Combine remaining tomato juice with rest of ingredients and heat to boiling. Add gelatin and stir until dissolved. Pour half of mixture in 9 X 5 pan. Chill until set ( #1). Leave remaining half at room temperature. 

To make white layer. Soak gelatin in cold water 5 minutes then melt over hot water (we used a double boiler). Combine remaining ingredients puree in the blender. Add gelatin and chill until slightly thickened (#2). Pour over set tomato layer (#3). Chill until set (#4). Add remaining tomato mixture (#5) and chill until firm (#6). 

I first tasted the dish almost as soon as the layers had set. The Worcestershire flavor was rather assertive in the red layer. The white layer was creamy with a subtle onion and celery overtone. The next day, the flavors had a chance to meld. The red layer had calmed down quite a bit and tasted just fine. This is lots of work (mostly my wife's) but it is a nice cool savory dish perfect for hot summer. We were glad we resurrected this "ancient" recipe. 

Creamy Tomato Aspic Salad クリーミートマトアスピックサラダ

My wife is a great fan of ribbon or aspic salad which now appears to be out of fashion. I also developed a liking for these aspic salads. Somewhere on-line, she came across a recipe for “creamy aspic salad”. She also had some V-8 juice left over from when she made ribbon salad so she decided to use it making this creamy aspic. As usual, although she got the idea to make the aspic from the recipe she modified it to her liking to accommodate the ingredients that were available. The most difficult part of making aspic is determining the correct amount of gelatin to use. Too much gelatin makes it like rubber and too little and it won’t hold together and keep its shape. This one was a bit on the softer side but had nice flavors and texture from using ricotta cheese and some crunch from celery.

Beside the celery, it has sliced and chopped green and black olive which gives a burst of salty flavor.

Ingredients:
3 cup V8 juice
2 packets of powdered gelatin (the end result was a bit soft so maybe another 1/2 packet of gelatin would make it firmer)
1 tbs sushi vinegar
2 tbs Worcestershire sauce
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup Ricotta cheese (I used 3/4 cup ricotta and 1/4 cup sour cream)
1 small onion (sweet or Vidalia onion), grated
2 stalks of celery, finely chopped
5 each Kalamata and oil cured olives, stone removed and chopped
5 pimento stuffed green olives, thinly sliced

Directions:
Soak the powdered gelatin in a cup of the V8 juice. Mix the remaining V8, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce and salt. Combine the ricotta and sour cream. Mix the cheese into the V8 vinegar mixture. Cut up and prepare the vegetables. Heat the soaked gelatin in the top of a double boiler until completely dissolved. (This is the only way I found to make sure all the gelatin is dissolved.) Add to the cheese mixture and stir to combine completely. Pour into the 9 X 13 pyrex pan and refrigerate. When the mixture becomes semi-solid stir in the vegetables. (This will encourage them to spread through out the mixture instead of sinking to the bottom.) Chill until fully set.

This is a very refreshing dish served cold on a hot summer day. The cheese and sour cream tone down the acidity of the V8 juice while ironically the sushi vinegar adds a nice acidic sharpness. The grated onion completely blends nicely into the mixture rather than standing out. The chopped veggies add a nice texture and the celery in particular really makes the dish. This is a good summer salad.

Stewed rolled daikon and deep fried tofu 大根と油揚の砧の煮物

This is another high-labor simple ingredient dish (it is a value added item and "you can charge more for this dish than for a simple nimono or simmered dish" is what I remember it said in the cookbook from which I got this recipe). Although I cannot charge more for this dish, I decided to make it because my wife found several Ziploc bags of half used packages of deep fried tofu pouches or "obraage" 油揚げ in our freezer, apparently representing different vintages. Since these things do not improve with age, I tried to use up the older vintage aburaage.  I made this dish a few times before and I remember that it tastes pretty good. I made this at the same time I made "Kanpyo with checkered daikon and carrot" カンピョウの市松 and the original recipe came from the same cookbook ("Appetizers and a la carte small dishes for Izakaya" by Tadashi Shinojima.)

(This is the way I served it the day I made this dish)

First, I soaked 6 "Inari" 稲荷 or "koage" 小揚げ type (i.e. small) aburaage in boiling water to thaw and remove excess oil.  While taking care not to burn my hands, I squeezed out any water it may have absorbed by pressing it between my palms. I then cut three edges of the aburaage and opened it up into a flat rectangular sheet (about 3 by 5 inches). I repeated this process with the rest of the abraage and set aside.

(The next day, with sugar snap)

I happened to have a rather large good daikon. I cut about a 5 inch-long (corresponding to the width of the aburaage sheets) segment of daikon. Using "Katsura-muki" 桂剝き, after peeling off the skin, I made a long thin sheet of daikon (it should be thicker -about 3mm- than when you make a daikon garnish for sashimi).  I managed to make 3 sheets, each about 13-14 inch long. I blanched the diakon sheets for 5 minutes so that it would be more pliable. When it cooled enough to handle, I layered the aburage on top of the dakon sheet. You need two abuaage sheets to cover 80% of the diakon sheet leaving about 3-4 inches at the end (which makes the outer most layer). I rolled up both together and tied the upper and lower portions of the resulting cylinder with Kanpyo 干瓢 (I cut the width of the Kanpyo ribbon in half since this one happened to be rather wide). I made three rolls (each will be cut in half when served yielding 6 pieces). I placed the rolls on their ends in a small deep pot containing dashi broth (abut 2-3 cups--enough to just cover the daikon cylinder), mirin (3 tbs), "usukuchi" 薄口 soy sauce (3 tbs). The original recipe calls for dashi, mirin and sugar without any soy sauce but this does not make sense to me, so I omitted the sugar and added soy sauce. With "otoshibuta" 落とし蓋, gently simmer for 30-40 minutes. Before serving, I cut the cylinder in half between two Kanpyo ties to make two disks. Serve with the cut end up (looks much nicer) with a dab of Japanese hot mustard and a bit of the broth. The combination of texture (still slightly crunchy daikon and gentle softness of obraage), subtle and gentle sweetness from daikon and the broth, all produced a sublime experience punctuated by loud wake-up calls from the Japanese hot mustard. Sake is definitely called for.

Kanpyo with checkered daikon and carrot カンピョウの市松

Kanpyo 干瓢, literally means "dried gourd", is a rather common item used in Japanese cuisines. The meat of the gourd (a certain edible kind, I suppose) is peeled like a narrow tape and then dried. You can buy it, in this dried form, in a Japanese grocery store. I do not think it has much flavor by itself but, certainly, it will absorb any flavors in which it is cooked. It is often used as an edible tie to tie off something. For example, when I stuff a deep fried tofu pouch or abraage with a rice cake or "mochi" in my version of the New Year Soup, I use kanpyo to tie the pouch closed. It is also a common item to be included in scattered sushi "chirashi-zushi" ちらし寿司 or sushi roll "norimaki" のり巻き. To prepare kanpyo, you first wash, rehydrate (30 minutes or longer), and briefly (5 minutes) boil in water. After this, you could cook further a few different ways. If you are going to use this to tie off something, I will just use it without further cooking. The dish I am describing here is one of the rare dishes in which kanpyo is used as the main ingredient. After using kanpyo as a string/tie for another dish, I had a lot of unused kanpyo and decided to make this dish.  It is very subtle in flavor and a bit of a chore to make but it looks more "professional" than "home made".

This dish is originally from a cookbook called (roughly translated into English) "Appetizers and a la carte small "idea" dishes for Izakaya" by Tadashi Shinojima. First, I make the center portion of the dish by cutting equally sized rectangular-shaped sticks of carrot and daikon measuring about 1/2 x 1/2 x 3 inches (2 each, total of 4) (for two small servings). Combining these sticks to make a checker board pattern on the end (this is called "Ichimatsu" 市松 pattern in Japanese which is named after a Kabuki actor in the late Edo period). I make sure the kanpyo ribbon is open and flat (not to be folded or twisted) and wrap this core of the carrot and daikon sticks, keep moving up and down so that the length of the carrot and dikon sticks are evenly wrapped. Use a butcher twine (or a more delicate thread if you prefer) to tie the end of kapyo. I simmer it gently with a "otoshibuta" 落とし蓋 in 2 cup of #2 or niban dashi, 3 tbs of mirin and (about) 2 tbs of light colored or "Usukuchi" 薄口 soy sauce for 30 minutes. Let it cool down in the broth to room temperature. For the sweet miso sauce, I mix 3 tbs of red miso, 3 tbs of mirin and 2 tsp of sugar in a small sauce pan on a low flame and stir until it reaches nice saucy consistency (for about 5 minutes). You should taste and, if needed, add more sugar. Cut the kanpyo roll into 4 equal disks and serve with the miso sauce. This is a rather classic Japanese dish; simple ingredients but lots of steps and time to prepare. It has a very subtle and pleasing flavors. Perfect accompaniment for sake.

Egg-in breakfast muffins 卵とベーコン入り朝食マフィン

My wife cannot resist interesting bread recipes especially ones that involve some kind of stuffing inside. She found this recipe on line and she had to try it. These breakfast muffins have cheese and bacon in the dough and encase an egg; either a whole or scrambled. It is an all inclusive portable breakfast. (If served on a stick it would classify as a "breakfast-on-a-stick" at the local state fair).  We were thinking that we might take this to work for breakfast and decided to make the scrambled egg version since this can be, reportedly,  be frozen while the one made with a whole egg cannot because the egg white becomes rubbery. We served this as a weekend lunch with my wife's ribbon salad.

As you can see, the scrambled eggs are stuffed inside.

Ingredients:

Flavorings (#4)

4 strips of bacon, cooked crisp, drained on paper towel (#2) and chopped (#4).

½ cup shallots, chopped, sautéed in bacon fat using the same pan in which the bacon was cooked and excess dripping poured out (#3).

2 cups grated cheddar cheese (we used smoked gouda and English cheddar)

Scrambled eggs: 5 eggs plus cream, seasonings and butter (#1).

Dry Ingredients

2 1/2  cups All purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

Wet Ingredients (#4)

1 cup buttermilk

1 tsp salt

10 tsp Greek yogurt (original recipe called for sour cream)

4 tbs  melted butter

2 eggs

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 180C/350F. 
2. Grease muffin tins with with butter (original recipe calls for "Texas muffin tin to accommodate a whole raw egg in each muffin, we used a regular muffin tin and scrambled eggs crumbled into small pieces).
3. Place Dry Ingredients in a bowl and mix to combine.
4. Whisk Wet Ingredients in a separate bowl.
5. Pour the Wet Ingredients into the Dry Ingredients until just combined. Do not over mix. 
6. Fold in Flavorings, including cooked bacon (#5).
7. Place 3 tbsp of the batter into 4 muffin tin. Bang the tin to flatten the batter.
8. Make a divot in the batter and put in the scrambled egg (or crack in a raw egg if using a larger tin and so prefer). (#6)
9. Divide the remaining batter between each hole to cover the egg. (#6) shows covered eggs in front and uncovered eggs in back.
10. Brush the muffins with melted butter (optional), then bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown.
11. Remove from oven and allow to rest for 5 minutes before turning out onto a cooling rack. (#7 and 8)
12. Best served warm.

This was good and the smell when cooking was divine but the amount of work and fat content may make us think twice before making this one again. We could possibly achieve the same effect by just baking a biscuit, cutting it in half horizontally and adding scrambled egg. Nevertheless, the idea is very interesting and we will take this to work for breakfast next week.