Salmon appetizer 4 kinds 鮭のお通し４種

The day after we had sashimi salmon, we had the four starters pictured below. Two are repeat dishes from the ones we had the previous day when we had salmon sashimi. In the back is instant gravlax (previously posted instant Gravlax made with umershu 梅酒 ) canapé on the no knead rye bread I made. Topped with sour cream and cucumber.  

Here is a close-up of the gravlax.

The picture below shows  Russian marinated salmon on the second day. So,  it is bit more "cured" or "cooked" than when we had it the day before but still not completely "cooked" and quite good.

This is the usual salmon salad. Instead of crackers, I served it with slices of cucumber so that we would not get filled up too quickly.

Below is "salmon nanban" 鮭の南蛮漬け. This is a variation of nanban 南蛮. I made it with chicken,  jack mackerel 鯵, "shishamo" ししゃも or capelin fish previously.

So, these were 4 starters all made with salmon. We had cold sake which went very well with all dishes.

No knead rye bread 捏ねないライ麦パン

This is another "No knead" bread. This time it was rye bread. The below is how this one came out. Looks pretty rustic and nice.

After it was completely cooled, I sliced it. The hole-yness is just right as was the thickness of the crust.

Ingredients

300gram bread flour

100gram rye flour

>8gram salt

2gram instant yeast

300gram cold (55-65F) water

Directions

Same was other no knead bread. I baked at 450 F instead of 475 F. 

Since I made instant gravlax from sashimi-grade salmon the day before and there was still some left over, I made a small canapé with the rye bread thinly sliced and lightly toasted, topped with this gravlax (this one was made with 23 year old home made umeshu 梅酒 instead of straight vodka). I topped the salmon with sour cream and cucumber slices.

Although rye flavor is not really pronounced, this is a good rustic bread with nice flavor and texture and perfect for this canapé/open sandwich.

Salmon sashimi 4 ways 鮭の刺身４種類

This was made with frozen sashimi salmon from Catalina. We got it for New Year but we did not eat it since we had so much other good food. We decided it wasn't getting any better with age and the ice crystals forming inside the package was probably not an improvement. So, we defrosted and enjoyed it. Since frozen sashimi salmon from Catalina usually comes in 1 lb. packages, I always have to come up with several variations rather than straight salmon sashimi.

The picture below shows what I came up with this time. From the left, straight sashimi with Meyer lemon juice squeezed on it. The next item (moving to the right) is salted and scorched on one side with a kitchen torch and then briefly marinated in concentrated Japanese noodle sauce. The rose shaped item is instant gravlax made from Umeshu 梅酒, and on the right most is several hour (instead of usual 3 days) marinated "Russian" salmon 鮭のロシア漬け. I could shorten the marination time since this salmon was sashimi grade.

The following pictures are close-ups of the individual preparations. Since I had Meyer lemons, I squeezed juice over the sashimi just before serving. In only a few minutes, the surface became slightly opaque and had a nice Meyer lemon flavor. This was so tender it was almost like eating salmon belly.

The below is salmon with one side salted and seared with a kitchen  torch and then marinated in concentrated Japanese "mentsuyu" 麺つゆ noodle sauce and garnished with the thinly sliced green part of scallion. The seared portion added an almost smokey flavor and a slightly denser texture which contrasted nicely with the soft un-seared portion. 

The below is the instant gravlax, probably the best I ever made.  The marinade is composed of 1 tbs each of brown sugar (I used regular sugar and drops of dark molasses) and Kosher salt, finely chopped dill, 1 tsp each zest of lemon and orange. I also added about 50 ml of vintage umeshu which I made in 1997, from the plums grown on the tree in our back yard, using 40% alcohol vodka. I mixed and coated the small block of salmon and covered it with plastic wrap and marinated in the refrigerator for 4-5 hours. Just before serving, I removed it from the marinade, removed the excess marinade from the surface by blotting with a paper towel and sliced it. This instant gravlax had nice complex flavors. Compared to regular gravlax, it was very moist since the it is mostly raw. We really liked it.

This is the classic Russian marinated salmon which I make every New Year using a recipe I got from my mother many years ago. (This used to be a regular in her line-up of NewYear dishes). I used the belly portion of the salmon and marinated for only several hours. So, the inside was raw. This was quite a contrast with the gravlax. It was lemony and slightly vinegary but not sweet at all. I garnished it with chiffonade of perilla.

Although this is a lot of salmon, because of the different flavors and textures, each preparation was uniquely varied so the entire dish was not monotonous as would have been the case if we ate everything as just salmon sashimi. (Believe me we tried it that way one time before and it was overwhelmingly too much of a good thing). This was infinitely better approach. There was a small amount of leftover Russian marinated salmon and gravlax. Since these preparations were particularly good we were glad to enjoy it again the next day.

Yellowfin tuna from Great Alaska Seafood 冷凍キハダ鮪

I am always looking for alternative sources of sashimi grade fish. Catalina offshore products has been a most reliable source for a long time. Other sites have come and gone such as "Fish-for-sushi" and "Sushi at home".  When it comes to sea urchin, "Maruhide" 丸秀 which sells only uni and uni products, is where I go to get them. Recently, I came across the website for "Great Alaska Seafood". I noticed they have "sashimi-grade" yellowfin tuna blocks. You have to buy a rather large amount. (In this case, 8 lbs. that is 8 blocks or "saku" of frozen tuna each weighing about 1 lb.). The price seemed reasonable. While it would have been difficult to accommodate an 8 lb. slab of frozen fish, 8 one pound blocks were do-able and the fact they were frozen made "storage" easier.  I also figured if the fish is not good enough for sashimi, I could always cook it. So I bought it.  The picture below shows one of the frozen blocks. 

The dish shown below was the first time we tasted my purchase. I made three different preparations but I did not take a picture of the third dish which was an imitation "negitro" ネギトロ.

After thawing the tuna block in the refrigerator (it took almost 2 days), I divided the block into three portions. One I made into "zuke" 漬け or marinated tuna. This time I used "concentrated noodle sauce めんつゆ from the bottle" plus ground roasted white sesame.  I sliced the tuna and marinated the slices for several hours in the refrigerator. Just for variation, I seared half of the "Zuke" tuna (far right) using a kitchen torch. The yellow item shown on the plate below is "Dashimaki" だし巻き omelet I had made earlier. I placed the tuna sashimi on top of baby arugula. I also served "Ikura" salmon roe in a cucumber cup (upper left corner).

We really enjoyed this. This is about the same as the frozen yellowfin tuna blocks we buy at our Japanese grocery store. It may be slightly better since it seemed to contain less water. (After thawing, not much water came out). The textures and taste are about the same. The "Zuke" and "imitation negitoro" preparations made very good variations.

Hanami 2020 #3 with Uni and tuna from Catalina ３日目の花見、カタリナの刺身

After we had our first hanami celebration meal of Tako Grill take out, we received some shashimi items from Catalina Offshore products. It is rare now-a-days that they have gold uni from California but they had it and I ordered it with Pacific bluefin tuna loin, salmon and "ankimo" Monkfish liver. The fish arrived Saturday and we had our second hanami of tuna sashimi and a half of uni that evening. The other items contributed to the third continuation of hanami. I prepared half of the uni as "shio-uni" 塩うに or salted uni. The uni arrived in this plastic container which works much better than traditional wood tray.

The uni was nicely formed (not fragmented or dissolved). It was a nice orange color. Its been a while since we had uni from Catalina. We have been getting some uni from Maruhide but this one was pretty good.

I enjoyed half as sashimi and prepared the other half as "Shio uni" or salted uni. I read that this was a very usual preparation in Aomori prefecture 青森県 which is the norther most part of the main land Japan, "Honshu"本州. Most of the recipes (all in Japanese) call for 100 grams of uni and 12 grams of salt. Place the uni slightly apart in a flat sealable container lined with a paper towel, and sprinkle with the salt (see below). I put on the lid and placed it in the refrigerator for three hours. After three hours, moisture came out and was absorbed by the paper towel. Since we were going to consume the uni the next day, I just move the uni to a smaller sealable container. If you use a sterilized container (a glass jar sterilized  in boiling water, cooled and dried), the uni should last at least 1 week in the refrigerator).

In any case, I forgot to take a picture when we had this the next day. To serve it I made a bottom layer of thinly sliced mini cucumber on a plate and put the salted uni on the top. We folded the cucumber and uni into single serving seasoned nori sheets 味付け海苔 and enjoyed the combination of flavors. The uni became bit more creamy with more intense flavor. Definitely I will use this technique to preserve and enhance the flavor of uni in the future.

In any case, we had the remaining tuna two ways; one is tuna cubes with avocado 鮪とアボカドの角切り(seasoned with finely chopped garlic, sesame oil and soy sauce).

Another was just straightforward tuna sashimi with blanched broccoli with sesame dressing ブロッコリーの胡麻和え, salt broth snap peas スナップ豌豆の塩びたし, Japanese omelet 出汁巻 and "asazuke" 浅漬け of cucumber and daikon.

In any case, we had a very good 3rd hanami.

Six "otoshi" appetizers お通し6種類

Although I secretly aspire to come up with 6 appetizers to start a meal like we enjoyed at two special izakayas, "Suiko" 酔香 or "Shuhai" 酒杯  in Japan, my appetizer count usually falls short. But one evening I found I could fairly easily come up with a set of 5 appetizers.  After giving it some thought I realized I could make one more for a total of six. Yay! The extra dish, however, did not make the group pic. Its portrait is, nonetheless, shown below.

The upper row from left to right are Chinese-style squid salad (store-bought) with my sugar snap in salt broth, grilled fish cake (store bought) with blanched broccolini dressed in mustard soy sauce, Russian marinated salmon (leftover from the previous evening). (It had been marinading for 2 days by then). The lower row from left to right are octopus leg, cucumber slices and Campari tomato dressed in sumiso sauce and "mizuna" oshitashi 水菜のお浸しtopped with bonito flakes.

Although it missed the group picture, the sixth appetizer was; salmon sashimi and avocado cubes dressed in soy sauce, sesame oil, chiffonade of perilla and finely chopped garlic. The salmon was leftover from the prior evening. I made a slight modification by salting one side and searing it with a kitchen torch before cutting it into cubes. This added an additional grilled flavor and slight crusty texture.

The dish shown below is Chinese-style squid salad 中華風イカサラダ  bought at our Japanese grocery store. The variation of this appears to be available at Catalina offshore products as well.

Below is a small deep fried fish cake which is almost always available at our Japanese grocery store. This appears to be locally made and is pretty good. We heat it up in the toaster oven. I dressed blanched broccolini florets with mustard soy sauce (I now make several Japanese sauces in small squeeze bottles and store them in the refrigerator for instant use).

This was leftover Russian marinaded salmon I made the night before. This marinaded a total of 2 days and was almost completely "chemically" cooked but the onion was better now (marinating just overnight,  the sweet onion was a bit too raw). I topped this with salmon roe and garnished it with perilla.

The dish below came about due to a mistake I made. I thought I got a bunch of edible chrysanthemum 春菊 but instead it was Japanese mizuna 水菜. I blanched it very quickly for 20 seconds, drained and cooled it down by fanning and squeezed out the moisture (I did this in the morning and kept it in a Ziploc bag in the fridge.) I made this to "ohitashi" お浸し("hitasu" in Japanese is to "soak", I made the sauce with equal parts Japanese dashi and concentrated noodle sauce and  "soaked" the mizuna) and topped it with bonito flakes. My wife preferred edible chrysanthemum but this was different and nice in its own right.

We still had the tip portion of the octopus leg left over. I just cut it up into small chunks and mixed the pieces with vinegared cucumber slices and quartered Campari tomato and dressed in sumiso (from the squeeze bottle I prepared earlier).

So with the help of store-bought and leftover items from the previous evening, I finally made a set of 6 appetizer to start the evening--mission accomplished!

Salmon sashimi three ways 鮭の刺身３種

Whenever we get frozen sashimi salmon from Catalina offshore products, I have to come up with several ways to serve it since having it as only straight salmon sashimi gets to be a bit too much of a good thing.  The first evening after the salmon was thawed, I served only the belly portion as sashimi for a small starting dish. The next evening, I prepared the plate shown below with three different salmon preparations, octopus leg and several vegetables.

The picture below shows straight salmon sashimi with my usual sugar snap in salted broth スナップ豌豆の塩びたし shown on the right.

The below is a new and very simple dish which I read about somewhere online. I just marinated the salmon sashimi in "shio ko-ji" 塩麹 for a few hours in the refrigerator. I served it topped with "ikura" salmon roe and garnished with chopped chives.  The shio ko-ji made the salmon sashimi softer but added a bit slippery surface texture. This is certainly different and not bad but not our favorite way of serving salmon sashimi.

The picture below shows salmon cured overnight in Russian marinade 鮭のロシア漬け. Since the salmon is marinated only overnight, just the surface of the salmon pieces are chemically cooked but the center is still raw. This partial curing is possible because this is sashimi grade salmon. If I made this dish from regular salmon filet, I would make sure the center was opaque indicating that it was completely chemically cooked. I garnished this with a chiffonade of perilla leaves. We liked this preparation very much. To the left of the salmon is a salad of thinly sliced cucumber in sushi vinegar 胡瓜の酢の物 and sliced Campari tomato. On the right side is blanched broccolini dressed with mustard soy sauce.

Since we had boiled octopus leg from the Japanese grocery store, I served it with sumiso dressing as usual.

We really enjoyed this medley of salmon dishes but luckily there was still a small piece of salmon left to look forward to the next evening.

New Year's eve sashimi and Black label "Mu" sake 大晦日の夕、大吟醸 黒乃無

On New Year's eve, we feasted on bluefin tuna sashimi and boiled octopus (with daikon namasu 大根なます, not in the picture) which we got frozen from Catalina offshore products and thawed for the celebration. I also served marinated "zuke" tuna 鮪の漬け (it's the darker tuna on the right upper corner of the plate)  along with "datemaki" 伊達巻 New Year's Japanese omelet and "salmon" Russian marinade 鮭のロシア漬けtopped with ikura all of which I made (except for the Ikura).

We opened a sake we haven't had before called "Kuro-no Mu" or "Black Label Mu" daiginjo 黒乃無 純米大吟醸 which is supposedly a step up from our house sake "Mu" daiginjo. Black Label Mu is made from sake rice with an RPR (rice polishing rate) of 40% meaning 60% of the rice's outer shell has been polished away. This compares to Mu which has a RPR of 50%; the minimum amount of polishing to be classified as daiginjo. Since less of the sake rice remains after polishing Black Label Mu is obviously more expensive than Mu.

So, our expectations for this sake were high--maybe somewhat over inflated because somehow this was not what we expected. To us it tasted much sweeter than the regular "Mu" and had a more sherry-like characteristic. What our taste-buds experienced is apparently confirmed by sake metrics shown below (cited from "Tippsy Sake" website which will be the subject for a separate blog in the near future). The SMV (Sake Meter Value or 日本酒度) for Black Label is +1.0 which is on the "slightly sweet" side (neutral is +3.0). Acidity also determines perceived "sweetness". With the acidity of 1.5 and  SMV of + 3, shown as the red dot on the taste metric graph below, the Black Label is still classified "light and dry (but on the border).  (Similar metrics were not available for a regular Mu). Black Label is good for sipping but we prefer regular Mu as an accompaniment with food.

We had a few more food items and ended by making tonkatsu (I breaded it earlier and just fried it).  We had hand made/cut soba noodles from Sushi Taro but as usual, we did not eat it on New Year's eve because we were too full. I fell asleep but my wife stayed awake and woke me up just before midnight. We saw the ball drop at Times Square on TV and welcomed the entrance of 2020.

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.

Salmon and avocado cubes and Yamahai sake 鮭とアボカドの角切と山廃純米酒

Most of the mid-West and Eastern U.S. are having very hot and humid summer days. One of these very hot weekends, I decided to go grocery shopping early in the day to avoid the mid-day heat. At our gourmet grocery store, which opened up just before I arrived, the sushi case had only a few items prepared. One of them was tuna and salmon sashimi. So I got a package intending to serve it for the evening. Both sashimi were rather thickly sliced. Since I happened to have Japanese nagaimo 長芋, I decided make "Yamakake" 山かけ from the tuna (left in the picture below)  and make  a variation of tuna and avocado cubes using salmon cubes (which would make it salmon and avocado cubes) (right in the picture below).

Since the tuna was yellowfin tuna キハダマグロ, I marinated it after I cut it into  small cubes in concentrated Japanese "men-tsuyu" noodle sauce 麺つゆ for several hours in the refrigerator to make it taste better.  I seasoned grated nagaimo or "tororo" とろろ with wasabi dissolved in soy sauce,  and placed the tuna on top after draining the excess marinade. I garnished it with strips of nori (I served more nori on the side). This is, of course, is a very common way to serve tuna and nagaimo and we both really like it. We added more nori as we enjoyed this dish.

Since I had limes, after I cut avocado into small cubes, I dressed the cubes with lime juice to prevent discoloration. Cubes of salmon were also marinated in Japanese concentrated noodle sauce in exactly same way as the tuna. I dressed them with finely chopped garlic, dark sesame oil and soy sauce and garnished it with chiffonade of perilla and finely chopped scallion. Since the salmon was much fattier than the tuna, it did not absorb the marinade as much but, over all, this dish really worked. Both the salmon and avocado had a similar oily texture.

As a third dish, I served  4 items on the small plate. Only one that is slightly new is the chicken tenderloin dressed in soy sauce, yuzu-kosho 柚子胡椒 and finely chopped edible chrysanthemum 春菊 (blanched, which I happened to have). The chicken tenderloin was removed from sous vide chicken breast. This was very good. The chrysanthemum gave a slightly bitter taste and went well with the moist tenderloin and yuzu-kosho flavor.

The remaining three items are "our usual suspects", Japanese dashi-maki omelet 青海苔入りだし巻きwith aonori, sugar snap blanched and soaked in salt-seasoned Japanese dashi broth スナップ豌豆の塩びたし, and simmered taro 里芋の煮付け.

This evening, we tried a new sake (although we had it before in Japan). It is Tengumai but not "daiginjo". This is Yamahai Junmai 山廃純米天狗舞. The label has a formal name of this old way of making sake 山卸廃止酛仕込(やまおろしはいしもとしこみ). Compared to our new house sake Tengumai daiginjo 天狗舞大吟醸, this is a quite different sake. I think we had this for the first time when we visited Kanazawa 4 years ago. This sake is savory/rich and dry and has earthy/mushroomy background flavor. Some sake expert suggested that this sake should not be served refrigerator cold but at room temperature and suggested the taste will change as it warms up. I took this bottle out a few hours prior to tasting for that reason. It has a nice golden hue (as opposed to clear as in daiginjo). In general, we prefer clean, fruity and dry sake (daiginjo profile), but we liked this sake. It has much more characters and is not too yeasty like other jumai sake can be. We got this sake from a new sake-specialized internet merchant called "Tippsy sake". I will post more about this place in more details in the near future.

Poke, sort of, and Champagne マグロとサーモンのポケもどき

We had something to celebrate but did not have a chance to get anything special and did not feel like going to a restaurant, either. So I got filet mignon and sashimi (salmon and yellowfin tuna) from a local gourmet grocery store. The quality of the sashimi was not great so I decided to make a "poke" like dish. The sashimi was in rather thick slices. I marinated it with Japanese concentrated noodle sauce for several hours in the refrigerator and then cut it into small cubes. In addition, I served some chicken tenderloin which I removed from a sous-vide cooked chicken breast I made earlier in the day. From right to left are tuna, salmon and chicken.

For the tuna, I used soy sauce, wasabi and perilla as dressing.

For the salmon, I used soy sauce, red pepper paste (from a tube) and dill.

For the sous vide chicken tenderloin, I used soy sauce and yuzu-kosho 柚胡椒 (from a tube) and garnished with sesame seeds.

These three starters borrowed from the concept of  "poke" which is getting popular here. Some fast food "poke" chains have even opened up. Instead of our usual cold sake, we started with champagne.

This was among the ones we happened to have on hand. I am not sure when and where I got this one but it is called Philippe Fourrier Cuvée Millésime Brut Champagne 2008. We made an ice bucket to keep the champagne cold. My wife somehow dug up a special cloth/towel we had tucked away somewhere with a representative champagne bottle depicted on it, to absorb the condensation from the champagne ice bucket.

This was vintaged (2008) and had a nice slightly yeasty/beady aroma with subtle melon and green apple taste with fine bubbles and went quite well with this appetizer I prepared.

After this, we had a filet mignon steak, green asparagus and some kind of potato. We switched to 2006 "the Maiden". This was one of the old wines we had stored in our basement. The conditions there, however, are is not really great for the enhancement of wine over time. We were afraid that the wine may have been way past its prime. I carefully decanted it and let it breathe for one hour before serving. There was a definitive brown hue indicating age/oxidization. As it had more contact with air, this wine opened up and we could taste good black  fruit, vanilla and chocolate. The tannin was quite mellow. We would have preferred to taste this wine a bit earlier but it did age quite well and went well with our impromptu celebratory steak dinner.