Friday, August 4, 2023
Quail egg fry and Scotch eggs うずらの卵の串揚げとスコッチエッグ
I skewered two fried quail eggs with a tooth picks (shown under the shrimp head) emulating “Kushi-age” 串揚げ, Japanese breaded fried items on skewer, which is a classic Izakaya item.
How to prepare boiled quail eggs:
Add quail eggs to a pan of cold water on medium flame, as the water gets warmer, gently start stirring the water which helps to center the egg yolks. Once the water starts boiling turn down the flame and boil for 3 minutes. Immediately cool in ice water
Quaril egg Scotch egg:
Ingredients: Made 5
8 oz ground chicken (or beef or pork)
5 boiled quail eggs
1/2 medium onion, finely chopped
2-3 shiitake mushrooms, finely chopped
freshly grated nutmeg, black pepper and salt to taste
1 tbs olive oil
2 tbs Panko bread crumbs
For breading
Flour or potato starch
1 egg beaten mixed with 2-3 tbs water
Panko bread crumbs
Peanut oil for deep frying
Directions:
Sauté the onion and mushrooms in olive oil for 2-3 minutes, let it cool to the room temperature
Add ground chicken, panko and the seasonings, mix well and knead by hand (if too loose add more panko and/or potato starch).
Coat each quail egg in potato starch
Divide the meat mixture into 5 parts and make an oval 1/3 inch thick on your palm.
Place the egg in the center and encase it with the meat mixture to make an oval sphere (or ellipsoid)
Bread the sphere by coating in the potato starch (or flour), the egg water and the panko bread crumbs
Deep fry at 180F for about 5 minutes or until the bubbles become small
Cut in half and serve
This was quite good. The fried quail egg had a nice crunchy outside and the inside yolk was velvety smooth. The overall flavor was very nice too. It would have been easy to eat many more. The little Scotch egg was just the right amount as an appetizer for us. (We find the Scotch eggs made with regular hens eggs are too big.
Monday, July 17, 2023
New Divided Plate and 9 Otoshi Appetizers 9つ仕切り皿にのせたお通し9種類
In the 1st row, left, is a sugar snap in salt broth スナップ豌豆の塩びたし. We used to be able to get decent sugar snaps from our regular grocery store but recently, we have had to go to gourmet grocery stores to get decent ones This was crunchy, sweet soaked in salt dashi broth.
In the 1st row, center, are cucumber onion salad and stir fried shirataki, jalapeño pepper and enoki mushroom.
In the 1st row, right, is the cheese curd my wife made but instead of jalapeño pepper, she added “Yuzukosho” 柚子胡椒, soy sauce and cream. I added a dab of yuzukosho on the side to provide an added “schmear” of yuzukosho flavor if desired.
Tsukune on a slice of lotus root 蓮根つくね.
“Uni-shuto” ウニ酒盗 from Maruhide. As I stated before this is the best uni aside from fresh uni. I served it with cucumber and perilla leaves.
I refried the shrimp head kara-age which was part of take-out from Tako Grill a few days ago. Shrimp head has a good amount of meat and is very crunchy but you have to be careful how you eat the prickly legs so as to not injure your mouth.
Recently, we discovered that Whole Foods carries fresh quail eggs. We really like boiled quail eggs. Although we can get canned boiled quail eggs, boiled eggs prepared from fresh quail eggs are much much better. I served it with marinara sauce, basil and sprinkle of salt.
Blanched asparagus with sesame mayonnaise. The dressing is a mixture of mayo, Japanese sesame paste or nerigoma 練りごま and soy sauce.
Salmon salad. My usual. The dressing is mixture of mayo, Greek yogurt and Dijon mustard.
We really like our new plates. If I serve 9 appetizers for two of us in small bowls, we have to wash a total of 18 bowls but here we had to wash only two plates. We really like the many small dishes we had here; true Izakaya-style.
Monday, November 7, 2022
Pickled “Takuan” daikon and cream cheese 沢庵とクリームチーズ
Among the Japanese pickles, “Takuan or Takuwan*” 沢庵 is common and traditionally made from “Daikon” 大根. My mother (and many other “mothers’) used to make it at home in the traditional way. First the daikon was hung to dry and then mixed with salt, rice bran and other ingredients in a wooden tub. Weights (often river rocks) were placed on a wooden lid which was slightly smaller than the opening. It was then left to ferment for several months. (In my mother’s case, it was left in the root cellar). In my childhood, it was a common fall scene to see daikon out hanging to dry often on the rack used to dry clothes. Nowadays, the vast majority of takuwan is produced commercially. The takuwan has a characteristic yellow color which traditionally came from a type of fruit called “Kuchinashi” クチナシ or “Gardenia” (this is just for color not for flavor) but commercial products may use other yellow food coloring.
*Growing up in Sapporo, Hokkaido, we always pronounced it “Takuwan” but elsewhere in Japan, it may be pronouced as “Takuan”.In any case, when I was picking up our take-out order of sashimi and sushi at Tako Grill the other day, I saw a package of “Takuwan”. I have not had takuwan for many years but I am sure I was influenced by seeing a YouTube episode which featured a dish made of takuwan with cream cheese which the host clearly announced he did not like and thought it was very strange. I thought it was a very interesting combination and wanted to try it. After coming home, I tasted the takuwan and it was kind of salty and sweet at the same time and nicely crunchy. After a quick Internet consultation, I made two variations and served them with crackers.
The first one (shown on the left) is cream cheese flavored with miso mixed with juliennes of takuwan and carrot. The second shown on the right is made with cream cheese, soy sauce, and takuwan.
Ingredients and Directions (Miso flavored):
50gram cream cheese, softened at room temperature
1 tsp of miso (I used “awase miso” 合わせ味噌 or mixture of “red” and “white” miso)
Takuwan and Carrot , thin juliennes, arbitrary amount
Monday, October 17, 2022
Octopus leg dressed in salted plum sauce タコの梅肉あえ
I have posted many dishes using octopus which we got from different sources. We like octopus legs (boiled and frozen) from D’artagnan and Great Alaska Seafood. Interestingly, both are “Spanish octopus legs”. The offer we recently purchased from Great Alaska Seafood included quite a large amount of octopus legs so I have the luxury of using it fairly regularly. The last time I used it, after thawing, I reserved about 2 inches of the octopus leg to eat as “sashimi*” 刺身 and I made the remainder into tender simmered octopus タコの柔らか煮 using an Instant pot. We usually eat octopus sashimi with wasabi and soy sauce or sumiso but this time, I tried a different dressing using salted plum or “Umeboshi” 梅干し (I used some umeboshi we received quite a few years ago from my mother the last time she made it. We kept it in a sealed container in the refrigerator. It looked and tasted good). I also served two small appetizer dishes.
*Most common “sashimi” of octopus is previously boiled legs because raw octopus is extremely perishable. Real “raw” octopus can be had in Japan. The first time we had “raw” octopus sashimi was in Kobe 神戸 many years ago. Because of the location of Kobe, very fresh octopus from the Japanese inland sea 瀬戸内海 was available. Now, because of the advancement in the logistics of transporting fresh seafood in Japan, it is more readily available throughout Japan. As a matter of fact, we had raw octopus sashimi at Tako Grill in Kuroishi 黒石, Aomori prefecture 青森県 in Japan.
Friday, October 14, 2022
Mackerel hand-shaped sushi 鯖の棒鮨
Shime-saba しめ鯖 is vinegar pickled mackerel and a very popular item in Japan. The best is fresh local “branded” mackerel (such as “Seki-saba” 関鯖) prepared in-house but, nowadays, the risk of Anisakis is rising possibly due to warming of the sea water. (The fresher the mackerel the higher the Anisakis’ risk. In addition, curing the fish in salt and vinegar does not kill the Anisakis but freezing does). We can easily get shime-saba in the U.S. packaged and frozen. Although there are so many varieties of mackerel, most frozen packages coming from Japan to the U.S. use mackerel from Norway as I understand it. I have posted molded sushi made of shime saba which is called “baterra” バッテラ or “oshizushi” 押し寿司. This type of sushi is famous in the Kansai region 関西. In that post, I said that the classic preparation requires a thinly shaven sheet of kelp called “Shiroita konbu” 白板昆布 placed on top of the fillet of fish. Such a preparation is next to impossible to get here in US. Some days ago, however, I found a package of frozen mackerel with a sheet of kelp already on it in Tako Grill’s frozen case and got it. This must be a new product which became available recently since I saw the identical item at the Japanese grocery store as well as at Catalina Offshore products.
Instead of using a mold to shape the sushi, I made it freehand which is called “Bou-zushi” 棒鮨 (“bou” means a rod or stick). The picture below shows the “saba-no-bouzushi” 鯖の棒鮨 I served as the ending shime dish one evening. As you can see, the surface of the fish is covered with a layer of thinly shaven kelp.
Ingredients:
One package of frozen vinegar cured mackerel as described above, thawed, tail portion cut and tucked in to make an even width.
Sushi rice (my wife made fresh rice for this).
Directions:
Instead of using oshizushi mold, I formed a log of the sushi rice about the same length and width as the mackerel by hand (you need to wet your hand).
Using a silicon sushi rolling mat (relatively recent acquisition, you could use a regular bamboo mat covered with plastic wrap or wet tea towel), place the mackerel skin or kelp side down.
Place the log of the rice onto the mackerel.
Press the rice lightly against the mackerel and roll the silicon mat (top image in the picture below)
Tighten the mat and also press on both sides of the rice to make the rice and the mackerel form a slightly flattened cylinder and unroll (bottom image in the picture below).
This was a very satisfying dish. The layer of mackerel was very thick, but very tender and well seasoned. My wife really like this and said the ratio of sushi rice to fish was perfect. With the addition of kelp layer, it is authentic and tastes better (I think). Since I did not have to find and soak the mold ahead of time, this method was a bit easier to make.
Sunday, October 2, 2022
Take-out sashimi from Tako Grill タコグリルからのテイクアウト
We have been taking out omakase sushi and sashimi 刺身と寿司おまかせ from Tako Grill since March of 2020 after it closed for dining-in. I have posted a few of these take-out sashimi and sushi dishes. I usually re-plate them on two plates for one serving each. I usually use rectangular plates but this time, I used round plates we got recently which are currently our favorite.
Today’s sashimi was Oo-tro tuna 大トロ, hamachi はまち and botan-ebi ボタン海老 (could be Argentinian red shrimp). All were quite good. I also use all the trimmings such as the daikon or perilla from the take-out box.
We also got 4 deep dried shrimp heads (extra benefit of Botan ebi sashimi) which were also great. We got nearly filled up with these assorted sashimi but we finished with the serving of sushi (including one California roll with real lump crab) that was the last part of the take-out. We really enjoy this sashimi and sushi feast at home with cold sake. It is a great to kick back, relax and enjoy our meal with sake libation in the comfort of our home without having to worry about a drive back from the restaurant through traffic.
Thursday, September 29, 2022
Tempura 天麩羅
I have posted quite a few tempura dishes. But I have not made tempura for a long time. My wife wanted to have chicken kara-age 唐揚げ and I had marinated chicken thigh for “Kara-age” but I needed to use new oil since I discarded the old reused peanut oil the last time I made a deep fried dish. Since fresh clean oil is best for making tempura, as my wife’s suggested, I made a few tempura items before frying the kara-age. I made, shrimp, shiitake and green beans tempura.
Friday, September 2, 2022
Firefly squid sautéed in butter and soy sauce ホタルイカのバター醤油炒め
Firefly squid or “hotaru-ika” ホタルイカ is very seasonal and, in the past, the only way we could enjoy it was to visit Japan especially Kanazawa 金沢 in the spring. On exceptional occasions far and few between we had firefly squid at Tako Grill. A few years ago, however, we learned that we could get boiled firefly squid from “Regalis food” in spring. This year, I ordered two trays which was a bit too much for us to consume all at once so, I froze a few small batches in vacuum packs partially as an experiment to see if it would work. Turns out it worked. We defrosted a batch in August and prepared a few dishes. This one (below) was particularly good. The firefly squid is sautéed in butter with deveined and deseeded Jalapeño pepper, shallot, seasoned with soy sauce (Actually I used x4 concentrated Japanese noodle sauce). I topped it with bonito flakes. This was inspired by one of the Japanese recipes I saw on line but I improvised based on the ingredients we had or did not have on hand.
Ingredients: (For 2 small servings)
Boiled firefly squid, about 30
1/2 Jalapeño pepper, deseeded and deveind and cut into thin juliennes
1/2 shallot, sliced into thin strips
1/2 tbs unsalted butter
2 tsp soy sauce (or x4 “Mentsuyu” 麺つゆ Japanese noodle sauce)
bonito flakes for topping
Directions:
Melt butter in a frying pan on medium flame
Add the jalapeño and shallot and sauté for a few minutes
Add the firefly squid and sauté a few more minutes
Add soy sauce (or x4 noodle sauce)
Serve immediately with a topping of the dried bonito flakes
Friday, April 8, 2022
Salmon cake with rapini サーモンケーキ
After we switched to grocery home delivery, we realized some of the items were different from the ones available at a physical store. One of them is a whole half filet of salmon with skin on (around 2.5 lbs.) which appears to be only available for home delivery. The price per pound is more reasonable compared to smaller filets available in the store. We like every part of the salmon even the skin particularly when cooked to crispiness. Interestingly the salmon is not scaled when it arrives. So one of the first things I have to do is to scale it using a handy-dandy Japanese fish scaler. (I guess the grocery store reasons that most customers don’t like the skin. They just remove it and throw it away so why take the time to scale it.) Another part of this type of fillet that we particularly like is the belly portion which we eat as a small hors d’oeuvre . We also like the main portion of the fillet dried in the fridge for a few days before panfrying it . (Drying the salmon in the fridge was a technique my mother introduced to us. On one of our visits to Japan my mother offered to cook some salmon she dried with the enticing phrase “Totemo oishi WA” delivered with an emphatic nod of her head. Even my wife knew this meant, “it’s really good” and it was.) Drying the fish obviously removes some of the moisture and in so doing improves the flavor.
I usually end up with several portions of salmon in irregular shape from both the belly and tail end of the fillet. I remove the skin and and make salmon cakes with these portions. I usually make 4 cakes which are perfect for lunch or snack. This time, I served this as a small dish to go with red wine. I heated up the cakes in a frying pan, added blanched and chopped rapini and made sauce with brown butter and lemon juice. To make it more interesting, I added yuzu-kosho 柚子胡椒 which went remarkably well with this dish.
Salmon cakes
Ingredients: (make 4 small salmon cakes)
150 gram salmon meat, half finely chopped (to hold the cakes together) and another half coarsely chopped (to add texture), amount is variable, whatever I have when preparing the whole half filet of the salmon.
1 small shallot (or onion) finely chopped (#1)
1 jalapeño pepper, seeded and deveined, chopped finely (#1, optional)
2 fresh shiitake mushrooms, stems removed and caps finely chopped (optional, this time I did not have fresh shiitake)
2-3 tbs of panko Japanese bread crumbs (#4, adjust the amount based on the consistency of the mixture)
1 tbs mayonnaise (#2)
1 1/2 tsp Dijon mustard (#2)
Lemon juice from half a lemon
1 tbs chopped fresh dill (#2), I use the dill I cleaned and froze)
Olive oil for frying the vegetables and the salmon cakes
Saturday, February 26, 2022
Tender simmered octopus たこの柔らか煮
Ingredients:
Boiled octopus leg, thawed
200ml Japanese dashi (I made this from dashi pack).
1tbs soy sauce
2tbs mirin
2tbs sake
several think ginger slices
Directions:
I used an Instant pot with a small metal container insert with a silicon lid (you could use the inner pot of the instant pot).
I added the octopus and the seasoning liquid into the insert and put on the lid.
I added 1/2 cup water to the pot and using the metal holder that came with the insert, lowered it into the instant pot.
I cooked it on high pressure for 30 minutes with natural depressurization.
The picture below is after cooking.
One of the problems with the Instant Pot cooking is that the simmering liquid does not reduce at all.
So I decided to put the leg and the simmering liquid in a frying pan and cook it on medium flame for 15-20 minutes until the liquid reduced by half.
Tuesday, February 15, 2022
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.
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.
Saturday, January 1, 2022
Happy New Year 2022 明けましておめでとう 2022.
Happy New Year 2022! The pandemic still persists with the Omicron variant making it debut and spreading so quickly just when we thought things were starting to come under control and using a quote from the movie Jaws "it was safe to go back in the water again". In any case, both my wife and I took all the precautions; being vaccinated and boosted. We sincerely hope we can get past this soon.
This is the year of tiger according to Chinese/Japanese zodiac signs. We thought we had a larger tiger figurine but these are what we had. The two shown below look somewhat like cats rather than tigers.
Tuesday, November 16, 2021
Japanese egg plant stir fry with cumin 茄子のクミン炒め
As I mentioned previously Tako Grill started a mini-Japanese grocery store in addition to take-out. Occasionally I get some Japanese groceries when I stop by for take out. This time I got Asian (Japanese) eggplant (slender long eggplant with light purple color). I decided to make something a bit different and came across this recipe in e-recipe. It is interesting since it uses bacon and cumin seeds not ususal Japanese seasoning.
The recipe also said this will go with wine; a major encouragement so I decided to make it. Initially when I tasted it I did not taste much cumin but later it became more pronounced and I am glad I did not add the additional ground cumin I contemplated.
Ingredients:
One Asian (Japanese) egg plant, cut in half lengthwise and then sliced into 1/4 inch thick half-moon slices.
2 strips of bacon, cut into small pieces
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1 tbs olive oil
Salt and pepper
Directions:
Add the olive oil in a frying pan on medium flame
Add the cumin seeds and fry until fragrant and starts making popping noises. But be careful not to burn it.
Add the eggplant and the bacon
Keep stirring until the bacon gets crispy and the eggplant gets soft and cooked.
Season with salt and pepper.
Saturday, November 13, 2021
Hiyaoroshi sake ひやおろし
When we traveled to Japan, we ususally chose late spring early summer to avoid the rainy 梅雨 and typhoon 台風 seasons. We could not handle the heat and humidity of summer months. Over the years, we made some exceptions. We visited Japan once in winter to attend New Year with my family and twice in late September and October just barly evading typhoons (in 2013 and 2017). It is nice to visit Japan in fall, since it is the harvest season with great produce especially fruits and vegetables. Seeing golden rice paddies at sunset from the Shikansen is something to remember. In addition, we could enjoy seasonal sake only available in the fall which is the main point of this post.
In 2013, we visted “Tako Grill” in Kuroishi 黒石, Aomori 青森. Chef Kudo 工藤 opened this Japanese Tako Grill after he left “Tako Grill” in Bethesda and went back to his home town in Japan. When we visited, he served us local Kuroishi sake “Kikunoi Akiagari” 菊乃井 秋あがり. We really liked this sake. We liked it so much Chef Kudo had to send a waitress out to get more from the brewery since we drank what he had at hand.
The “Hiyaoroshi” 冷やおろし or “Akiagari” 秋あがり is a seasonal sake and is only available in the fall. My undestanding is that the sake is brewed during the winter and bottled in the spring. It is pasturized or “hi-ire” 火入 and then stored in a cold environment until fall when outside temperatures get cold. Up until now we thought the only way we could enjoy “hiyaoroshi” was to go back to Japan in the fall. Now, we discovered we can get “hiyaoroshi” sake in the U.S. from Tippsy sake. Recently we got two hiyaoroshi from them; one is “Otokoyama” from Asahikawa, Hokkaido 男山、旭川 (right) and Koshi-no-homare from Niigata 越の誉, 新潟 (left). Both are junmai class sake.
We first tasted "otokoyama" (meaning "manly mountain") . The label shows what looks like baby seals drinking sake. (We momentarily contemplated whether this image suggested under-age drinking…by seals)? This is a very nice sake. Although it is "tokubetsu junmai", it does not have any yeasty smell/taste but is rather dry with rich complex flavor and some fruitiness up-front. We had this with imitation negitoro and it went very well.
Although we tend to favor "Otokoyama" (and that is not just because I am from Hokkaido), we are very happy with either one. It is so nice that Tippsy sake brought "hiyaoroshi" sake to U.S.