Tuna "Maguro" 鮪 Part 1

Grilled tuna with teriyaki sauce マグロの照り焼き

As Mark's book mentions, many Izakaya regulars start with Sashimi 刺身. We are no exception. In the United States, good sashimi-grade tuna or other sashimi items are not easy to get. We occasionally mail order from Catalina Offshore Products in San Diego. They have a fairly good quality fish for sashimi including very excellent "uni" 雲丹 or sea urchin. They ship overnight   either frozen or ice packed. The only problem is that we have to order a rather large quantity especially if you want several different varieties of sashimi. I hope I can post our sashimi feast sometime soon.  So, I resort to getting sashimi from the local Japanese grocery stores, not the best but certainly OK. When I am desperate, I even get a frozen sashimi-grade tuna block さく of  yellow fin tuna, which is treated with an "odorless" smoke (euphemism for carbon monoxide) to retain its red color. We even saw this type of tuna being served at a Japanese restaurant in North Carolina (poor sushi chef and customer). "Yellow fin" tuna is least desirable for sashimi.  Blue fin tuna ほんまぐろ or bigeye tuna めばちまぐろ are much preferred. In any case, sometimes, the quality of these frozen tuna blocks is just barely good enough to eat as sashimi, thus, I made these two dishes. Other ways are to marinate the tuna in soy sauce and mirn for several hours or overnight in the refrigerator (this is a very similar to what I mentioned in the squid posting called "okizuke") after cutting into cubes or slices and make "tuna domburi" 鉄火丼　or "yamakake" やまかけ (I will post these later).

After thawing the tuna block, I smear grated garlic (I use a garlic press), black peper and salt. Sear very quickly in hot frying pan/skillet (for 10-15 seconds each side) with bit of vegetable or olive oil. Take the tuna out and set aside. Add about equal amounts of mirin, soy sauce and (good quality but not super expensive) balsamic vinegar and reduce in half or until a saucy consistency is reached. (You could add cold butter to make it more like western style sauce.) Slice the tuna in half inch thick pieces, arrange on the plate, add sauce and sprinkle with sesame seeds. You will be surprised how good the combination of balsamic vinegar,  soy sauce and tuna is. Now, it becomes rather palatable!

Tuna tartar with cream cheese

This is another dish I made from this low-grade frozen block of tuna. Mince tuna in small pieces. You need softened cream cheese in 1/3 to 1/2 amount of the tuna. Add grated or finely chopped garlic, dash of sesame oil (darkly roasted, of course), soy sauce, wasabi (more about this in the future), salt and pepper to taste. Fold the tuna into this mixture. Sprinkle chopped chive and splash of lemon juice.  You could eat this as is or with slices of baguette or crackers. It goes well with wine (do not put to much lemon juice if you are drinking wine) or sake.

Deep Fried Items 揚げ物

Squid Tempura イカの天ぷら

Like any bar food in United States, deep fried items 揚げ物 are very popular in Izakaya. Mark's book contains quite a few deep fried goodies. Deep fried chicken nuggets ("tori no kara-age" 鶏の唐揚げ and "Tatsuta-age" 竜田揚げ, recipe in Mark's book p84) are definitely Izakaya teiban 定番 (regular or classic) items.  On our last trip to Japan, we were in Kanazawa in June. It was the season for small white shrimp called "Shiraebi" 白エビ.  The Izakayas we ate at in Kanazawa offered this seasonal treasure in either "kara-age' (simply fried) or as "Kakiage" かき揚げ (more about this later). We loved the kara-age version of it. In addition, it was also the season for tiny, fluorescent squid called "Hotaru-ika" 蛍イカ or "firefly squid" (firefly for obvious reason). We had this squid in a very simple preparation called "Okizuke" 沖漬. What a treat!

The picture  above shows a fried squid dish I happened to make the other night since relatively fresh squid was available at the near-by Barducci's gourmet market. Talking about squid in U.S., nothing comes even close in terms of quality, variety, and freshness to the squid available in Japan. An extreme example of which was the "live" squid sashimi (生き造り) we had at the port city of Hakodate in Hokkaido. (I am sure we will have a chance to share our experience with that regional delicacy with you another time). You could use legs げそ as tempura especially in a form of "kakiage" but I used only the body parts this time. The problem with squid is that it contains lots of water which makes it splatter in the hot oil while cooking and makes it difficult to achieve a crispy crust. Also, cooked squid meat could be very chewy. A few preparation steps required to prevent this.

1) After cleaning the squid (if it is not already cleaned), cut open the tube, and make sallow criss-cross cuts. These are called "kanoko-giri" かのこ切りor "matsukasa-giri" 松かさ切り (see the diagram on left). Then, cut into small bite sized pieces. This will make the squid meat less chewy and easy to bite off.
2) Dry the squid by sandwiching it in a paper towel.  If you have time, you could refrigerate the squid in the paper towel "sandwich" for 10 minutes.
3) Before dipping into tempura batter, coat the squid with flour (I use potato starch).
4) There are many version of tempura batter but I use a whole egg (classical recipes use egg yolk only), 1 cup of cake flour and ice cold water mixed to the desired consistency. But do not over mix. You want a light flour so you do not want to develop the gluten in the flour. For vegetables, I prefer a thin watery batter--for shrimp and squid a slightly thicker batter.
5) I use peanuts oil since it imparts a nice peanut flavor to the squid and has a high smoke point. To test if the oil is hot enough I drip a very small amount of the batter into it. If the batter sinks into the oil half way and then immediately floats back to the surface, the oil is ready. (another method I use to check if the oil is ready, that was taught to me by my mother, is to put the tip of a bamboo cooking chopstick into the oil and if bubbles come out of the chopstick, the oil is ready). Depending on how things go, you may want to "double" fry the squid. Be careful to take out any stray pieces of tempura batter left in the oil ("tenkasu 天かす which can be used as a topping for needle in a soup dish and has other use) after the squid is cooked through and removed, otherwise they will burn making an unpleasant taste. Increase the heat and crisp up the crust for the second time (just 15 -20 seconds). You may need to try this several times before you will get it right.

6) Traditionally, tempura is eaten using a warm dipping sauce "tentsuyu" 天つゆ (dashi, mirin, sugar, soy sauce or buy in a bottle) with grated daikon and ginger root. But we usually eat it with "green tea salt" 抹茶塩 (a mixture of Kosher salt and powered green tea) and lemon. The  night I made this tempura, we went more traditional .

Sunomono 酢の物

Wakame with vinegar dressing わかめの酢の物

This type of side dish belongs to a general category of "sunomon" 酢の物 or "vinegard items". This is my version of wakame salad. Mark's Izakaya Cookbook has two entries of this kind;

VINEGARD WAKAME SALAD わかめ酢　(P16)
NANOHANA RABE AND WAKAME SEAWEED SALAD 　菜の花とわかめのサラダ　(P112)

You can make many variations by changing the dressing and/or adding (or removing) any ingredients available (or not available) at a given time. But you need to use vinegar dressing to qualify for "sunomono".  The closest we can get for nanohana here in the U.S. is brocolli rabe (rapini)  but it is too bitter and too tough to eat raw. For this dish, I blanched the broccoli rabe. For cucumber, in stead of Japanese cucumber, I used American "mini cucues" which became available in our grocery store recently. It is closest to Japanese cucumber in size and taste (of course, you could get a Japanese cucumber from a Japanese grocery store). I also added skinned tomato (we do not like tomato skin), avocado, and wakame. I cut the cucumber in "jabara" 蛇腹 or "snake belly" fashion as suggested in Mark's book. If you have not seen how this is done, please check out this youtube episode. For dressing, I used "ponzu" (ポン酢) here (Mark's book has a recipe p154 but good quality one can be bought in a bottle) but you can make "nihaizu" 二杯酢 (rice vinegar, soy sauce and dashi) or "sanbaizu" 三杯酢 ("nihaizu" plus mirin) or simply use "sushi vinegar" (this is not just rice vinegar but seasoned with sugar and salt) from the bottle. We usually omit  "dashi" since the liquid from the vegetables takes out some of the harshness of the vinegar. Other common variations of the dressings, especially if you add seafood such as boiled squid legs, octopus, or shrimp, are "sumiso" 酢みそ (Miso paste, sugar and rice vinegar) and "karashi sumiso" ("sumiso" plus Japanese hot mustard).

Yakitori 焼き鳥 Part 5

Grilled Rice Ball 焼きおにぎり
Salted vegetables 浅漬け 


This is also our favorite to complete a yakitori meal. Mark's book has a more elaborate version of this old favorite,

Grilled Rice Balls with Vegetable Miso (p148).

You can make this using a frying pan and/or in a toaster oven but you never get the crunchy surface you could get when it is grilled over a direct charcoal fire. I usually use  simple miso paste (white or red miso or a mixture of the two), mirin, add sugar, sesame oil or tahini if you so desire, and heat and mix well to reduce to the original consistency of miso). Of course, you could follow the recipe in the book to make Vegetable Miso. This time, I was too lazy to make the miso mixture and used a mixture of soy sauce and mirin (in equal parts) instead. Just brush it on the rice ball toward end of the cooking process. It will penetrate the surface and further caramelize (because of the sugar in the mirin). It makes a nice crunchy crust and adds flavors. My wife likes it extra crunchy and squeezes lemon over it as she eats it. One of the reasons I like this so much is that this reminds me of "okoge" おこげ  or burned rice in the bottom of a rice cooker when rice is made in the old fashioned way rather than with an electric rice cooker. As a kid, I liked to munch on "okoge" with a bit of miso. My wife likes it because "what is not to like about crunchy on the outside soft and piping hot on the inside".

The small vegetable dish on the side goes well with grilled rice balls or any rice dishes, for that matter. We made a simple  "asazuke".  We cut up cucumber, carrot, Nappa cabbage ("hakusai" 白菜) or regular cabbage, diakon, myoga, radish or whatever vegetables are available.  They can be whatever size you like but not too small or too thin so as to give some texture. I add thinly sliced Jalapeno pepper (seeded and deveined), lime slices, finely minced ginger, red pepper flakes, and/or hydrated thinly sliced kelp ("konbu" 昆布). I add enough salt to sparsely coat the veggies ( I never measure) and mixed well by hand. Place it in a Japanse pickling pot. This can be bought at Amazon or simply use a bowl with a plate which can fit inside and weigh it down with whatever is heavy enough (such as a large unopened jar of pickles). In, at least, 4-5 hours or overnight, a surprising amount of water comes out over the vegetables. Move the vegetables in a plastic container and into a refrigerator. This will last at least several days. Use of Jalapeno pepper and lime is our modification of the basic recipe but works well.

Yakitori 焼き鳥 Part 4

Minced Chicken Patties つくね

This is from the recipe in Mark's book (p130). Although "tsukune" is a regular item in any yakitori place, this one is a bit unique and we really liked it. There are many variations to these recipes but the constant is ground or minced chicken. Usually, this is cooked with a "tare" sauce. Many yakotori places mix in chopped up cartilage but we do not like it. The texture of the cartilage reminds us of store-bought ground beef patties with bone fragments in it--which my wife hates. I used the thigh meat here and did not remove the fat as meticulously as I would otherwise do before mincing it by hand (a la Iron Chef Morimoto style) into the desired consistency. Of course, I could have bought ground chicken or used a food processor. Since I did not have "yuzu" (and even limes for some reason), I used lemon zest (using micro-grater) with finely minced onion and some salt following the recipe. For different texture, you could mix in chopped "renkon" or lotus root which gives much gentler crunch than adding cartilage. I think the secret to forming patties without any binders is, as stated in Mark's book, to knead it by hand until it becomes sticky enough. Then, take  a ball of the mixture, and "throw" it on to a cutting board surface forcefully like a pro baseball pitcher (use your discretion, though) several times and shape it to a flat rectangular shape (this removes entrapped air). Put two skewers through as seen here (In this upper picture, I probably browned the surface too much but it tasted just fine) and refrigerate several hours. This step makes the patties firmer (Mark's book mentions this. Do not skip this step. This is very important especially if you do not use any binders and want to use skewers. I refrigerated the skewered patties rather than the meat mixture.) After refrigeration, the patties will not come apart too easily. The lemon flavor is very nice but if we could use a real "yuzu", it probably would have been better. (Sometimes we see yuzu in our Japanese grocery store several days before New Year's day. Unfortunately, they usually look dried up and shriveled--not really good and awfully expensive). Here is the image of "tsukune" and "skin" being grilled side-by-side. Next time, I may mix in "yuzu kosho" (the recipe is included in Mark's book p145 but this can be purchased in small bottle or tube in a Japanese grocery store) to see how it works.

Yakitori 焼き鳥 Part 3

Chicken Skin 雛皮

We love cripsy skin of any kind very much. This is a common yakitori item made of just chicken skin.  But to make it all nicely crunchy without causing flared up when it cooks, which gives it a gasoline-taste,   requires some preparaion. You can use any part of the skin but I usually use the thigh part. To remove any strong smell and to render out some of the excess fat, the skin is placed in salted boiling water with some sake. (Although I have not tried, some people use roasted brown tea or "bancha" 番茶 for this.) I boil the skin a good 5-7 minutes until I see fat floating on the surface. Wash the skin in cold water and pat dry. Next question is how to skewer the pieces. Most yakitori-ya, apear to make multiple folds or make a stack of small square pieces of skin on skewers but, for us, this does not work well since the skin does not get crunchy throughout. Instead the edges of the squares or tops of the folds get too singed and the insides of the folds are soft. You see how we did it in the pictures. You need to avoid flare-ups while grilling by moving them to colder areas of the grill.

Chicken liver 肝 きも

Chicken liver is our (especially my wife's), favorite. Again, it requires some prepping and this is my version. Fortunately, chicken liver is very cheap and comes in plastic tubs at most grocery stores near us. But unfortunately, you need to carefully sort out the fragmented and blemished parts and remove any fat, vessels, connective tissue attached to it. Then soak it in ice water for 10-15 minutes. I then use a marinade consisting of equal parts mirin plus sake and soy sauce with grated ginger root (sort of teriyaki marinade but not very sweet). I marinade the liver for a couple of hours in the refrigerator. When skewering the liver paying attention to some details can help. As you can see in this picture, either I use metal yakitori skewers with flat surface (4 sewers on left) or use two bamboo skewers (two on right) to prevent the liver from rotating when it is turned. I spray the metal grills with a non-stick spray (I use a Weber brand which works best). Attention to these details will result in a lovely textured chicken liver--nice grilled surface with a creamy center, and lots of flavor. We should have some more discussion regarding sake and wine later but the liver goes extremely well with red wine. This evening, we had Syrah from Languedoc, Domaine Famille Ligneres Montagne d'Alaric "Notre Dame" 2004, before switching to sake.

Yakitori 焼き鳥 Part 2

Ume-Shiso Rolled Chiken 梅しそ巻き

This is from the recipe in Mark's Izakaya Cookbook, page 130. "Shiso" or more precisely "Aoziso" or green shiso (Perilla) can be grown very easily in most of US or can be bought in a Japanese grocery store. It has a very distinctive flavor; not quite mint but somewhat similar. The sauce is "Umeboshi" paste ("Bainiku' 梅肉). Umeboshi is salted plum (actually Japanese apricot). They are salted togerther with "Akaziso" or red perilla. The red perilla imparts a red to pink color to the end products. This salty and slightly sour condiment is a very basic Japanese taste. The simplest form of lunch box or  "Bento" consists of a bed of white rice with red umeboshi in the center. Since this looks a bit like the Japanese flag it is called "Hinomaru bento" (Japanese flag lunch box). In any case, I made this paste from my mother's homemade umeboshi by cutting fruit from the stone and putting it into a Japanese mortar and pestle ("Suribachi") with a little bit of sweet cooking wine "mirin" to make a paste. You can buy commercial umebosh paste in a tube as well. This combination is very classic and excellent. Another recipe I often use is chicken tenders tempura with umeboshi paste. I cut a small slit in the meat, put umeboshi paste in the slit and then wrap everything in perilla. I then coat the packet in tempura batter and deep fry. The result is as good as this yakitori.