Broccolini in the style of "Nanohana" ブロッコリニの菜の花風おひたし

When Spring comes, many Japanese dishes reflect the season. One of those, in my mind, is "Nanohana" 菜の花. Although this plant is mainly cultivated for oil ("natane abura" 菜種油), similar to rapeseed oil, Japanese enjoy eating the young just-about-to-blossom buds as a symbol of Spring. It has a slightly bitter taste. Although rapeseed is widely cultivated in the West,  I have never seen "flowering buds" being offered for food.*

* Digression alert: My wife was shocked to learn Japanese eat the rapeseed plant because it was her understanding the plant, seed and oil were considered toxic to humans and livestock. She said that was probably why I had not seen flowering buds in the grocery store. I was sure "Nanohana" is related to rapeseed and has been eaten in Japan with no ill effect for quite some time so I decided to do some research.
Turns out, rapeseed contains glucosinolates which gives it a bitter taste and, in high doses, is toxic. The seeds of rapeseed apparently contain a higher level of glucosinolates than the leaves and buds. In addition cattle that were fed rapeseed meal (residue left over after the seeds were crushed for oil) didn't appreciate the taste, changed their feeding habits and lost weight further leading to the perception that it was toxic. Many vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts, however, also contain small amounts of the same substance which is the source of bitterness in their taste. Rapeseed also contains erucic acid. Between the glucosinolates and erucic acid, rapeseed was not considered suitable for human consumption or cattle feed in Canada, US and the European Union until the 1970's when the Canadians came up with a rapeseed cultivar low in toxin and acid called CANOLA (CANadian seed Oil Low-Acidity). There is now a rapeseed cultivar (rapeseed 00) which has much lower erucic acid and glucosinolates and is considered fit for human consumption.
Japanese "Nanohana"  may have its roots in ancient varieties of rapeseed which came to Japan from China centuries ago. It originated from west asian and northern european varieties that grew as weeds in barley fields. Also, since the leaves, which are eaten in nanohana contain lower concentration of glucosinolates it would be more acceptable for human consumption in Asia than in Europe where primarily the more toxic seed was use for oil production. Japan produced its own low glucosinolates and erucic acid cultivars as well as cultivars that are more suited as edible vegetables than for oil production. Nonetheless the vast majority of currently grown varietals in Japan are imported from the West. That was probably more than you ever wanted to know about the rapeseed plant.

As far as I can tell, we have two possible substitutes for Nanohana; one is broccolini and the other is broccoli rabe. Broccoli rabe, which is also called "Rapini" has a more assertive "bitterness" than "Nanohana" and broccolini, although similar in form and texture, has a very neutral taste and lacks the bitterness. I think, Rapini may be closer to Nanohana because of the bitterness. I have no idea which of these substitutes is more closely related to "Nanohana" taxonomically.

 I made two small dishes; one from broccolini (below) and broccoli rabe (the second picture below, two separate evenings) to represent spring.

Broccolini: I used only the top portion with flowering buds. The long stalks are edible but tend to be a bit hard. I boiled it in salted water for 4-5 minutes or until the thickest part of the stems were cooked but still crunchy. I shocked it in ice cold water to stop the cooking and maintain the fresh green color.
Broccoli rabe: Similar to broccolini in terms of the preparation. I removed the larger stems and leaves especailly the ones that started turning yellow. I blanched it in the same manner as the broccolini including  shocking in ice cold water.

Dressing: I had several choices; mustard soy sauce (karashi-zouuyu 辛子醤油) and sesame soy sauce (goma-shouuyu 胡麻醤油). Another choice is "ohitashi" お浸し meaning to "soak".  For this preparatio,  the vegetables are "soaked" in a mixture of dashi, soy sauce and mirin in 8-6:1:1 ratio for  5-10 minutes before serving
For the broccolini, I used mustard soy sauce. I put prepared Japanese hot mustard or neri-garashi 練り芥子 (1/4 tsp or to taste) in a small Suribachi すり鉢 or a Japanese mortar and added sugar (1/4 tsp). I added soy sauce in small increments as I mixed the mustard paste, sugar and soy sauce together using a pestle. I tasted it as I went until the combined sweetness and hot mustard taste was appropriate (about 1 tbs of soy sauce or slightly more).
For the broccoli rabe, I decided not to use any of the choices listed above and instead made an altogether different dressing. My wife had roasted walnuts for another dish and there were some leftover. So I decided to make a walnut soy sauce dressing. I ground about 2 tbs of roasted walnuts (dark skin removed by rubbing in paper towel) in a Suribachi Japanese mortar. When the walnuts released oil and became a bit pasty, I added sugar (1/4 tsp) and soy sauce (2-3 tbs). I also added mirin (1 tbs).
I simply dressed the blanched broccolini with  the mustard soy sauce and garnished with roasted white sesame seeds. I dressed the broccoli rabe with the walnut soy sauce and garnished with coarsely chopped toasted walnuts as shown below.

This is a nice small dish to start the evening. It is nice enough substitute for nanohana. The broccolini lacks the distinctive slightly bitter taste which is characteristic of "Nanohana" and broccoli rabe is closest to Nanohana.

Beef "Yakitori" 牛肉ステーキの焼き鳥

Spring is the best season in the Washington DC area. In addition to all the beautiful flowers and cool sunny weather there are no mosquitoes. This enables us to have a barbecue outside without become a meal ourselves for these pesky insects. During this mosquito free interlude we really enjoy sitting outside and doing “Yakitori” style cooking. This is one such occasion. We did not plan to do Yakitori but it was such a nice sunny day and when we checked the fridge we saw we had some ingredients that could be grilled so we did it on a whim. Instead of the usual chicken or pork, we grilled New York strip steak and also cooked mushrooms two ways.
We have this yakitori grill from Japan which was purchased from a New York company “Korin 光琳.  Given the ingredients I had, I knew I would not be grilling for a long time so I put just enough lump charcoal in the chimney starter to cover the bottom 1/3 of the grill (below left). Since it is still early spring, it gets a bit chilly when the sun goes down, so we wheeled out the infra-red outside heater which was very effective in keeping us warm and providing a golden ambient light while we cooked (below right).

Rather than grilling steak in usual way i.e. as one big piece, I trimmed the fat cap and cut it into cubes and skewered them (below, left). I seasoned it with salt and pepper. This was one American size serving of New York strip steak but perfect for two of us.

I also had a box of assorted shimeji (both white and brown) as well as Royal trumpet mushrooms). I cooked the shimeji mushroom with miso and butter with the addition of sliced onion in an aluminum foil pouch as before (below right).

I just tore the trumpet mushroom in half lengthwise, coated with olive oil, seasoned with salt and pepper and put on a skewer. I grilled the pouch of mushrooms in miso, steak cubes, and royal trumpet mushrooms. As you can see all the trees were pushing new-growth leaves (below, right upper).

Once the beef, royal trumpet mushrooms (above, left) and shimeji with miso and butter in a packet (above, right) were done all I needed to do was to make grilled rice balls (below). I used the leftover miso sauce on the bottom of the mushroom packet which worked very well. As I mentioned before, this is the best way to make the perfect grilled rice ball. All the surfaces had a nice savory crust. This can only be accomplished by slow patient cooking on a hot charcoal fire.

Japanese often grill beef in small pieces such as in “Yakiniku” 焼肉 or “Dice” steak or “Saikoro steak” さいころステーキ in which cubes of steak are grilled. What I made is a sort of hybrid between them. The cubes increase the ratio of caramelized surface crust to tender meat inside. I think this gives the meat more flavor and dimension than when it is cooked as one large piece. The cubes were small enough that we (at least I)  could use only chop sticks to eat them. Although this was US prime not “Wagyu”, this was quite good.

Spinach rolled in thin omelet ほうれん草の卵巻き

This is a small dish I made from the steamed spinach my wife made. She cooked the entire bag of spinach (pre-washed) using a dry wok with a lid without any liquid. We kept this in a sealed container and used it for many dishes such as this one.

This is a variation of nori rolled spinach but instead, of using nori I used a thin omelet.

Spinach: I just seasoned the steamed spinach with Japanese prepared hot mustard (from a tube) and sugar mixed in some soy sauce (the amount is arbitrary, I use only small amount of sugar).  If you want it spicier you could increase the mustard. I also mixed in bonito flakes but this is optional especially if you want to keep it vegetarian.

Omelet: I made the  mistake of not watching it carefully and the flame was too high so it became a bit dry and browned. I just used one egg omelet seasoned with a bit of sugar and salt. I put a non-stick frying pan on low flame ( not low enough, apparently) poured in the egg mixture, put the lid and let it slowly cook until done (5-7 minutes). If the flame is low enough, the omelet is perfectly yellow without brown spots.

I placed the omelet on the cutting board and lined up the spinach mixture in the middle and rolled it up. I then rolled it in plastic rap and let it stand for a few minutes so that the omelet would not unravel. I then cut the roll into small disks as you see above, Both ends which are not perfect were eaten before serving by me and my wife.

This is nothing dish but quite good.

Botargga pasta variation 唐墨パスタその２

This is just a variation of pasta with bottarga which I posted. Actually I used leftover grated botargga and angel hair pasta to make this dish. This is made in the same manner as "creamy tarako pasta".

I just sauteed the cooked angel hair past in olive oil to warm it up with small amount of red pepper flakes. After the pasta was coated with oil and warmed up, I added a few tablespoons of cream and let it cook for one minute or two so that it made nice sauce that could cling to the pasta. I cut the heat and mixed in grated botargga and garnished with thinly sliced botargga and nori strips.

The addition of cream add a different dimension to the pasta with bottarga. Both versions are good but I like the original a slight bit better.

Chicken "soboro" on rice ライスのそぼろのせ

This is the second dish I made from the chicken "soboro" I made a few days ago. This was a small ending dish one evening.

I just made three stripes over a dish of rice using the chicken soboro, spinach and scrambled egg. This is a variation of "bento" box.

Spinach: My wife prepared an entire package of baby spinach a few days ago. She just put the spinach in a dry wok (no water) with a lid on low heat. As the spinach steamed she used a tongs to move the cooked spinach on the bottom to the top. With this method the spinach steams by itself without adding any water. I chopped the cooked spinach coarsely, added dried bonito flakes (katsuo-bushi or kezuri-bushi, dried bonito shaving which come in a small plastic package) and concentrated noodle sauce (from the bottle). The amount is to taste but not too much.

Egg: I simply made scrambled eggs from one egg seasoned with sugar and salt.
Assembly: using, a ring mould as seen below, I first packed in a layer of white rice to make a disk and layered it with stripes of chicken soboro, spinach and scrambled egg.


This is very good flavor and color combination. You can make it any shape or amount you like. You can also change the seasoning such as sautéing the spinach in bacon grease and seasoning it with salt and pepper etc. Other greens such as asparagus, green beans will also work. If you want add another color, you could add cooked carrot seasoned whatever way you like.

This was a perfect "shime" ending dish for us.

Octopus sashimi Wasabi flavor with apple and olive oil 蛸のわさび漬け、リンゴとオリーブオイルいり

This is a "proof of concept" testimonial. When we described the octopus dish we had at "Daikaya", I said, the dish must be based on a frozen packaged item. To confirm my point I decided to reproduce the dish using the packaged item I had in mind. Since I did not have a "kaiware" daikon (sprout of daikon radish), I used finely chopped jalapeño peper.


I defrosted a package of "Tako wasabi-zuke" たこわさび漬け (picture below left, the price is for two packages). The picture, below right, shows what it looks like once thawed.
I just diced an apple (Fuji apple) mixed it in, splashed on a good fruity olive oil and garnished with finely diced jalapeño pepper (seeded and de-veined).

My wife thought my concoction was better than what we had at "Daikaya". It has a nice yuzu-wasabi flavor and the pieces of raw octopus were much larger with a much nicer texture. (Maybe because of the difference in size and texture of the pieces of octopus in our dish, they did not stick between our teeth like the ones in the dish at Diakaya).  It was a good idea to add the crunch of apple and the nice fruity olive oil flavor to this type of dish but I'm not sure I would call this "cooking".

Izakaya, Daikaya 居酒屋 大鍋屋

Recently, a few places have begun appearing in the Washington D.C. area with “Izakaya” as a part of their name; which is very encouraging. Once a restaurant with Izakaya in its name pops up on the “radar screen” we have to try it.

For example we tried Izakaya Azuma which is located in Rockville. It opened in June of last year and less than a year later it is closed. We can’t say we are surprised. We thought it missed the point of an izakaya both in terms of food and ambience in a big way. It was basically a Chinese restaurant with some “teiban” Izakaya dishes on the menu such as Yakitori and Kushiage.

Another such place is Kushi Izkakaya and Sushi. It is a big space lacking the real atmosphere of an Izakaya. I did not go but my wife went for lunch. She was not impressed.  To do it real justice, however, we should probably try it in the evening.

Another called Izakaya Seki sounds very promising but it’s location is very inconvenient for us so we haven’t tried it. 

Recently, another Izakaya cum ramen restaurant opened up in the “Penn Quarter” called “Daikaya”. It appears that its corresponding Japanese letters are “大鍋屋” meaning “Large caldron” probably referring to the large caldron in which ramen noodles are cooked. It is housed in a brand new building across from the Verizon Center (Google map street view still shows an empty lot). The 1st floor is a ramen place which we have not tried yet. It serves up a “Sapporo”style ramen. Since I am originally from Sapporo, we have to try this place. We did try the upstairs, however, which is  an “Izakaya”
Inside the restaurant is very nice with a central bar counter with small tables and booths around the periphery (picture above left).They have very cozy (read: tight) seating for 90. The tables are quite close together so you have the added advantage of sharing the conversations of the tables on either side of you. The table at which we were seated was so close it its neighbor that the neighboring table had to be moved aside in order for us to be seated which is awkward when the other table is occupied.

The wait staff was very enthusiastic and tried their best to explain everything, as scripted, even after I told him that we were familiar with these types of food and drink. As part of the explanation it was suggested that in contrast to American style where you order the entire meal at once, for Izakaya style you order a few dishes at a time in several rounds over the course of the meal. Our waiter in true American style, however disappeared after the first round of orders.

For libation, we chose sake from Kochi 高知 prefecture called “Sui-gei, Tokubetsu junmaishu"  酔鯨　特別純米酒 (picture above right). This is not too bad, not too yeasty but a bit short on taste.

Here are the dishes we had. I stopped taking photos after the 4th dish. Since we are not big eaters we never thought we would say this, but the portions of these dishes were way too small for us or even for any Izakaya. Certainly the portion size is miniscule for your average American even as a drinking snack or bar food. In order to make a meal we ended up ordering quite a few dishes which became rather expensive and even so we left the place still hungry.

The first dish we had, was wasabi octopus sashimi (left upper). I may be wrong and hate to say it but this dish looked and tasted like it was made with packaged frozen wasabi favored raw octopus such as I occasionally buy at the local Japanese grocery store. They just added small cubes of apple or jicama, olive oil and daikon radish sprouts. This was not the type of dish I would have expected.

The second was cheese stuffed shishi-tougarashi which was very interesting and good. We may have mentioned that shishi-tougarash  grown in US soil can be atomically hot but all four peppers we ate were fine (Our waiter appropriately warned us).

Then I found “Ruibe” るいべ of salmon. This is an Hokkaido specialty. It is thinly sliced semi frozen salmon. This was pretty good but again, the portion was Lilliputian (above lower left).

The 4th dish was "crab croquet". This is a very common Izakaya item and the base is Bechamel sauce with corn and crab meat. To be authentic, I was told that the crab meat must be "canned". In any case, this was served on old Japanese newspaper in apparent imitation of "Fish and Chips". We did not find the sight of our dish sitting on old newspaper appetizing and wondered how sanitary old Japanese newspapers could possibly be. Although this dish was not bad (deep fried Bechamel in general can’t be too bad) the crab missed its cue and didn’t make an appearance. This really looked like a factory made frozen item just deep fried at the restaurant.

Although I stopped taking pictures we had several other dishes: creamy tarako pasta, fried turkey wing  (this was good), tsukemono 漬物 (picked or salted vegetables) assortment of three kinds (again not bad but the portion was ridiculously small). At this point we were out of sake but still hungry (very unusual for us, since we usually get filled up with just a few appetizers). We thought of going to another restaurant but the Verizon Center was having a hockey game and the other restaurants we tried were stuffed to capacity. We gave up and went home.

While the dishes at this restaurant sounded innovative, they all had a premade packaged quality to them. Again, like many restaurants in the US that claim the izakaya title, it missed the ambiance that makes an Izakaya an Izakaya. Based on portion size alone, I just can’t imagine how this Izakaya will fair with the burly American clientele attending the hockey games and other events at the Verizon Center.