porridge with nagaimo 長芋お粥

My family never had a tradition of eating "Nanakusa-gayu" 七草がゆ or "seven herb porridge" which is usually eaten on January 7th. I am not sure of its history or reasons for it but in Japan, a package of 7 herbs for this dish appears in the market when the date nears. I made this porridge after we ran out of osechi and other dishes I made for the New Year. This is a rather interesting recipe which came from Buddhist monk Nishikawa 西川和尚. This porridge contains both grated and cubes of nagaimo 長芋. I made a slight modification and added baby water cress and topped with aomori powder and the meat of pickled plum. I served it with Mackerel simmered in miso sauce サバの味噌煮, red wine simmered chicken liver 鶏レーバーの赤ワイン煮 and simmered Japanese "kabocha" squash カボチャの煮物 for one weekend lunch.

This is a rather simple recipe. Instead of using a totally vegetarian broth (i.e. kelp broth), I used a combination of kelp and bonito flakes for the broth.

Ingredients (for two small servings):
3/4 cup of cooked rice (we microwaved frozen cooked rice to thaw it )
Nagaimo, 5 inch pieces, peeled, 1/3 grated and 2/3 cut into small cubes
1 cup of Japanese broth
Baby water cress, stems removed, an arbitrary amount
Dried aomori and umeboshi pickled plum meat finely chopped for garnish

Directions:
Add the cooked rice to a pan and add the broth, mix and simmer for 5 minutes.
Add the grated nagaimo, mix and simmer another 2-3 minutes.
Add the cubed nagaimo, add the water cress, season with the salt and cook 1-2 more minutes (do not over cook the nagaimo cubes).
Serve hot with the garnish of the Aonori, pickled plum and fresh water cress leaves.

The simmered Japanese "kabocha" pumpkin was prepared as before.

So were the mackerel and chicken liver.

The graded nagaimo added to the volume and, of course, added a unique texture to the porridge. The combination of grated texture with the nice crunch of the cubes of nagaimo was unique. This is very gentle soothing dish for your stomach.

Scallop curry in a pouch レトルト帆立カレー

Japanese are quite fond of curry. It was said the original Japanese curry was first served on Japanese Navy ships and is based on English modifications to Indian curry. Now, in Japan, many curry restaurants have proliferated including ones serving very authentic regional curries such as those in India, Thailand, and Nepal in addition to Japanese style curry. Japanese have three choices if they want to eat curry at home; 1. make it from scratch using authentic methods and spices, 2. Use commercial "curry roux" which is readly available and 3. or heat up Curry-in-a-pouch which is called "retoruto-kare" レトルトカレー.  Food-in-a-pouch or "retort pouch" / "retortable pouch" was initially developed by the US military to replace canned or bottled food, reduce the weight and waste and also to make a meal-ready-to-eat (MRE) that could be heated quickly. It was also used during space travel. In the US, food-in-a-retort pouch did not become very popular among the general populace, perhaps, because of the widespread use of frozen food. But, in Japan,  curry-in-a-pouch has been extremely popular. One servings of curry comes in a pouch and the price ranges for $1 to $10 encompassing mass-produced cheap varieties to high-end varieties with a restaurant's or hotel's name attached to it. In recent years, another category of curry-in-pouch called "gotouchi kare" ご当地カレー is getting popular. There are even specialized websites from which you can buy quite interesting varieties of "locale-specific" or "Gotouchi" curry. We recently ate one such example which was sent to us as part of my mother's New Year "care" package. This one was scallop curry from Hokkaido. I added shrimp, blanched green beans and broccoli. Of course, I also served Japanese curry condiments "rakyo" ラッキョウ and "fukishin-zuke" 福神漬け.

The curry contained a goodly number of scallops which were nice and tender but I am not sure it added anything substantial to the curry. The curry roux was moderately hot and had nice flavors and texture. My wife added yogurt to dampen the heat (and also because she just likes yogurt in her curry.)

This seafood curry in a pouch came from "Sato suisan" 佐藤水産 or Sato seafood in Sapporo.  I found out that, beside selling Hokkaido seafood products, this company also runs seafood restaurants with one located near the opening of Ishikari river 石狩川 called "Old River" restaurant. This curry is supposedly from this restaurant using fresh Hokkaido vegetables and seafood (two varieties of seafood curry are available;  scallop 帆立 or sea whelk  ツブ) without animal fat or meat.

As per the directions on the back of he package, I boiled the pouch in water for 5 minutes. They also recommend adding cooked (sautéed in butter) vegetables.

I thawed uncooked shell-on shrimp, cleaned and sautéed them in butter with blanched green beans and broccoli seasoned with salt and pepper.

We shared one pouch between the two of us and put it over rice  (pre-cooked frozen rice microwaved to thaw). The scallop was tender and the roux had nice heat, texture, and flavors albeit not particularly special. (My wife thought it tasted very similar to the curry I make with Japanese curry roux, although this curry doesn't include any animal products but the roux does). Certainly this is a very convenient  way to  enjoy curry at home.

My mothers package also included the "whelk" curry in-a-pouch which tasted very similar to the scallop curry but with the inclusion of "rubber tire" chewy whelk. My wife "graciously" passed all the welk she could find in her dish to me--even the one she had been unsuccessfully chewing on for awhile.

Focaccia bread フォッカッチア

This is a variation of my focaccia bread. Although this is a bit too thick to make sandwiches, it is much better as eating bread dipped in olive oil.

We like this particular Spanish olive oil. It has quite robust flavors. We recently got a newer pressing (for 2017).

This is not a recipe but a note to myself for future reference. I made this bread to reuse (rescue) the sponge (or starter or biga) my wife was attempting to make for her Panettone bread.  My wife started the "biga" as per the recipe she found on line (200 grams or 1 3/4 cup of flour, 125 grams or a bit more than 1/2 cup of buttermilk, a small pinch of yeast, mixed together and let to stand at room temperature for 12-16 hours or until the volume doubles).

It looked quite dry for sponge and she was afraid she had not followed the recipe precisely. So she prepared another batch which also looked quite dry for sponge. In any case, she did make Panettone using the second sponge which was successful. So, we had the first sponge left over. Rather than throwing it out, I decided  I would make a focaccia bread using this sponge.  Since the sponge was rather dry, I added more water and kneaded and left it in a Ziplock bag for several more hours (it was made 2 days ago). It started looking more like sponge. Since the sponge had 1 3/4 cup of flour, I added 2 more cups of bread flour, one package of yeast (proofed in a small amount of lukewarm water with a pinch of sugar) and about 1 cup of water (I added a bit more until a proper dough formed). I kneaded it in a mixer with a dough hook for 10 minutes.

I decide to let it rise three times. I finished kneading by hand to make a tight ball. In a large bowl, I added a small amount of olive oil and placed in the dough ball and turned to coat. I covered it with a plastic wrap and towel and let it rise for 1 hour or until the volume doubled. I punched it down and let it rise for the second time. After the volume doubled again, I punched it down and let it rest for 10 minutes on the board (to relax the gluten). Then, I spread the dough onto a 1/4 sheet non-stick baking sheet. I let it rise for the 3rd and last time for 30 minutes. I then, pressed the dough with my finger tips to make multiple indents. I brushed on chopped fresh rosemary soaked in olive oil and scatted oil cured black olive (after the stones were removed) and pushed them into the dough (see below).

I  baked it at a lower temperature than usual, at 350F for 30 minutes.

The focaccia came out less crusty and much thicker and bread-like in the center. This was one of the items in our bake-a-thon shown below. One weekend, we made Stollen (far left), English muffin bread (Upper middle), Panetonne (Upper right), White bread (Lower right) and my focaccia (center).

You may have notice both edges of the focaccia were already cut off for the tasting. We really liked the texture and flavor of the focaccia made this way.

Sea Urchin from Maruhide with squid sashimi 丸秀の雲丹とイカの刺身

Between Christmas and New Year, we got "uni" sea urchin from Maruhide 丸秀 in Los Angeles, again. We think this is the best place to get quality uni in the U.S. They sell two kinds of uni; one is conventional (treated with potassium alum or myouban 明礬) to maintain the shape and firmness, the other is soaked in 3% salt water (salinity of sea water). The vast majority of uni available, which comes in a tray, is myouban-treated. Done properly, you do not tase the myoban but sometimes, they use an excessive amount and the uni can taste bitter. We got both versions from Maruhide and both are excellent. The one packed in salt water may not last as long as alum-treated one and starts to lose its shape quickly.

I served the myouban-treated uni on the top of perilla leaves and squid sashimi. This is emulating our favorite way to eat uni at Tako Grill (see below).

Since we did not have appropriate squid sashimi, I used a package of precut frozen squid sashimi from the Japanese grocery store.

This uni was alum treated but we did not taste any bitterness and the combination of perilla, squid and uni is indeed our favorite way to eat uni.

Roast beef bowl ローストビーフ丼

I made this dish as a lunch after Christmas since we made a large rib roast and had leftovers. In Japan, "Beef bowl" or "Gyudon"牛丼  is a popular fast food.  One example is "Yoshino-ya" 吉野家  made of braised thinly sliced beef and onion in a soy sauce based broth  (with other "secret" ingredients) placed over a bowl of rice. While braised beef is fairly common, roast beef is not. Roast beef bowl, however, is also getting more popular in Japan. Some appears excessive in terms of the amount of meat they put on the rice. I made a much tamer version. I thinly sliced the rib roast choosing the medium rare part. This is a small bowl and I served it with miso soup.

The Japanese version is often topped with an egg (either raw or onsen-tamago) but I topped this with thinly sliced cucumber, sweet onion and blanched green asparagus.

The miso soup was made of scallion, aura-age and tofu.

For the sauce, I just mixed soy sauce, mirin and prepared horseradish.

This was a just perfect lunch for us.

Cornish hen for Thanksgiving, Rib roast for Christmas クリスマスリブロースト

We have given up cooking holiday Turkey for some time. Since Turkey meat is dry and rather tasteless and  produces a large amount of leftovers, we would rather have chickens. As a matter of fact, for this year's Thanksgiving, we barbecued cornish game hens.

For us, half a cornish hen is more than enough.

For Christmas, we cooked a rib roast which is something unusual for us. We did it because prime rib or rib roasts were very reasonably priced at our grocery store. We barbecued it in our Weber with a light hot smoke cooked to medium rare. My wife made "broccoli stuffing balls" and mashed potato with cream cheese and chives.

This was the rib roast before cooking. It was over 5 lbs with ribs attached. I removed the excess fat and seasoned it with onion salt, garlic powder, fresh rosemary from our front garden (finely chopped), Kosher salt and black pepper.

I had a bit of difficulty keeping the inside temperature in the Weber kettle below 400F but managed to keep it below 400F for most of the time the meat cooked. I took the roast out when the internal temperature reached 120F.

After resting in for 20 minutes, I sliced it.

Since this was a rare dish for us on a rare occasion, we throughly enjoyed it.

Jako braised with Japanese ”sansho" pepper bowl じゃこの有馬煮丼

Sushi taro osechi box inlcudes "Jako" braised with Japanese sansho pepper じゃこの有馬煮 every year. "Jako" is a very young and small sardine or anchovy, boiled and then dried. Many small fish are a symbol of prosperity and a traditional dish for osechi. It was braised with the fruit of the Japanese "Sansho" pepper tree 実山椒. The name "Arima-ni" 有馬煮 came from a spa resort called "Arima hot spring 有馬温泉" near Kobe 神戸.  In the past, inns in Arima served dishes to their guests using the fruit of wild sansho trees which were abundant in the near-by Rokkou mountain (六甲山).  Japanese pepper from the Rokkou mountain is called  Arima sansho "有馬山椒" which supposedly has distinctive flavors different from sanshos from other regions in Japan.

It is a bit difficult to serve this dish as it is, so I decided to make a rice bowl or "donburi" 丼 from it with the other items that remained in the osechi box. I served this as a lunch with miso soup and daikon namasu 大根なます which I made.

I made sushi rice from microwaved frozen rice. I used "Jako",  shrimp (only one left the osechi box, I peeled and cut into half for two bowls), "kazunoko" herring roe, ikura and New Year's omelet rolls.

Although a bit hidden, Jako is the main topping. We put a bit of soy sauce on the other items.

This was a really good lunch. The very distinctive flavor of Sansho was very nice. We really enjoyed  this dish.