Watari bune Daiginjo 渡船純米大吟醸

This sake “Watari bune, junmai daiginjo” 渡船純米大吟醸 was a gift from a friend for a recent occasion. This is a really great sake with a slightly effervescent feel and fruity, crisp but very complex flavors. This should definitely be drunk cold. This sake is brewed by “Fuchu-homare” 府中誉 which is located in Ibaragi prefecture 茨城県. The sake rice or “sakamai”  酒米 used for this sake is also called “Watari bune” which is supposedly a very rare near-extinct sake rice which relatively recently has been revived. The famous and most popular sake rice “Yamada nishiki” 山田錦 is reportedly a descendant of this rice. Also the name “Watari bune”  渡船, which means a  “ferry” or “ferryboat”, is very fitting for sake from Ibaragi which is known for Tone river 利根川 and its estuaries criss crossing the flat delta before pouring into the Pacific ocean.This area also contains large lakes. (Such areas rich in water ways and lakes are called “Suigou”  水郷). Such topography would require use of ferries i.e. “Watari bune” to navigate the water ways.

In any case, a great sake calls for great “Tsumami” ツマミ or small sake snacks. We were lucky to get fresh unprocessed fresh “uni” sea urchin in salted water from Maruhide 丸秀 called “Ensui uni” 塩水ウニ. We also recently got frozen blocks of Bluefin tuna from Great-Alaska-Seafood. We served these items on recently acquired Japanese plates. The soy sauce in the small round plate is also a special “sashimi” soy sauce.   

I made the tuna three ways (two shown directly below. One came later). The first was straight sashimi (upper left in picture). The second was “Negi-toro” ネギトロ with slices of cucumber (lower left in picture). We enjoyed this negi-toro as a kind-of hand roll on a small sheet of nori (not shown) with the cucumber slices (shown).

This uni from Maruhide (shown upper right in the picture) is not processed with the usual “alum” and only soaked in salt water with salinity consistent with seawater. As far as I can tell, Maruhide is only source in the U.S. where we can get this. As an aside: my wife can sometimes taste the alum on uni. She immediately passes her portion to me when this happens. Not exactly a hardship for me, since I can’t taste alum. (She can also detect the alum used in some brands of baking powder).  The consistency of the uni in salt water is slightly softer than alum processed ones but it is absolute pure fresh uni. With just a little bit of wasabi and soy sauce and a sip of the sake, you cannot get anything better.

We needed a few more “Tsumami” to go with this sake. We had more tuna, this time “zuke” tuna 漬けマグロ, in which tuna slices are marinated in x4 concentrated Japanese noodle sauce for few hours so.  I served it with wakame and cucumber dressed in sumiso sauce 胡瓜とわかめの酢味噌あえ (left). Since my wife made blini a few days ago and we had Keta salmon ikura roe thawed, we made our usual “blini topped with cream cheese, smoked salmon and ikura” (right).

All these items are again perfect accompaniment for this wonderful sake.

Frozen bluefin tuna block from Great Alaska Seafood 冷凍オーストラリア産の黒鮪

 We have purchased quite a few items from Great-Alaska-Seafood. We tried frozen sashimi-grade yellowfin tuna or "kihada-maguro" 黄肌マグロ blocks which were on a par with the ones we can get at our Japanese grocery store. Recently we received an email from Great-Alaska Seafood about a special offer for Australian aqua-cultured sashimi-grade blackfin tuna, "Hon-maguro or Kuro-maguro" クロマグロ. In general I am a fan of any tuna but I tend to like blackfin a bit more than yellowfin. Great-Alaska’s advertising was pinpointed targeting. They clearly “had-my-number/Knew-where-I lived”/had-me-dialed-in”. I instantly succumbed to the offer and ordered the tuna. If I recall correctly I had to call a special number (rather than order on the internet) and the offer was good for only one day. The offer consisted of a total of 8 lbs made up of 8,1 lb packages,  half-and-half chu-toro 中トロ and akami 赤身.  As you can see below, the blocks were irregular in size and inconsistent in shape. I surmise that because they were not cut like Japanese “saku” blocks which are neatly of equal size and shape they probably could not be used in a Japanese sushi bar for example. 

Each packages are marked either  “akami” (left) or “chu-toro” (right) .

We first tried the smallest package which was marked as “akami”. I served two small dishes.

The picture below shows a dish of straight forward sashimi with cucumber sunomono きゅうりの酢の物 with tomato garnished with “ikura” salmon roe. The akami was certainly better than the frozen yellowfin tuna and good enough but not great.

I also made it into cubes of tuna and avocado 鮪とアボカドの角切りon a bed of arugula dressed with soy sauce, garlic, sesame oil.

So bottom line is that this is not bad. It is certainly better than yellowfin tuna but it was not truly great. Nonetheless we are satisfied that we have this choice and will have absolutely no trouble “choking” it down .

Ikura from Vital Choice バイタルチョイスからのイクラ

 I am always looking out for alternative sources of sashimi items such as "ikura" salmon roe. Depending on the source, the quality and price vary a lot. Our Japanese grocery store almost always has it but the per ounce price is very high. Other sources often have Ikura but the roe are a smaller size with a smaller diameter.  We like salmon roe with a 5 mm diameter rather than the smaller ones. Sometimes the roe are identified as trout roe, but often the type is not specified so it is very difficult to know exactly what type of salmon roe we are getting. We learned "keta" or "chum" salmon roe fits our preferences best. Recently we have gotten frozen keta salmon roe from Vital Choice. It came as a package of three, 7 oz. glass jars. The price was about average, and the quality was quite good. The 7 oz jar size was also a good size for us because we could generally finish it in 5 days. We have prolonged the shelf life of ikura by adding a marinade. (I use a mixture of x4 concentrated 'mentsuyu" Japanese noodle sauce and sake). Since we used up three of the jars, I went back to order the same but the only choice at that time was a 2 lb. (almost 1 kg) tray. I thought that would be way too much for us to use up before it went bad unless we could somehow divide up the quantity into smaller portions. But the offer was too good to pass up so I took a chance and ordered it. Turned out the pack could be subdivided (see discussion below).

 Ikura can be used many different ways. The below is an appetizer of home-made blini, cream cheese, smoked salmon, ikura and chopped chives.

Another way we like it is as a topping for cold "chawan-mushi" Japanese savory egg custard.

The picture below shows how we received the package (#1). It was packed with dry ice and solidly frozen. Once I opened the lid, I saw the package was divided into 4 compartments. Each compartment was about 1/2 lb. or 8 oz). Fortunately for us, using a small plastic spatula, ikura in one compartment could easily be removed (#3). I vacuum packed three blocks (#4) and placed them in the freezer. I let the remaining block, thaw in the refrigerator for a few hours (#5).  Although the center was still solidly frozen, the peripheral portion started thawing and crumbling away from the still frozen section. I placed the crumbled portion into a separate plastic container with an airtight lid and put it back in the freezer. 

I left the remaining ikura in the refrigerator to thaw. The amount was about 1/4 lb (or 4 oz). It was just the perfect amount for us to use up in a few days. I refroze the portion which was semi-thawed (#6). Later I thawed this and it looked and tasted fine. So, buying 2 lbs of Ikura is very feasible…it was quite good, I might add. 

Cucumber salad PA Dutch style PA ダッチ風胡瓜サラダ

Many years ago when we discovered the American mini-cucumber, we were delighted since it is the closest thing to a Japanese cucumber we can get here. Before this, the only options were the standard American cucumber or the English cucumber. We really didn't like the standard American cucumber. It's much larger than the Japanese cucumber. It has a tough skin. It has more and larger seeds. It has somewhat mushy, watery flesh, and for us doesn't have much taste. So, as far as we were concerned, the available alternative was the English cucumber which I used until we discovered the mini-cuke. While it has more flavor than the standard American cucumber, the English cucumber still has, to a lesser extent, some of the characteristics we didn't like about the standard cucumber. It was better than the standard cucumber but not as good, to us, as the mini-cuke. The thing we like most about the mini-cuke besides its smaller size, thin skin, small seeds is its intense fresh cucumber taste.  Even now it is extremely difficult to get a Japanese style cucumber. Occasionally, if we are lucky, it is available at the Japanese grocery store. So for the most part I am using American mini-cukes to make "asazuke" 浅漬け and "sunomono" 酢の物 with good results. One day we realized we had an excess of cucumbers in the fridge so, out of the blue, my wife blurted, "Its summer. We have a lot of cucumbers.  Let's make Pennsylvania Dutch style cucumber salad like I used to eat summers growing up in rural Pennsylvania." So I was set to slicing Vidalia onion and American mini-cukes. After consulting her "historic"  PA Dutch cookbooks my wife made the dressing. This was quite good. 

Ingredients:
5 mini-cukes
1 medium sized Vidalia onion
3 Tbs. dill weed

For the dressing: (shown in picture below)
1/4 cup sour cream
1/4 cup Greek yogurt
1/4 cup Mayonnaise
2 Tbs. sushi vinegar (Yes. I know the Pa. Dutch did not have sushi vinegar…but we did.)
1 Tbs. Worcestershire sauce
1/4 tsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt

Directions:
Thinly slice the cucumber and onions. For the onion cover with several pinches of salt, knead it, let stand for several minutes to draw out moisture. Squeeze out additional moisture. Rinse under water to wash off the salt and squeeze it again. For the cucumber; cover with several pinches of salt, using less than for the onion. Repeat the steps used for the onion, but because I used less salt I did not need to rinse it. Add all the ingredients together for the dressing. Add the dressing to the onion, cucumber mixture. Add the dill and mix. (See picture below).

This was a very nostalgic taste of summer for my wife. You can't go wrong with a cream based dressing on fresh veggies. The overall taste of this salad is very refreshing and perfect for a hot humid summer day. The day we made this salad my wife had also made a chicken curry. They were both done at about the same time so we decided to taste the products of our (her) labor. We had a small bowl of each and were very surprised to find that the cucumber salad went perfectly with the curry. Then it dawned on us; this was the Pa. Dutch equivalent of Indian cucumber yogurt salad i.e. raita a customary side dish for curry. No wonder they went so well together. 

Spare ribs cooked in Instant pot with home-made BBQ sauce バーベキューソース豚スペアリブ

 This was the second version of pork spare ribs we made using Instant Pot. I asked my wife to come up with the BBQ sauce. We looked at a few Instant Pot rib recipes. Most of them start with dry rubs and add apple juice/vinegar in the bottom of the Instant  Pot and place the ribs on the trivet and pressure cook. After that, smear the BBQ sauce and grill it for a few minutes. My wife said, she does not like charred and blackened BBQ sauce on the surface. She remembered a BBQ sauce based on a recipe from Joy of Cooking that she used to make years ago. So we looked up the recipe and made her version based on the notes she wrote many years ago on a post-it note she stuck in the book next to the recipe. This was more traditional flavors but it is also very good. The meat came off the bone very easily.

First my wife made the BBQ sauce:

Ingredients:
One medium onion, coarsely chopped

1 cup ketchup

2 Tbs. Vinegar (we used sushi vinegar)

1 Tbs. Worcestershire sauce

1/4 cup lemon juice

2 Tbs. Brown sugar

1/2 tsp. Salt

1/4 tsp. Paprika

1/4 tsp. Pepper

1 Tbs. Mustard

Directions:
For Sauce:
Sauté and caramelize the onion in olive oil. Add the ketchup and cook until it caramelizes and darkens (Maillard reaction). Add the rest of the ingredients and simmer for about 20 minutes.

For cooking ribs in the Instant Pot.

Ingredients:
4-5 pork spare ribs
onion and garlic powder
Salt and pepper
Olive oil
the BBQ sauce made above
Water

Directions:
Rub the ribs with onion and garlic powders, salt and black pepper
Using the sauté function, heat the Instant Pot and when the oil is simmering, add ribs and brown all four sides, add the BBQ sauce and water so that the ribs are just submerged.
Choose manual, pressure cook to high-pressure and 35 minutes
Let it naturally de-pressurize and remove the lid
Using the sauté function, reduce the sauce for 15-20 minutes or until thick.

This is relatively easy to prepare without additional grilling in the oven. The meat fell off from the bone and the BBQ sauce was sweet, sour, and  tomato-y but not dry or crusty. We are quite satisfied with this.

Spareribs cooked in Instant pot, Chinese style 中華風豚のスペアリブ

 At the beginning of the COVID pandemic, many workers at the major meat packing plants came down sick and some of the plants had to shut down leading to concerns about an impending meat shortage. So, we stocked up on meat, buying and freezing, some cuts we usually don’t get but were available at the time. My wife (a.k.a. Freezer inventory control officer for the household) informed me that we have frozen pork spareribs from that period dated April 2020 which were not getting any younger. With no impending meat shortages in sight, it was with some relief that at least that part of the epidemic was over, we decided it was time to reduce our “Covid stockpile”. The ribs turned out to be quite meaty. Some pieces contained 2 ribs (country style?). In any case, we decided to cook these in the Instant Pot rather than in the oven. The way the ribs were cut, made it possible for me to easily divide the ribs into shorter pieces.  We decided to make two different kinds of spareribs: one with BBQ sauce and the other in Chinese style. This worked well due to the capacity of the Instant Pot. The latter recipe based on what we saw on YouTube, but I had to modify it, as usual, due to the lack of some ingredients. In any case, the picture below shows the final product. It was definitely “off-the-bone” tender and had a sweet and sour taste which was quite good.

Ingredients:
5 3-inch pork spareribs (#1), seasoned with onion powder, garlic powder, salt and black pepper
Vegetable oil for sautéing and searing the meat
(Herbs and aromatics, #2 below)
3 shallots finely minced
4 garlic gloves finely minced
1/2-inch ginger finely minced
one cinnamon stick
2 star anis
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
(Seasoning liquid #3 below)
4 tbs soy sauce
2tbs brown sugar (I used mixture of dark molasses and sugar)
2tbs oyster sauce
2tbs red miso (instead of hoisin sauce* since I did not have one)
1 cup sake
2 tbs rice vinegar

*I usually have hoisin sauce, but I do not use it often. I must have thrown out the opened one which I kept in the fridge some time ago. Red miso appears to work in the recipe.

Directions:
Using  the “sauté” function of the Instant Pot and a small amount of oil (wait until the oil gets hot), I browned the ribs (#1) in all 4 sides (despite our belief that browning of the meat in a stew is not needed).
Take out the meat and add a bit more vegetable oil and bloom the spices (#2) add the aromatic vegetables (#2) and sauté for several minutes.
Add back the ribs and add the liquid seasonings (#3)
Add 1/2 cup water and pressure cook at high-pressure for 35 minutes with natural de-pressurizing.
Remove the lid after de-pressurized and turn on “sauté” function and let it reduce for 20 minutes or until the sauce thickens.
We tasted a finished rib. (The result after the tasting shown in #4. As you can see it was so good not much was left for the picture after our “tasting”.) The meat easily came off the bone.

This is a good sparerib in oriental/Chinese style. The meat is very tender and falls off the bone easily. With sweet and salty flavor with anis and cinnamon flavors are very nice. I was afraid that the seasoning may become too salty, but it was just fine. Using the Instant Pot made the entire process easy.

Cheesy Lebanon Bologna bites チーズとレバノンボロニャ ミニマッフィン（バイツ）

 Some time ago, my wife made some small muffin/bites with cheese and Lebanon Bologna which is the perfect small appetizer with wine. We kept them frozen and she served the last two. She wanted to make some more and we naturally assumed we could find the recipe in our blog but after some searching, we could not find it. So, we concluded we must not have posted it. We looked for the original recipe and had difficult time but finally my wife found the print-out of the recipe. The original recipe came from King Arthur Flour web site and called “Cheesy Pepperoni bites”. The original recipe calls for “Pizza flavor seasoning ” to make it taste like pepperoni pizza, I suppose. As usual she took the recipe as “advisory” and made some changes mostly based on what ingredients we had available. So she used Lebanon Bologna (she keeps some on hand frozen) instead of pepperoni, added chopped fresh chives and omitted the pizza seasoning (since we didn’t have it).

I ask my wife to take over.

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups (180g) AP flour
1/4 cup (28g) Cheddar Cheese Powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons (57g) butter, cut in pats
1/2 cup (50g) Lebanon Bologna (or pepperoni, diced) (#1)
1 cup (113g) sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
1/4 cup (14g) sliced chives (or scallions) (#1)
3/4 cup (170g) milk

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 425°F. Lightly grease a bite-sized tart pan; a mini muffin pan, or a baking sheet. If using the pop-up tart pan, have an ungreased baking sheet available to use as a base.

In a medium-sized mixing bowl, combine the flour, cheese powder, baking powder, salt.
Add the butter, working it in until the mixture is crumbly.
Add the Lebanon bologna, shredded cheese, and scallions, mixing to distribute (#2 above).
Add the milk, mixing just until everything is evenly moistened.
Scoop the dough by the level tablespoonful (second smallest ice cream scoop we have)  into the mini-muffin pan. 

Place the mini muffin pan onto a baking sheet to catch any drips.
Bake the biscuits till they're a medium to deep golden brown, 10 to 14 minutes.
Remove the biscuits from the oven, and cool briefly on a rack. Use a table knife to pop the bottom of the pan off the biscuits

I am sure pepperoni works well in this but Lebanon Bologna’s smoky and sweet flavors also work well. It is very cheesy with cheddar flavor which may be due to the addition of  “Better cheddar cheese powder” from King Athur.