dinner 1
Dinner 1: Chicken Rolls
Soramame no su-yaki (fava beans grilled in the pod); zaru-soba (cold buckwheat noodles served with a soy-based dipping sauce); toriniku no isobe-ni (chicken rolled in nori seaweed).
The chicken rolls are a favourite around here, so they made up for the beans. I know I've posted about them already, so this time I'll include the recipe.
Tori no Isobe-ni (Chicken Rolls)
- 1/4 of a small carrot (about 20 grams or 3/4 oz)
- 2 fresh shiitake mushrooms
- 200g (7 1/2 oz) ground chicken
- 1 egg
- 1 1/2 Tbsp soy sauce
- 1 Tbsp sake
- 2 Tbsp katakuriko or cornstarch
- 2 sheets nori seaweed
- 1 Tbsp vegetable oil
- 100 ml (3 1/2 oz) sake
- 2 Tbsp soy sauce
- 2 Tbsp mirin (sweet cooking sake)
- 1 package of kaiware-na (daikon sprouts) or shredded cabbage or lettuce, optional
Peel carrot and chop finely. Remove stems from shiitake and finely chop the caps. Add carrot and shiitake to a large bowl with the chicken, egg, 1 Tbsp sake and cornstarch, and mix until smooth and spreadable. If mixture is too thin, add a little more katakuriko until it is spreadable.
Lay the nori on a cutting board and spread each sheet with an even layer of the chicken mixture, leaving about 1 cm of nori uncovered on three sides and spreading up to the edge on one side. Starting with the edge spread with the chicken mixture, roll the nori up gently.
Heat the oil in a pan over hight heat and gently add the chicken rolls, with the edge side down to seal. Saute for a few minutes, turning to cook all sides. Add sake, mirin and soy sauce, reduce heat to low and cover. Simmer, turning over the rolls occasionally, until liquid is reduced.
Remove rolls to cutting board and let sit until cool enough to handle. Wash the kaiware-na and cut off roots, then arrange on serving plates. When chicken rolls have cooled slightly, slice into bite-sized rounds. Arrange chicken rolls on the kaiware-na and drizzle the reduced cooking liquid over top.
Serves 2 to 4.
Dinner 2: Chicken teriyaki
- Miso soup with spinach and wakame seaweed
- Green salad with tofu dressing
- Smashed potatoes with mentaiko (spicy cod roe) butter
- Teriyaki chicken
Believe it or not, this was my first time making teriyaki chicken. It's such a standard dish back home in Canada but it's a bit less common here in Japan, or so I thought. And I'd kind of forgotten about it, considering teriyaki as a way to cook fish. But with a pack of discount chicken thighs in the fridge and a craving for Japanese food, I searched through some online Japanese recipe sites-- and teriyaki chicken kept coming up. Seems like it's just as popular here as at home, but as a home-cooked dish rather than a restaurant item.
Just another example of the information gap I have as a person who loves Japanese food but whose only knowledge of it comes from what I cook myself or eat in a restaurant. So rarely have I tried a proper home-cooked Japanese meal that I really have no idea what people normally eat.
A little more about teriyaki: "teri" means shine or luster, and "yaki" means grill, and it was originally used only for fish. Fish steaks are grilled, preferably over charcoal, and brushed regularly with a thin sauce made of sake, soy sauce, mirin (sweet cooking sake) and sugar. When it is finished cooking it has a beautiful shiny coating with a texture that is slightly crisp on the outside and soft and tender on the inside. The sauce should be slightly charred, creating a kobashii (rich and smoky) flavour. If you've never tried a traditional fish teriyaki, I urge you to head to the nearest (good) Japanese restaurant and try it now.
Apparently chicken and beef teriyaki were invented in a Japaense restaurant in America, for diners at who didn't like fish. It became a hit and was eventually re-imported to Japan. And according to my recipe search chicken teriyaki (never beef) is now a favourite of home cooks, thanks to its healthyness, speed of cooking and delicious flavour.
I think it will be a favourite around this house too. The recipe I used called for the chicken to be browned on both sides and then braised in the teriyaki sauce, which resulted in moist, tender meat. The skin turned a lovely colour the braising caused it to lost its crispness, so I didn't eat it. I'd like to try a different recipe next time, giving the chicken a long marinade and grilling it instead of braising. It wouldn't turn out as soft and juicy but crispy skin would make up for it!
But first things first. Here is the recipe for the braised version:
Chicken Teriyaki
- 2 full boneless chicken thighs, skin on*
- 3 Tbsp sake
- 3 Tbsp mirin
- 3 Tbsp soy sauce
- 1 Tbsp sugar
- 2 negi (fat green onion) whites, optional**
- 2 Tbsp vegetable oil
- shichimi (seven spice mix), optional
Trim excess fat from the thighs, leaving skin on. Cut into two pieces each, pierce in several places with a fork, and score any thicker areas. Combine the sake, mirin, soy sauce and sugar, pour over chicken and marinate 30 minutes or more.
Cut the negi whites into 3-cm pieces. Heat oil an a large frying pan and saute the negi whites until slightly browned, remove to paper towel. Drain chicken, reserving the marinade, and add skin-side down to pan, and cook until lightly browned. Turn and lighly brown other side, then add the reserved marinade.
Cover and bring liquid to a boil, reduce heat to low and simmer about 5 minutes. Remove lid, turn the chicken pieces to skin-side down, simmer a few more minutes until the chicken's juices run clear when speared. Remove chicken pieces to cutting board.
Over high heat, cook the liquid until thick. Using tongs to handle the chicken, cut into strips. Add chicken and negi to plate, cover with sauce, and sprinkle with sesame.
* This is a Japanese cut of chicken, that comes in a large "fillet" weighing about 300g (10 ounces or 2/3lb). If you can't find full thighs, use about 600g of regular thighs or breasts.
** Substitute regular green onions, strips of green peppers, or any other vegetable you like.
One of my favourite quick main dishes is nikumaki (meat rolls), which is made of thinly sliced pork or beef rolled around vegetables and braised in soy sauce, sake and mirin. This time I used enoki mushrooms and bannou negi (green onion) with pork cut thicker than usual, and gave it a longer simmer to make the meat nice and tender.
I've posted a nikumaki recipe before, but here is a slightly different one that uses a thicker cut of meat.
Enoki no Butamaki (Pork rolled with enoki mushrooms) dinner 3
- 250g or 6 slices pork shoulder, sliced about 3mm thick (labeled shougayaki-you)
- 1 package (about 100g) enoki mushrooms
- 6 bannou negi (thin green onions)
- salt and pepper
- 1 Tbsp vegetable oil
- 3 Tbsp each: sake, mirin, soy sauce
- 100 ml dashi
Remove ends from bannou negi, cut whites and greens into 8 cm (3 inches) lengths. Cut hard ends from enoki so stalks are same length as negi, divide into 6 bundles.
Lay pork slices on cutting board, sprinkle with salt and pepper. Lay sliced bannou negi and enoki mushrooms at one end of the slices, roll up tightly and secure with a toothpick.
Heat oil in a pan, add the rolls and brown on all sides over medium-high heat. Add the sake, mirin, soy sauce and dashi, bring boil. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover pan, and simmer turning rolls occasionally. Cook for 20 minutes or until meat is tender (to test, remove one roll to cutting board, slice off one end, and to taste).
Remove rolls to cutting board and let sit, when cool enough to handle slice in half or thirds and arrange on plate. Meanwhile, reduce liquid over high heat until thickened, pour over niku maki.
dinner 4
Nabe
Finally, the year's first nabe (hotpot). This was a typical one, with a mixture of vegetables, seafood and pork (no matter how much the other ingredients vary, we always have to have pork).
On the plate in front: thinly sliced pork belly; salmon; harusame (glass noodles). Bamboo plate at right: mochi (rice cake); negi (long onion); carrot; maitake mushrooms; spinach. In the donabe (clay pot) is kombu dashi (kelp broth) and mixed with a little leftover tai dashi (sea bream broth from the tai chazuke I cooked a few days ago), and in our bowls is a dip made of oroshi daikon (grated daikon radish), ponzu (citrus soy sauce) thinly sliced negi and yuzu koshou (yuzu citrus with green chilies).
Here are some cooked ingredients, cooling down in the tangy dip. Looking at this picture I'm already getting hungry again. I'm going to have to do nabe again soon...
This is my attempt to recreate the wonderful tai chazuke (rice topped with sea bream broth) my mother-in-law made a few weeks back. Not quite as good, as expected: I used the typical farmed tai commonly sold in Tokyo, and it's different enough from the wild tai of the Seto Inland Sea to be classified as a whole other fish. It also wasn't grilled first, so it lacked the kobashisa (a deep, charred fragrance) of the original, made from grilled fish.
Still, it was pretty damn tasty. I used tai no ara (sea bream scraps, in this case the head and spine) and got a very nice dashi (broth), but little meat. With tai no ara this was a great economical dish, but I'd like to try this with a meatier cut or even a whole bream.
It's hard to give an exact recipe as the quality and quantity of fish will vary a lot, so I'll just give a few guidelines.
First, the way my mother-in-law did it. She started with leftovers of tai no shioyaki (salt-grilled sea bream). After we'd eaten our fill, the remaining meat was picked from the bones. The bones, including the head, were simmered in kombu dashi (kelp broth) for about 30 minutes then removed from the broth (no salt was added as the original salt-grilling left enough salt in the bones was enough to flavour the broth). The leftover flakes of meat were added to the broth and warmed up. Then the broth was ladled over a bowl of hot rice, with the final ladleful full of meat, and chopped mitsuba (trefoil) was added.
When using raw ara, a little more preparation is required to remove overly fishy odors. First make the kombu dashi: add a large piece of kombu (kelp) to a pot of water and let soak for about 30 minutes (it can soak for several hours if you want to start early). Bring it slowly to a simmer over low heat and remove the kombu just before the boil.
Meanwhile, in a large colander, arrange the ara in a single layer and sprinkle with salt on both sides and let sit for 30 minutes. Bring a large kettle or pot of water to boil, and pour it over the ara. Drain and add the ara to the kombu dashi.
Simmer about 30 minutes, occasionally skimming the foam that develops. Drain well and let the ara cool, then pick out any meat, making sure it is free of scales and small bones. Discard the ara, return meat to broth, add salt to taste. Ladle over hot rice and top with mitsuba, nori seaweed, or kinome (leaves of sansho, a relative of sichuan pepper).
That's about it. Very rough instructions, but it's such a simple dish that it would be hard to go wrong. There's no reason why this wouldn't work with other delicate white-fleshed fish, and you can add your own flavourings as you like.