New Year's Day Dinner
Teddy and I made a Japanese-style dinner. We made inarizushi, spring mix salads with tomato, edamame, and corn with sesame-soy sauce dressing, miso udon soup with veggies and fried tofu sheet, and edamame. We also got pineapple and made shiruko for dessert.
First up, here's how to make inarizushi. You need inarizushi pockets (available at Tokyo Food Mart) and sushi rice. Usually you use white rice for sushi, but we don't buy white rice, so we made it with brown short grain rice (at least in this case, it worked really well).
Vegetarian inarizushi (the kind that has not been boiled in fish broth) comes in a can, generally. You need to drain it, then pour boiling hot water over it. Next, bring some broth, sake, and soy sauce to a boil and reduce it to a high simmer. Simmer the pockets for 4-5 minutes:
While you do that, fan and flip your sushi rice after sprinkling it with mirin and sake. Before cooking the rice, it needs to be soaked in water with a little sake for at least a couple hours, preferably at least 6-8.
Drain the inari pockets:
Give them a quick rinse to make them cool enough to handle, then gently open the pockets:
Stuff the pockets with rice so that they are nice and plump, but you can still close the bottom:
Now you have yourself some cute little inarizushi!
We served the inarizushi with a salad on cute little plate sets we got on clearance from Le Gourmet Chef:
Here's a picture of the soup. I made the broth with 1 quart of veggie stock, 1 quart of water, some soy sauce, some sake and some sesame oil. I boiled the carrots the longest (I placed them in the pot before turning on the heat), added 3 bundles of udon when the water boiled, and set the timer for 10 minutes. At 4 minutes, I tossed in the pepper and onion. I tossed the snow peas and mushrooms in at 2 minutes. After the udon was done (at zero minutes), I took some of the broth and mixed it with 3 Tbs of akamiso (Red miso) and then added it to the soup. I put cut up tofu sheet on top.
For dessert, we had pineapple and shiruko. Shiruko is simple to make. Take a can or two of sweetened red beans and put them in a pot with some water (the amount of water depends on if you want thick or thin soup - I like thicker soup). Simmer the soup until it is warm, stirring to distribute the heat. Serve the soup garnished with mochi dumplings.
And that was our dinner!! :D
First up, here's how to make inarizushi. You need inarizushi pockets (available at Tokyo Food Mart) and sushi rice. Usually you use white rice for sushi, but we don't buy white rice, so we made it with brown short grain rice (at least in this case, it worked really well).
Vegetarian inarizushi (the kind that has not been boiled in fish broth) comes in a can, generally. You need to drain it, then pour boiling hot water over it. Next, bring some broth, sake, and soy sauce to a boil and reduce it to a high simmer. Simmer the pockets for 4-5 minutes:
While you do that, fan and flip your sushi rice after sprinkling it with mirin and sake. Before cooking the rice, it needs to be soaked in water with a little sake for at least a couple hours, preferably at least 6-8.
Drain the inari pockets:
Give them a quick rinse to make them cool enough to handle, then gently open the pockets:
Stuff the pockets with rice so that they are nice and plump, but you can still close the bottom:
Now you have yourself some cute little inarizushi!
We served the inarizushi with a salad on cute little plate sets we got on clearance from Le Gourmet Chef:
Here's a picture of the soup. I made the broth with 1 quart of veggie stock, 1 quart of water, some soy sauce, some sake and some sesame oil. I boiled the carrots the longest (I placed them in the pot before turning on the heat), added 3 bundles of udon when the water boiled, and set the timer for 10 minutes. At 4 minutes, I tossed in the pepper and onion. I tossed the snow peas and mushrooms in at 2 minutes. After the udon was done (at zero minutes), I took some of the broth and mixed it with 3 Tbs of akamiso (Red miso) and then added it to the soup. I put cut up tofu sheet on top.
For dessert, we had pineapple and shiruko. Shiruko is simple to make. Take a can or two of sweetened red beans and put them in a pot with some water (the amount of water depends on if you want thick or thin soup - I like thicker soup). Simmer the soup until it is warm, stirring to distribute the heat. Serve the soup garnished with mochi dumplings.
And that was our dinner!! :D