More food, more Japanese
I made dinner tonight, and since I had wanted to use our nameko mushrooms properly, I went online looking for a proper recipe. I found this one and it looked yummy and simple, so I went out to Tokyo Fish to buy the crab meat, dashi, bamboo shoot and sake. Dashi was actually very difficult--first to find which aisle it was in, and second to decide what dashi to buy. I knew it had to contain bonito extract (not bonobo extract, as I mistakenly related to Christian over dinner), but I wanted to follow the blog's recommendation and buy a liquid instead of a powder, since the powders were loaded with MSG. Sure enough, the three dashi powders at Tokyo Fish all had MSG prominently among the ingredients--in 2nd, 3rd, or 5th place. There was a second shelf with bottles that had prices for dashi, but they were mixed in with prices for other sauces and the bottles were all in Japanese, save for an English label which dubiously translated them as "Worcestershire Sauce." I didn't see any bonito in the ingredients, so I figured it wasn't the right thing. I had all but resigned myself to the packets when I noticed a top shelf that was empty save for two single bottlets of "somen," which had bonito, soy sauce, rice vinegar and no MSG. Bingo!
The crab meat was also a minor adventure since the recipe called for 1/4 cup of meat and that's not a measurement the fishmonger was used to hearing. He just guesstimated it would be a paltry handful and that jibed with my intuition too, so that's what I got. I was about to walk away when I noticed the marinated baby octopus and impulsively decided to get a paltry handful of that too, just to try. The guy was nice enough to give it to me gratis (maybe he pitied my cluelessness, but it was probably just because it was the end of the day, they were going to have to throw it out anyway).
So, I got home and popped it all in the rice cooker and waited until Christian got home. He didn't seem thrilled about having the octopuses as an appetizer, so I ended up eating most of them. The flavor was good, but the texture could be unsettling--chewy yet crunchy, like a half-cooked vegetable. The rice thing was delicious and was enough for two heaping helpings each. It's a recipe that I'm gonna keep in mind for next time we invite someone over for dinner.
The crab meat was also a minor adventure since the recipe called for 1/4 cup of meat and that's not a measurement the fishmonger was used to hearing. He just guesstimated it would be a paltry handful and that jibed with my intuition too, so that's what I got. I was about to walk away when I noticed the marinated baby octopus and impulsively decided to get a paltry handful of that too, just to try. The guy was nice enough to give it to me gratis (maybe he pitied my cluelessness, but it was probably just because it was the end of the day, they were going to have to throw it out anyway).
So, I got home and popped it all in the rice cooker and waited until Christian got home. He didn't seem thrilled about having the octopuses as an appetizer, so I ended up eating most of them. The flavor was good, but the texture could be unsettling--chewy yet crunchy, like a half-cooked vegetable. The rice thing was delicious and was enough for two heaping helpings each. It's a recipe that I'm gonna keep in mind for next time we invite someone over for dinner.