Fish flakes?!? I thought he said fish steaks.
They say that autumn is the time for eating in Japan. Just today I walked into the classroom I clean at the end of every day to discover a couple of pounds of sweet potatoes lying on the floor on sheets of newspaper, just inside the door. I assume they had just been harvested from the school’s little potato field, but that doesn’t make it any less weird to find a bushel of potatoes on the floor. Maybe it is the season that has finally pushed me into making forays into Japanese cookery. Up until now, I had sort of avoided those aisles of the supermarket containing shelf upon shelf of miso, seaweed, and bonito flakes. I’d made some quick stir-fry, some homemade yaki-niku (which is Korean, by the way), but nothing overtly Japanese. However the times, like the leaves, they are a-changing.
It all started when Sarah sent me the latest BUST, which contained a recipe for soba noodles in miso dressing. While the recipe was an American take on Japanese food (and therefore turned out much tastier than most Japanese food,) it called for miso, which I had hitherto been too afraid to purchase, mostly because I had no idea what to do with it. I knew you could use it to make soup, and that the Japanese put it in a ton of stuff, but this recipe gave me a place to start. It also pushed me to go to the grocery store and look for ingredients, the names of which I had to look up before hand. You wouldn’t think buying sesame oil would be terribly difficult, but when it comes in a strange looking bottle with naught but Japanese on the label you are screwed unless you consult a dictionary before leaving the house. I knew sesame already ( goma; it’s a popular flavor here. Have you ever tried black sesame ice cream? I have!), but the word for oil was definitely a look-up worthy term. Anyway…after locating all of the necessary components, I successfully concocted the recipe and it turned out pretty good. Let’s check it out:
After preparing the noodles, I sautéed some tofu and red pepper in some of the leftover dressing and piled that on top. Taste wise, this probably rates about an 8 on a scale of 1 to delicious.
Well, now that I had all this leftover miso in the fridge, I realized that I’d have to come up with some way of using it, or it was going to end up like those two containers of yogurt I’ve had since the summer that are still lurking around in there. Like all honest people of my generation, I place my hope and faith in the Internet before all others, and it has not let me down yet. Type ‘Japanese’ and ‘recipes’ into google and you will get plenty of hits. I did a broiled sweet potato and miso recipe, but it didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped. I’m planning on trying it again sometime this week, this time steaming the potato rather than boiling it, and leaving the skin on.
Not easily discouraged now that my collection of ingredients was quickly growing, I veered away from miso and decided to try some shoyu (soy sauce) based dishes. I’d had kitsune udon at a friend’s school’s festival and had liked it, so I decided to try my hand at that. Since I had soba, rather than udon, already, I figured that kitsune soba would be just as good. Kitsune udon/soba is a soup, consisting of a shoyu based broth, noodles, and tofu-age (deep fried tofu). You can buy tofu-age at the supermarket, but I decided that as long as I was going all gung-ho with the cooking thing, I might as well do it all from scratch.
My first task was to make up some dashi-the stock that most Japanese soups call for. Whether you’re making miso or shoyu broth, you start with dashi. Because of this, soups I previously believed to be veggie, miso soup for instance, are not. Dashi is made from dried kelp (konbu) and dried bonito fish flakes (katsuo-bushi). It’s a snap to make, although the fish flakes smell and look exactly the way I remember goldfish food looking and smelling. You are left with a clear, golden, surprisingly non-fishy stock.
After adding some shoyu and cooking sake to the dashi, you’ve basically got your shoyu broth. Deep frying the tofu went pretty much as you’d expect it would, although when I put the first piece of tofu in the oil there was this tremendous pop and oil went shooting all over the place. I was not burned, thankfully, but I proceeded hence with a clear pot lid held over my face as a shield. (My face is my trademark; it’s what I’m known for! I’m not going to let it get all scalded while frying tofu!) One new thing I learned was that after frying and re-frying the tofu, you give it a bath in boiling water, which removes all the excess oil from the outside. Neat!
So, once you’ve got your noodles, shoyu broth, some fried tofu and scallions (oh how I love scallions!) in a bowl, you’ve pretty much got your kitsune soba. Let’s take a look:
If you can’t tell, I’m getting super into presentation with my cooking, which is funny (funny ha-ha, or funny weird?) because I’m only cooking for myself. Tonight I got a hold of some udon noodles (those big pasty ones that look like albino worms) and used the leftover broth, scallions, and tofu to make kitsune udon. To make it extra delicious, I hardboiled an egg too, because there’s nothing that says decadent meal like a hardboiled egg! Let’s see a picture:
This rated about a 6.5 on the deliciousness scale, but definitely scored high for attractiveness.
Sorry if this entry was super boring, but hey, this is Sara’s journal, and I kind of want to chronicle my attempts at Japanese cooking, since it’s something I’ve just gotten into. Plus I (might) have a New Year’s party to plan, so I need to start testing recipes now! I hope the next twelve hours are as pleasant for you as they were for me. Ja ne.
It all started when Sarah sent me the latest BUST, which contained a recipe for soba noodles in miso dressing. While the recipe was an American take on Japanese food (and therefore turned out much tastier than most Japanese food,) it called for miso, which I had hitherto been too afraid to purchase, mostly because I had no idea what to do with it. I knew you could use it to make soup, and that the Japanese put it in a ton of stuff, but this recipe gave me a place to start. It also pushed me to go to the grocery store and look for ingredients, the names of which I had to look up before hand. You wouldn’t think buying sesame oil would be terribly difficult, but when it comes in a strange looking bottle with naught but Japanese on the label you are screwed unless you consult a dictionary before leaving the house. I knew sesame already ( goma; it’s a popular flavor here. Have you ever tried black sesame ice cream? I have!), but the word for oil was definitely a look-up worthy term. Anyway…after locating all of the necessary components, I successfully concocted the recipe and it turned out pretty good. Let’s check it out:
After preparing the noodles, I sautéed some tofu and red pepper in some of the leftover dressing and piled that on top. Taste wise, this probably rates about an 8 on a scale of 1 to delicious.
Well, now that I had all this leftover miso in the fridge, I realized that I’d have to come up with some way of using it, or it was going to end up like those two containers of yogurt I’ve had since the summer that are still lurking around in there. Like all honest people of my generation, I place my hope and faith in the Internet before all others, and it has not let me down yet. Type ‘Japanese’ and ‘recipes’ into google and you will get plenty of hits. I did a broiled sweet potato and miso recipe, but it didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped. I’m planning on trying it again sometime this week, this time steaming the potato rather than boiling it, and leaving the skin on.
Not easily discouraged now that my collection of ingredients was quickly growing, I veered away from miso and decided to try some shoyu (soy sauce) based dishes. I’d had kitsune udon at a friend’s school’s festival and had liked it, so I decided to try my hand at that. Since I had soba, rather than udon, already, I figured that kitsune soba would be just as good. Kitsune udon/soba is a soup, consisting of a shoyu based broth, noodles, and tofu-age (deep fried tofu). You can buy tofu-age at the supermarket, but I decided that as long as I was going all gung-ho with the cooking thing, I might as well do it all from scratch.
My first task was to make up some dashi-the stock that most Japanese soups call for. Whether you’re making miso or shoyu broth, you start with dashi. Because of this, soups I previously believed to be veggie, miso soup for instance, are not. Dashi is made from dried kelp (konbu) and dried bonito fish flakes (katsuo-bushi). It’s a snap to make, although the fish flakes smell and look exactly the way I remember goldfish food looking and smelling. You are left with a clear, golden, surprisingly non-fishy stock.
After adding some shoyu and cooking sake to the dashi, you’ve basically got your shoyu broth. Deep frying the tofu went pretty much as you’d expect it would, although when I put the first piece of tofu in the oil there was this tremendous pop and oil went shooting all over the place. I was not burned, thankfully, but I proceeded hence with a clear pot lid held over my face as a shield. (My face is my trademark; it’s what I’m known for! I’m not going to let it get all scalded while frying tofu!) One new thing I learned was that after frying and re-frying the tofu, you give it a bath in boiling water, which removes all the excess oil from the outside. Neat!
So, once you’ve got your noodles, shoyu broth, some fried tofu and scallions (oh how I love scallions!) in a bowl, you’ve pretty much got your kitsune soba. Let’s take a look:
If you can’t tell, I’m getting super into presentation with my cooking, which is funny (funny ha-ha, or funny weird?) because I’m only cooking for myself. Tonight I got a hold of some udon noodles (those big pasty ones that look like albino worms) and used the leftover broth, scallions, and tofu to make kitsune udon. To make it extra delicious, I hardboiled an egg too, because there’s nothing that says decadent meal like a hardboiled egg! Let’s see a picture:
This rated about a 6.5 on the deliciousness scale, but definitely scored high for attractiveness.
Sorry if this entry was super boring, but hey, this is Sara’s journal, and I kind of want to chronicle my attempts at Japanese cooking, since it’s something I’ve just gotten into. Plus I (might) have a New Year’s party to plan, so I need to start testing recipes now! I hope the next twelve hours are as pleasant for you as they were for me. Ja ne.