His Gchat response when I asked how to cook daikon (“abu” is the childhood word we used for daikon):

stir fry about a couple minutes.  depends on how much abu,  Soy sauce, I think size of 2 AA battry, sugar 1 AA battery to start

Measurements in terms of batteries? Next Food Network Star HERE WE GO!

This is a slight variation of a firm Cook Japan family favourite…buta no kakuni (Japanese braised pork belly).  Mrs Cook Japan is loving our local supermarket’s so called “forgotten cuts”, in this case pork cheeks… 

…so it was still pork, just that it happened to be cheeks and not belly…I have to say if you are a fan of slow cooking pork cheeks are a wonderful cut of meat for this type of dish with a fabulous texture.

So the recipe…Mrs Cook Japan’s secret  is to cook the meat in earl grey tea for 1-1.5 hours until it is really tender, she then changes this to fresh water and adds ginger, garlic,dried lily flowers and daikon (long white Japanese radish) along with soya sauce, mirin, sake and sugar which gives the dish its lovely sweet syrupiness.  The whole thing is put in the rice cooker and left to cook for a couple of hours, after which a few spring onions and leeks go in and everything is left on “keep warm” until its time to eat.

One of the great things about this dish is the way the daikon soaks up the sauce, creating this wonderful marbling effect and making it absolutely delicious…

The finished pork just falls apart on your fork/chopsticks, the tenderness of the meat and flavour is superb and only increases with time (especially if there’s some left for the following day). 

Served on a bed of rice (thankfully we have 2 rice cookers for when it comes to making meals like this), the only drawback was having friends pop round…once they’d had a bowl as well it meant was nothing left for me reheat tomorrow…

Kimchi Bloody Mary - Photography by Jessica Boucher

Just when you finally got used to crazy ingredients like chile peppers and wasabi in your cocktails, I’m going to throw you a curve ball:  kimchi cockails!

Kimchi is a Korean side dish – usually pickled and fermented Napa cabbage, but I’m told that there are as many kimchi recipes as there are Koreans. In other words, the vegetable can differ, and so can the pickling liquid and technique. But considering the recent spate of nifty books on pickling, not to mention the recent International Pickle Day, which had a fair kimchi representation, and the simple pleasures of the Pickleback cocktail, it seems time to put new meaning behind the words “Let’s Get Pickled.”

So we’re talking kimchi cocktails today, folks. If you’d like something easy to make, I recommend the Spicy Kimchi Bloody Mary, which uses a new product called Mother-In-Law’s Kimchi – one of the kimchis on show at the International Pickle Festival. But if you’re feeling more ambitious, may I suggest…

Gin Kimchi - Photography by Sara Remington

 The Gin Kimchi

 I first heard about this drink two years ago, when Scott Beattie, then of Cyrus, presented drinks from his gorgeous ”Artisanal Cocktails” book at Tales of the Cocktail. It’s beautiful, complicated, and features pickled ginger and daikon (a Japanese radish) – but no cabbage.

1 1/2 oz. Sarticious gin

3/4 oz. freshly squeezed lemon juice

1/2 oz. Ginger-Shiso syrup (recipe follows)

8 pieces Pickled Ginger (recipe follows)

8 pieces Pickled Daikon (recipe follows)

5 small shiso leaves, cut into chiffonade

3/4 oz. Bundaberg or Cock’n Bull ginger beer

Combine the gin, juice, and syrup in a mixing glass and give it a stir. Add the pickled vegetables, the shiso, and enough ice to fill the mixing glass. Cover and shake a few times. Add the ginger beer, and pour it into a stemmed water glass or a tall collins glass to serve.

To make Ginger-Shiso Syrup (makes 1 cup)

1 cup simple syrup, chilled

2 drops essential oil of ginger

2 drops essential oil of galangal

1 drop essential oil of perilla (shiso)

Combine the simple syrup and essential oils in an airtight container. Cover and shake well to mix the oils into the syrup. Keeps for about 2 weeks, refrigerated.

To make Asian Pickling Liquid (for Ginger & Daikon – makes 1 2/3 cups)

1 cup rice wine vinegar

1/3 cup mirin

1/3 cup filtered sake

1/2 cup sugar

Combine the rice wine vinegar, mirin, and sake in a stainless steel saucepan over high heat. Bring the mixture to a boil, add the sugar, and stir until it dissolves. Allow the liquid to cool before pouring into an airtight container.

Pickling shorthand: The daikon and ginger each are sliced thinly and (in separate batches) marinated in pickling liquid, which is brought to a boil, poured over the vegetables, and then allowed to cool. A red beet is added to the ginger to create that pretty deep pink color. 

The full recipe is about 3 pages long…not exactly blog friendly. But if you aspire to make the cocktail and want more detail than I’ve provided, I encourage you to buy the book. You’ll want to try the five-spice Waverly Place Echo cocktail anyway, trust me!

Kakiage is a member of the tempura family, though these mixed vegetable fritters are less complicated to make than is usual for tempura. For this recipe, I show you how to suspend them in a dashi-based sauce rather than serving them in the usual tempura way – with salt or Worcestershire Sauce. Needless to say, if you prefer, you can eat them that way as well.

Kakiage is a useful recipe when you need to use up the vegetables remaining in your fridge, things like onions, carrots and green beans. Just make some Kakiage, then keep the finished fritters in the freezer. You can eat them on their own, as I show here, or with Udon noodles. When you make udon, take the ready kakiage out from the freezer, heat it in the toaster and add them to the noodle soup as a topping: a great way to sex up a simple bowl of udon.

Made right, the fritters will retain a bit of their crunch even underneath a very watery sauce. The result is absolutely scrumptuous!

• Carrot – half of one
• Onion – half a large one
• Gobou (optional) – one third of a root
• Egg – one
• All-purpose flour – four tablespoons
• Water – three tablespoons

for the sauce

• Water – 1.5 cups
• Konbu – one 5 cm. piece
• Dashi – 1 teaspoon
• Soy Sauce – 1 tablespoon
• Mirin – 2 tablespoons
• Daikon – one 10 cm. piece

Preparation:

• Chop carrots into thin little strips
• Julienne the Onions
• Shave off the skin of the gobou with the sharp end of a knife. Then cut the gobou into chips with a knife by shaving it as though you were sharpening a pencil (Japanese people call this technique “sasagaki”).
• Mix the ingredients in a large bowl
• Add flour and an egg, keep mixing well
• Add 3 tablespoons of water, keep mixing
• Grate the daikon

click to enlarge

Cooking:

The sauce

1. Place a piece of konbu in 1.5 cups of water
2. Bring pot to a boil
3. Add dash, soy sauce, mirin

click to enlarge

The fritters

1. Heat a generous quantity of canola oil over a low flame. Aim for 340 degrees Farenheit
2. Fry the fritters evenly on each side, trying to get them to hold together
3. Place fritters on newsprint to get rid of the excess fat

Serving tips:

• Place one or two fritters at the bottom of a deep bowl
• Scoop some grated daikon over them
• Pour sauce into the bowls
• Eat hot

We are well into nabe (hot pot) season and I am trying to do more experimenting this year.  Last year we ate kimchi nabe a couple times a week.  That was a lot of days I could have been trying new things.  I even had a nice nabe cookbook at my disposal.  I have tried a few this year already (Cod and Chinese Cabbage Nabe) and I thought I’d share a good one that non-meat eaters could enjoy too.  I’m pretty sure that if you substituted vegetarian soup stock for chicken stock you wouldn’t find too much of a difference in taste.  As you can imagine, prep for this one takes a little while but it makes up for it in short cooking time.  If yo u are wondering about the color of the rice, I added a tablespoon of black rice to two cups of white rice in the rice cooker.

It was originally published in Japanese so I cannot guarantee what I did is exactly what the recipe called for but it worked and tasted great.

Ribbon Vegetable Nabe

Kyou no Ryouri Beginners 2008.1

1/3 carrot
15cm daikon, cut in half lengthwise
1/4 lotus root (れんこん)
1 potato (a longish one works best)
1/2 burdock root (ごぼう)

1 1/2 cups fish stock
1 1/2 cups chicken stock
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon Thai fish sauce (ナムプラー)

Put the fish stock, chicken stock, salt and fish sauce in a nabe pot (or regular pot).  Use a vegetable peeler to turn all of the vegetables except the lotus root into ribbons.  Slice the lotus root thinly.  Bring the stock to a boil and add the vegetables.  Boil the vegetables for 2-3 minutes and serve.  It’s that easy.

In light of my great respect for the fine art of Kaiseki, Yuki’s mom decided that she wanted to take me out for another style. That woman loves me! Frankly, I can’t blame her. At any rate, a friend of hers had recommended Ushiyama in the Meguro neighborhood of Tokyo, so we gave it a shot last night. And what a shot it was! Slam dunk!

It started off with a plate of carrots, shiitake, and mibuna with grated apple. Who would have thought of putting grated apple on mushrooms? Ushiyama, that’s who. I’m damn he did, it was amazing!

After that came a dish of four. I ate them clockwise from bottom left. Ama ebi (sweet shrimp), raw sardines with thinly sliced onion that’s been soaked in cold water to remove the sharpness, warm salted ginko nuts skewered on pine needles on top of seitan (wheat gluten) cakes on top of grilled sweet potato that was shaped like a ginko leaf, and uni in a lily blossom. No, I did not eat the maple leaf in the center of the plate nor the pine needles.

Next was the soup course. I heavily bonito flaked dashi broth that was nice and smokey with a rinkon (lotus root) and mochi dumpling and a bok choy leaf with some yuzu zest. It ranks right up there with the best soups I’ve ever eaten, next to the one I ate a few years ago at Iron Chef Michiba’s restaurant.

After the soup course was the sashimi course. It consisted of suzuki (sea bass), melt-in-your-mouth tuna, and ika (squid). It must be ika season because the ika I’ve eaten on this trip is by far the softest and sweetest I’ve ever had.

Then they served us home-made soba noodles in a light soy-dashi with some thinly sliced negi (green onions) on top. I’m telling you, there is absolutely nothing like top quality freshly made soba noodles. I don’t know if I can go back to store-bought dried soba when I get home. I mean, of course I can, but it just won’t be the same. So chewy and clean tasting.

Next up was the grilled course. Sawara (a cousin of the spanish mackerel) grilled with yuzu-miso and served with yuzu-miso konnyaku and daikon that was cut into a flower with a small slice of red pepper. I’ve never had yuzu-miso before, I’m a huge fan!

After that was the simmered course which was kinmedai (splendid alfonsino) in a ginger sauce. It was served with spinach and daikon radish with chawanmushi in the middle.

For the fried course we got a dish with some tempura. Shishito pepper and ebi imo (a kind of yam) served in a light dashi with momiji oroshi and chopped chives.

Then came the rice and miso course. The rice was a glutinous rice with chirimenjako (baby sardines simmered in saltwater, dried in the sun, and covered in a sweet soy marinade), sliced shiso, and served on top of a cherry leaf. The miso had mizuna greens in it. There was also some lightly pickled cucumber and daikon on the side (yes Nick, I even ate the pickles!).

Finally, for dessert we got sweet potato mousse. It was so soft and lightly sweet, it was really more like a light sweet potato cheesecake. Served with a sweet potato chip on top.

This Kaiseki was Kyoto-style which is considered to be the most sophisticated and delicate of all styles. Hard to argue as the food was simply magnificent! Plus, all of that food for only $50 per person! I challenge anyone to find a deal half that good for a meal of that quality prepared with that caliber anywhere in the states. Thanks so much for bringing me here Tamiko!!!

Rice with seasoning

Egg omelet with mix vegetables

Cabbage with sausage

Kabocya

Spicy chicken

Daikon

Egg omelet : beat eggs and pour into skillet, while it is cooking, add boiled mix vegetables across the middle of the eggs, then roll it up

Cabbage with sausage : cut cabbage thin strips. heat the skillet, fry cabbage and thin sliced sausage and then add salt, pepper

Spicy chicken : cut chicken, coat it with mixed flour, bread crumbs and chili powder, and then deep fry it

This is Today’s Obento!

It’s nice to have a partner in the kitchen. Howard is a great helper, but, more important, he does a great job on his own when he’s the chef. He makes our breakfast every morning. It’s something simple during the week, usually just toast and fruit. On weekends, it’s more elaborate: eggs in many styles, pancakes, waffles.

As a trained scientist, Howard comes up with his own kitchen experiments. Some time, I’ll tell you about his sous vide setup (assembled from parts purchased on eBay). This week, he worked on perfecting Chinese pickles. These were inspired by a garnish on the entrees at Baumgart’s, a place we ate with Howard’s family in New Jersey. The garnish was pickled broccoli stems. They were tasty. Howard made similar pickles with the stems from our CSA broccoli plus carrots and daikon (also from the CSA share).

Here’s the formula:

Howard’s Sweet and Sour Chinese Pickles
Makes about 1 quart

3 to 4 cups crispy vegetables (such as broccoli stems, carrots, daikon, radishes, salad turnips), cut into penny-sized slices
2 tsp kosher salt
¾ cup rice wine vinegar
½ cup + 2 Tbsp sugar
1½ Tbsp shredded fresh ginger

Prepare the vegetables. For broccoli stems and daikon, peel, quarter lengthwise, then slice thinly. Carrots can be treated the same, but don’t need to be quartered. Radishes can just be sliced. Turnips probably need to be quartered, depending on the width.

Place the vegetables in a bowl and sprinkle with salt. Let it sit for 2 hours. Rinse off the salt and drain.

To make the brine, combine vinegar and sugar until the sugar dissolves. Add ginger.

Put the vegetables in a clear jar big enough to hold them. Pour the brine over the vegetables to cover. Store in the refrigerator. Wait overnight or longer before eating them.

I found this recipe on The Kitchen Mouse.  At the fruit store, I already saw daikon but didn’t know what to do with that.  When I saw this simple recipe, I knew I had to try it.  In the recipe, I needed 5 inches of Daikon.  And the one I bought was near 10 inches and only 89 cents for this whole piece.  That’s not expensive.

Rutku-burkānu salāti (Daikon-Carrot Salad)

Daikon tastes like radishes but is not strong like some radishes.  I didn’t use cucumber in the salad cause I forgot to buy it.

So now I have to find a recipe for the remaining daikon I have in the fridge. 

Questo post è specialmente dicato a mia sorella. Giorgina mia, da tanto tempo mi chiedevi di insegnarti a fare i tramezzini… ed eccoli qui! Pensati e ripensati insieme mille volte (perchè sei una difficilona eh!) gli abbinamenti ideali, siamo giunte a questo risultato che ci soddisfa entrambe: tu affezionata al pollo al curry e ai sapori “d’oriente”, io allo zenzero e alle carote, tu che ci vuoi mettere per forza il prosciutto e io che ti assecondo ma solo se ci mettiamo anche qualche frutto secco… dunque a quando la prossima??

Ingredienti:

9 filoni di pane bianco da tramezzini, 3 petti di pollo, curry, zenzero, 1/2 kg di carote, 1 daikon, 300gr prosciutto cotto, 3 porri, 2 caprini, 1 ricottina, mayonese, olio, sale, pepe e noce moscata.

Tempo di preparazione: 45 minuti Difficoltà: facile Dosi: 40 tramezzini circa.

Preparazione:

Tagliate il pollo a striscioline e fatelo saltare in padella a fuoco vivacissimo per 3-4 minuti con un cucchiaio di olio. Salate, spolverate con il curry e fate raffreddare ( E’ importante non mettere il pollo tutto in una volta ma a diverse riprese in modo tale che ogni strisciolina si possa dorare e rosoli in ugual modo… ci vuole pazienza in cucina Giorgia…anche solo per fare i tramezzini!!! . Lavate le carote e il daikon, tagliatele a striscioline sottili e fatele saltare in padella a fuoco vivace per circa 5 minuti con un paio di cucchiai di olio (devono rimanere croccanti ma essere cotte). Salate, pepate, insaporite con lo zenzero e fate raffreddare. Il ripieno per il primo tipo di tramezzini è pronto!Non vi resta che montarli: spalmate abbondantemente il pane con la mayonese, coprite con il pollo al curry, un altro strato di pane, salsa, verdure saltate e chiudete con un’ultima striscia di pane.

Passiamo alla seconda variante: Tagliate il prosciutto al coltello a fette non troppo sottili. Lavorate la ricotta e i caprini con un cucchiao di legno in modo da renderli morbidi, cremosi ed omogenei, insaporiteli con sale, pepe, noce moscata e abbondante olio. Mondate i porri, asciugateli e tagliateli a rondelle sottilissime che farete stufare in una padella con un paio di cucchiai di olio. Quando asciugano, bagnatelicon un mestolo di acqua, salate e continuate la cottura per una decina di minuti. Quando il liquido sarà tutto assorbito, spegnete il fuoco, aggiungete due abbondanti manciate di gherigli di noce tritati grossolanamente al coltello e fate raffreddare. Componete ora anche questi tramezzini come segue: pane splamato di mayonese, prosciutto cotto, pane spalmato con la crema di formaggio, porri e noci e infine pane. Vi consiglio di aspettare a tagliare i tramezzini fino a poco prima di gustarli. Metteteli a riposare sotto un peso leggero in frigorifero per almeno un paio d’ore in modo che si compattino e il taglio ridulti più lineare (nel nostro caso non lo abbiamo fatto per mancanza di tempo, ma il consiglio è valido comunque! E la fretta, quando si cucina è sempre meglio lasciarla altrove…vero Giorgia??

This is a great winter comfort food that is quick to assemble but does need some time to cook. Of course, you could make this vegan by leaving out the pork and using a vegetable broth. I made a fun discovery about daikon by mistake (apparently I put the daikon too close to the cold air flow of the fridge): if you’re using it for soup, it can be frozen from its fresh state! (It wouldn’t work too well for other dishes after thawing – too watery.) Thaw it slightly to slip the skin off, then cut as indicated.

If you want to add the seaweed, you should look for kelp (scientifically called laminaria, known as haidai in Mandarin) that has been dried in strips. If you don’t have an Asian market nearby, you can alternatively order from the Maine Seaweed Company if you already know you like seaweed. For more information on seaweed, you can visit this page about the medicinal value of seaweed and Michael Guiry’s Seaweed Site, which has a lot of scientific info and great pictures.

ingredients:

• 3/4 lb pork spareribs, cut across the bone into 2″ sections, then separated into individual ribs or 1 lb baby back ribs separated into individual ribs (try to buy pastured pork – you’ll do your health, your tastebuds, the pig, and the environment a favor!)
• 1 qt water or broth (low sodium if you’re using canned)
• 1/2 lb daikon
• 1-2 strips of kelp, optional
• salt to taste – seaweed is salty, so you may not need to add any

method:

1. Place the ribs in the liquid and bring to a boil. Immediately reduce to a simmer and skim any scum from the top of the liquid – if you boil too rapidly, your soup will be cloudy. Simmer for approximately 1 h, or until almost completely tender.
2. In the meantime, peel the daikon and cut it into 1″ thick rounds, then quarter or halve the rounds.
3. If using kelp, wash it, soak it in cool water for 15-30 m, rinse and repeat, rinsing it again before cutting it into 2″ sections.
4. Add the daikon to the soup, and simmer for 30 – 60 m more, adding the kelp about 15 m before pork and daikon are both completely tender. The kelp will help to thicken the soup slightly and give it a smooth, glossy look and feel.
5. Adjust the seasoning, and serve.

In Canada, autumn means Apples: they’re incredibly abundant at this time of the year. But in Japan, autunmn means Sanma, a fish so seasonal that its Japanese name brings together the character for autumn (秋) with the one for knife (刀 – because, of course, sanma kind of looks like a long blade) and the one for fish (魚), to make 秋刀魚, literally “Autumn Knife Fish”.

In the west, sanma is formally known as “pacific saury”, but more commonly referred to as “mackerel pike”. Personally, I’ll always call it sanma, and think of it as just another reason to look forward to the autumn. In season, sanma cost almost nothing, and grilling them always brings back memories of the big, back-to-school barbecue parties students at my university always organized at the start of the fall term.

Sanma is definitely best grilled over a charcoal fire and lightly seasoned with a bit of salt or with a light mixture of soy-sauce and grated daikon. It’s already too cold to barbecue here so, for tonight’s dinner, we did it on a stove-top grill.

In Montreal it’s very difficult to find fresh fish, but vacuum-packed frozen fish is also fine. I’m very proud of myself that I paid just $2.10 (for two of them!) for this spectacular fish at Angel Seafoods the other day.

Ingredients (for two)

• Pacific Saury – two whole fish
• Salt
• Daikon – a small section
• Soy sauce – 3 tablespoons

Preparation

• Grate a piece of daikon lightly, to obtain the watery pulp
• If you prefer, gut the fish. (This isn’t strictly necessarily: personally, I like the fish “whole” – guts and all.)
• If your grill is shorter than the fish, cut it into two sections.
• Sprinkle a generous quantity of salt onto the fish
• Let the fish sit for about 15 minutes, then rinse off the excess salt
• Pat off the excess moisture using kitchen towels

click to enlarge

Cooking

1. Heat a stovetop grill (or, better yet, do it on a barbecue)
2. Grill on each side for about 8 minutes, letting the considerable amount of fat sanma contains drain away.

click to enlarge

Serve hot, alongside a little molehill of grated daikon pulp. At the table, add soy sauce to the daikon pulp, mix, and add the soy-sauce-daikon mix to the fish.

Itadakimasu!

On Saturday morning, we left for the summer house. I mentioned in my last post that I didn’t know where we were going. Though, I did have an idea and it turned out my idea was correct. I was able to visit the the summer house once more (and I forgot to take pictures of it again!!!!). The Daikon field was about a 20 minute drive from their house so no big deal. Saturday was mostly a “fun” day. The first thing we did was stop in a nearby town to play a round of Park Golf. Surprisingly enough, the weather on Saturday turned out to be very pleasant. It was warm enough to wear only a light jacket or just to forget one all together.

Compared to other Park Golf courses I’ve played on, this one seemed like it had been forgotten. There were no fairways and no greens. Leafs were scattered about making a tricky shot only, well, trickier. It was still an enjoyable time though. Definitely kept things interesting.

Nearby, I found a nice little gem of a place.

After our time here, we headed back to the summer house. As soon as we arrived, we rushed upstairs and started playing with our PSP’s. It’s happened every time I go. A PSP party breaks out. Gotta love it. About an hour passed when we were called outside to take down the tarps along the fence line. We were left alone to do this job while Ojii san went back to the city to pick up Okada san. It didn’t take us very long to finish the job with the 5 of us. Probably about 45 minutes or so.

For supper, we had the greatest thing ever, jingisukan. I believe I have mentioned it before. So good! After dinner, we watched the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters take on the Yomiuri Giants in the Japan Series Baseball Championships. The Giants won (series 4-2), leading them to their first championship since 2002. It was a sad day for all of us Fighter fans. Japan Times Article

Sunday morning arrived and this was to be the day of the Daikon Harvest. We arrived at the field shortly after 9am and spent roughly 4-5 hours there. The majority of our pickings was obviously Daikon, but we did manage to get some cabbage and a few other items (names which are unknown to me). I’m sure that there has to be at least 200 Daikon’s sitting in Okada san’s garage right now. And these things aren’t tiny either. They can get pretty big.

Picking a Daikon from the ground is fairly easy and doesn’t involve much force to remove it from the ground. No digging is required. Just grab and pull.

While we were waiting for the van to come back, we had time just to fool around a little bit. Kousuke and Kensuke were pretending to be Nathan Drake from the Uncharted series on PS3. I on the other hand, thought it would be cool to make a ball of cabbage my girlfriend.

Yup, another great weekend has come and gone. It’s just to bad that Kousuke and Kensuke decided to take my cabbage girlfriend and smash it into pieces.

If I were Harry Potter, then maybe that would be true, but nope, it ain’t happening. I don’t even have a wand.

This is just a tiny update for all you tiny update lovers out there.

*Ding Dong*
[Aaron] Oh, hello. This is for me? Thanks!
[Postman] No problem, have a good day.
[Aaron] You too! Thanks again.
[Aaron] I wonder what this could be? *opens envelope* Ah, a letter!
[Letter] Tiny Update Lovers do not exist!
[Aaron] *hand slap to forehead* Gosh darn it!

Wow, I must be bored.

I just wanted to let you guys know that I’ll be away for most of the weekend (I think). Where am I going? Don’t know. What am I doing? Digging up Japanese Radishes (Daikon) from a field. Sounds fun? Yup, should be. Will be full of random shenanigans.

Also, I still have that bottle of Pepsi Azuki in my fridge.

1 burdock (Gobo)

1 fried bean curd (Age)

daikon (white radish)

green onion

sesame oil

Japanese soy sauce

cut burdock and boil

cut fried bean curd and stir it with burdock using sesame oil

serve it on the plate and add grated Daikon, green onion

put Japanese soy sauce on that

I hope you enjoy it!

click please

My husband has recently developed an unhealthy fixation with daikon. I’ve tried to explain to him that it won’t hurt him to go without it for a day or two, but it’s no use: he’s obsessed. To quell the beast, I made him this Negimiso (leek and miso) sauce tonight, which goes spectacularly with daikon. He was pleased…until tomorrow.

In this recipe, I share an old kitchen trick for keeping the daikon’s color a brilliant white, even after long cooking: boiling the daikon twice, the first time in the water you used to wash rice. Since we didn’t make rice tonight, I used a little work-around that gives you pretty much the same result. Read on to find out how I did it.

Ingredients (for four)

• Daikon – one
• The water you’ve used to wash rice in or, failing that, uncooked rice – two tablespoons – just to keep the daikon’s color
• Konbu – two segments
• Sake – two tablespoons

for negimiso sauce

• Leek – one, green part only. (Alternatively, you could use five or six spring onions: the result is the same.)
• Miso – two tablespoons
• Cooking oil – half a tablespoon
• Sugar – one tablespoon
• Mirin – two tablespoons
• Water – two tablespoons

Preparation

The key here is to cook the daikon radishes and the spring onion sauce separately. Lets do the daikon first:

For the daikon:

• Cut the Daikon in 8-10 cm. segments, as you would for Daikon Nimono, then peel each segment
• Rinse well under cold water
• Place the segments in a large pot.
• If you’ve saved the water you used to wash some rice, cook the daikon in that water. Otherwise add two tablespoons of uncooked rice to the water
• Bring to a boil, covered, over a high flame
• Once it boils, uncover, and let cook for 20 minutes
• Strain and rinse the daikon under cold water, if you’d added rice, discard it
• Add two pieces of konbu to the pot, return the rinsed daikon to the pot, add six cups of water and two tablespoons sake
• Bring to a boil again, uncovered, over high heat
• Once it boils, turn the flame down to low,
• Make a little dome over the daikon using two layers of kitchen paper towels
• Allow to cook for another 40 minutes

click to enlarge

For the sauce:

• Take only the green part of one leek (or of 5 or six spring onions), wash well and chop as small as possible
• Sautee in a small pan with the cooking oil over a medium-low flame, for about 10 minutes until it’s well cooked
• In a separate container, add miso, sugar, mirin and water, mix well.
• Add the miso mixture to the cooking leek, stir and cook for three minutes

click to enlarge

When the daikon is fully cooked, remove from the water, plate, and place sauce over the daikon. Serve hot.

As you’ll certainly notice, this leek and miso sauce (negimiso) is heartstoppingly delicious. Enjoy it also over cooked aubergines, or as a rice topping.

Itadakimasu!

Rice with seasoning

Kiriboshi daikon

Meat-balls

fried potato

Egg omelet with spinach

Egg omelet : beat eggs and pour into skillet, while it is cooking, add spinach across the middle of the eggs, then roll it up

This is Today’s Obento!

Rice ball with seasoning

Egg omelet

Stir broccoli and spinach

Soy sauce flavored Chicken

Daikon to Kanikama no sattoni

Chikuwa (fish cake)

Egg omelet : beat eggs and pour into skillet, while it is cooking, then roll it up

Daikon to Kanikama no sattoni : cut daikon and Kanikama, fry that with sesame oil, then add salt/pepper

This is Today’s Obento!

Rice with seasoning

Egg omelet

Sausage

Boiled spinach

Fried Japanese pumpkin

Daikon no nimono

Small hamburg

boiled spinach : boil washed spinach and cut it small. mix Japanese soy sauce with sugar, and put it on spinach

This is Today’s Obento!

1/2 Daikon (Japanese white radish)

1 Hanpen (fish cake)

1 cup Katsuo dashi

1 tbsp Japanese soy sauce

1 tbsp Mirin

cut Daikon and boil

when Daikon is cooked, drain water

heat katsio dashi and add Japanese soy sauce and mirin

put Daikon back to it and boil for a while

cut Hanpen and put it into the pan

boil for 10-15 minutes

serve it into the small dish

This is very easy to cook and nice side dish.

I hope you enjoy it!

click please

Nothing has done more to harm tofu’s reputation in the West than the sense that it’s “health food”. Lets face it: nobody wants to eat health food. “Health food” is just another way of saying “food that you eat despite the way it tastes”.

My philosophy is that you should never eat something primarily because it’s healthy: you should eat food because it’s delicious. The only way you keep coming back to a recipe, or to an ingredient, again and again is if your mouth waters when you think of it.

So here’s a dish to drive a mack truck through every idea you have about tofu. How about we bread it, fry it and suspend it in a lovely, deep dashi-based sauce? Agedashi tofu is a glorious dish, golden and soft and swimming in deep, delicate flavors that dissolve in your mouth like cotton candy.

For Agedashi tofu you can’t go without grated daikon.  It’s easiest to get nice fresh and sweet daikon in autumn and winter, so agedashi tofu is another menu you should try now!

Ingredients (serves 3)

• Silken Tofu – 400 grams – (soft tofu will also work)
  • For some reason, Chinese brands of tofu tend to fall apart when you try to cook them this way! Pick a Japanese or Korean brand.
• Potato Starch – half a cup, as needed
• Daikon – one 8-10 cm. section
• Spring onion – one

sauce

• Water – 1.5 cups
• Konbu – one 5 cm. piece
• Dashi – 1 teaspoon
• Soy Sauce – 1 tablespoon
• Mirin – 2 tablespoons

• Frying oil
• Newsprint

Preparation

• Cut the tofu into cubes on your hand (not on a cutting board)
• Place the cubes on top kitchen paper and cover them with kitchen paper as well, to soak up excess moisture, for about 15 minutes.
• After the tofu has dried, coat the cubes thoroughly with potato starch. Handle the tofu gently to keep it from falling apart.
• Grate the daikon gently into a pulp, using a cheese grater (or, if you want to be fancy, a daikon grater).
• Slice the spring onion as fine as possible
• Set out a small pot (to cook the sauce) and a frying pan (to fry to tofu)

Cooking

First, make the sauce

1. Place a piece of konbu in 1.5 cups of cold water in the smaller pot
2. Bring to a boil
3. Add dashi, then soy sauce and mirin
4. Keep on low heat

Then, fry the tofu

1. Pour a layer of frying oil – about 0.5 cm. deep – in the frying pan and heat on a medium low flame. (Aim for 180 degrees)
2. Fry the tofu pieces on all sides until the outside is a nice golden color.
3. When done, place tofu on newsprint to absorb the excess fat
4. For each diner, place two pieces of fried on each bowl.
5. Top each piece of tofu with some of the daikon pulp. Here’s a kitchen trick: to avoid getting too much of the watery part of the pulp, do this with your hands instead of a spoon
6. Sprinkle spring onions on top of each bowl
7. Ladle the dashi sauce onto each bowl. Be generous: the tofu should be nearly covered by the sauce.

click to enlarge

Itadakimasu!

Our local wholefoods shop has started selling the tops of brussels sprouts as a vegetable in their own right. They recommend cooking it like spring cabbage (the dark green type of cabbage), and at 35p for a whole top (which includes a few sprouts hidden in there) it was worth a try. Today I was in a Japanese soup mood for lunch, and decided to experiment.

2 cups konbu dashi
5cm (2") piece of daikon
3 leaves from the brussels sprout top
approx ½ tsp finely grated ginger
1 tsp sake
¼ tsp soy sauce
nanami (shichimi) togarashi
a pinch of sesame seeds

Put the dashi on to boil, and while waiting, cut the daikon into fine julienne strips. Fall further in love with the very sharp Japanese knife your beloved recently bought you as a present. Add the daikon to the pot. Roll up the leaves and slice them so you get fine strips. Bung ‘em in. Add the sake and soy sauce and simmer until the daikon is tender. Add the ginger. Pour into a bowl, and sprinkle nanami togarashi and sesame seeds on top. Serves one.