♥
Baby potatoes fried in duck-fat with gomashio
♦ ♦ ♦
Oyako Don (親子丼)
♥
Miso soup with acorn squash & ginger
♥
Greens with calamansi vinaigrette
♥
Homemade Japanese pickles — carrot; watermelon radish; ginger
Winter vegetables in tare sauce.
Showing posts with label miso. Show all posts
Showing posts with label miso. Show all posts
Sunday, December 3, 2017
Japanese Dinner
♥
Baby potatoes fried in duck-fat with gomashio
♦ ♦ ♦
Oyako Don (親子丼)
♥
Miso soup with acorn squash & ginger
♥
Greens with calamansi vinaigrette
♥
Homemade Japanese pickles — carrot; watermelon radish; ginger
Winter vegetables in tare sauce.
Sunday, May 3, 2015
Weekend Menu
Just one "fancy" meal on the weekend with an old classic on Saturday. Recipes to follow.
The first meal is classically Italian, of course, but the ingredients came from a Japanese store. They have higher standards of quality.
The correlative in the Japanese meal is the blackness. It comes from the black rice which is representative of squid ink but there's none of that in the rice. The "toban djan" is Chinese in origin but it's amazing how the Japanese have converted the quick stir-fry to their own tastes. The "burdock salad" has mayonnaise but Japanese-style which is much much lighter and once again umami-laden. Okra is emphatically not Japanese but once again their love of slimy substances (natto!) means they've made it their own. There's very little "Japanese" about the second meal except that they have taken all these influences and converted them into a coherent Japanese meal.
The CC has said this many times but he'll say it again. One of the pleasures of cuisine is to be able to see the world through a different pair of eyes. We're all stuck with our origins but we can surpass them with imagination and empathy.
Cuisine is the fastest and easiest way to get there†.
† This is the 1000th post. No need to get all misty-eyed. There will be many more to come.
The first meal is classically Italian, of course, but the ingredients came from a Japanese store. They have higher standards of quality.
The correlative in the Japanese meal is the blackness. It comes from the black rice which is representative of squid ink but there's none of that in the rice. The "toban djan" is Chinese in origin but it's amazing how the Japanese have converted the quick stir-fry to their own tastes. The "burdock salad" has mayonnaise but Japanese-style which is much much lighter and once again umami-laden. Okra is emphatically not Japanese but once again their love of slimy substances (natto!) means they've made it their own. There's very little "Japanese" about the second meal except that they have taken all these influences and converted them into a coherent Japanese meal.
The CC has said this many times but he'll say it again. One of the pleasures of cuisine is to be able to see the world through a different pair of eyes. We're all stuck with our origins but we can surpass them with imagination and empathy.
Cuisine is the fastest and easiest way to get there†.
Pasta with mushroom sauce
Japanese meal
Three-taste mixed rice (white, brown, black)
Okra ohitashi
Burdock salad (ゴボウサラダ)
Squid toban djan
Miso soup
Smashed-cucumber pickle (タタキキュリ); Myoga
Sunday, April 19, 2015
Weekend Menu
Two meals. Recipes to follow.
Soufflé with snails, tomato sauce & chinese chives
Japanese meal
Fresh bamboo-shoot rice w/ sanshō
Okra ohitashi
Scallop sashimi
Miso soup
Pickles (lotus-root amazuke, carrot shiozuke)
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
Pea Soup with Miso
The weather has still been unseasonably cool out here and this soup is a perfect little pick-me-up. It's equally versatile served warm or cold and it's a cinch to make.
Ingredients
1 leek (both white and green parts - chopped)
4 cups peas (frozen is fine)
4 cups dashi (or chicken broth)
4 tbsp. white miso
3 tbsp. mirin (substitute with 1 tbsp. sugar)
1 scallion (finely chopped for garnish)
2 tbsp. butter
black pepper
Recipe
Note: You don't need to add salt because the miso is salty enough.
Heat up the butter in a heavy pot. Fry the leeks until they are softened. Add the peas, black pepper and the broth and let it cook until the peas are tender. About 10 minutes.
Purée the mixture and pass it through a sieve. Toss out the solids.
Reheat the mixture. In a small bowl, add a little bit of the broth to the miso and let it dissolve. Add the mixture back into the broth. Thin the soup if desired. Taste for salt (you shouldn't need any.)
Do not boil the miso.
Serve at once. Garnish with the scallions.
Ingredients
1 leek (both white and green parts - chopped)
4 cups peas (frozen is fine)
4 cups dashi (or chicken broth)
4 tbsp. white miso
3 tbsp. mirin (substitute with 1 tbsp. sugar)
1 scallion (finely chopped for garnish)
2 tbsp. butter
black pepper
Recipe
Note: You don't need to add salt because the miso is salty enough.
Heat up the butter in a heavy pot. Fry the leeks until they are softened. Add the peas, black pepper and the broth and let it cook until the peas are tender. About 10 minutes.
Purée the mixture and pass it through a sieve. Toss out the solids.
Reheat the mixture. In a small bowl, add a little bit of the broth to the miso and let it dissolve. Add the mixture back into the broth. Thin the soup if desired. Taste for salt (you shouldn't need any.)
Do not boil the miso.
Serve at once. Garnish with the scallions.
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
Bacterial Overload
Recently the CC went to one of those outdoor street fairs where there was a pickle stand. They were also selling some of the pickled juice blended with tomatoes as a "Bloody Mary Mix". The vendors kept apologizing and warning clients who wanted to buy it that it was not pasteurized.
And the CC was completely nonplussed, "So it has come to this?"
It doesn't need to be pasteurized!
There is a fundamental lack of understanding by people who work in food about our relationship with other bio-agents and particularly the organisms that we are deeply symbiotic with namely bacteria.
At this point in time, advertising agencies have basically convinced consumers that bacteria are "evil" but nothing could be further from the truth.
The standard mechanism of cultivating bacteria in the lab is creating something called a "culture". Basically, a swab of bacteria are grown on a substrate and then examined under a microscope. Based on this, it was estimated that something like 1% of a human mass was actually bacteria. Little did people know how wrong this estimate turned out to be.
In the early part of the 21st century, the price of DNA sequencers fell precipitously. What used to be an expensive tool became dirt cheap. Scientists had the entirely brilliant idea of not measuring bacteria by mass but by what percentage of DNA of our body was made up of bacteria. Turns out the answer is between 90-99%.
Remember the two estimates are of different things. One is by weight and the other is by percentage of DNA that is non-human. They are different things but the latter estimate is clearly the more important.
To put it differently, we humans exist for the benefit of the bacteria not the other way around. Of course, we are extraordinarily symbiotic with them. We provide them the food and they provide us both protection by repelling all the "bad bacteria" and do significant portions of body work for us.
In fact, the bacteria on your left and right hands are completely different.
So why did the earlier scientists get it so wrong? How can the estimates be so off?
You should be able to guess the answer. Not every bacteria can grow in the "culture". In fact, they can only survive in that localized environment inside the body that they have adapted to.
The answer is even more complex. There's no such thing as "good" or "bad" bacteria. It's contextual. You move the "good" bacteria from the right spot where they are supposed to be into the wrong spot and they will become "bad" bacteria. The context is completely important.
The bacteria that we are the most symbiotic with is a family called lactobacillus. Every time, you eat yogurt, eat or drink miso, eat pickles, cheese, kimchi, drink beer or wine, you are basically consuming them in vast quantities. They do the fermentation for us, and in turn, they repel other harmful bacteria for us. We are completely reliant on them.
So now maybe you can guess why the pickled juice blended with tomatoes did not need to be pasteurized?
The lactobacilli would repel any invader which there are not that many of to start with because of the acidity of the environment. The lactobacilli are the rare family that has adapted to the acidic environment thanks to their symbiosis with us.
Fermented foods have a long history of being considered "good for you". It was just an empirical observation over large swathes of human history in vastly different regions and contexts but they all came to the same conclusion.
Only in the 21st century is science able to actually dissect how all these various extraordinarily-complex mechanisms actually work.
But the CC's point is a lot larger. How have we gotten to a point where the most basic food interaction is fraught with anxiety? The answer is that Madison Ave. has made you paranoid.
The CC never relies on the expiration dates for milk. Just smell it. It's pretty obvious. Sometimes it will go bad before the expiration date!
The same goes for fermentation and fermented products. They work in a complex way and made correctly will last forever. Experienced picklers never throw out the juice. They use a cup of it to start off the next batch because it has the complex blend of bacteria all ready to give the next batch the right start.
Pickling is one of the greatest achievements in food technology. Just remember that for most of human history, humans were food deprived. Our modern calorie-rich environment is an extraordinarily recent development barely 50 years old. Pickling was the trick that allowed humans to store food for the winter. It also gave variety and complexity to their diet and the symbiotic relationship with the bacteria made for healthier humans.
The CC hopes that this explanation convinces people not to think of bacteria as "evil" but our necessary partners in the game of life. We need them; they need us. We can't actually function without them.
So the next time you're at the fair eating a pickle-on-a-stick, you should not think to yourself "Ooh! crunchy cucumber", you should really be thinking "Ooh! Tons of bacteria with a side helping of crunchy cucumber!"
And the CC was completely nonplussed, "So it has come to this?"
It doesn't need to be pasteurized!
There is a fundamental lack of understanding by people who work in food about our relationship with other bio-agents and particularly the organisms that we are deeply symbiotic with namely bacteria.
At this point in time, advertising agencies have basically convinced consumers that bacteria are "evil" but nothing could be further from the truth.
The standard mechanism of cultivating bacteria in the lab is creating something called a "culture". Basically, a swab of bacteria are grown on a substrate and then examined under a microscope. Based on this, it was estimated that something like 1% of a human mass was actually bacteria. Little did people know how wrong this estimate turned out to be.
In the early part of the 21st century, the price of DNA sequencers fell precipitously. What used to be an expensive tool became dirt cheap. Scientists had the entirely brilliant idea of not measuring bacteria by mass but by what percentage of DNA of our body was made up of bacteria. Turns out the answer is between 90-99%.
Remember the two estimates are of different things. One is by weight and the other is by percentage of DNA that is non-human. They are different things but the latter estimate is clearly the more important.
To put it differently, we humans exist for the benefit of the bacteria not the other way around. Of course, we are extraordinarily symbiotic with them. We provide them the food and they provide us both protection by repelling all the "bad bacteria" and do significant portions of body work for us.
In fact, the bacteria on your left and right hands are completely different.
So why did the earlier scientists get it so wrong? How can the estimates be so off?
You should be able to guess the answer. Not every bacteria can grow in the "culture". In fact, they can only survive in that localized environment inside the body that they have adapted to.
The answer is even more complex. There's no such thing as "good" or "bad" bacteria. It's contextual. You move the "good" bacteria from the right spot where they are supposed to be into the wrong spot and they will become "bad" bacteria. The context is completely important.
The bacteria that we are the most symbiotic with is a family called lactobacillus. Every time, you eat yogurt, eat or drink miso, eat pickles, cheese, kimchi, drink beer or wine, you are basically consuming them in vast quantities. They do the fermentation for us, and in turn, they repel other harmful bacteria for us. We are completely reliant on them.
So now maybe you can guess why the pickled juice blended with tomatoes did not need to be pasteurized?
The lactobacilli would repel any invader which there are not that many of to start with because of the acidity of the environment. The lactobacilli are the rare family that has adapted to the acidic environment thanks to their symbiosis with us.
Fermented foods have a long history of being considered "good for you". It was just an empirical observation over large swathes of human history in vastly different regions and contexts but they all came to the same conclusion.
Only in the 21st century is science able to actually dissect how all these various extraordinarily-complex mechanisms actually work.
But the CC's point is a lot larger. How have we gotten to a point where the most basic food interaction is fraught with anxiety? The answer is that Madison Ave. has made you paranoid.
The CC never relies on the expiration dates for milk. Just smell it. It's pretty obvious. Sometimes it will go bad before the expiration date!
The same goes for fermentation and fermented products. They work in a complex way and made correctly will last forever. Experienced picklers never throw out the juice. They use a cup of it to start off the next batch because it has the complex blend of bacteria all ready to give the next batch the right start.
Pickling is one of the greatest achievements in food technology. Just remember that for most of human history, humans were food deprived. Our modern calorie-rich environment is an extraordinarily recent development barely 50 years old. Pickling was the trick that allowed humans to store food for the winter. It also gave variety and complexity to their diet and the symbiotic relationship with the bacteria made for healthier humans.
The CC hopes that this explanation convinces people not to think of bacteria as "evil" but our necessary partners in the game of life. We need them; they need us. We can't actually function without them.
So the next time you're at the fair eating a pickle-on-a-stick, you should not think to yourself "Ooh! crunchy cucumber", you should really be thinking "Ooh! Tons of bacteria with a side helping of crunchy cucumber!"
Monday, December 23, 2013
Japanese Meal
For the celebration of a special friend's birthday dinner.
Bottom left:
Sautéeed scallops in miso-glaze reduction.
Left placement:
Miso Soup.
Asari Gohan (あさりご飯).
Down the center plate:
Fresh wasabi (わさび).
Pickled cucumber.
Pickled jellyfish with hijiki, ginger & cucumber.
Pickled burdock (ごぼ).
Fresh seaweed salad.
Bottom right:
Scallop Sashimi.
Right placement:
Symmetric placement of left.
Bottom left:Sautéeed scallops in miso-glaze reduction.
Left placement:
Miso Soup.
Asari Gohan (あさりご飯).
Down the center plate:
Fresh wasabi (わさび).
Pickled cucumber.
Pickled jellyfish with hijiki, ginger & cucumber.
Pickled burdock (ごぼ).
Fresh seaweed salad.
Bottom right:
Scallop Sashimi.
Right placement:
Symmetric placement of left.
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Miso-Glazed Cod
This is one of the simplest recipes that the CC has ever provided. It's basically a "shake-n-bake" with fancier ingredients, and definitely what you want in summer time when it's too hot to cook.
The only caveat is that you must prep it a day before.
Prepare a small side-salad (also cold) and you have a simple summer meal.
Ingredients
2 cod fillets
1/3 cup sake
1/3 cup mirin
4 tbsp miso paste
2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp soy sauce
Recipe
Mix the ingredients together to a paste, and let the cod fillets marinate in it overnight in the refrigerator. (The CC just puts them all in a plastic bag.)
Turn the broiler on. Broil the fillets for 4 minutes.
(If you like you can reduce the marinade in a skillet over high heat and pour over the broiled fillets. This "pan sauce" is amazing!)
The only caveat is that you must prep it a day before.
Prepare a small side-salad (also cold) and you have a simple summer meal.
Ingredients
2 cod fillets
1/3 cup sake
1/3 cup mirin
4 tbsp miso paste
2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp soy sauce
Recipe
Mix the ingredients together to a paste, and let the cod fillets marinate in it overnight in the refrigerator. (The CC just puts them all in a plastic bag.)
Turn the broiler on. Broil the fillets for 4 minutes.
(If you like you can reduce the marinade in a skillet over high heat and pour over the broiled fillets. This "pan sauce" is amazing!)
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Summer Sizzle
The city has gone from cold and rainy to muggy and stifling in the blink of an eye! Even eating is hard to do let alone contemplate slaving over a hot stove for hours.
In that spirit, here's a terrific recipe for a marinade for fish.
Two tablespoons white miso, 4 tbsp mirin, 1 tbsp soy sauce, 4 tbsp sake.
Marinade the fish.
Put in a broil-proof pan, add more of the marinade on top and broil for four minutes.
Serve with a cool salad.
In that spirit, here's a terrific recipe for a marinade for fish.
Two tablespoons white miso, 4 tbsp mirin, 1 tbsp soy sauce, 4 tbsp sake.
Marinade the fish.
Put in a broil-proof pan, add more of the marinade on top and broil for four minutes.
Serve with a cool salad.
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