Tag Archive for 'Japanese'

Bittermelon with pork and blackbean sauce

Published
by
marc
on September 5, 2008
in Chinese, Ingredients, Japanese and Pork
. 11 Comments

Bitter melon is one of those things that I used to detest as a kid and to this day, I can’t say I’m a huge fan. It’s a curious looking vegetable (technically a fruit), that looks a bit like a cucumber with blisters all over it. If you hang out at Asian groceries you’ve probably seen them and wondered what they were.

True to its name, it is intensely bitter, almost to the point where you wonder if it’s safe to eat. These things make endives taste sweet in comparison. So why would anyone want to eat it? In eastern medicine bitter melon is considered to help with digestion and prevent diseases ranging from malaria to type II diabetes. While I’m always skeptical about such claims, they are rooted in centuries of history, so you have to wonder if there’s some truth to them.

On this particular occasion, one of L’s co-workers gave her one and I found it laying in the veggie drawer just begging to be cooked. Not being one to waste food, I thought back to my childhood when I’d tried it at my grandparents home. Though I can’t say I’ve had it more than a handful of times, I do remember it being cooked with a lot of oil, salt, sugar and umami to cover up some of the bitterness.

This preparation I came up with sits somewhere between Japanese and Chinese food. It’s richly fatty from the pork, which along with the dried anchovies and black bean sauce imparts some serious umami. The miso, mirin and sugar serve to mellow it all out making for a well rounded (though still bitter) side dish.

So was it as bad as my childhood memories? After the first few bites, my tongue adaped to the bitterness and by the time I finished it off I was craving some more. It pairs well with beer and made a nice accompaniment to a steaming bowl of rice.

1 small bitter melon
1/2 lbs ground pork
1 clove of garlic minced
small handful of dried anchovies
2 Tbs black bean sauce
1 Tsp miso
1 Tsp sugar
1 Tbs mirin

Cut the ends off the bitter melon then slice it in half lengthwise. Use a spoon to scoop out all the seeds and pith then slice them into 1/8″ crescents.

Heat a pan then add the pork. If there’s a reasonable amount of fat in it, you shouldn’t have to add oil. Break up the meat and fry until some of the fat has rendered out then add the garlic and dried anchovies. Continue frying until the meat is completely cooked and the garlic is fragrant.

In a small bowl combine the black bean sauce, miso, sugar and mirin.

Add the bitter melon to the pan and stir-fry until the melon is translucent and almost tender. Finish by adding the sauce and stir-frying until the pork and melon are well coated and the sauce has caramelized.

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Japanese Style Broast Duck

Published
by
marc
on August 24, 2008
in Duck, Japanese and Uncategorized
. 5 Comments

Okay, this is admittedly a terrible name. I always cringe when I see any recipe that starts with “Japanese style” (replace Japanese with any country). It tells me that the creator either didn’t feel confident enough in the authenticity of the dish to give it its proper name, or they were just too lazy to come up with a better name for their new dish (which doesn’t bode well for the recipe). In this case it’s more the later than the former, but this one is tasty, I promise!

What the hell is a broast you ask? Well it’s a rather un-witty name I came up with for half braising / half roasting something. As it turns out, it’s also a trademarked technique of pressure frying chicken, but I’m too tired to think of a better name, so until someone posts a comment with a better name, this dish is forever blighted with its rather unoriginal trademark infringing name.

So how did it come to be? I had 4 duck legs sitting in the freezer waiting to be turned into confit, but I just wasn’t in the mood to do a real confit, so I started thinking of other ways I could cook this. One of my favourite Japanese dishes is Buta Kakuni (braised pork belly); it’s a great way to prepare fatty cuts of meat and duck legs squarly fit in that category.

One of the best parts of duck though is having crisp skin, and several hours of braising aren’t exactly conducive to that end. Braising then broiling won’t work because the skin would absorb too much moisture, and I could always braise and deep fry it, but I really didn’t feel like using up a quart of oil for 4 legs. So how could I make the the meat moist and fall-off-the-bone tender while having crisp golden brown skin? Broasting!

Broasting starts off with a quick browning under the broiler, then with just enough liquid to braise the meat half of the duck, it goes in the oven allowing the skin half to slowly roast, unimpeded by liquid. It finishes up with a few quick minutes under the broiler to make sure that the skin is nice and crisp.

It worked! The meat was tender and moist, with a thin layer of creamy melt-in-your-mouth fat, topped with a crisp layer of skin. It’s similar in flavour to its more porky cousin, but but the roasting intensifies the flavours of the dashi and soy sauce creating a slightly sweet glaze on top.
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Kinpira Miso Gobo (Burdock with Miso)

Published
by
marc
on August 19, 2008
in Japanese, Side, Vegan, Vegetable and Vegetarian
. 6 Comments

For those not familiar with gobo (or burdock), it’s one of those wonder-veggies that has loads of fiber, iron and calcium. When lightly sauteed it’s got a pleasantly fibrous crunchy texture without being stringy or tough. When cooked for longer periods of time it will get tender while retaining it’s structure. Flavor wise, gobo is earthy, minerally, and just tastes “healthy”, but not in an overpowering medicinal kind of way.

If you don’t have a Japanese market near you, you may have a hard time finding it, but it’s the taproot of a common “weed” that grows all over the world. Here in NY, you needn’t look further than a patch of dirt disturbed by humans and you’ll find it growing all over the place.

“Kinpira” is type of Japanese dish that involves sauteing then simmering root veggies cut into thin strips. Kinpira Gobo is a very common side dish served with rice that’s typically seasoned with mirin, soy sauce and sugar. For my version I used miso and ground sesame seeds to compliment the earthiness of the gobo. It’s not a traditional preparation, but the flavors are very Japanese.

This isn’t really intended to be served as a main dish, but rather as “okazu” or something that goes along with rice and your main dish. A typical Japanese dinner might include a small grilled fish, a few types of okazu, a bowl of rice and bowl of miso soup.

1 gobo (burdock root about 2-3 feet long)
1 Tbs oil
1 tsp sugar
1 Tbs mirin (sweet Japanese rice wine)
1 Tbs white miso
3 Tbs water
3 Tbs ground toasted sesame seeds*

To prepare the burdock you’ll need to scrub it thoroughly with a rough sponge or a food brush. If you don’t have either you could run the blade of a knife along the root at a 90 degree angle to scrape the brown skin off. You could use a vegetable peeler but these roots are relatively thin so if you use a peeler there won’t be much root left to eat.

Cut burdock will start turning brown on contact with air, so it’s best to work in small batches and put the cut burdock in a bowl of water. Cut off a 2″ length of burdock using a sharp knife and slice in to 1/16″ slices lengthwise. Then cut the slices in the other direction lengthwise to form thin matchsticks. Soak the matchsticks in water until you’re ready to use them.

Heat 1 Tbs of oil in a pot until hot. Drain the gobo and add to the pot (be careful as the hot oil will spatter). Stir fry for about a minute until the gobo is well coated with oil and starting to cook. Add the sugar and mirin and stir. Add the miso and water stiring until the miso is dissolved. Cover and turn down the heat and simmer for a few more minutes. I like my gobo on the crunchy side so I let it cook for another 2-3 minutes covered, but if you want it softer, cook it for 5-10 minutes.

When it’s cooked, add the ground toasted sesame seeds, stir, then plate. You can garnish with some whole toasted sesame seeds and chili flakes.

* To toast sesame seeds, just add sesame seeds to a pan and heat the pan using a swirling motion to keep the seeds moving at all times. It will turn a nice golden color and will smell like sesame when it’s done. To grind, you can use a spice grinder, a pepper mill, a food processor, or if you like to kick it old skool, use a mortar and pestle.

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Karei raisu (Japanese curry rice)

Published
by
marc
on July 18, 2008
in Japanese, Poultry and Soups & Stews
. 12 Comments

In a country where you can get everything from hamburgers to underwear out of a vending machine, it’s no surprise that home cooks have many instant options that make “cooking” a meal as simple as slice and bake cookies.

For some dishes like mapo tofu, it’s become the accepted norm to combine a packet of sauce with some meat and veggies, and preparing them from scratch is almost unheard of. Curry is another such dish.

Like many foods in Japan (tempura is actually Portuguese), curry is a dish that was imported from another part of the world (presumably India). Typically the mix comes in segmented bars like chocolate that you break off and add to a pot of meat, veggies and water. It’s sweeter, milder and thicker than Indian curries and used to be one of my favourite dishes growing up.

I haven’t made Japanese curry since I started blogging since using packaged food is against the very ethos of this blog. Last night, I fixed that by figuring out how to make it from scratch. For those that love the packaged curry, the taste and texture are similar, but the flavours are brighter and more intense. It has an almost creamy quality about it that the packaged kind just doesn’t have.

For those that have never had Japanese curry, this dish is chock full of big tender chunks of meat and potatoes, all covered in a slightly sweet sauce that’s redolent of caramelized onions, cumin, coriander, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, and nutmeg.

The best part is that this requires only a little more effort than using the packaged variety and almost no extra time (since you make the roux while the veggies and meat are cooking).

For vegetarians, just double the amount of caramelized onions and replace some of the meat with firm tofu. In my hunger, I totally forgot to add the peas, so you’ll just have to imagine how great this dish looks with little bubbles of green popping out of the dark sauce.
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Sukiyaki

Published
by
marc
on June 25, 2008
in Beef, Dinner, Dinner party, Japanese, Soups & Stews, Vegetable and Winter
. 11 Comments

No… I’m not going to bust out singing that Japanese pop song from the 60’s that got renamed for the US market by some culturally insensitive prick record executive. Instead you get my rendition of this ubiquitous dish that’s become synonymous with Japanese food. Not that I have anything against record execs, or even renaming songs, but really… did ya have to name it after a hotpot dish? I wonder how that guy would have felt if I took a song like “Unchained Melody” and renamed it “Beef Stew” in Japan because it’s easier to say and more catchy.

There are many styles of making this, but perhaps the most common way is to cook meat and veggies in a sweet soy sauce based broth at the table. While I’m a big fan of the table top cooking method (especially for Shabu Shabu), I actually prefer to pre-cook the stuff separately and just serve the sukiyaki in a large bowl in the center of the table.

Regardless of how you decide to cook it, it makes for a really simple weeknight meal that requires no more than some washing and cutting of veggies. It’s typically made with thin slices of well marbled beef, but you could really use just about anything. Japanese markets tend to have the meat pre-sliced and packaged. I lucked out and got a pack of wagyu end-cuts (kiriotoshi) for a couple bucks. Because they were the end cuts the pieces were kinda irregular (which would be a problem for shabu shabu), but works just fine for sukiyaki. The most important thing is that the meat is tender and has a good amount of fat marbled with the meat.

For veggies you can use just about anything. I went mostly traditional using Tofu, green onions, bamboo, enoki mushrooms, and chrysanthemum leaves, but I also added some fresh summer squash I got at the farmers market the other day. It’s a good way to clean out the vegetable drawer in your fridge.

   

Traditionally it’s eaten by dipping the cooked meat into a raw egg, but due to the potential for getting salmonella I wouldn’t recommend it. You could soft poach or coddle the egg, but I still don’t think that would technically be “safe”. Instead I just grate some raw yamaimo (japanese mountain yam) also known as nagaimo which has the texture and slimy consistency of a raw egg when grated. If all this talk of slimy things is turns you off, or you can’t find it, you could always just skip it.

Leftover sukiyaki makes for a great bowl of udon (with some boiled noodles and egg cooked in the broth), or you could turn it into a donburi by reheating it with some beaten egg on top then serving it over a bowl of rice.
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