Category: Japan, the Cookbook

Japanese Cooking Binge

January 15th, 2024

Winter seems to be the time of year I most like cooking Japanese food. It’s not dependent on locally grown farmers’-market ingredients and it’s a pretty healthy change from all the holiday cooking and eating. It is also right up there with Italian and Peruvian as one of my favorite cuisines. This year I really wanted to push the envelope in trying several new cookbooks and new seafood.

Cookbooks

The top row of books are a great collection for those interested in learning Japanese cooking. Japan the Cookbook (JtC) by Nancy Singleton Hachisu (who is white and moved to Japan in her youth, ultimately writing a cookbook on the cuisine, Fusia-Dunlop style) has oodles of reliable recipes spanning different regions and styles. The vast majority of my recent dishes have been from this one. Rintaro is a reliably yummy and slightly more complicated Japanese-West-Coast fusion restaurant. Japanese Cooking, A Simple Art, by Shizuo Tsuji is an English-language classic on the subject and includes very helpful descriptions of how to pair and serve various dishes to form a complete Japanese meal. The bottom three cookbooks I turn to rarely but have seemed good so far.

Techniques

One technique that is common to almost all of the meals prepared below is making homemade bonito flakes. These are shaved from a dried, smoked, salted, and cured bonito called katsuobushi. The dried fish is so hard that a wood plane must be used. Specialized wood planes are rather expensive, but I found a regular Japanese carpenters plane is much cheaper and works just as well.

Na No Hana Ohitashi (Flowering Rapini in Warm Mustardy Dashi, Rintaro)

Joe’s Rating: 6
Difficulty: 3

Kani No Sunomono (Crab Sunomono, Rintaro), Kabocha Croquettes (JtC)

Joe’s Rating: 7.5 (Crab), 7 (Kabocha)
Difficulty: 5.5 (Crab), 4.5 (Kabocha)

Steamed Egg Custard Pots (JtC)

Joe’s Rating: 7.5
Difficulty: 3.5

Ika No Nuta (Mustard-Miso Dressed Squid, Rintaro)

Joe’s Rating: 6.5
Difficulty: 4.5

Miso-Fried Eggplant and Green Pepper (JtC)

Joe’s Rating: 6.5
Difficulty: 3

Salmon Nabe (JtC)

Joe’s Rating: 7
Difficulty: 4.5

Mountain Yam with Edamame and Nori (JtC)

Joe’s Rating: 7
Difficulty: 1.5

Kamo Nanban Soba (Japanese Soul Cooking)

Joe’s Rating: 6.5
Difficulty: 5

Salmon Sashimi

Miso Soup with Poached Egg, Crispy Green Beans in Sesame (JtC), Citrus-and-Soy-Glazed Swordfish (Washoku)

Joe’s Rating: 6.5 (Miso Soup), 6.5 (Crispy Green Beans), 7 (Swordfish)
Difficulty: 3.5 (Miso Soup), 2.5 (Crispy Green Beans), 3 (Swordfish)

Grated Daikon with Salmon Roe (JtC)

Joe’s Rating: 7
Difficulty: 1

Miso-Simmered Mackerel, Cucumber and Bean Sprouts in Sesame Vinegar (JtC)

Joe’s Rating: 6 (Mackerel), 7 (Cucumber)
Difficulty: 3 (Mackerel), 3.5 (Cucumber)

Peddler’s Udon with Spicy Meat Sauce (Japanese Home Cooking)

Joe’s Rating: 6.5
Difficulty: 4.5

Natto Soup (JtC)

Joe’s Rating: 6.5
Difficulty: 3

Miso Soup with Grated Carrot (JtC)

Joe’s Rating: 6
Difficulty: 3
Taro Root Country Soup (Japan, the Cookbook)

December 8th, 2022

My housemates and I were throwing a housewarming party on Saturday night. One of them suggested that we throw a few big pots of soup on the stove the satisfy the hungry. After protesting that we could do better -(maybe some fried food? everybody loves croquettes!) – I took up the task of handling our vegan and gluten free option. I was up for the challenge of cooking for dietary constraints, but also aware that this would clear me to cook the meat at the next party.

What to cook. My housemate suggested lentils? But I want to surprise, and lentils would be a typical American vegan/gf option. I drifted towards my Asian cookbooks. In retrospect, I think I could have done something really good with coconut milk from southeast Asia, but I ended up in Japan. I saw a bunch of soups and simmered-vegetable recipes that featured many obscure ingredients that I could find from a specialty store, thus giving our guests a unique experience. I selected one that highlight taro roots and had no offending katsuobushi. Be careful though: usuage (deep-fried tofu pouches available frozen in Asian markets may have gluten in them if they are pre-seasoned.). A triple-batch was necessary for a 50-person party. The recipe includes: taro roots, naga imo, carrot, daikon, burdock, konnyaku, usuage, momendofu, shiitake, shimeji, enoki, negi, komatsuna, and seri in a broth of inaka miso and konbu. Of these, the komatsuna (Japanese mustard greens) and the seri (*wild* and not conventional Japanese parsley) were the most difficult to find and required going to a Japanese market.

Looking to impress, I made sure to get very high-quality and thick konbu. The resulting broth was delicious and umami-packed. After boiling the vegetables in the broth, it became even more delicious. That being said, the preponderance of potatoey taro root in the soup was a bit fatiguing. I’d recommend cutting the taro, actually, and/or upping the amount of broth. Overall, guests complimented the soup, particularly those with dietary constrains, but the accompanying spicy chicken-tortilla soup that my housemate whipped up was about twice as popular (perhaps more as we ran out by midnight). I don’t believe that the increased popularity of the chicken-tortilla soup was due to its having meat. It was more tasty. Had I selected a better recipe, I believe the guests would have eaten all of it. My soup did have a novelty factor; guests got to try a bunch of new produce!

Joe’s Rating: 6
Difficulty: 5