It’s that time again, I was craving deep fried something in beer batter. I decided to use tofu that had been frozen and it worked beautifully. With this we had a Napa cabbage salad, tonkatsu sauce, rice and furikake. I dealt with the tofu, my husband with everything else 😁
Two types of tofu, or better one type of real tofu made from soybean and the other one was made from chickpeas. Looking at this I would bet that 99% of people in Europe would not recognise which one is which unless they know their tofu well. The bland looking stuff is the soy tofu which was Koya Dofu that came as a meal kit from kokorocares.com. I rehydrated it in hot water with a concentrated soup base. It was juicy and tasted of fish and slightly sweet, very delicate and Japanese (my husband thought it tasted of cardboard 😅). The chickpea tofu came marinated in some kind of sweet chilli sauce and just needed cubing and frying. It had a slightly stronger taste, probably more suited to the Western tastebuds. I liked both, my guys preferred the chickpea version.
With this I served courgette in a Gochujang sauce, pickled beetroot, and rice with Furikake. Everything was in separate bowls as I wanted to really taste all items properly.
Curry udon. Perfect on a hot day like today. And easy to make too. You need dashi (fish or mushroom stock), Japanese curry cubes, breakfast bacon (I’m sure it would be great with tofu too), sake, soy sauce, and udon noodles. Some green toppings and shichimi togarashi go well with it.
These were very good again, Menchi Katsu, Japanese minced meat patties with panko. This time we used beef and pork to find out the difference in taste to lamb. I still prefer the latter, but it’s only a small difference. 😋😋😋
I was trying to recreate a Japanese tuna chilli oil product that I got from Kokorocares.com some years ago but while it tasted good, it did not look anything like the original. I think I need to use tuna in oil next time (this one was in brine) and also need to let everything steep for some time in the fridge, possibly several days, to get the miso to do its magic. Still, my mix was very edible and worked really well with takikomi rice (rice cooked with seasonings and vegetables), so I was happy.
Welp, no mushrooms with dinner... the packet I got delivered today expired two weeks ago. (This is the third time in as many weeks I've had a well-expired item in my grocery delivery. I called head office and told them if it happens again, I'm going somewhere else).
The smoke detector went off 5 times in the 10 min the salmon was in the air fryer.
All in all, not the relaxing experience I'd hoped that cooking in my new place would be.
So, i started this batch of miso back in December of 2020, about 9 months into the pandemic. Technically it was finished in December 2021, but i’ve read about aged misos that are 5+ years old, so i just decided to keep it rolling along. it’s now so salty rich and dark that it looks like baked brownies. #DIY#fermentation#Miso#japanesefood
Mapo (or Mabo) Nasu. Minced meat with aubergine in a dark sauce. Good as always but noticeably darker than when I made this before. I was so annoyed with it being so pale last time and this time I didn’t really do anything different. Maybe it’s the new oyster sauce or a slightly bigger amount of Haccho Miso that did the trick. I also used more meat but that should not influence the colour. 🤔
I wanted to make an udon soup dish and when I read that I need dashi I thought, don’t I still have some instant soup packages from one of my kokorocares.com deliveries left in the shelf? I pulled out the pack of Kyushu Dashi Hot Pot Soup from my winter box and when I red the ingredients list (flying fish, bonito flakes, shrimp and obviously more) I instantly changed my mind. No more simple udon soup but hot pot it was!
I got my induction cooker for the table out, put the four packs of concentrated soup base in a saucepan with the right amount of water and heated that up.
Of course I also got out a range of things to put in there and had prepared them:
🥢 Napa cabbage, the top of the head in one piece 😅
🥢 May turnip, sliced thinly
🥢 Carrot, cut into “flowers”
🥢 Spring onion, in 4 cm pieces
🥢 Spinach, chiffoned, to be used like a topping
🥢 Shimeji mushrooms, roughly separated
🥢 Smoked tofu with almonds, sliced
🥢 Thin pork meat rolls (from Spain!)
🥢 Chinese dumplings with tasty fillings
Yes, there were also udon noodles, and I decided to make this a little more Chinese by adding a punchy dipping sauce with sesame oil, soy sauce, vinegar and chilli pul biber.
I think the whole affair cooked for about ten minutes and by that time it was perfect so I turned the temperature down and called the family.
I don’t know how but this was sooooo good and so perfect on a cold almost wintery day! I really think it was the absolutely delicious soup base that made this, we finished it all in one setting. (I remember having a flying fish based soup product from Kokorocares before and I loved that too.) But I also have to give a honorary mention to the May turnip which was exquisite and the Spanish pork that had a great taste.