Nabe Day

Tomorrow is Nabe Day, as declared by the Japan forum at eGullet. We participated a day early, since I'm taking Hideaki out for dinner tomorrow to celebrate his new job.

Nabe is a Japanese hotpot- a small gas burner at the table heats an earthenware pot full of stock, with diners adding raw ingredients and fishing them out when cooked. This doesn't happen all at once; rather, ingredients are added and taken out little by little. This creates a nice slow-paced meal, and is a very nice way to eat.

Last month, our first nabe of the season was a disaster, so we tried something completely different: ishikari-nabe. Ishikari-nabe is from Hokkaido and features the seafood and vegetables of the region, simmered in a miso-flavoured stock.

The raw ingredients are shown above. Top left basket: hiratake (oyster mushrooms), chingen-sai (bok choy), potatoes, salmon, daikon; top right basket: scallops, shiitake, negi (scallion), carrots, enokidake (straw mushrooms); bottom basket: hakusai (Chinese cabbage), tofu, mame-moyashi (soybean sprouts), thinly sliced pork; shichimi (seven-spice mix), butter, corn and sliced negi are on hand as well.

Here is the first batch being cooked, with my first bowl. The broth starts off fairly light, but by the time all the ingredients are cooked the broth has taken on a deep, rich flavour. The leftover broth is usually cooked with rice or udon noodles to make a deliciously satisfying finale, but with ishikari-nabe ramen noodles are used instead.

So we added fresh parbroiled ramen noodles and a little leftover corn and mame-moyashi, cooked it a bit, and spooned it into our bowls with some shichimi and chopped negi. It tasted a lot like Sapporo ramen and was a fantastic finish.

Check out the rest of the eGullet nabes here.

Comments

[Julie & Lou]

Greetings from your Texas relatives....

Hey - looks like all you guys do is eat & take pictures of food!

Congrats to Hide on his quick recovery from the land of unemployment. Hope his new job works out.

So - what's for dinner tonight? We're having blackened salmon, spinach, and dilled rice. Too bad for you guys - we'll not be taking any pictures.....our camera is filled with ragdoll kitten pics.

[Amy]

>Hey - looks like all you guys >do is eat & take pictures of >food!

Yeah, that's right. We're married- what the hell else are we going to do in our free time?

Your dinner sounds great. Get those kitty pics developed (and send me some), start taking pictures of your food, and send them to me. With recipes. Seriously- a lot of the food you've cooked have become favourites here. Mexican meatball soup and Lamb stew for example.
And I wish you could send me some dill too. There's none here. Can you imagine- all this fish and no dill to go with it.

Thanks for stopping by.