Blue Lotus

秋刀魚のねぎぽん酢ソースかけ

• Daikon braised with tofu
• Spinach dressed with sesame seeds
• Miso soup with wakame seaweed, shiitake, chikuwabu (fresh wheat gluten) and mitsuba (trefoil)
• Sanma no negi-ponzu sosu kake: grilled sanma (Pacific saury) with a sauce of negi (long onions) and ponzu (citrus soy sauce)

I'm not exactly getting tired of sanma, which is cheap, abundant and delicious this time of year, but I thought it was time to try something different. So instead of merely sprinkling it with salt and grilling it like I usually do, I sprinkled it with salt, grilled it, and poured on this simple sauce. Yeah, not really a radical departure from the usual, but sanma is just one of those fish that doesn't need a lot of fuss: a little variation goes a long way.

Happy Halloween!

Here is this year's Jack-o-lantern. Carved in a hurry, it turned out better than I thought. It now lives at my sister-in-law's house, where we brought it on Sunday. I was hoping to impress my neice Marya, who loves the pictures of jack-o-lanterns that have been decorating shops for the past month. She did seem to like it at first, but found it too scary once it was lit up. We were hoping to get a picture of her next to it but she wouldn't get near it, so we settled for a family picture. Marya was OK as long as she was looking away from the pumpkin, and otherwise in a good mood because her grandma was visiting from Osaka:

Speaking of shops decorated with pictures of jack-o-lanterns, it's funny how Halloween has suddenly become a big deal here. Just a few years ago it was impossible to find a real pumpkin, and Halloween candy could only be found in a few import shops. Now every store puts up Halloween decorations as soon as summer is over, and nearly every candy manufacturer sells Halloween treats. I don't think many people actually know what Halloween is and how to celebrate it; rather it is mostly just an excuse to put up seasonal decorations and eat (or more to the point, sell) sweets.

Not that I'm complaining. Pumpkins are now easy to find and I'm so glad that I no longer have to carve kabocha squash, which were once the closest thing here to pumpkins, and hard as rocks.

Pot roast

Loin of pork pot-roasted in a tomato red wine sauce, with penne. Based on Mario Batali's Braised Pork in the Black recipe, with extra tomatoes to make a more pasta-friendly sauce. I don't know if it's the recipe, my fantastic cooking skills or the high quality of Japanese pork, but this always turns out so soft and tender. No knife was necessery, and my husband's poor teeth weren't bothered.

First day

This was my lunch yesterday: zousui (rice porridge) made using the broth, shiitake, negi and spinach leftover from Sunday's shabu-shabu, along with an egg. Easy and tasty, but I felt a bit guilty. This is the kind of thing Hideaki loves, but today is his first day at his new job so he wasn't here to enjoy it.

The day was weird. I woke up early with him and helped him get ready, and I watched him through the bedroom window as he rode away on his bike. The minute he was out of sight I was overwhelmed by loneliness. Watching your spouse leave for work is a completely normal thing that millions of people do every day, but as we've both worked from home for years it's not something I'm used to doing. I'm rather embarrassed to admit that a few hours later I suddenly burst out crying. It was out of the blue and I can't think of what exactly triggered it, but I do know that it wasn't just about loneliness (I'm not that big of a wimp.) Rather, I think I was just overwhelmed, knowing that a major change in our lives had just quietly occured.

After spending almost all of our time together for nearly 4 years-- and liking it-- we've suddenly become a (somewhat) normal couple. It is not necessarily a bad thing, and I know I am going to get a lot more done without the distraction of having the man I love right next to me all the time. But it's definitely a big change. And although I used to embrace change as something wonderful and positive, somewhere along the line I seem to have learned to fear it.

The change is made all the more apparent by o the fact that I work at home, and part-time at that. If I was also starting a new job out of the house I would barely even notice this change, but I'm stuck at home, and yesterday morning this place just seemed so empty.

So I had a very short cry, and immediately felt better. I guess I just had some apprehension to get out of my system, but as soon as it was gone I was over it, and I ended up getting loads of work done.

I also spent a long time at the supermarket trying to decide what to feed Hideaki after his first day. It was a tricky decision, seeing as he has an unfortunate habit of developing a major toothache before any big event. He's had a doozy for a few days, so needed something soft to eat.

Then I remembered what I served the last time he had a bad tooth:

That's right! Unadon: a big bowl of rice topped with unagi (grilled eel). And miso soup with tofu and wakame seaweed, and green beans simmered with enoki mushrooms: a very soft and easy-to-eat meal. Kind of practice for when he's back at home every day again (and by that I mean retired, old and toothless).

He actually finished work early enough to get to a dentist: the company he works for is brand-new, so there wasn't a lot to do on the first day. Hopefully his teeth will get better before the obligatory overtime kicks in, because not many dentists stay open late and we certainly can't afford to eat unagi every day.

しゃぶしゃぶ

Tonight I wanted to cook something special, to celebrate Hideaki starting his new job tomorrow: shabu-shabu. Shabu-shabu is a type of nabemono (hot-pot) in which ingredients are quickly cooked by being swished around with chopsticks in a light broth. Thinly sliced beef is usually the main ingredient, but shabu-shabu can really be made with anything.

Above are the condiments used to dip the cooked ingredients: negi (long onion), yuzu-koshou (yuzu citrus with green chiles), goma-dare (sesame sauce), shichimi (seven-spice mix), yuzu-ponzu (soy sauce with yuzu citrus), daikon oroshi (grated daikon radish. The goma dare is used on its own, while the ponzu is mixed with the daikon oroshi and whatever of the other condiments are desired.

Our main ingredients were salmon and pork, accompanied by spinach, tofu, hakusai (Chinese cabbage), kuzu-kiri (glass noodles), negi (long onions), shiitake and kishimen (flat wheat noodles). The tofu, hakusai, kuzu-kiri, negi and shiitake are traditional, with the spinach and kishimen replacing the more usual shungiku (chrysanthemum greens) and udon noodles.

Shabu-shabu is traditionally cooked in a shabu-shabu nabe, similar to a Mongolian hot pot, although a regular pot works fine. Inside the shabu-shabu nabe is kombu-dashi (a simple broth made from kelp) lightly flavoured with salt, sake and mirin (sweet sake).

To cook shabu-shabu, ingredients like tofu, kuzu-kiri, negi and shiitake, which take longer to cook, are added first and left for a while. Meanwhile, you pick up your quick-cooking ingredient of choice with your chopsticks and swish it around in the hot broth. "Shabu-shabu" is the swish-swish sound the ingredients make as they are moved around in the broth.

The salmon was sashimi-grade, so we only swished it around for a few seconds, until just the outside was cooked. Very good beef is cooked in the same way, and cooking it any more than rare will melt away the fat and make it tough. Pork is of course fully cooked, but again care is taken not to overcook it.

The cooked ingredient is then dunked in your dip of choice. The salmon was best in the ponzu, with the refreshing citrus nicely cutting through the salmon's grease and fishy flavours. The tofu and spinach were best in the goma-dare, and the pork was good in both. But that's just me, and every diner has a favourite combination.

The kishimen (or more usually, udon) is saved for the end. By now the broth has become richly flavoured from all the ingredients being cooked in it. The noodles are added to this tasty brew, and when they are cooked they are added to what's left of the ponzu and topped up with the broth.

Normally we save whatever is left of the broth to use for lunch the next day, either with more noodles or cooked with rice to make zousui. But with Hideaki at work all day I don't know what I'll do: I'd feel kind of guilty using up this yummy broth all by myself.

It's going to be weird having him away all day...

More birthday eating

Recovered from his cold, Hideaki made my real birthday dinner tonight. A few weeks late but worth the delay:

• Shio-aji yaki-soba (fried noodles flavoured with salt rather than the usual sauce) with pork, cabbage, carrot and white shimeji mushrooms, topped with katsuobushi (bonito flakes) and aonori seaweed flakes
• Egg-drop corn soup
• An ice-cold can of Ebisu beer

My perfect birthday meal. But that's not all: he included a bouquet of flowers in the deal, as well as dessert:

A chocolate cake from Planetes, our local cake shop. I'm not a big cake person, but if there's no whipped cream or custard or other gooey stuff I'll happily eat it. This is quite a small cake, but rich and chocolatey enough that a little piece is plenty satisfying.

Beef stroganoff

We live near a discount supermarket that has great prices made even greater by frequent "time service" sales. "Time service" is a beloved practice in Japan, involving sudden surprise sales which last just a few minutes and are announced by a fast-talking, microphone yielding clerk. As soon as an announcement starts, all the shoppers stop what they're doing and listen carefully, then make a mad dash to whatever is on sale and grab as much as they can before it runs out. If you've never seen a crowd of customers fighting over time service items, then you probably also believe that the Japanese are a polite, peaceful people. Trust me-- that stereotype doesn't apply when there's a sale.

Yesterday Hideaki and I were in the produce section of this supermarket when a time service was announced. Not understanding the rapid-fire announcement, I looked to Hideaki for a translation, and he told me to get myself to the meat section (he stayed behind to watch the shopping cart, as husbands and shopping carts are huge hindrances during a time service). So I found the crowd and fought through it, triumphantly grabbing a large package of thinly sliced Australian beef. Everyone else was thrilled, but I'd been expecting pork, because that's usually what's on sale. And since we don't eat beef, aside from the very occasional sukiyaki or steak, I had no idea what to do with the stuff. Far too thin for yaki-niku (Korean style bbq), too lean for sukiyaki or shabu-shabu, and in too great a quantity for a stir-fry, I was at a loss. Until Hideaki suggested beef stroganoff.

What a super idea. It turned out beautifully, cooked with onions, cremini mushrooms and shimeji mushrooms, and of course sour cream. Which is a delicacy here, and cost far more than the beef. I served it over rice which is how it's done here, and which I was sure I wasn't going to like-- to me egg noodles are the perfect match for anything stewy-- but was really nice.

I did a little bit of research and found that in Russia, where stroganoff hails from, it is often served over mashed potatoes. I was also surprised to learn that mushrooms are not traditionally included, but I can't imagine it without mushrooms. And I found that some people use yogurt instead of sour cream, which sounds like something I should try as yogurt is far cheaper here than sour cream. I wonder if it would taste as good, though. Has anyone tried it with yogurt?

 

Sui gyoza

• Egg-drop corn soup
• Fish sausage sauteed with spinach
• Sui gyoza (boiled pork dumplings)
• Dipping sauce made with chili paste, sesame, green onions and soy sauce

Hideaki made everything, right down to the wraps for the sui gyoza. Home-made gyoza is always so much better than store-bought, and the slight imperfections, with every dumpling a different size and shape, make eating them extra fun.

That bright pink fish sausage is new to our table. Unlike traditional fish paste products like kamaboko and chikuwa, which don't try to be anything other than what they are, gyo-niku soseji (literally "fish-meat sausage") actually tries to masquerade as something else. It is coloured and flavoured to resemble sausage, ham or other meat products, and is meant to be a cheaper and healthier substitute. I've always found the concept ridiculous so have avoided the stuff, but recently I figured that I better give it a try. After all, I've been in Japan for over a decade and have a blog with Japanese food as a major theme-- I should be making it my mission to try everything here. And besides, I have a fondness for kani-kamaboko (fake crab meat) so I know that a food can be ridiculous and tasty.

So I tried it, and it's actually pretty good. Sweet and salty are the primary flavours, much like spam. I'm not sure how healthy it is, as besides the high sugar and salt the stuff contains a host of unpronounceable chemicals. But gyo-niku sausage is the Spam of Japan and it doesn't have to be healthy. And it's a new guilty pleasure. 

さつまいもご飯

Satsuma-imo gohan (sweet potato rice); tofu and spinach dressed with soy sauce and katsuobushi (bonito flakes); tonjiru (miso soup with pork) with carrot, daikon, atsu-age (fried tofu) and chikuwa-bu (pressed wheat gluten); toriniku no isobe-ni (chicken rolled with nori seaweed).

I posted the recipe for the chicken rolls a rew years ago, this is it here. It remains one of my favourite dishes and I highly recommend it. This time I'll give a recipe for the satsuma-imo gohan, another favourite. It is really satisfying and tasty on its own merits, but I love how the sweet, slightly nutty and creamy satsuma-imo makes it resemble kuri-gohan (chestnut rice). Kuri-gohan is an iconic autumn dish, loved by everybody but not turning up very often on my table due to the amount of time involved in peeling the chestnuts. I think satsuma-imo is just as good, and it is far less work.

Here's the recipe:

さつまいもご飯 (Satsuma-imo gohan)

Make this with satsuma-imo, a Japanese variety of sweet potato with a thin reddish-purple skin and cream to yellow flesh. Other varieties of sweet potatoes or yams will not work as well. If you can't find mochi-gome, regular Japanese rice is fine. One "go" is equivalent to 180 ml.

• 1 go (Japanese rice cup) Japanese rice
• 1 go (Japanese rice cup) mochigome (glutinous Japanese rice)
• 250 grams (8 ounces) satsuma-imo
• 2 Tbsp sake
• 1 Tbsp mirin (sweet cooking sake)
• 1 Tbsp soy sauce
• 1/2 tsp salt
• pinch goma-shio (salt with black sesame seeds) for garnish, plus more for the table

Wash rice in several changes of cold water, until the drained water is almost clear. Pour rice into a sieve and let drain for 20 minutes.

Wash the satsuma imo but do not peel. Cut into 1.5 cm cubes, soak in cold water with a pinch of salt for 15 minutes.

Add drained rice to pot of rice cooker with 380 ml (13 ounces) water and the sake, mirin, soy sauce and salt. Stir gently to mix, top with drained satsuma-imo and cook as for regular rice.

When cooked, stir the rice gently with a few swipes of a shamoji (rice paddle) or wooden spoon to mix in the satsuma-imo evenly. Serve to chawan (small rice bowls) and top with a sprinkle of goma-shio.

Serves 3 to 4.

Birthday eating

So last Thursday was my birthday-- I won't tell you which one, except to say that I can no longer really describe myself as in my early 30s. No big fuss on the day itself. At 8 am Hideaki woke up an told me he was going to make me coffee and pancakes, and was promptly sent back to bed-- we were out of coffee, I didn't feel like pancakes, and he was too sick to cook anyway. He was just coming down with a cold I gave him, and considering I was still recovering from it myself and had a busy day at work, the day passed quietly.

The one birthday-type thing I did was buy myself a take-out treat on my way home from work:

Sushi for me (all that was left at the sushi counter: a mixed set and four pieces of kohada, or gizzard shad), chickuzen-ni (chicken simmered with vegetables) to share, and hire-katsu bento (boxed meal with pork fillet cutlet) for Hideaki. All half-price as I bought it late after a night class.

The sushi wasn't very good, and I should know better: while supermarket oshi-zushi (pressed sushi with marinated mackerel), inari-zushi (stuffed fried tofu), and futo-maki (fat rolls with a mix of fillings) can be quite good, the nigiri-zushi (the kind pictured above) usually isn't. And by the time I buy it it was usually been sitting around for a while, and a discount sticker just doesn't make up for bad sushi. Hideaki loved his bento though-- lucky him, (I'll have to remember that for his next birthday) but kind of a bummer for the birthday girl.

The next day, after sleeping the entire morning, Hideaki was up for making pancakes. He uses a mix, but I'm hardly in a position to complain, and they always turn out nicely. Especially when smothered in maple syrup (note the giant 1 litre bottle, straight from my father's coworker's sugar bush). I spent the afternoon on a sugar high, and he went back to bed.

That night I made myself a birthday dinner:

Tempura of enoki-dake mushrooms, maitake mushrooms, shiso (perilla) and kabocha squash; salt for dipping; daikon oroshi (grated daikon radish) to add to a soy-based dipping sauce; and ikura oroshi (salmon roe atop grated daikon).

I've always been afraid to make tempura as it looks difficult, and I've never really seen the need to as it is readily available here. But I figured I should learn how to do it sooner or later, and now that mushrooms are cheap and plentiful it seemed like a good time to do it. I skipped the traditional shrimp and other seafood as I knew there was a good chance I'd fail, and it would be a shame to throw away good expensive ingredients. So I chose the vegetables and mushrooms knowing that failure would only cost me a few hundred yen.

It turns out that tempura is indeed hard to do well. I couldn't get the proper crispy, light and greaseless texture that I love, and a few pieces were downright soggy. I'm sure if I found a different recipe for the batter and learned to control the oil temperature I'd do a better job next time, but I suspect that tempura is one of those foods that takes a long time to master. I'm up for the challenge, and am looking for advice.

My biggest question: is it really that important to use ice-cold water in the batter? That's the big tip every single recipe mentions, but since tempura takes a while to make the batter doesn't really stay cold for very long. And looking back on visits to tempura restaurants (which usually fry the food right in front of you) they've used big tubs of batter, which likely are only made once a day. Anyway, I did use ice water for the batter, and since my tempura still didn't turn out well I'm thinking there's more to it than the tempurature of the water...

鮭の親子丼

• Shake no oyako-don: ikura no shouyu-zuke (salmon roe cured in soy sauce) and flakes of shio-jake (salted salmon) atop a bowl of rice, garnished with shiso (perilla)
• Wakame to daizu no ponzu-ae: wakame seaweed, soybeans, cucumber and myouga (ginger buds) dressed with ponzu (citrus soy sauce) and sesame
• Miso soup with tofu, wakame, mixed mushrooms, and negi (long onions)

So I made ikura (salmon roe) again, this time with soy sauce instead of salt (I posted the recipe for salted ikura last week). While ikura no shio-zuke (salted ikura) has a clean, fresh flavour that is good for sushi and western cuisine, ikura no shouyu-zuke (ikura in soy sauce) is richer and sweeter-- a perfect topping for donburi (rice bowl).

Ikura-don is a donburi topped with ikura and nothing but. It is delicious and quite luxurious, but it uses the ikura up all at once and I'd rather stretch those precious little eggs out. Adding a selection of sashimi makes it a kaisen-don (seafood donburi). And pairing ikura with salmon makes it a delicious spin on oyako-don. Oyako means "parent and child" (sometimes translated as "mother and child"), with oyako-don usually being made of chicken and eggs. But the name works just fine for salmon and salmon roe, and the two also taste great together.

Fresh figs

Fresh figs are rather new to me. I've been enjoying them in tarts for a few years, but it wasn't until last year that I actually bought and ate a whole one raw. It was a revelation, and made me wonder why it took so long to try them.

Perhaps it's because I grew up in Canada, where figs don't grow. I'd never even seen a fresh fig until I came to Japan, had no idea what they looked like. Although I occasionally encountered dried figs growing up, they were mostly in the form of Fig Newtons, which for some reason were never in the house. The only place I could eat them was at school, where I'd have to a trade for them. And since my mother so seldom packed cookies or other trade-able goodies, Fig Newtons were a rare treat. How I envied those kids whose parents regularly packed Fig Newtons in their lunches! The only kids I envied more were those who brought packets of Jell-O powder for dessert, dipping a spit-moistened finger in the package and pulling it out, dusted with a colourful coating of sweet, sweet powder. They'd then stick their finger in their mouth and suck all the sweet Jell-O goodness off, with an expression of pure bliss.

Now that I look back I can't help but think that sending ones kids off to school with a package of Jell-O is verging on child abuse, and I no longer resent my Mom for not doing so. But I'm not sure if I'm ready to forgive her for failing to supply me with Fig Newtons.

So I have many figless years to make up for, and now that I know that fresh ones are even better than dried, Japan seems to be the perfect place. Domestic figs are in season for a relatively long time in early autumn (thanks to Japan's long North-South configuration) and are no more expensive than any other fruit of the season. Not knowing what to do with them was what prevented me from buying them for so long, but last year so many food blogs featured fresh figs that I was inspired to try them. I just ate them all raw, not wanting to screw anything up. Baby steps.

This year I knew it was time to take it to the next level. I started simply:

Fresh figs roasted with Gorgonzola and pecans. No sauce, although I did drizzle a few with honey. These were lovely, although walnuts would have been nicer. Sadly my husband, a fan of neither figs nor Gorgonzola, had to leave the room while I ate.

Next I poached them whole in a sweetish Riesling, with honey, vanilla, lemon peel and cinnamon. After letting sit in the poaching juices for a day, this was just heavenly. And it was even better the next day, paired with a scoop of vanilla ice cream:

For the sauce, I just removed the cinnamon, vanilla and lemon peel from the poaching juices and reduced it to a syrup. It turned a very pretty colour and was so delicious that I'll double the poaching liquid next time, just so I can make extra syrup.

Figs are still in the markets, so I think I'll have time to cook with figs once more this season. Any ideas?

Penne alla vodka

A big favourite around here is penne alla vodka, a classic Italian-American pasta that combines a simple tomato cream sauce with vodka, which gives it a subtle kick. It is just lovely and would be on our table a lot more often if I wasn't so cream-phobic. But Hideaki has been requesting it lately, and since he's now sick with a cold I thought that cooking up a batch might have a therapeutic effect.

It seemed to work, although at first I thought he didn't like it. He was eating it so slowly, and when I asked why he said he was eating a single piece at a time, in order for it to last longer. Cute. I just wolfed mine down as usual.

So here is the recipe. The pancetta (or bacon if you live here in Japan where pancetta is a luxury) and red pepper flakes are optional. The cream, vodka and Parmigiano are not.

Penne alla vodka 

• 3 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
• 150 grams pancetta or bacon, thinly sliced
• 2 to 3 cloves garlic, minced
• pinch of red pepper flakes, or to taste
• 2 400 gram cans whole tomatoes, pureed
• 100 ml vodka
• 250 grams penne
• 150 ml cream
• 2 Tbsp chopped fresh parsley
• pinch of salt, or to taste
• 4 Tbsp grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, plus more for garnish

Heat the olive oil in a large heavy pan, add the pancetta and cook on medium-low heat until lightly browned, about 5 minutes. Remove half of pancetta for garnish.

Add the garlic and red pepper flakes to the pan and saute for 2 minutes over low heat. Carefully pour in the pureed tomatoes and salt to taste, stir and increase the heat to medium. Bring to a boil, add the vodka and let simmer for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, cook the penne in a large pot of salted water. Drain when al dente. Add the cream to the sauce and mix in well, then add the penne and parsley. Bring to a boil and cook over medium-high heat about 5 minutes, or until the sauce is reduced and clings to the pasta. Stir in the Parmigiano and taste sauce, adding salt if necessary.

Spoon onto plates and top with the reserved pancetta and a sprinkle of Parmigiano.

Serves 2 to 3