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There hasn't been much food around here in recent months so I think it's time to show you what I've been eating lately. And lately it's been lots of stews and nabe (hotpots), which are warming, easy to make and usually can be stretched into several meals: perfect for cold weather and a period of my life when I'm busy and not really into cooking.

We'll start with the gyusuji nikomi (stewed beef tendon) above, which was simmered for hours until tender in soy sauce and sake along with daikon, shiitake, negi (long onion), shirataki (konnyaku, or devil's tongue jelly, noodles), and eggs. Served with rice and chopped okra mixed with katsuobushi (bonito flakes) and soy sauce, this was a healthy meal: beef tendon is so extremely flavourful that we only ate a very small amount of meat but enjoyed its rich flavour in the food it was simmered with.

It made a few days worth of leftovers. Here tofu and stronger seasonings have been added, making it good for eating with rice. And when the solid ingredients were gone we ate neko manma, a slightly naughy indulgance. Neko manma literally means "cat food" (manma being baby talk for solid food) and it refers to the dish that results from mixing the leftovers of a meal together, which is then fed to the cat. It's usually rice mixed with miso soup or the liquid from stews like the one above and happens to be an absolutely delicious way to finish a meal, but it is bad manners both to mix food and to add stuff to rice (people here have a weird thing for the sacred purity of white rice and would drop dead with shock if they saw a westerner pour soy sauce directly onto her rice). So even everybody loves eating this way, they all know it's bad manners and continue to call it cat food. Even when there's no cat and they have every intention of eating it themselves. Anyway, try neko manma for yourself, but do it at home--this is not something to do in company.

Here is oden, a stew of daikon, and any number of other foods, usually fish or tofu related. The bowl above includes egg, hampen (steamed fish cake), yaki chikuwa (a steamed and grilled tube of fish paste), yakidoufu (grilled tofu), chikuwabu (a chewy tube of wheat gluten), konnyaku (devil's tongue jelly), and daikon. There was plenty more in the pot and this is just a small sampling of oden, but you can probably imagine that it's warming and healthy. But it's also far more satisfying than many healthy foods thanks to all the variety (and also thanks to the delicious broth, made with kombu and katsuobushi and flavoured with sake and light soy sauce). It can be a very budget-friendly food, and this meal is especially so: the daikon greens were sauteed in sesame oil, flavoured with soy sauce and sesame seeds and added to the rice, and a side dish was made by simmering the daikon peels with the kombu (kelp) and katsuobushi (dried bonito) used to make the oden broth. The greens and used kombu and katsuobushi tend to get thrown out in modern Japanese households, but taking the time to turn them into something edible is so rewarding.

Here are the ingredients to one of the many nabes I made this winter. Hakusai (Chinese cabbage), salmon, ground chicken mixed with garlic, ginger and other seasonings (to be spooned into the broth as meatballs), thinly sliced pork, grated daikon, shungiku (chrysanthemum leaves), atsu-age (fried tofu), negi (long onion) and shiitake.

Here are some of the ingredients ready to eat, cooked in kombu dashi (kelp stock) at the table. The good is added to the broth and taken out to eat litle by little, with the stock being monitered: extra stock will be added when it gets low, and periodically the foam that rises to the top will be skimmed off (the pot above is due for a skimming).

With some nabe the food is plucked from the pot, placed in a bowl and eaten as-is, but we usually add flavourings. In the bowl is grated daikon and ponzu (soy-based citrus sauce), and the food gets dipped in that before eating. Eventually the stock becomes so tasty from all of the ingredients that little extra flavouring is needed, and when the ingredients have run out udon noodles or rice is cooked in the leftover broth. In our house this is usually done the next day or the next day after that as we like to stretch the nabe into a few meals. We also cook extra ingredients in the nabe and serve them the next day as a kind of stew, so when you see the huge amount of ingredients in the pictures above and below don't assume we ate it all at once--we're not total pigs.

Another nabe, a bit classier but featuring many of the same ingredients. The hakusai, shiitake, tofu and pork are the same as usual (they show up for practically every nabe at our house), and there are a few special ingredients, including a mystery green (there are so many types of leafy greens in Japan that I haven't even tried half of them, and totally forget what this new one was) and enokidake mushrooms.

Kuzukiri, noodles made of kuzu starch. They are flavourless but are very good at absorbing flavours and have a nice jelly-like texture. They are pre-soaked before being added to the nabe and left to simmer for several minutes, and when they're ready they must be eaten quickly before they turn too soft.

Fresh oysters. This is not my favourite way of eating oysters but they add such a wonderful flavour to the broth.

Buri (yellowtail) sashimi. I sliced it myself with my knew knife, and while I wouldn't call this an expert job it's the best I've done so far. The sashimi can be eaten as-is or dipped in the nabe.

And there it is ready to eat. The sashimi to be eaten up that night, but the other ingredients lasted for another meal.

The next day udon and egg were added to the broth to make this rich udon soup. I almost like this better than the original nabe.

And that's a brief summary of our recent dinners. There is still a month or two of nabe and stew weather and I intend to make full use of it, and at the same time I'm looking forward to lighter spring fare. Hopefully you'll be seeing more yummy stuff on this blog.

Comments

[kat]

love neko manma and eat it often, in the privacy of my home :)

[Hanna]

Everything looks absolutely delicious! The eggs look quite big, are they hens eggs or from some other bird?

[Amy]

Kat, me too but let's just make that our little secret.

Hanna, they're hen eggs but now that you point it out I do think the eggs are a bit bigger here.

[sara]

Amy, we are having a cold snap here in california, so your stews and soups look divine. My best friend is Japanese, and I laughed out loud when i read this: "and would drop dead with shock if they saw a westerner pour soy sauce directly onto her rice" Becuase Tomoko just about had a heart attack when I did this one afternoon at her house in highschool. I've never seen her loose her cool, and yet she had a fulll blown fit in the kitchen about my horrid american manners. Woo! ^_^

[Mari L'Esperance]

Do you think the chickens in Japan are given hormones to increase the size of their eggs?

These stews and nabes look so warming, comforting, and delicious. Better than attempting to make them myself!

I was in a Japanese restaurant in Alameda (San Francisco Bay Area) a while ago. An elderly American couple sitting at the table next to me asked the waiter for 1) forks (for their sushi) and 2) sugar to put in their green tea. I almost spit up my food! The forks I can understand (it's partly a generational thing), but sugar in green tea?!?!? Yikes!!!

[David]

Ha ha, your knew knife. Good one! I look at these photos and your ingredients and I want to say that it seems you and my wife learned to cook from the same person.
I also think that anyone who says the only Japanese food is sushi, should read your blog - or get out more.
We don't often have nabe cooking at the table. Our daughter is very curious, and I don't trust those table top propane burners. That's a problem I'll have to work on because we don't get to add the ingredients on the fly as we go. The last time we did that was in Japan last spring. I kinda miss it. I don't think I've ever had kombu dashi, but wouldn't know for sure. You're right about the leftovers, somehow they become better the next day...

[Amy]

Sara, that's a funny story. I guess you and Tomoko both learned something that day.

Mari, I'm not sure why the eggs are so big. But they taste better than Canadian eggs (chicken meat does too) and are generally safe to eat raw, so I suspect that the Japanese give *fewer* hormones and medications to their chickens and raise them a little more humanely. Or maybe that's just wishful thinking.
The forks and sugar in the tea is funny but at least they were trying something new, that's far more adventurous than many people. Tea is a funny thing: if you're used to drinking it sweetened, it can be a shock to try a new type without sugar. I remember the last time I met my Grandma we went out for Chinese food. She liked Chinese food (this was out west, where every little town has had a Chinese restaurant since way back when) and was fine with everything we'd ordered, but she hated the tea (I think it was Jasmine). She called it "pee tea" and refused to drink it!

David, I can see how tabletop cooking could be scary with little kids, but there must be some way to make it safe. I hope you find out how. You've almost certainly had kombu dashi, but it's very subtle so you probably didn't realize it.