CSA week 13 - Komatsuna udon

This is actually a cross between two traditional Japanese dish--sansai udon and ohitashi--to create something that isn't quite either but I think takes some good elements from both.

The common element between the two is greens--komatsuna commonly--and a soy-dashi broth. I created a somewhat richer and more complex broth by caramelizing (or at least browning. I haven't got the patience or temperature control on my stove to properly caramelize onions.) half an onion and then sautéing the CSA oyster mushrooms until they'd browned a little and started releasing moisture. Then I added:
4 cups water
2 teaspoons instant dashi crystals
4 Tablespoons soy sauce
2 Tablespoons rice wine
4 teaspoons mirin, and
2 teaspoons sugar.

Once I had brought that to a simmer I added a pack of udon noodles and cooked for the three minutes recommended on the package. Then I fished those out and set them aside.

Then into the broth went the thicker komatsuna stems and six ounces of deep fried tofu. You can buy pre-fried tofu, but the stuff you buy is puffy and I prefer the chewy texture of homemade. The six ounces is half a standard block of tofu. After a minute of simmering I added the komatsuna leaves, waited until they wilted down, and then turned off the heat and let them soak for ten minutes. One of the recipes I drew from instead left the komatsuna whole and had you tie the leaves into a bunch with butcher string and dangle the stem ends in the broth for a minute before dropping the leafy ends in too. I didn't really have room in my pot for that, but it's an interesting idea.

After the ten minutes are up, warm the soup back up and put serving portions of the noodles into individual bowls. Once the soup's at serving temperature, add greens and tofu to each bowl, ladel over the soup and garnish with scallions, garlic chives and shredded nori.


I accidentally deleted my first draft (first time since starting the blog which isn't a bad run) so I don't have a detailed description of my impressions of the dish when I ate it last Thursday. The broth, I recall writing, was rich and complex, having absorbed flavors both from the onion and mushroom but also komatsuna. The noodles, greens and tofu each absorbed some flavor from the broth too, but not so much that they lost their own distinctive flavors. There's a nice variety of textures in the bowl too. I particularly liked how the tofu squishes out stock when you chew it. It's a tasty and pretty hearty dinner considering the lack of meat (beyond a bit of fish in the dashi).

Another interesting idea in one of the source recipes was, instead of udon, cooking rice in the broth. I tried that the following day but was a bit disappointed in the result as a lot of the broth's flavor disappeared, locked away inside the rice. Plus the rice got kind of mushy. That's probably more because of my rice cooker's sensors getting confused than anything inherent in the broth, though. I did like the suggestion in that recipe of adding a beaten egg to the rice when it was just about done cooking, but you'd be better served adding an egg to the noodle variation.

CSA week nine wrap-up, week ten start-up

I made a couple dishes worth mentioning here but not worth a full post. The radishes, cabbage and avocado garnished fish tacos made with beer battered mahi mahi. Mahi is a particularly good fish for the purpose, by the way.

I also made a yakitori using more cabbage, spring onion, green pepper, carrots and rapini (which I misidentified last week, but can recognize now that I've got some proper komatsuna for comparison). Most recipes just toss everything in a pan, fry it up and call it a day, but I found one with an interesting approach I wanted to try. I separately cooked the meat, vegetables and noodles, keeping each a little al dente. Then I fried the noodles in a large pan long enough to dry them out a little but not to get them crispy and mixed in the meat and a somewhat watered-down sauce. Then I laid the vegetables out on top of the noodles. Once the sauce came to a boil, I covered the pan and reduced the heat. The idea is that the excess water boils off, steaming the vegetables while the noodles absorb the sauce's flavors. Once the pan is just about dry, it's done. The goals is to keep the flavors clean and distinct and I think it worked pretty well. A step above previous yakitoris I've made where the flavors have been on the muddy side.

I finished the week with half a cabbage, one spring onion, a little parsley and a completely untouched head of lettuce left. So I think that's the last straw; I'm leaving the lettuce behind from now on.



For week ten, let's start with the fruit. Hidden in the back left corner are a couple carambolas and in the middle are two tangerines and two sour oranges. I think. There were supposed to be four tangerines and one orange, but I think I've got everything correctly identified. The oranges are very juicy so, if they've got both and good and a good amount of flavor, unlike much of the fruit we've had so far, I'm thinking doing an ice cream.

Also on the left hand side is a bunch of komatsuna. I want to use it in its traditional role in a Japanese soup or hot pot. I might freeze it to wait until we get some daikon so I can do it properly. Or maybe I'll just wilt them down, dress them in a sesame dressing and serve them as a bento-style side-dish.

Next to the komatsuna are four tiny canistels. I've just used my leftover roasted canistel in another savory application (even stranger than the meatballs) so I want to make something sweet with these. I'm curious if I could use them in the meringue cookie/mini-spongecake recipe I came up with last week so I might try that.

Next up a big bunch of scallions. Combined with my leftover spring onion and a bunch of store-bought scallions I've got, that's quite a bit and hard to use up in one shot. I've found a Greek scallion pie recipe that's interesting, but I don't really want to make it without the fresh chervil it calls for and I know I'm unlikely to get my hands on any. Maybe I'll ditch the dill and mint it calls for too and completely switch around the flavor profile. Other than that, there's Chinese-style scallion pancakes, but those use less than you'd expect. I'll have to think about this.

That's a bag of thyme to the right. There's way too much to bother coming up with thyme heavy recipes to try to use it up. The last bag like this we got I just stuck in the freezer and have been pulling from ever since. The flavor's not quite as good as fresh, but it's not bad and it's certainly convenient.

The radishes I've already used half of. I really like them thinly sliced and fried, particularly with eggs, so I'll probably use the rest that way.

Below that's a bunch of cilantro. This particular bunch was already half rotted so there's less there than it appears. Since I've got parsley from last week too I might make something North African, but I might just pull from both to season whatever comes up. Most savory dishes could benefit from a handful of one or the other if you ask me.

And finally, the bag in the bottom center is full of baby arugula which I quite like wilted over pasta in a butter/olive oil sauce with a bit of ham and, maybe, a fried egg. I've discussed this before, I'm certain. It's one of my go-to comfort food don't-feel-like proper cooking dishes.

Tofu donburi

So what to do with the first big batch of rice I impetuously made after unpacking my new rice cooker? I considered just adding a little butter and digging in, but I wanted a real meal. I could have gone with the Chinatown steamed chicken I described last week, but I've only got chicken thighs and they don't steam up so well. Then it hit me: donburi! They're called rice bowls in English, giving the rice top billing over whatever they're served with, which seemed appropriate.

There are lots of variations, but usually it's a protein and some vegetables, including onion of some sort, mixed with beaten egg and served with a sweet sauce made of stock, soy sauce and a sweetener.

I, because I was feeling too lazy to defrost a chunk of meat, went with tofu as my main ingredient. I used firm tofu, cut into blocks about an inch square by two inches and deep-fried for about a couple minutes longer than you usually want to. Usually, when you're frying tofu, you're just getting it a little golden and crisp around the edges. If you cook it longer, the golden layer thickens and the tofu gets dried out and chewy. In this case, that's a good thing. The tofu firms up as it cools so it was still soft enough that I was able to squeeze out the absorbed oil with my tongs as I pulled it out of the pan.

I also dug up a few scraps of sirloin I had in the back of the refrigerator; sliced them thin; marinated in soy sauce, white pepper and sesame oil; shook them dry and gave them a quick dip in cooking oil. Just enough to brown since they're getting cooked a little more later.

Next, in a small pot, I combined 1 cup mushroom stock, 2 Tablespoons soy sauce and 1 1/2 Tablespoons sugar and brought it to a boil. I added the tofu and mushrooms, turned down the heat and simmered for 5 minutes to let them absorb the sauce's flavors. And just absorb the sauce, I suppose.

Meanwhile, I beat a couple eggs and mixed in a large scallion, sliced into 2-inch lengths and the beef I half-cooked earlier. After the 5 minutes were up, I turned the heat up a little and added the egg mixture. Once I saw that the egg had started to solidify, I turned the heat back down, covered the pot and let it simmer for 3 minutes more.

After that, I just dumped half over a big bowl of rice and served (and saved the rest for later). But what I should have done was to fish out the solids and then thicken the sauce with a little corn starch. That would have disguised the ugliness of this bowl a little bit.


Appearances aside, it tastes great. The sauce is a balance of savory and sweet that's a bit intense on its own, but just right absorbed into a whole lot of rice. The simmering has softened the tofu from leathery to a pleasantly meaty chew. The sauce's flavors penetrated through the outer layers, but left a creamy plainer tofu center. The mushrooms, on the other hand, soaked up the sauce and give off bursts of flavor at the bite. And the rest add some nice flavors and textures without being worth noting in detail.

It should make a good weekday meal since it's so quick and easy. Here's a more generalized recipe:

Ingredients:
1/2 pound of firm tofu, cut into largish chunks
a little meat or fish, cut into strips [or ditch the tofu and add more meat if you like]
4 small dried shiitake mushrooms, soaked and quartered
1 large or 2 small scallions, both white and green parts or a white onion, cut into 1-2" lengths
some broccoli, fresh mushrooms, greens or daikon wouldn't be a bad addition. Just add heartier stuff early and more delicate ingredients late
1 cup stock or dashi
2 Tablespoons soy sauce
1 1/2 Tablespoons sugar or mirin
maybe a couple teaspoons sake
2 large eggs, beaten lightly
lots of white rice

0. Start cooking the rice.

1. Deep or pan fry the tofu until golden brown and crispy. Par-cook the meat.

2. Mix sauce ingredients and bring to a boil. Add tofu and dried or tough vegetables. Simmer 5 minutes.

3. Mix egg with meat, delicate vegetables and onion. Add to pot. Cover and simmer 3 minutes more.

4. Remove solids from pot and divvy up amongst two or three bowls of rice. Measure 2 teaspoons cornstarch into a small bowl. Add a small ladle of the sauce and mix well. Pour back into pot and simmer until thickened slightly. Top the rice bowls, add a sprinkling of sesame seeds to garnish and serve.

CSA week 19 - garlic soba noodles with kale and scallops

So I was searching on-line for a New York Times recipe for kale that substituted soba noodles for a traditional Italian buckwheat pasta and discovered a) the non-healthified version of that dish uses cabbage and potatoes (other CSA veges I've still got) and looks really good and b) there are Japanese recipes that legitimately pair soba noodles with kale. I set the Italian recipe aside and went with Japanese tonight.

There doesn't seem to be a particular name for this dish, but a couple pages of Google results roughly agreed on the recipe. Cook the soba noodles and set them aside. Shred the kale, blanch it for a few minutes and then sauté just like the Brazilian recipe I posted about a while back. Maybe this is a recent Sushi Samba sort of thing. Garlic, shiitakes and scallions are standard additions. Scallops my own since I wanted a bit of protein.

I sautéed the kale over very high heat and it took a couple minutes before it started wilting properly. I added the shiitakes early on, the garlic just as the wilting started and the scallops and scallions right before taking it off the heat and mixing with the noodles.

For the sauce I went the lazy route and used the little packets that came with the soba. I saw a recipe that simmered the shiitakes with some kombu instead of soaking and boil that down and mix with a bit of soy instead which sounds interesting.

Deglaze the pan with a little rice wine, mix in that and the sauce, top with a little sesame and/or chili oil and, if you've got it, shredded nori and you're done.


The texture on the kale's pretty good--just a little firm to the bite, but I wish it had retained a little more flavor. The chunky bits stand up to the sauce but the little bits of kale and scallion have trouble. Their not entirely lost, but it would be nice if they stood out a bit more. I think I'd use big chunks of scallion next time, but there's not much to be done about the kale. Maybe some salt in the blanching water to brighten it up.

Also, in retrospect this would be best chilled instead of slightly above room temperature. And that means this would work as a potluck dish and you could trick unsuspecting innocents into eating kale. Interesting.

CSA week five - potstickers, part 2

I stopped by Lucky Oriental Mart on the way home from work today and picked up some dumpling wrappers to substitute for my failed attempt last night. There were four choices: square vs. round and egg vs. eggless (and also, eggless with yellow die #2 so it looks like it has eggs in it). With egg was labeled Hong Kong-style and eggless Shanghai-style. I was tempted to go for Hong Kong as that's the home of dim sum, but I wanted to reproduce what I tried to make so round, eggless it was to be.

Once I had the package defrosted it was time to stuff. I didn't ruin any even from the start but it did take some time to find a method that worked really well.

I understand that fresh dough would stick closed on its own, but this dough I had to wet around the edges. I kept a little bowl of water and would dip a couple fingers and run them around the circumference. I tried a brush (as I had to redip a couple times to make it all the way around), but that spread too much water and made the dough mushy. So fingers it was to be which slowed the process down considerably.

For each dumpling I scooped out about a Tablespoon of filling using a coffee scoop and dislodged it onto the wrapper using a teaspoon so I didn't get it all over my fingers. After a bit I realized I needed to put the filling in the top half of the wrapper and press it down a little to spread it out. Then I could fold the bottom half up and seal it at one spot at the top. Once the wrapper was held in place I'd seal up which ever side had the filling closer to the edge first, pushing it in to even things out, and then the other side ending not quite at the bottom so I could squeeze out any excess filling as if it was a little pastry bag.

Once I had it sealed up I had to make sure it stayed closed so I pleated the edges starting from the top and then a couple times down each side ending with a folded in corner if I had enough spare dough to do it. It's a two hand process so I'm afraid I didn't get any pictures of the process; sorry. Try YouTube; there are video tutorials that are better than anything I could have done.

It's not tricky after you get the hang of it--kind of meditative, really--and my end results look about right, I think. Pretty time consuming, though. I filled up 38 dumplings total which is not a whole lot for the amount of filling I had. They do seem a little plumper than most I've seen. But then I'm not selling them by the dozen so it doesn't pay me to skimp.

I put most of them onto a sheet of freezer paper on a baking sheet so they can freeze individually before I pack them away. I made sure to press them down a little bit to give them flat bottoms so they'll sit up in the pan later.

But several I kept aside for dinner. You can steam them, boil them in soup, deep fry them, but I wanted to do use the real potsticker method. So I lighted oiled a non-stick pan (If you do this right, non-stick isn't necessary. That's how this method developed and how they got the name. The dumplings stick at first and then unstick themselves.), laid in the dumplings and then added enough water to come about halfway up their sides. Optionally, you can use chicken stock, but I wanted to see how my dumplings held up on their own first.

Then I just covered the pan, with the cover slightly askew to let steam escape, turned the heat to medium high and waited for the water to completely evaporate. When the water's gone; they're done. I gave them an extra minute since, as you can see, they bloated monstrously and I wanted to be sure they were cooked all the way through. That was a mistake, though, and I ended up overcooking the flavor out of them. When cooking them from frozen, you need that extra minute and this is the first time I've cooked fresh. I'll know better next time.

I am pleased that, despite the bloat, none of them burst (at least until I picked them up. They didn't stick to the pan, but they did stick to each other). Partially that's thanks to the store-bought, machine-manufactured wrappings, but my seals stayed sealed so there's that. They're nicely crisp on the bottom and soft and chewy on top as potstickers should be. And, even overcooked, they made fine meaty dipping sauce delivery tools. I made the traditional sauce: soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, a bit of ginger, a bit of scallion and a bit of sesame oil. I like chiu chow chili oil thinned with a little soy, too.

You know, the pre-made wrappers were just fine and they only cost around $2.29 and I have trouble imagining my homemade would be any better even if I made them perfectly. I'm choosing to be O.K. with not successfully making my own.

Before I sign off here, I'd like to mention that, in a remarkable synchronicity, La Diva of http://ladivacucina.blogspot.com is making gow gee, just about the same dumpling but steamed instead of potstuck. Check out her post about it here.

CSA week three - Sunomono

Sunomono is a generic term for any vinegary Japanese side-dish salad. I had this with my leftover sukiyaki and I thought the contrast of the astringent salad dressing and the sweet sukiyaki sauce improved both dishes.

I cobbled my version together from several recipes I found on-line, but there's not a huge amount of variety out there.

Ingredients:
1 medium cucumber
1 small daikon
1/2 Tablespoon salt
dressing:
1 fluid oz soy sauce
1/2 fluid oz rice wine vinegar
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1/4 teaspoon chili oil
1 pinch sugar

3 oz picked crab meat

0. Don't peel the cucumber or the daikon. OK, you can peel the daikon if you really want to.

1. Thinly slice the cucumber and daikon in similar ways. I used my mandoline to make somewhat larger julienne than I really wanted. I probably should have used my food processor and made shreds instead. Coins would be fine too. I also probably should have scooped out the cucumber seeds but they did no great harm.

2. Toss vegetables with salt and put into a colander. Let them desiccate and drain for 45 minutes. Rinse off the salt and drain/spin/pat dry the vegetables.

3. Mix the dressing ingredients. Put the vegetables and the crab into a bowl, add the dressing, toss, let sit in the refrigerator for 15 minutes before serving.

Those 15 minutes are actually important I found. Not only does that give the vegetables time to soak up some of the dressing, but the flavors are best at just below room temperature.

I know you don't have crab. I wouldn't either if I hadn't bought it for the callaloo last week. The dish is OK without it, but it's really much better and much more Japanese (which was important to me as I was pairing it with the also distinctively Japanese combination of soy, sweet and fishy in the sukiyaki). The slight bite of the daikon and the cool freshness of the cucumber both pair nicely with the crab. Right now, I'm thinking the three, with a little mayo, would work just as well in little crustless sandwiches for afternoon tea. But with soy and vinegar, yeah, very Japanese. Serve with teriyaki, yakitori, anything yaki, really.

CSA week three - sukiyaki with hon tsai tai

I had heard the term sukiyaki and had a passing familiarity with the dish when I decided to make it, but I really didn't know what I was getting into. It's a dish more suitable for a family or party than one guy, but once I get an idea in my head for this sort of thing I find it tough to change course.

Sukiyaki, if you break it down to its basics, has two main parts: a sampler platter of chunks of raw ingredients and some sauce to simmer them in.

I used the most complicated sauce recipe I could locate which I found here.

"Warishita (Sukiyaki Sauce):

1/2 Cup Soy Sauce
3/4 Cup Mirin
1/2 Cup Sugar
1/4 Cup Water
1/4 Sake
1/4 tsp Dashi No Moto(optional)
1 clove garlic smashed (optional)

Combine Warishita ingredients(except for dashi no moto) and bring to a boil while stirring, turn down heat and simmer for 3-5 minutes to burn off alcohol. Remove from heat and add dashi no moto, if desired. Remove from heat and cool. Let the sauce "rest" at least 20 minutes, or over night."

Dashi, in case you're unfamiliar, is a fish/seaweed broth which is probably the most common broth in Japanese cooking. It's available in dried granulated form. From the 1/4 teaspoon measurement I'm pretty sure that's what Kirk K., whose recipe I'm filching, means. Which is a good thing as that's what I've got handy.

This sauce is the good stuff. Sweet but with several layers of rich savory flavors even before I start to simmer anything in it.


As for that anything, there's a a lot of variation--regional I think--about what goes into the pot. There's most agreement on beef, enoki mushrooms and yam noodles. Beef I'm using, of course, enoki mushrooms I wish I had but I'm not willing to go out shopping for them right now. Instead I'm using shiitakes, also common, and creminis. Yam noodles are pretty bland and have a nasty rubbery texture so I'm substituting in egg noodles, a move sure to appall purists. Also going in are sliced bamboo shoots, onion, (scallion if I wasn't just about out of it), tofu, and hon tsai tai.

I didn't turn up any sukiyaki recipes that actually called for hon tsai tai, but I did find plenty using spinach and one using mazuna so it should fit in fine.

A sidebar on the hon tsai tai before I continue here. One common thread I noticed in the sparse documentation on using hon tsai tai was complaints about the woody stems. Our batch this year seems rather better on that score than last year's. I think that's because this is younger. I don't see the distinctive yellow flowers and many of the stems are still green. The more purple the stem the woodier it is so I'm avoiding the worst this time around.

There is still some woodiness, though, so I'm going to pick through the bundle harvesting the leaves and keeping only the most tender stems. Everything else I'm packing away for the next time I make stock.

Last year I suggested cooking the hon tsai tai like kale, but I think this batch is more on par with spinach so it's not going to need a long braise, just a quick simmer in the sauce.

So, step two, after making the sauce (and pre-cooking the noodles), is to brown everything that needs pre-browning. In my case that's the tofu and the beef. Traditionally, a cast iron pan is greased down with a chunk of beef fat. I've still got some lard kicking around so I used that. And can I point out that my fresh-rendered lard is substantially less hydrogenated than the big block from the supermarket so it's no worse for me than butter? First I fried the tofu (which isn't traditional but I like a little texture on my tofu), removed it from the cast iron pan and let it rest to crisp up. Then, when I was ready to eat, I seasoned the beef with a pinch of salt and a few drops of soy sauce, browned it quickly on both sides and gathered it up into a pile at the side of the pan.


Next I poured in the sauce and added the greens. I wanted them to wilt down before adding anything else so I put them in right away to let them cook as the sauce came to a boil.





Once it got there, everything else went in--each to its own sector of the pan--and I simmered at medium heat for three minutes before it was ready to serve.




The traditional method of eating sukiyaki is too keep the pot simmering away. Everyone sits around it picking out what they want and cooling each bite by dipping it into a small bowl of slightly thinned beaten egg. Yeah, I know and I understand your trepidation. Japanese folks accept a wider range of food textures than most anyone else. But it's not a problem in this case; There's no raw egg mouth feel at all. The boiling hot meat and vegetables cook the egg they come in contact with and the tiny bit that sticks to them mixes with the clinging layer of sauce to add body and temper the sweetness--improving flavor and texture as well as doing its job as a heat sink. It's actually an essential step that does a lot for the dish.

I don't have a hibachi to set up on a table--heck, I don't have a dinner table--so I had to eat at the stove which is not a dignified operation let me tell you. I think I had the burner cranked up a bit too high because the beef overcooked pretty quickly; I probably should have used skirt steak or the like instead of the more delicate cut I had in the freezer. The onions passed through a properly cooked, firm but not raw, stage at around five minutes and then started cooking down. On the other hand, the noodles and the mushrooms stayed good throughout which was nice.

The hon tsai tai turned out to be much tougher than it looks and took a very long time to soften up. The leaves aren't as thick as most tough greens, but they're very fibrous. It's like chewing on a strip of fabric if it's undercooked. On the other hand, its slightly bitter flavor played against the sweet sauce beautifully. Even with the textural issue, it was the best component of the dish.

Overall, an interesting experience but I could use a bit of practice to get this right. On the CSA end of things it wasn't the best possible use of hon tsai tai. That really needs a braise. If we get any more I'm just going make up a mess of greens southern-style with a chunk of salt pork and a dollop of molasses and be done with it.

I also made a daikon/cucumber salad but since I accidentally made enough food for four people, I didn't eat much. I'll give it a separate post tomorrow.

Teriyaki tuna and tofu

Here's a dish I threw together tonight that I think turned out well enough to share. I now compulsively photograph everything I cook so even though I didn't know I'd be posting about it until it's done, it's fully documented.

Ingredients:

1 tuna steak, about 1/3 pound - cut in 2 inch cubes
1/3 pound extra firm tofu - cut in 2 inch cubes

marinade:
a few glugs of soy sauce
half as much sake
a generous pinch of brown sugar
finely grated ginger
white pepper
red pepper
(obviously, I didn't measure so I'm not going to make quantities up now)


2 scallions, sliced thin - white and green separated
4 leaves bok choy - sliced thin - stem and leaves separated
1 carrot, in very thin strips

2 eggs

squeeze of lemon
drizzle of sesame oil

white rice, cooked however you cook your white rice


1. Mix the marinade ingredients. Add tuna and tofu. Marinate one hour, turning half way through.

2. Drain marinade into a small bowl and set aside. Pat tuna dry.

3. Heat a Tablespoon of oil to nearly smoking in a medium non-stick pan. Sear tuna for no more than 30 seconds, flip and sear again. Remove.

4. Repeat with tofu for about the same time. Remove to bowl with tuna. Keep someplace warm.

5. Add a bit more oil to the pan as the previous Tablespoon is now all over your stovetop, shirt and glasses. Actually, you might want to go wash your face at this point.

6. Give the oil a moment to heat up then add the bok choy stems and the white part of the scallion. Stir fry until wilted. Add the rest of the vegetables. Stir fry briefly. I let the cabbage get a bit browned for some extra flavor, but it's up to you.

7. Remove pan from heat. Crack in the two eggs and stir to lightly scramble. When eggs are not quite dry, remove to bowl.

8. Pack a bowl with white rice. Top with four cubes of tuna and four of tofu. Add a third of the vegetable mixture. Pour a third of the marinade on and finish with lemon and sesame oil.

If you want a proper restaurant-style teriyaki sauce, you'll want to make a bit more of the marinade, bring it to a boil in a small pot, add no more than a Tablespoon of cornstarch (dissolved in cold water) and let thicken. Personally, I didn't want to let everything else get cold while I did that. But if you're keeping everything someplace warm as I suggested above, it would probably be an improvement.

The tuna and tofu absorbed plenty of flavor from the marinade but still maintained their own character and texture. You could use meat or shrimp instead but then you'd definitely want to boil the sauce for a while. Or you could use all tofu. You could mix and match the vegetables, too. Mushrooms or peppers would work well. Maybe even broccoli, but I think that would throw off the quick cooking and you wouldn't the bright fresh flavors I got.

So, quick, easy and tasty. Fresh and fairly healthy. I'm rather pleased with it.

CSA - Avocado salmon sushi

Next up out of last week's CSA share are the avocados which are finally ripe enough to use. This first recipe doesn't use a whole lot of it, but it's been a really long time since I've made sushi at home and it's good to keep up the skills.

This was something of a spur of the moment idea though and I don't keep sushi-grade fish just lying around the house. I do have some not-too-bad salmon, though, so I decided to use that. There are a couple of choices if you're going to use lesser fish for sushi: either you can sear it, and if my salmon had skin that's the way I would have gone, or you can chop it up into a paste like you find in spicy tuna rolls.

My woefully understocked pantry is missing Japanese-style mayonnaise too so a real spicy roll wasn't going to happen. Instead, after mashing up my salmon (and removing the darker-colored nasty-tasting line of flesh that runs down the middle. I thought it was called a bloodline, but looking up the term didn't turn up information on it so I must have been wrong.) I added a couple dashes of powdered wasabi, a dash of powdered ginger, a dash of white pepper, a couple teaspoons of soy sauce and a teaspoon of sesame oil. I mixed that all up and set it aside in the refrigerator to let the flavors of the powders bloom a bit.

Next up is the rice. Sushi rice should stick together because of the stuff it's mixed with, not due to starch so you need to rinse it thoroughly before cooking it. Cover the rice with water and stir until the water is cloudy with starch, pour it out and repeat until the water runs clear. I went through four rinses and my rice still turned out sticky so just do the best you can. Cook the rice in your usual way, adding in a chunk of kombu if you've got any. When the rice is done add 1/8 cup of rice wine vinegar and a Tablespoon of mirin (a little less of sugar will do) per cup of uncooked rice. Mix thoroughly and spread it out on a jelly roll pan or cookie sheet to cool. Personally I like my rice a little warm, but some people get it down to air-conditioned-room temperature. It's up to you. That's the basics. I understand it takes years to really master making sushi rice so there are plenty of subtleties I'm not even aware of much less capable of explaining.

Then comes the fillings. I sliced up half an avocado (and used no more than half of that) and slivered a scallion to go with my salmon paste. Cucumber would have been good too. Some people go for red or yellow pepper, carrots or zucchini but not me. I would have added some sesame seeds, though, if I had thought of it earlier.

Now for assembly. Take a sheet of nori and lay it out shiny side down. If you've got a bamboo sushi mat, well then you know all this so I'm going to assume you don't. I put the nori down on a cutting board, but I think that's why it lost its crunch so fast. A sheet of plastic wrap in between should help with that and with rolling later. Wet your hands and drop a lump of rice into the middle of the nori. Spread it out without pressing it down. You want a thin layer with the green of the nori visible through and an inch left bare at one end. You'll use less than you'll expect.


Then lay out the fillings at the end opposite the bare strip. This time you'll need to use a little more than you'll expect. Wet a finger and run it along the remaining exposed nori so it will stick and seal up the roll when you're done.





Once everything is laid out and ready, it's time to roll. If you used plastic wrap, grasp the edges and flip the filling-laden end of the nori over. I didn't so instead I slipped my chef's knife underneath and used that as a long spatula. If you've got an offset spatula for icing cakes, that should be ideal.




Pull the overturned section of the roll towards you to tighten it up. Not too vigorously or the nori will split, but firm enough so it holds its shape.







Finish by rolling the resulting cylinder over the rest of the rice and the exposed nori. Lay the roll seam side down and press a little to get a good seal.









Using your sharpest knife slice the roll in half, place the halves side by side and cut them in thirds.



Stand them up and if you're like me, you've got some mediocre sushi. Sushi at its best is all about balance and technique elevating simple ingredients and preparation. That's why it takes years of training. It's not really the sort of thing that's going to give exquisite results to the amateur home cook. Still, it's fun and a change of pace so worth a try now and again.

Smelt nanban zuke

If that name looks familiar it's because it's one of the dishes I had at Shiro's while I in Seattle.
I liked it a lot when I had it there and it looked straightforward enough so I thought I'd try to make it at home. If you don't want to click through, basically we're talking about deep-fried pieces of smelt in a vinegary sauce topped with a garnish of onion and pepper. Luckily, my visit to Shiro's was a couple weeks back so I have no real recollection of how it tasted there. I wouldn't want to put my version up to a direct comparison.

I looked around a bit for a recipe right after I went to Shiro's and settled on this one I found at Chilies Down Under although I couldn't tell you why at this remove:
"Nanban Zuke

Marinade

• 2 tblsp light soy sauce
• 1 small chilli (serrano, birds eye, etc) seeded and finely chopped
• 2 tblsp sake
• 700g mackerel fillets, cut into bite-sized pieces
• cornflour
• oil for frying

Sauce

• 0.5 cup rice vinegar
• 0.5 cup sugar
• 0.3 cup water
• 1 teasp salt
• 1 tablsp sake
• 1 small chilli (serrano, birds eye, etc) seeded and finely chopped
• 1 tablsp light soy sauce

Garnish

• 2 spring onions, finely chopped
• 0.5 small green capsicum, cut into thin strips
• 1 cayenne chilli seeded and finely slivered
• a few slices frish ginger, cut into slivers

Combine the sake, light soy sauce and chilli in a bowl and marinade the mackerel in it in a fridge for around 20 minutes. Take out the fish and let it drain for a minute. Dust with cornflour and fry in the oil in a frying pan until golden brown.

Blend the sauce ingredients together, place the fish in a serving dish, and pour the sauce over the fish.

Pour boiling water over the spring onion, capsicum, and chilli, leave for 30 seconds, then drain. Sprinkle the spring onion, capsicum, chilli, and ginger over the fish."

The author calls it a "classic example of the Japanese style" but "nanban" translates as "southern barbarian" if you believe Wikipedia. This article (which is pretty interesting nanban aside) explains that this dish evolved from Spanish or Portuguese escabeche, another dish I need to get around to making at some point.

I made a few adjustments to bring this recipe more in line with Shiro's. First, instead of mackerel fillets, I used whole (well whole-ish, they'd been beheaded and gutted) smelt cut into bite-sized pieces. I was hoping to find fresh smelt somewhere as Florida is known for its smelt, but I only found frozen at Whole Foods so that's what I used. Where the recipe says "cornflour" I assumed it meant cornstarch not cornmeal. I used chili oil instead of fresh chili in the sauce to better distribute the flavor. And I substituted slivers of sweet onion for the chopped scallion. And finally, I made sure everything was deeply chilled instead of room temperature

Since I wasn't using fillets I probably should have lengthened the marination. Twenty minutes wasn't enough for more than a bit of heat to soak in. Wilting the onion probably wasn't necessary; I liked the crispness of the onions at Shiro's.

Shiro's served the dish alone, but I served it over rice. I made a last minute decision to sushify my rice (1 1/2 T rice vinegar, 1 T sugar and 1/2 T salt for each cup of uncooked rice. Rinse the rice well; sushi rice should stick together because of the additions not because of starch. You might add a piece of kombu to the rice cooker too if you're thinking that far ahead.) so I went light on the sauce to keep the dish from getting too vinegary. Overall, a pretty nice summer dish. Cool, light, tart and not too much time or trouble in the kitchen. A green salad with that Japanese style dressing and some hot sake would accompany it nicely.

Seattle trip - FareStart

If you've been in suspense since Rebecca, FareStart's donor relations manager commented on my post last week, you'll be happy to hear that I e-mailed her back telling her not to waste her time on a penny ante blogger from across the continent, she insisted and, since it's her time to waste, I accepted her offer of a tour.

So Rebecca spent a half hour showing me around FareStart's facilities and explaining the operation. Basically, what FareStart does is give homeless, or nearly homeless, people a 16 week course in the kitchen skills they need to start a career and the life skills they need to keep it going.

They spend the first few weeks in the basement kitchen working on simpler prep skills creating family-style meals for local childcare centers and shelters using donated ingredients and in the classrooms learning getting basic kitchen knowledge and life skill counseling, training and services.

In the middle weeks they move up to the ground-level kitchen that serves lunches on weekdays using a deliberately widely varied menu to work the skills needed in a variety of different sorts of kitchens and the Thursday night guest chef dinners which also each week. A student will work with five different guest chefs before graduation to get a sampling of different cuisines and kitchen work styles.

In the final weeks they move on to catering work giving them another range of cooking challenges. I think I've got all that right. I'm sure Rebecca will pop up in the comments with corrections, clarifications and elaborations.

Fifty-nine students graduated the program last year out of 102 entering (most dropouts are after the first week) with an 89% job placement rate which seem like pretty good numbers to me.

As you can see in the photos, the kitchens are large and nicely appointed. I've seen plenty of worse teaching kitchens. The dining room is pretty nicely designed, too. The community table in the middle is a nice touch and tonight it was filled with the actual FareStart community including a new graduate, a hostess and admin staff. I had the option to sit there as I was dining by myself, but honestly I would have felt like a complete jackass sitting there taking notes on the food.

So, how was the food? I'm happy to say it was pretty good.

The appetizer was a grilled Japanese eggplant drizzled with sesame ponzu and topped with crunchy tempura bits and little shreds of shiso leaves. I really liked how the eggplant came out, with the thinner slices chewy and the thicker slices creamy. My favorite thing about eggplant is how it can take on both textures (although I've never quite been able to work out how to do it myself). The ponzu and shiso are a trendy pairing, but they work well adding complimentary citrus and herbal notes.

The main dish was tuna tataki, rubbed with wasabi and lightly fried in panko bread crumbs with a pair of spicy mayos, yam fries, a cabbage salad and taro chips. I've got to admit that I didn't care for the tuna, but my main problem with the dish is conceptual; I don't like treating fish, even tuna, like a chunk of chunk of red meat so preparing and presenting it like tenderloin irks me. Also, it really wasn't quite high enough quality tuna to be serving in thick raw slices so the texture wasn't terribly nice. But during my tour I saw chef Dews telling the cooks how thick to slice it so it's all her fault, not theirs. On the other hand, the fries were well done (a vital cook's skill at any level) and I really liked the cabbage salad. I've had trouble making cabbage salad myself so I'd like to have the recipe. The texture was just right with a bit of bite, but not actually crunchy and the seasoning managed to highlight the cabbage's natural flavors without overwhelming them. The taro chips were toasty and crisp but mine had a bit too much finishing salt.

Dessert was chocolate lavender mousse with a candied lavender wand. The mousse was well done; I saw some pretty good folding technique as I walked through the kitchen. There was enough lavender to round out the chocolate flavor but not enough to be identifiable on its own if you didn't know it was in there. The lavender wand was a fun little accessory and pretty tasty on its own. I probably should have resisted the temptation to stir my coffee with it, though.

So, on the whole, a pretty successful meal. The service was lousy, but they were volunteers so I didn't expect much and the place was filled with people enjoying themselves and supporting a good cause so if you've got to sit around waiting for your entrée it's a fine atmosphere to be doing it in. If I lived in Seattle I could easily see myself coming every week, but since I'd probably still be a jerk critiquing the food on my blog, perhaps it's for the best that I"m not.

Seattle trip - Shiro's sushi restaurant

I just got in to Seattle today for my conference and I skipped the free buffets at open houses and instead walked over to Shiro's Sushi Restaurant. Seattle is lousy with sushi places--I passed four or five on my way over--but Shiro's has a Local Specialties section on the menu I really wanted to try. I've also read that chef's choice will net you some really interesting and odd dishes, but it was a full house and it didn't look like they had time to get experimental.

I was a bit surprised about where I found the restaurant. It looked like a Williamsburg-esque hipster-infested mid-gentrification neighborhood, but Shiro's has been there and, apparently been a hot-towel glass-covered-white-tablecloth sort of place, since 1994.

It was a full house at 7 pm on Sunday with a good mix of families, the aforementioned hipsters, and Japanese young professionals boozing it up at the sushi bar. The amount of customers may have been unusual; the wait staff seemed a little overwhelmed.

I didn't order any sushi myself, but I wasn't far from the sushi bar so I got a look at the orders. I liked how they were laid out--prettily garnished with bean threads, shrimp heads and such but not sculptural. It's a bit of a peeve of mine when dishes are laid out so they look great, but are a pain to actually eat.

So what I did order was:
Geoduck Butter Yaki--Tender giant clam sauteed w/butter and mushroom sauce
Smelt Nanban--Marinated smelt w/fresh sliced Walla Walla onion
Asari Sakamushi--Steamed local Manila clams w/sake sauce
and a bowl of miso soup with baby mushrooms.

Let's start with the soup which I didn't photograph because you know what miso soup looks like. I think you can get a sense of a Japanese restaurant from their miso soup. I was particularly impressed with Shiro's because it had such a nice balance between the miso and the bonito and kombu in the dashi. Most places use a lot of miso and drown the dashi and most dashi goes heavy on the bonito and drowns the kombu. Really tasting all three is pretty rare and pretty nice. The cilantro garnish instead of the usual wakame was a good match with the baby mushrooms.

I was also pleasantly surprised by the smelt. Looking at it, I expected it to be warm, fresh from the deep fryer, and to taste primarily of tempura batter. Instead, the fish were deeply chilled and bursting with a bright vinegary flavor well balanced against the raw sweet onions that topped them.

The geoduck I was actually a little disappointed with. It's the first time I've had geoduck (a giant clam native to the Pacific northwest) and I don't know if sautéing it with butter and mushrooms is a great showcase. I've made similar recipes with chicken and the flavors and textures in dish were hard to distinguish from them until the shellfish aftertaste hits. Maybe that's the point? If it's deliberately using geoduck as just another meat then it succeeded well as it was a well prepared and pleasant enough dish. I'll have to have more geoduck in other preparations to really get a sense of what was going on here, I think.

Finally, the Manila clams. They were cooked to just the right level of doneness, firm but not chewy and tender enough to de-shell using chopsticks. I'm assuming the broth I got was the advertised sake sauce, but I couldn't taste any sake in it. It tasted of clam liquor rounded out subtly with other flavors, a squeeze of lemon, a bit of kombu, maybe some sake. The scallions on top were raw but wilted slightly in the broth. Quite straightforward, which is how I like my clams generally, but carefully managed to get just right. Not a hint of grit either which I appreciated.

Overall I was quite happy, and, surprisingly, full for only $36 including tip and tax. (It would have been more if I had went with sake instead of tea.) I can only hope my other meals here are as good.