ume pork

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about a foodie party we had and a dish that one of the wives brought.

She didn't have a recipe, so I tried re-creating the dish for dinner.

You need thinly sliced pork. I bought the kind for shabu-shabu (the hot pot where you wave your slices of meat in hot broth a couple of times then eat it). Try to buy meat that is a little bigger than the width of your shiso leaf.

Try to buy the same amount of shiso (perilla leaves/beefsteak leaves) as slices of meat. Luckily, in Japan, they sell it in packages of 10.

You need some ume paste, if you don't have any, just de-seed the ume and chop it up. I didn't have any, but did have a paste made with chopped up shibazuke (veggies that are pickled with red shiso), shiso, black sesame and ume.

Lay your piece of pork flat, put a leaf of shiso, then put some ume paste, then roll tightly.

Put a half tablespoon of oil in a pan and heat.

Cook until the pork is browned and cooked through. Some ume paste may leak and the red from it may be hard to tell if your meat is cooked through, just try to cook it for at least until the outside is dark brown in color.

This dish is easy and tasty. I think you could use thinly sliced beef or even flattened out chicken too.


With the leftovers, I put some into our breakfast bento on Sunday.
With breakfast and some coffee in tow, we went to our favorite park during this time of year--Aramaki Rose Garden. The roses are in full bloom.

There were many people there and the soft fragrance of the different roses was so nice and relaxing.