yuzu & daikon

Apparently this year root and leafy veggies are plentiful and super cheap.

I was able to get a nice sized daikon and yuzu for 98 yen each!

(BUT, I was saddened to see on the news that the farmers here are having to throw out tons of produce! apparently due to the lack of food operators not operating at full speed..um can't the produce be frozen or given away to countries that don't have enough food?!)

Anyway, with part of the daikon I made some yuzu daikon pickles.

Found on the internet: 2 servings

500 grams daikon, peeled and sliced into sticks

1 yuzu, juiced and thinly slice the peel

1 teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons sugar 

2 tablespoons vinegar

some dried chili pepper

In a bowl put the daikon and salt and massage, leave for 5 minutes.

After the 5 minutes, squeeze out the water from the daikon.

In a ziploc bag, put the daikon, yuzu peel, sugar, vinegar and chili.

Massage gently then store in refrige.

Enjoy after a couple of hours.

NOTES: The whole recipe was for 2 servings, and since I didn’t know how it would taste I only made half the recipe.

It was so easy and tasty, I’d definitely make this again.

I froze the rest of the yuzu peel to bake with and or to add to osuimono (clear soup).

Saturday night, with about 1/3 of the daikon, I peeled and grated it to put into mizore nabe.

Grated daikon is called oroshi but it is also called mizore because it looks like sleet.

After the ingredients of the nabe (hot pot) were cooked I added the grated daikon and waited for for the liquid to come up to a boil before serving.

With the leftover yuzu juice, I made some ponzu (1 tablespoon of yuzu juice & 1 teaspoon shoyu per person) for us to use while eating our nabe.

I still have the top part of the daikon which I plan to use in the coming days.

the past couple of days

The weekend was forecast for the coldest front in many moons.

The weather dude even forecast that Okinawa may even get some snow!

Whoa?!

We bought some water for drinking, just in case the power went out.

My survival skills go only as far as for hurricanes, so this blizzard thing was new to me.

Luckily (read disappointedly), we didn't have ANY snow.

In fact, the sun came out for the most part of the day.

Still, we didn't go outside, the wind was pretty icy.

Oh well, at least I got to finish a book I was reading.

Dinner was a nabe (hot pot) of pork belly, hakusai (chinese cabbage), a can of diced tomato, dashi (stock) and curry powder.

We also had some really pale gyoza...I still need to get the hang of cooking gyoza...

To end, we made ojiya and added some rice and cheese.

Hope your weekend was a good one.

cantonese clay pot chicken

After making my first nabe dinner, reader HoiYan mentioned making clay pot chicken.

So, I looked online and found a recipe that sounded really delicious.

I planned to try it yesterday, because I thought it would be Chinese New Year over the weekend...

Disappointed that I had gotten the days wrong, I decided to try it anyway since Satoshi and I could eat dinner together.

Cantonese Claypot Chicken Rice (2-3 servings) adapted from Travelling Foodies

Ingredients
9 chicken drumsticks
2 lup cheong, chinese sausages
1 piece dried scallop, reconstituted overnight
4 fresh shiitake mushrooms, stems removed
2 cups of rice, brown
3 cups of water
1 chicken consomme cube

Marinade
2 tbsp oyster sauce
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp pepper
1 cloves of garlic, grated
A small knob of ginger, grated
2 tbsp of cooking sake
1/2 teaspoon of sesame oil
1 heap tbsp cornstarch

Topping and Garnish
dark soy sauce
sliced green onion

Process
Rinse drumsticks and prepare marinade.
Soak drumsticks for a couple of hours, mixing every so often.
Rinse rice and add water and consomme cube to clay pot.
Slice mushrooms, lup cheong, green onions, scallop. Set aside.

Turn on heat, bring mixture to a fast boil and then lower flame to low, lid on and allow to simmer.
Stir the mixture once in a while to make sure that the consomme cube is well dissolved and incorporated.
After 5-7 minutes, quickly but carefully lay the chicken pieces from the marinade over the rice, followed by scallop, mushrooms and chinese sausages.
Turn to the lowest flame possible and allow it to continue to simmer.
When the steaming through the vent on the lid has somewhat subsided, remove lid and drizzle in half of the chicken wing marinade over the top. Cover with lid again. There should be some steam from adding the marinade.
When the steaming has once again subsided (about 5 minutes later), turn off flame.
Remove lid and check that the chicken pieces have just cooked through.
If not, simply cover and let the clay pot sit for another 5-7 minutes allowing the residual heat to cook everything through.
Just before serving, garnish with green onions and a generous drizzling of dark soy sauce and give everything a good toss.

NOTES: I marinated the chicken for about 6 hours or so.

And then I started the cooking about an hour before we planned to eat...following the directions as best as I could...there were parts I didn't quite understand.

According to the recipe, you are supposed to use long grained rice but since I only had brown, which is a short grain, that is what I used.

This made things a bit "mushy" rather than having a "browning" on the rice at the bottom. If you use long grained rice, cut the liquid (water) back to 2 cups.

At the end of the cooking time, there was still quite a bit of liquid, so I turned off the heat and left the pot covered on the stove until we were ready to eat.

By the time we were ready for dinner, about a half hour later, the rice had soaked up most of the liquid. I didn't drizzle soy sauce on it before serving, but did put a nice amount of green onion.

It didn't look like the original recipe, but there was lots of flavor--it was kind of sweet-salty.

We had this with brussels sprouts sautéed simply in olive oil, salt & pepper.

If I can find long grained rice, I wouldn't mind trying this again. If not, I definitely want to make the marinated chicken again.

What did you have for Sunday dinner?

sunday dinner

Awhile back, I made mille feuille in my frying pan with a cover.

On a recent trip to visit MIL, I asked Satoshi to look for a donabe (clay pot) amongst her "stash".

She had several and Satoshi brought home this one made by Ginpo. These are made in Japan and are very sturdy (and heavy!). They hold heat well.

Last night we had mille feuille for our Sunday dinner, made in the donabe.

I had to adjust my recipe because this pot holds more liquid.

Instead of 1.5 cups of water, I used 6 cups. The flavors were a lot lighter but since Satoshi is watching his sodium, it was just right.

We had this with beer.

And at the end, I re-heated the soup, added some rice and egg to make a dish called Ojiya (which is also known as Zosui--a porridge of rice and veggies).

You might be wondering what the difference between zosui/ojiya and okayu is? Well, Okayu is just the porridge of rice (plain, if you will). Zosui/ojiya is a rice porridge that is seasoned with condiments like miso, shoyu or salt.

Dinner was easy to put together and I can see why lots of families like to make this during the winter.

I think we'll try other dishes in this donabe (clay pot) for our Sunday dinners in the coming weeks.

Have a nice week!