david lebovitz's venetian style sardines

Last night I made an adapted batch of David Lebovitz's venetian style sardines, which can be found in "The Sweet Life in Paris".

His version directs you to fry the fresh sardines, but of course, I took the easy way out using canned and sauteed them in the marinade.

The portions I used are below: makes about 2 servings

2 tins canned sardines packed in oil (about 70 grams each can)
1/2 onion, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon olive oil

marinade
1/2 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon wine vinegar
1 tablespoon sake (rice wine)
chili pepper flakes

handful of dried cherries
handful of pine nuts, toasted

In a frying pan, heat the olive oil and saute the onions until soft
Add the sardines with the packing oil
When the fish is heated through, add the marinade and cherries
Top with pine nuts before serving
Serve with crusty bread

NOTES: I didn't want to fry or go through having to clean the fresh sardines, so I used canned.

Our tinned sardines are quite teeny, so I used 2 cans.

His recipe called for golden raisins but I didn't have any and didn't want to buy, so I just used some dried cherries that I had in the freezer.

Next time I will use the packing oil of only 1 tin.

We enjoyed this...sweet and sour.

Crusty baguette was also nice to mop up all the juices.

I'm definitely thinking about making this again!

throw together dinner

Sometimes I get into a rut as to what to make for dinner.

Usually when I feel like this, then "laziness" also follows...

Not really knowing what I wanted to eat, I decided to use a can of sardines and bake something off in the oven.

I sautéed some spinach, red bell pepper and onion.

Then I mixed some diced tomato sauce with some garlic and anchovy.

I cooked a little amount of quinoa.

And then I put everything into a baking dish and topped it off with some panko, parmesan and a little pepper.

Then I baked everything for about 5 minutes then under the broiler for another 5.

Relatively fast, easy and definitely delicious.

What did you have for dinner?

re-create

Remember that sardine sandwich we had at Amanohashidate?

Well, I recreated it and turned it into a salad.

You need:
a can of sardines in olive oil
shiso leaves, chiffonade
lettuce
cherry tomatoes, halved
cucumber, sliced

Tartar sauce: rakkyo (pickled onions)
mayo

Make your tartar sauce, chop up some rakkyo and add some mayo to the consistency of your liking
Put together your salad
Top with sardines, tartar sauce and shiso
Enjoy!

NOTES: If you don't have rakkyo where you are, mix some chopped sweet pickles and some diced onion in some mayo. I love that these sardines are so tender! Definitely making this again.

shimabara-isahaya-hakata-osaka

The next morning, there was a haze, which seemed liked fog.

The breakfast buffet had slim pickings...mostly pre-packed stuff that was re-heated...

After walking the town a little, we caught the train to Minami-Shimabara.

This is apparently where Ryoma Sakamoto landed in 1864 to travel to Nagasaki City.

And then we walked to the port area because we wanted to check out the fish market, Funabito Tottoto.

We had intended on eating an early lunch, but they weren't serving anything until 11:00.

So, we just bought some frozen sardines roasted in olive oil & garlic.

These are good. We've had them with our New Years' foods and also in a pasta.

From Fujita Cherry Mame, we bought these seasoned fava beans, which they call "cherry mame".

I'm not too sure why they call them by this name.

There were sweet ones and savory ones in the sampler packet we bought...we liked the savory ones best because they were crunchy. The sweet ones were coated with sugar and were a bit stale.

Tatsumiya Sohonten makes a tora-maki.

A light sponge cake wraps smooth sweet bean paste. We agreed that they didn't need to coat the outside with granulated sugar.

and a mikan-zuke.

A whole mikan (tangerine) that is dried and covered with granulated sugar. This was similar to orange peel. They also make a zabon-zuke (pomelo), we should've bought some of that to try too.

From Shimabara it took us about an hour to get to Isahaya.

Most of our guide books had nothing written up about Isahaya, so we grabbed a couple of pamphlets at the train station and went in search of lunch.

We found a huge unagi restaurant up a steep hill called Uoso.

Satoshi had their sashimi.

I ordered their Isahaya sushi, which was seasoned shiitake and kanpyo (gourd) mixed into the rice. Shiso placed in the center and topped with Uoso's kabayaki unagi.

The sushi is a pressed type of sushi rather than a rolled or hand-molded sushi.

I really liked this, the flavors were balanced, not overpowering.

Satoshi also ordered their una-zen. (ooh-nah-zen)

This was served in a Kyoto raku style dish, the dish holds hot water in the base to keep the unagi hot all the way through the meal.

I also ordered the u-maki. (ooh-mah-key).

The unagi they use is prepared lightly (edo-mae style) and is put into their omelette. The photo in the menu looked small, but when this arrived at the table it was HUGE!

Since we had some time before our train, we walked along the river until we reached the Spectacle bridge.

This one was larger than the one we saw in Nagasaki City. We also realized that we didn't go across the one in Nagasaki city.

On the way back to the train station, we stopped in at Tsukasa to pick up some of their okoshi (puffed rice). Peanut (on the left) and Isahaya (black sugar) on the right.

Not as light as some I've tried before, these kinda stick to your teeth.

And then it was time to go back. From Isahaya, it took about and hour and 40 minutes to Hakata and then 3 hours back to Osaka.

We were happy that the weather turned out to be nice the whole time. We did lots of walking, lots of eating! I hope you enjoyed this adventure as much as we did.

Have a nice weekend!

Funabito Tottoto
451 Minato-shinchi-machi
Shimabara, Nagasaki
Phone: 0957.63.9911
Lunch: 11:00-15:00, Dinner: 17:30-20:00

Fujita Cherry Mame
1850-8 Imagawa-machi
Shimabara, Nagasaki
Phone: 0957.63.1100
Hours: 10:00-17:00

Tatsumiya Sohonten
275 Nakagumi-machi
Shimabara, Nagasaki
Phone: 0957.62.3127
Hours: 8:30-17:30

Uoso
3-41 Uzu-machi
Isahaya, Nagasaki
Phone: 0957.22.0039
Hours: 11:00-21:00

Tsukasa Honten
5-5 Eisho-higashi-machi
Isahaya, Nagasaki
Phone: 0957.22.2380
Hours: 8:30-18:30
Closed 1st and 3rd Thursdays

sardine brandade

I saw this recipe in "Whole Living" and wrote it down because I'd never had brandade and thought it was interesting and easy enough to try.

As with anytime I scribble something down, I usually forget to write steps/ingredients down. So, here is the recipe online.

As a result of my scribbling, I whizzed everything in my food processor instead of mashing or "whisking" as the recipe directs and the consistency came out smoother than the photo in the magazine.

Still, this was delicious with some baguette.

The following is what I scribbled down and how I did it:

Sardine brandade serves 4 from "Whole Living April 2012"

200 grams potato, peeled and cooked
2 cloves roasted garlic
1 can sardines in olive oil, net weight 105 grams
2 tablespoons olive oil
zest of 1 lemon and 1 tablespoon lemon juice
some cayenne pepper
crusty bread

Cook potato for about 8 to 10 minutes or until soft and reserve 1 cup liquid
Add sardines & oil
use reserved water to adjust consistency
Add zest, juice, garlic and pepper

NOTES: I couldn't find smoked sardines, so I just used sardines that were packed in olive oil. The recipe says to use the sardines and the oil they are packed in, but because I hadn't scribbled this part down, I didn't add the packing oil.

Also, the recipe suggests boiling the garlic with the potato, but I instead roasted my garlic (oven 220C (425F) for 30 minutes).

Aesthetically, it doesn't look good, but it was, I ate it right after making it, so it was still warm and it was delicious on toasted baguette. I liked the creaminess that came from the potatoes. The recipe calls for salt, but I didn't add any.

I think this would be nice served warm in winter and served chilled for summer.

I'm making this again.

iwashi pasta

The weather was awful today. Raining hard at times and the wind picked up....brrr...what happened to the nice weather?

Anyway, after coming home from beads class I didn't feel like cooking. So, I threw this together for dinner....canned iwashi (sardines) in olive oil, sliced onions, pasta, capers, nori (seaweed) and several grinds of pepper. Heat the onions with the sardines, add the pepper and cooked pasta and top with capers and nori. If it is a bit dry, you can add some of the pasta water. It was super fast, easy and delish!

comforts of home

Well, I've been home for about 3 days and I think Satoshi and I have talked about 15 minutes tops! He is very busy and comes home very late, then goes to work very early...sigh.

Since he didn't need dinner last night, I decided to try something new. I had bought these sardines in olive oil when I was home. I thought it would be good if I roasted them with some veggies, garlic, capers and herbs.

I was right, the aroma from the oven was heavenly and it tasted great.

For dessert, I had a chocolate macadamia drink made by Doutor (a Japanese coffee maker) who teamed up with Hawaiian Host--which I think was Hawaii's first chocolate macadamia nut candy maker. (I found this at the convenience store) Gosh, this tasted just like eating one of their candies! Creamy and nutty. Delish.

Hopefully I can get adjusted to spending a lot of "me" time, though with Blogger being down a lot recently, it is a bit hard. I guess I should start reading all those books and magazines that I brought back with me.

Have a great weekend!