adventures in cooking

Yesterday I decided to make a Japanese meal, so I went to Sanko to pick up some ingredients. I love this store, mainly because it has so many interesting things I can't find anywhere else.

I decided on two recipes from The Japanese Kitchen (a gift from Parki): Satsuma-jiru (chicken and vegetable miso soup) and Futo-maki. The latter is traditional roll, though I modified this recipe to make it more like the rolls my mom made). Instead of shrimp, I used eel, and I also added pink seasoned codfish.

The chicken and vegetable miso soup recipe apparently originated in the southern island of Kyushu in Japan. I chose it because it had interesting vegetables I had never cooked with before, like satoimo (taro root), gobo (burdock) and daikon. I had also never cooked with brown miso before, only white and red.





At Sanko, I puzzled over a rack of unlabelled vegetables for several minutes before finally going to someone to ask for help. I had guessed right on the daikon, but had no idea what gobo looked like (see picture at top of Blatherings). Ack, what an ugly vegetable. Someone must have been pretty hungry to try eating this. Apparently gobo was introduced to Japan from China as a medicine before the tenth century, and can grow to more than 2 feet in length.

Back at home, I simmered the chicken in water, sliced ginger and mirin, then added the gobo, daikon, taro, green onion and miso. Meanwhile, I was also preparing the ingredients for the norimaki. I'd forgotten how labour-intensive it was: soaking the kanpyo (gourd strips) and shiitake mushrooms then simmering them in a mixture of dashi, water, and shoyu, making tamagoyaki (rolled omelet of eggs, dashi, sugar, salt, rice wine), making the sushi rice.

When my mom made sushi rice, we kids had the job of fanning the cooked rice as she stirred in the mixture of vinegar, sugar and salt. According to the cookbook, this fanning helps with quick cooling and gelatinizing of the surface of the rice, "giving it an attractive, glossy appearance".

After the sushi rice was made, I spread it out on the sheets of nori (toasted seaweed) laid out on small bamboo mats, added the ingredients, then rolled it up. After letting the rolls sit for about ten minutes, I carefully took off the bamboo mats and cut the rolls into thick slices for serving with wasabi and pickled ginger.





Both the rolls and the soup turned out well, yay! Lots of leftovers for today, too.

Once I've gotten more practice, I'm going to start inflicting my Japanese cooking practice session results on some of my friends and family. You have been warned. :-)






Links/News:

Palm is replacing Graffiti with Jot. Source: Brighthand

"My Big Fat Greek Life", a new television series based on the hit movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding is debuting on CBS next month. Source: Nando Times

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Today's Blatherpics:

	Gobo, or burdock.
	Simmering the kanpyo and shiitake mushrooms in water, dashi, shoyu. Afterwards, I let them cool a bit and then slice up the mushrooms and cut the gourd strips into 4" lengths for putting in the sushi rolls.
	Laying out the filling ingredients before assembling my sushi rolls.
	Woohoo, success!