kanten!

Kanten is Japanese for agar agar, the same agar used in petri dishes, a seaweed product that thickens like gelatin. Yōkan is a sweet jello-like dessert made from agar agar and some flavoring. Here are two simple versions:

Mizuyōkan is made from anko, or red bean paste and agar. I boiled a cup of water with two teaspoons agar agar (the Thai-based "Telephone" brand, a powdered version) and added a cup of anko (made with light brown sugar this time, which worked very well with azuki beans!). I strained that and let it set.

Grean tea yōkan is the same one-cup of agar in water and a cup of cold water with ground sencha and two tablespoons fine sugar. That was then strained and let to set.

Yōkan holds its for much better than jello (especially in heat) and has a very firm-yet-smooth texture that I enjoy despite not being a fan of jello. The grean tea yōkan was smooth and not too sweet, the mizuyōkan was a perfect way to enjoy anko outside of ice cream or daifuku. Perfect for an afternoon snack in this 95ºF heat.

Thanks to Hiroko Shimbo for the original formula!

red bean paste

I wanted to make red-bean paste to make red bean ice cream. Here we go (following Hiroko Shimbo's recipe). Bring one cup azuki beans to a boil. Drain; boil in four cups water for an hour, until the liquid barely covers the beans. Purée the beans.


Pass the beans through a sieve.


And wrap in a tight towel. Rinse in two changes of water. Squeeze out excess moisture.


Bring to a boil with a third-cup of water and a cup of sugar.


Cook until a thick paste and voilà! it's done!

Gyuniku no Misozuke

Maybe I'm anæmic, maybe having red meat last night just had me craving more. Same project as last night: various vegetables in the fridge; went and bought a cut of meat. This time, a strip steak that looked to have lots of juicy fat (it was melt-in-your-mouth good, actually).

Instead of turning to Julia Child, I went to Hiroko Shimbo's The Japanese Kitchen. I marinated the trimmed steak in miso, sake and mirin (the steak protectively wrapped in cheesecloth, an interesting method). The fat I trimmed was rendered for a fried brown rice with onions, garlic and Japanese scallions (Shimbo called for shiso, which I grew last year and is otherwise impossible to find out here. Moreover, there were scallions in the vegetable bin). The steak was seared, sliced and served with a reduction of the marinade and a dash more of sake (Shimbo called for brandy, of which I have none).

That I served with Shimbo's a cold stir-fried carrot and burdock and my pickled asparagus.

• The steak was incredible. Even though it was only marinated for three hours, it had a wonderful aroma of miso and some sweetness from the mirin; it was just seared and rosy pink inside. Delicious.
• The fried rice was perfect. It was strong (from the beef fat) and could hold its own against the steak. The Japanese scallions, added at the end, livened it up.
• Pickled asparagus was a sharp contrast to the sweet of the miso and the fat of the steak and rice. And they are perfectly intact and flavorful, fermented ten (!) months ago.
• And then the burdock and carrot: both vegetables regained all of their crunch after cooling. The earthiness of the burdock and the sweetness of the carrot were a perfect match for the pickles and meat, something-in between the two.
  

This is excessively verbose. But it was that good.

teriyaki

So, I have a whole duck. And I started taking it apart this morning: legs, wings, neck and a good deal of the extra fat were marinated for rillettes (you'll see that result in a week). I rendered a lot of the fat from the breasts and neck, and here I am with two breasts. Hiroko Shimbo's recipe for duck teriyaki was most tempting. Most of the fat is removed from the brests. They are then tossed into a very hot pan and seared (and Shimbo suggests blanching, but I removed too much fat so I figured they didn't need it). Simmered in saki (I used saki and white wine, lacking enough of the former), sugar and mirin, — and then shoyu — they are set aside. Orange juice is added to the sauce and it is reducd (see above) and seasoned with tamari and rice vinegar. The duck then rests in the sauce (10 minutes, but 5 suited me) and is plated and garnished with the sauce and scallions (or naganegi, which I have never seen). The duck was wonderfully tender, the sauce sweet but with enough savory to balance it, and brown rice was perfect with both.

The salad is a quick pickling of carrots: ume and brown rice vinegars tossed with carrots. Forty minutes later and it's great (be careful with ume vinegar, it is excepionally salty).

smelts two ways

I bought some smelts the other day, not quite knowing what I'd do with them. They're small — like sardines — but white and delicate — unlike sardines. The latter I figured out after making that first meal: fried smelts with roasted potatoes and beets. It appears that smelts and boiled potatoes are traditional... but, I'd argue bland. So I thought I'd roast the potatoes. But the smelts were still bland. Nice, but white. Very delicate.

They needed something.

So I re-interpreted Hiroko Shimbo's recipe for sardines in a sweet sauce. The sauce is 1T honey heated in ¼c. water (recipe called for 2T sugar) to which ¼c. mirin and ¼c. shoyu are added, then simmered. The fileted smelts were tossed in lemon juice and then in brown rice flour (which I use for fish in general). I fried them in sesame oil, drained them and placed them on rice and poured the sauce over. A little sprinkle of black sesame seeds...

And that worked. It was very good.