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coraaA few weeks ago I saw ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rowr talk about doing the Washoku Warriors challenge -- basically a group of people who agree to make recipes from Washoku: Recipes from the Japanese Home Kitchen
. The cookbook appears to be a primer on Japanese traditional cooking, with an emphasis on home cooking -- the kind of thing people would make an eat for themselves (as opposed to restaurant or inn food, or fancy cuisine). It looked like a lot of fun, so I ordered the book and decided to give it a try with the first dish: San Shoku Domburi, or Three-Colored Rice.
One side note. Normally, I'm a very, um, relaxed cook. I adjust, substitute, throw things around, do what seems right. Normally this works great. However, if what I'm doing is trying to learn another culture's cuisine, I make the recipes by the book -- at least the first time. That's because I want as much as possible to try to taste the way it's 'supposed' to taste. Then can adjust to suit my tastes, once I have some idea what it's meant to be like. I also try not to make substitutions unless I absolutely can't find the ingredient (and with Uwajimaya down the street, that doesn't seem terribly likely).
Since I'm going to be doing -- hopefully -- many recipes from this one book, it feels a bit unfair to the author to publicly post the recipes themselves. But I am going to blog the process I went through to make it, so you can probably recreate it if you want (and if you're really curious about a particular ratio or something, feel free to ask).
The book begins with a lengthy explanation of the basics of Japanese traditional cooking and traditional ingredients, which partially explains the 'three colors' reference in the name -- according to the book, ideally a meal would contain at least one ingredient of each of five colors: red, yellow, green, black and white. This dish accordingly provides three colors; with garnishes, it goes all the way up to five.
I'd like to say that, if this is an indication of the kind of food in the book, I'm going to be very happy, because it was both pretty easy and really good.
Basically, I started by making rice (I even took the time to rinse it until the water ran clear). Because the rinsing and cooking is kinda time-consuming, I went ahead and made five cups of rice even though I only needed a cup and a half -- the remainder is waiting patiently in the fridge for future dinners. When the rice was done, I set it aside and began to prepare the vegetables.
I think part of the reason it came out so well was that I had the good fortune to find beautiful fresh English peas and also fresh corn, which were the required vegetables. They're even more or less in season. So I shelled the raw fresh peas and cut the raw corn off the cob until I had half a cup each of peas and corn kernels. I set those aside.
I then got out the ground chicken for gingered ground chicken (tori soboro, according to the book). I was only going to need a little less than half a pound for the two of us, but I went ahead and cooked the whole pound since the recipe said it kept well. (I may make onigiri with the rice and chicken later in the week.) I broke up the chicken and put it in a cold skillet, then added a few tablespoons of sake and an equal amount of sugar. I stirred the chicken around until it was broken up into fine 'crumbs,' and then turned the heat on low underneath it and let it cook very gently like that. (This was new to me -- I'm used to searing ground meat in oil to get them browned, but that wasn't apparently the point with this chicken.)
While the chicken simmered gently, I took a knob of ginger and grated and squeezed and grated and squeezed until I had about a tablespoon of ginger juice. (This was my one exception to the 'no changes' rule: it's a bit more ginger than the recipe calls for. But I love ginger so much that when I made too much juice I couldn't bring myself to throw it out.)
When the chicken was cooked and the liquid reduced, I added soy sauce, raised the heat a bit and continued to cook. Meanwhile, I filled a small saucepan and brought it to a boil, then dunked the peas in it and cooked until they were bright green and just tender. I fished them out with a colandar and repeated the process with the corn.
When the soy sauce had also reduced down to just a little liquid in the pan, I added the ginger juice, stirred it around, and let it cook a few minutes more. Then I turned off the heat and began assembling the domburi.
I put half the rice in each bowl in a flat-ish layer, then arranged the chicken, corn and peas on top. It was supposed to be neatly arranged with the chicken filling half the bowl, and the corn and peas each filling a remaining quarter (and completely covering the rice). My lines were a little wobblier than that, but still it looked pretty okay. I topped it with crumbled nori, a halved cherry tomato, and a generous spoonful of shredded pickled ginger. (This was the bright red kind that comes in fine julienne strips and is sour-spicy, rather than the pink of yellow stuff that comes in big sheets/petals and is sweeter.)
It looked pretty good, I think, although this picture is unfortunately a bit out of focus:
And it tasted really good. It was very flavorful, which, I'll be honest, kind of surprised me: there was relatively little flavoring -- the sake, soy sauce and ginger on the chicken, and that's really it. But that meant that the fresh taste of the barely-cooked peas and corn came through. It was best if you mixed it up and got a combination in each bite: a little gingery, meaty chicken, a little sweet corn or peas, a little salty nori, a little tart-sweet tomato or spicy-tart ginger. And the rice, properly cooked, tasted amazing. (And it wasn't just me --jmpava kept exclaiming how good it tasted.)
As I said, I think it helps that I had fresh corn, fresh peas, and higher-quality rice to work with; I'd be interested to compare it to a more 'spur of the moment dinner' version made with frozen veg, for instance. But it was really, really good -- amazingly good for something with very little fat (the chicken was mostly breast meat, and so quite lean) and relatively little sodium (just a little soy sauce in the chicken) and sugar (a little, again, in the chicken). And I do want to try it as a 'weeknight meal' thing, since it was pretty fast even from scratch, and with pre-made chicken (it's easy to make in a batch, and freezes well according to the book), pre-made rice, and frozen veg, you could do it very quickly indeed.
So I'm very excited for the next assignment!
As a side dish -- and as something to give Pava when his stomach started grumbling before I finished -- I made a small salad of chopped fresh spinach, julienned carrots and cucumber, and miso dressing, using a miso sauce from the book. (It was basically sake, mirin, miso and sugar stirred and simmered until smooth and glossy, then taken off the heat and with yuzu added. It was supposed to be with freeze-dried yuzu peel, but I misread the ingredients list and bought yuzu juice instead. Still tasty, tho.)
Picture here -- though you can't see the spinach, since it's under the other veg:
It was also very good, although a bit strong; I used the only miso I had, which was red miso, and the recipe called for white. I imagine the white would have been less salty! Still, tasty.
rowr talk about doing the Washoku Warriors challenge -- basically a group of people who agree to make recipes from Washoku: Recipes from the Japanese Home Kitchen. The cookbook appears to be a primer on Japanese traditional cooking, with an emphasis on home cooking -- the kind of thing people would make an eat for themselves (as opposed to restaurant or inn food, or fancy cuisine). It looked like a lot of fun, so I ordered the book and decided to give it a try with the first dish: San Shoku Domburi, or Three-Colored Rice.One side note. Normally, I'm a very, um, relaxed cook. I adjust, substitute, throw things around, do what seems right. Normally this works great. However, if what I'm doing is trying to learn another culture's cuisine, I make the recipes by the book -- at least the first time. That's because I want as much as possible to try to taste the way it's 'supposed' to taste. Then can adjust to suit my tastes, once I have some idea what it's meant to be like. I also try not to make substitutions unless I absolutely can't find the ingredient (and with Uwajimaya down the street, that doesn't seem terribly likely).
Since I'm going to be doing -- hopefully -- many recipes from this one book, it feels a bit unfair to the author to publicly post the recipes themselves. But I am going to blog the process I went through to make it, so you can probably recreate it if you want (and if you're really curious about a particular ratio or something, feel free to ask).
The book begins with a lengthy explanation of the basics of Japanese traditional cooking and traditional ingredients, which partially explains the 'three colors' reference in the name -- according to the book, ideally a meal would contain at least one ingredient of each of five colors: red, yellow, green, black and white. This dish accordingly provides three colors; with garnishes, it goes all the way up to five.
I'd like to say that, if this is an indication of the kind of food in the book, I'm going to be very happy, because it was both pretty easy and really good.
Basically, I started by making rice (I even took the time to rinse it until the water ran clear). Because the rinsing and cooking is kinda time-consuming, I went ahead and made five cups of rice even though I only needed a cup and a half -- the remainder is waiting patiently in the fridge for future dinners. When the rice was done, I set it aside and began to prepare the vegetables.
I think part of the reason it came out so well was that I had the good fortune to find beautiful fresh English peas and also fresh corn, which were the required vegetables. They're even more or less in season. So I shelled the raw fresh peas and cut the raw corn off the cob until I had half a cup each of peas and corn kernels. I set those aside.
I then got out the ground chicken for gingered ground chicken (tori soboro, according to the book). I was only going to need a little less than half a pound for the two of us, but I went ahead and cooked the whole pound since the recipe said it kept well. (I may make onigiri with the rice and chicken later in the week.) I broke up the chicken and put it in a cold skillet, then added a few tablespoons of sake and an equal amount of sugar. I stirred the chicken around until it was broken up into fine 'crumbs,' and then turned the heat on low underneath it and let it cook very gently like that. (This was new to me -- I'm used to searing ground meat in oil to get them browned, but that wasn't apparently the point with this chicken.)
While the chicken simmered gently, I took a knob of ginger and grated and squeezed and grated and squeezed until I had about a tablespoon of ginger juice. (This was my one exception to the 'no changes' rule: it's a bit more ginger than the recipe calls for. But I love ginger so much that when I made too much juice I couldn't bring myself to throw it out.)
When the chicken was cooked and the liquid reduced, I added soy sauce, raised the heat a bit and continued to cook. Meanwhile, I filled a small saucepan and brought it to a boil, then dunked the peas in it and cooked until they were bright green and just tender. I fished them out with a colandar and repeated the process with the corn.
When the soy sauce had also reduced down to just a little liquid in the pan, I added the ginger juice, stirred it around, and let it cook a few minutes more. Then I turned off the heat and began assembling the domburi.
I put half the rice in each bowl in a flat-ish layer, then arranged the chicken, corn and peas on top. It was supposed to be neatly arranged with the chicken filling half the bowl, and the corn and peas each filling a remaining quarter (and completely covering the rice). My lines were a little wobblier than that, but still it looked pretty okay. I topped it with crumbled nori, a halved cherry tomato, and a generous spoonful of shredded pickled ginger. (This was the bright red kind that comes in fine julienne strips and is sour-spicy, rather than the pink of yellow stuff that comes in big sheets/petals and is sweeter.)
It looked pretty good, I think, although this picture is unfortunately a bit out of focus:
 |
| From Food 2009 |
And it tasted really good. It was very flavorful, which, I'll be honest, kind of surprised me: there was relatively little flavoring -- the sake, soy sauce and ginger on the chicken, and that's really it. But that meant that the fresh taste of the barely-cooked peas and corn came through. It was best if you mixed it up and got a combination in each bite: a little gingery, meaty chicken, a little sweet corn or peas, a little salty nori, a little tart-sweet tomato or spicy-tart ginger. And the rice, properly cooked, tasted amazing. (And it wasn't just me --
jmpava kept exclaiming how good it tasted.)As I said, I think it helps that I had fresh corn, fresh peas, and higher-quality rice to work with; I'd be interested to compare it to a more 'spur of the moment dinner' version made with frozen veg, for instance. But it was really, really good -- amazingly good for something with very little fat (the chicken was mostly breast meat, and so quite lean) and relatively little sodium (just a little soy sauce in the chicken) and sugar (a little, again, in the chicken). And I do want to try it as a 'weeknight meal' thing, since it was pretty fast even from scratch, and with pre-made chicken (it's easy to make in a batch, and freezes well according to the book), pre-made rice, and frozen veg, you could do it very quickly indeed.
So I'm very excited for the next assignment!
As a side dish -- and as something to give Pava when his stomach started grumbling before I finished -- I made a small salad of chopped fresh spinach, julienned carrots and cucumber, and miso dressing, using a miso sauce from the book. (It was basically sake, mirin, miso and sugar stirred and simmered until smooth and glossy, then taken off the heat and with yuzu added. It was supposed to be with freeze-dried yuzu peel, but I misread the ingredients list and bought yuzu juice instead. Still tasty, tho.)
Picture here -- though you can't see the spinach, since it's under the other veg:
 |
| From Food 2009 |
It was also very good, although a bit strong; I used the only miso I had, which was red miso, and the recipe called for white. I imagine the white would have been less salty! Still, tasty.
