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coraaThis month's Washoku Warriors meal was a variety of miso-based dishes. We technically only had to make a couple of things, but I went a little, uh, overboard. :D
The dishes I made were:
Goma Miso (Creamy Sesame-Miso Sauce)
Aka Neri Miso (Pungent Red Miso Sauce)
Shiso Miso (Herb Miso)
Shira Ae (Creamy Tofu Sauce)
Saikyo Yaki (Miso-Marinated Broiled Fish)
Hakuto No Dengaku (Poached Peaches in Lemon-Ginger Miso Sauce)
...along with raw or blanched chilled vegetables, rice, homemade tsukemono (pickles) and homemade pickled ginger.
I had to start the fish first -- the recipe called for wrapping the fish (I chose salmon) in cloth, then smearing it all over with miso paste and letting it sit for quite some time to marinate in the miso. I wish I'd taken a picture of the salmon mummified in miso!
While the salmon was curing, I made the four miso sauces. The most straightforward was the creamy sesame-miso sauce: sesame paste, whisked together with sweet, light miso and a little dashi to smooth it out. (Being unable to find specifically Japanese sesame paste, I resorted to unroasted tahini.) It wound up with a rich, tangy sesame flavor, balanced by the sweet-salty taste of the white miso.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bellwethr and morganlf compared it to hummus, because of the sesame taste.
Then there was the pungent red miso sauce, which consisted of red miso gently cooked together with sugar, sake and water. This wasjmpava's favorite: the miso flavor was stronger and more pronounced, and the overall taste was complex, sweet and salty.
The herb miso was my personal favorite. It was made with dark miso, shiso leaves (a Japanese herb that I quite like -- hard to describe, but kind of basil-y), sesame seeds, mirin, sugar, and dashi. I really liked the combination of flavors and textures provided by the miso, the shiso, and the sesame seeds.
The creamy tofu sauce, while good, was not the star of the night. It was made by par-boiling a block of tofu and then blending it smooth. Since I don't have a food processor up to the task, I blended the tofu the old-fashioned way: by forcing it through a strainer. The tofu was then combined with sweet white miso and a drop of mirin. The end taste was very mild and pleasantly nutty, but I think it suffered for being tasted alongside so many stronger flavors. Also, I think it would have been better if I'd had a food processor, to get a creamier texture. Still, not at all bad!
Then... the fish. Once all the sauces were made, I unwrapped the fish in preparation for broiling it. Because I recently got a bento cookbook, I'd been thinking about pretty presentations, and I thought maybe I could trim and cut the fish to make it look like... well, a fish, hence the title. :) You can see that my knifework is not exactly superb, but I did get a fish outline! I then broiled the fish quickly (although I think I overcooked it a little, oops), and decorated it with pieces of pickled ginger to make an eye and a fin. (Rather than letting the extra pieces of fish that I trimmed away go to waste, I hid them underneath the fish shape, so we could still eat them.)
Of course, the miso sauce needed something to be eaten on, so I made a couple of platters of vegetables: sauteed spinach, blanched-and-chilled snap peas, blanched-and-chilled carrots, radishes (I tried to make radish chrysanthymums, but that didn't quite work out!), blanched and chilled green bell peppers, cherry tomatoes, and cucumbers. I also made sushi rice (mixed with crumbled wakame and sesame seeds, for flavor), pickled ginger, and pickles made of shredded carrot, cabbage, red onion and daikon.
For dessert -- the peaches! They were made peeling and slicing white peaches, drenching them in lemon juice, and simmering them in a sweet water-and-sake mixture, along with ginger. They were then slowly cooled in the poaching liquid, the peaches removed from the liquid and chilled, and the liquid reheated with a little red miso. I also took a liberty and garnished them with a little shiso. I served them for dessert.
Overall, everyone seemed to enjoy the meal. The real winners were the miso sauces -- the sesame miso, herb miso and red miso sauces were favorites. I also liked the delicate flavor that the miso lent to the salmon -- and next time, maybe I won't overcook it! I'd already learned a lot about miso flavors from experimenting with different miso types in soup, but seeing the different ways of treating and flavoring miso -- and trying them side-by-side -- gave me a real appreciation for the different flavors, and the different applications you might put it to. And the peaches? Let me tell you, chilled ginger-lemon-poached peaches on a warm summer night are the best thing ever.
 |
| From Food 2009 |
The dishes I made were:
Goma Miso (Creamy Sesame-Miso Sauce)
Aka Neri Miso (Pungent Red Miso Sauce)
Shiso Miso (Herb Miso)
Shira Ae (Creamy Tofu Sauce)
Saikyo Yaki (Miso-Marinated Broiled Fish)
Hakuto No Dengaku (Poached Peaches in Lemon-Ginger Miso Sauce)
...along with raw or blanched chilled vegetables, rice, homemade tsukemono (pickles) and homemade pickled ginger.
I had to start the fish first -- the recipe called for wrapping the fish (I chose salmon) in cloth, then smearing it all over with miso paste and letting it sit for quite some time to marinate in the miso. I wish I'd taken a picture of the salmon mummified in miso!
While the salmon was curing, I made the four miso sauces. The most straightforward was the creamy sesame-miso sauce: sesame paste, whisked together with sweet, light miso and a little dashi to smooth it out. (Being unable to find specifically Japanese sesame paste, I resorted to unroasted tahini.) It wound up with a rich, tangy sesame flavor, balanced by the sweet-salty taste of the white miso.
bellwethr and morganlf compared it to hummus, because of the sesame taste. |
| From Food 2009 |
Then there was the pungent red miso sauce, which consisted of red miso gently cooked together with sugar, sake and water. This was
jmpava's favorite: the miso flavor was stronger and more pronounced, and the overall taste was complex, sweet and salty. |
| From Food 2009 |
The herb miso was my personal favorite. It was made with dark miso, shiso leaves (a Japanese herb that I quite like -- hard to describe, but kind of basil-y), sesame seeds, mirin, sugar, and dashi. I really liked the combination of flavors and textures provided by the miso, the shiso, and the sesame seeds.
 |
| From Food 2009 |
The creamy tofu sauce, while good, was not the star of the night. It was made by par-boiling a block of tofu and then blending it smooth. Since I don't have a food processor up to the task, I blended the tofu the old-fashioned way: by forcing it through a strainer. The tofu was then combined with sweet white miso and a drop of mirin. The end taste was very mild and pleasantly nutty, but I think it suffered for being tasted alongside so many stronger flavors. Also, I think it would have been better if I'd had a food processor, to get a creamier texture. Still, not at all bad!
 |
| From Food 2009 |
Then... the fish. Once all the sauces were made, I unwrapped the fish in preparation for broiling it. Because I recently got a bento cookbook, I'd been thinking about pretty presentations, and I thought maybe I could trim and cut the fish to make it look like... well, a fish, hence the title. :) You can see that my knifework is not exactly superb, but I did get a fish outline! I then broiled the fish quickly (although I think I overcooked it a little, oops), and decorated it with pieces of pickled ginger to make an eye and a fin. (Rather than letting the extra pieces of fish that I trimmed away go to waste, I hid them underneath the fish shape, so we could still eat them.)
 |
| From Food 2009 |
Of course, the miso sauce needed something to be eaten on, so I made a couple of platters of vegetables: sauteed spinach, blanched-and-chilled snap peas, blanched-and-chilled carrots, radishes (I tried to make radish chrysanthymums, but that didn't quite work out!), blanched and chilled green bell peppers, cherry tomatoes, and cucumbers. I also made sushi rice (mixed with crumbled wakame and sesame seeds, for flavor), pickled ginger, and pickles made of shredded carrot, cabbage, red onion and daikon.
 |
| From Food 2009 |
For dessert -- the peaches! They were made peeling and slicing white peaches, drenching them in lemon juice, and simmering them in a sweet water-and-sake mixture, along with ginger. They were then slowly cooled in the poaching liquid, the peaches removed from the liquid and chilled, and the liquid reheated with a little red miso. I also took a liberty and garnished them with a little shiso. I served them for dessert.
 |
| From Food 2009 |
Overall, everyone seemed to enjoy the meal. The real winners were the miso sauces -- the sesame miso, herb miso and red miso sauces were favorites. I also liked the delicate flavor that the miso lent to the salmon -- and next time, maybe I won't overcook it! I'd already learned a lot about miso flavors from experimenting with different miso types in soup, but seeing the different ways of treating and flavoring miso -- and trying them side-by-side -- gave me a real appreciation for the different flavors, and the different applications you might put it to. And the peaches? Let me tell you, chilled ginger-lemon-poached peaches on a warm summer night are the best thing ever.
 |
| From Food 2009 |
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