My friend, Chef Tanigawa, the owner-chef of Kichisen was frustrated to see a total absence of overseas visitors to Kyoto this spring. The disaster in Tohoku is that cause, however the exaggerated media coverage has made the local tragedy into a national economic calamity, with far reaching consequences, and for no rational reason. While the nuclear meltdown is deadly serious, so far, just two workers at the plant have required treatment for radiation exposure. Apparently, simple soap and water was their only required treatment.

From what I heard and saw this spring, Kyoto hospitality related businesses lost more than 98% of their customers from overseas. Yet, there was absolutely no damage or danger in Kyoto. That fact didn’t stop the media from going into frenzy mode and report that the situation in Japan was as bad as Chernobyl. This inflicts real damage on small businesses and local economies. And then, the media just move onto the next crisis, their greener pastures. It is very irresponsible, to say the least.

If you want to help Japan recover from this tragedy and you have a trip planned. Don’t cancel! Come, enjoy yourself and support the economy. If you cancelled or postponed a trip, please consider coming!

Kichisen White Miso and Tofu Served with Rice Tea Ceremony-style and Sashimi

So, here we go. Kichisen’s recipe for Kyoto-style white miso.

Temperature: Usually miso is made in the winter so it doesn’t need refrigeration as it ferments. We started this in late May so it will have to ferment in the refrigerator over the summer.

Name: Kyoto white miso, called ‘saikyo’ (west capital) miso in Kyoto and ‘shiro’ (white) miso in the rest if the country, has a lower than usual salt content, so the temperature during the fermentation process is important.

Kichisen Shiromiso Ingredients

• 1.2 kg soybeans (best quality, from Hokkaido)
• kome-koji 2.5 kg (malted rice)
• arajio salt 450 g (natural sea salt)
• water 3.5 liters

Ingredient: Hokkaido Soybeans

Ingredient: Hokkaido Soybeans - Soaked

Ingredient: Rice Koji

Preparation: Simmering Soybeans

Preparation: Simmering Soybeans - Done

Preparation: Soybean Grinder

Preparation: Mixing in Salt

Preparation: Adding Liquid

Preparation: Mixing

Preparation: Packing and Removing Air

Ready for Fermentation

Preparation Steps

• Soak soybeans in cold water overnight.
• Drain and rinse soybeans.
• In a large pot bring 3.5 liters of water to boil, reduce heat and add soybeans. Simmer for about 1 hour.
• Drain and allow to cool.
• Mash, grind or puree the soybeans. (Kichisen uses a meat grinder with a fine hole plate attachment.)
• Mix by hand the soybean puree with kome-koji thoroughly and then add salt while continuing to mix.
• Add liquid. Use the cooled ‘soup’ leftover from simmering the soybeans to soften the mix. Ladle in this liquid little-by-little and mix by hand until evenly absorbed creating a soft paste. The ideal liquid content will make the paste ‘the softness of an earlobe.’
• Vigorously knead paste and remove air bubbles.
• Make into balls and place in non-reactive container. Flatten the balls of miso paste until you have filled the container.
• Cover container and ferment at about 5 degrees C for 3 months.

Final Product: Kichisen White Miso - Done!

Final Product: Kichisen White Miso - Smokey and Pungent

About kome-koji: Rice koji (malted rice) can be made if you can obtain the active koji mold. In Japan we purchase this from a company that specialized in making kome-koji. Chef Tanigawa ordered his from a company in Shikoku. If anyone is interested, I can get the company name and contact information. However, kome-koji must be used fresh and kept refrigerated until use. I guess it is impossible to be shipped abroad.

Sake breweries, miso breweries and so on make their own kome-koji but usually purchase the actual koji mold. There are many varieties of koji in Japan and in sake and miso they play a large part in determining the taste of the final product.

Obtaining Koji Spores Abroad: Vision Brewing
The koji seeds are dry and extremely stable and are stored in an air lock bag. They have an indefinite shelf life being dried conidia, they need no refrigeration and the packet can be opened and closed frequently without harm done to the contents. Postage (air mail, 7 working days) is the method of shipping.

2010 was probably the best year of my life, therefore there were very few KF articles this year, sorry!! KF does still get lots of access, encouraging comments, links and mentions. Thank you!

To ring in the new year, to hope for a year of happiness and contentment, people like to have good food and drink. Here is some inspiration, KyotoFoodie style!

Uni Ikura Donburi and Champagne

Uni Ikura Donburi - detail

Even before I was the KyotoFoodie, I dreamt up this breakfast for Japanese ’Oshogatsu’ New Year’s Day. Japanese have osechi on New Year’s Day morning, all together, at home, a family meal, all out of one box. Osechi is real Zen master food, it is great. However, I couldn’t really call it delicious, and that is fine. Traditionally, the idea was to give the womenfolk three days rest by eating preserved food for the first three days of the year. Truly delicious or not, you only eat osechi once a year and it definitely gives you a taste of life from like 1000 years ago. How Zen master!
I like osechi but this is my idea of how to celebrate the new year. This is my take on Japanese zeitaku (luxury).

How to Do It:
1. You wake up on Jan 1st, not too early, hopefully not hung over from the previous evening’s festivities.
2. You see a big box of excellent Osechi on the dining room table. But, you save that for later. Hey, this is New Year’s Day. You should go back to bed – drunk on champagne, real soon.
3. You have the most zeitaku donburi imaginable – for breakfast. This meal is:
Rice cooked in dashi, heaps and heaps of konbu and maybe sake and mirin. (I thought about cooking the rice in champagne this year, but chickened out. Maybe another day?)
On the rice you heap tons of uni (sea urchin roe) and ikura (salmon roe). This is New Year’s Day, so don’t hold back! I aim to make it about 1 inch thick, this is at least 5 times more than you would get if you ordered this dish at a decent donburi restaurant.
4. You drink a bottle of champagne, with your zeitaku breaki. (One bottle per capita. No sparkling wine, go with the overpriced French stuff today.)
5. You go back to bed and sleep for another few hours.
6. You wake up and think: Hey, this is starting out to be a really great year! (And, its only like half a day old.)
7. What to say to your lover: I hope I don’t need to explain this part on this PG13 site.

Champagne Chilling in the Snow - Japanese Garden Style!

Eating with a Spoon Makes it More Luxurious

All Gone!

What to do if you can’t get, or eat, uni and ikura: Ah, how about steak and lobster, etc? The point here is to:
1. Have one of the most luxurious dinners of the year – for breakfast!
2. Drink a bottle of champagne.
3. Go back to bed (or futon).

’Recipe’
1. Get your lover close and be sweet.
2. Cook rice.
Use really good water, preferable from a shrine with the best, or second best feng shui in the prefecture.
Cook that rice in dashi with, and I quote, an ’insane’ amount of konbu. Miwa, said that my white rice is black, because of so much konbu. Good, good. Make your white rice ’black’ with flavor on New Year’s Day!!!
3. Serve and Indulge
Heap with tons (and I mean tons) of fresh uni and ikura. Authentic KyotoFoodie style is that it should exceed 1 inch in thickness!
4. Go back to bed.

Kurogome - Black Heirloom Rice

Black Rice - Kombu Overload!

Socialize!
Tweet! Tweet! Find out what’s going on in Kyoto right now, follow me on Twitter.
Facebook Find me on Facebook.


Roast Salt Pork Okowa with Root Vegetables and Yuzu

Recently I have made a lot of okowa because I got sick. I got a nasty cold (twice) for the first half of February and when I get sick, I get cookin, or at least eatin! I eat out or cook plenty of high calorie meals. Wagyu yakiniku is my favorite foodie cold remedy!

I happened to have several big chunks of fatty pork shoulder on hand because I had just finished making an epic batch of charcuterie with Brendon E. Also, I had also discovered a nikuman (meat-filled steamed ‘baozi’ bun) at FamilyMart this year that I liked a lot, it was filled with shio buta (salt pork). So, I salted up one of the pork shoulders and let it rest in the refrigerator for several days and then roasted it in the oven, until a lot of the fat had melted away. After it cooled I chopped it up into bit sized pieces for okowa. If you know Chinese cuisine, you can see this is heading in that direction.

Mochigome and Kome: Sticky glutinous rice compared to regular short-grain rice.

About Okowa (おこわ)
Okowa was originally casual expression used by women working in the Imperial Court. The proper name for the dish was kowameshi 強飯 (こわめし). Kowameshi literary means strong, hard (kowa) rice (meshi). This is because as the dish is made with mochigome it has a much more firm and chewy texture than normal white rice or takikomi-gohan.

Throughout history mochi rice was very precious and was only enjoyed on special occasions such as festival and new years. Even today mochi rice is far more expensive than regular rice.

As mochi rice has its own sweetness in Japanese cuisine a simple seasoning with some seasonal ingredients is favored. Popular ingredients for seasonal okowa recipes include chestnuts, mushrooms, sansai mountain vegetables, bamboo shoots, white meat fish. This is then cooked with a cooking sake, mirin (sweet cooking sake) and soy sauce. Properly okowa is steamed, however modern rice cookers can make it very well with the push of a button.

There is now an okowa specialty chain shop in many of the department store food courts that offers seasonal okowa steamed to perfection.

Some of the ingredients.

Hearty Mid-winter Fatty Pork and Root Vegetable Okowa
Okowa is usually not at all oily but I needed some cold fighting power from this so I put plenty of pork in. Japanese believe that it is very healthy to eat root vegetables in the winter, so I added a lot carrot and burdock root. The aburaage deep-fried tofu came from Otokomae Tofuten, it is very thick and has a rich tofu flavor. I made this dish 3 times over the last 10 days or so and I must say that I liked the oiliest, sweetest, stickiest and most caramelized version the best, which this slightly more healthy recipe is not.

Shio-buta Roast Salt Pork

Gobo Burdock Root: Washed and Unwashed

I garnished mine two different ways; one with chopped scallions and the other with julienned yuzu peel and a squeeze of yuzu juice. Yuzu was far better. If I were serving guests, I thought that I would make three versions and serve each guest all three in small portions. That would be very ‘Kyoto’, I thought. For the third garnish I thought that go with fine chopped pork that had been re-sauteed in oil with additional salt and then a squeeze of grated ginger through muslin over the rice. Or, perhaps long strips of paper thin sliced deep-fried gobo.

Roast Salt Pork Okowa with Root Vegetables and Scallions

Roast Salt Pork Okowa with Root Vegetables and Yuzu

Roast Salt Pork Okowa with Root Vegetables and Yuzu

Okowa Recipe: Hearty Mid-winter Fatty Pork and Root Vegetable Okowa
Shio Buta (Roast Salt Pork) I ground sea salt onto the fatty pork until it has well covered and then wrapped it in cellophane and let it rest in the refrigerator for about 2 days. Next I slowly roasted it in the oven for several hours until a lot of the fat has cooked off. My unscientific analysis is that all the salt runs off the surface with the melting fat. However, the roasted pork still comes out salty enough that you couldn’t really eat more than a few bites at a time and this makes it just right for flavoring the okowa.

Gobo Burdock Root Burdock root must be well washed and then cut into strips or chunks, depending on how thick the actual root is. Next you need to perform the ‘aku-nuki’ to remove the bitterness. Normally you place the cut burdock root in water and allow to soak for 30 minutes or an hour and change the water several times. The water will turn brown and the burdock whiter. Traditionally aku-nuki is considered essential for any preparation of gobo. However, recently it has been revealed that the ‘aku’ in gobo is not aku at all but polyphenol and other desirable nutrients. Modern preparations of gobo call for soaking it in vinegar water for just several minutes to remove the dark color which will stain soups and rice dishes.

Gobo needs a good deal of heat and/or time cooking and the time required to cook rice doesn’t suffice. So, you can either cut your burdock paper thin or blanch it. This is a hearty recipe so I went with chunks of burdock and blanch them for a few minutes.

Mochigome Just mochigome can be used, however I made mine about 20% oshimugi (pressed barley), the same that is used in mugi-gohan. It is essential to first soak the mochi rice in hot water. I put my mochi rice into a metal bowl and poured on 60º C water and allow to soak for about an hour.

After soaking well, rinse the mochi rice with fresh water several times.

Caramelizers – Cooking Sake, Mirin and Soy Sauce Mochi rice has a natural sweetness but okowa gets sweeter thanks to these ingredients. A lot of chefs in Japan add and measure these ingredients with a ladle and that is what I did. My ratio is 3:2:1; 3 parts cooking sake, 2 parts mirin (sweet cooking sake) and 1 part Japanese shoyu soy sauce. One Japanese ladle full is about 35 ml, or 4 tablespoons. I think that you could even double the amount of sake and mirin from the above.

Ingredients

• 3 cups mochi rice (Japanese short grain glutinous rice)
• water
• 1 cup chopped fatty pork (salt roasted if possible)
• 1 cup chopped carrots
• 1 cup sliced gobo burdock root (blanched)
• 1/2 cup sliced shiitake mushrooms
• 1/2 cup sliced aburaage tofu (deep fried tofu)
• 90 ml cooking sake
• 60 ml mirin
• 30 ml shoyu soy sauce
• scallions and yuzu for garnish

Preparation
Rinse the rice well and add to rice cooker. Add desired amount of sake, mirin and shoyu then add required amount of water according to your rice cooker settings. I made mine with just the same amount of liquid as for regular white rice and it came out just fine.

Rinse gobo well and add all other ingredients to rice cooker. Stir the ingredients a bit to even out distribution then close the lid and start cooking.

Serve and garnish as you like.

Roast Salt Pork Okowa with Root Vegetables - Leftovers 24 hours later, wow! What a color.

Links and Reference
Just Bento has a good article on a more typical preparation of okowa here.

SHARE! Kyoto Support Forum: Join the Conversation!

Tweet! Tweet! Find out what’s going on in Kyoto right now, follow me on Twitter.

In Kyoto, people like sweet miso soup and the miso soup for O-shogatsu, or Japanese New Year, is especially sweet, surely the sweetest miso soup in all the land. The soup is called o-zoni and this article is about Kyozoni, or Kyoto-style o-zoni. The source of the sweetness is not sugar, but rice, which produces a rich and mellow natural sweetness. The miso paste is called saikyo shiro miso and it is made with more rice and less soybeans than usual. This is the taste of miso from the Kyoto Imperial Court of antiquity.

My Colorful Rendition of Ozoni (The snowman is a sake bottle label.)

Saikyo White Miso
This year I ordered a few containers of Honda Miso’s Daiginjo Saikyo Shiro Miso (大吟醸西京白味噌) for my New Year’s Day ozoni miso soup and to give to a few friends. This daiginjo miso is very special because for several reasons; it is made with heaps of rice, it has little salt, it is only fermented for several weeks and is not pasteurized. Honda Miso only makes a small amount of this miso every December and it sells out in just a few days with many families having a standing order every year. If you are into Japanese sake you will probably know the term daiginjo as the finest quality sake. Saikyo means ‘west capital’ (Kyoto), this is Kyoto-style miso.

This miso is usually the lightest color miso that you can find in the miso section of a store and is ground into a very fine texture. Sakyo miso paste can also be used to make an excellent marinade for fish and chicken.

The staff at Honda Miso kindly gave me their recommended recipe for their daiginjo miso, which I improvised upon. The idea is that all the ingredients in the soup and the soup itself all be white as white is the color of celebration in Japan. Having this for breakfast makes for an auspicious start to the new year.

The ingredients are two kinds of taro (karashi imo and ko imo), nezumi daikon (a short, rat-looking radish) and round white mochi. I used ebi imo, regular daikon, kintoki ninjin carrot, green yomogi and yellow awa mochi and a few nanohana rape blossoms. So, mine turned out very colorful and festive.

Like all o-shogatsu food, the vegetables in the classical Kyoto recipe have symbolic meanings: having smooth human relations, having many descendants, being promoted in the world, not to become jealous or petty and to put down strong roots.

As I was having my soup, I was thinking that this daiginjo saikyo shiro miso would make an excellent ice cream flavor. I wish I had an ice cream maker to try and make some!

Usually miso paste is quite pungent as it is fermented, it is also quite salty. Honda Miso’s Daiginjo Saikyo White Miso paste itself is a treat to taste. It is buttery in fragrance and has no whiff of ferment. The taste is lightly bean-like and quite buttery, even with a hint of caramel. The texture is completely smooth. The ingredients are simply rice, soybeans and salt. There is no koji and the salt content is about one-tenth that of regular miso. The cost is about 1,500 yen ($15) for 500 grams. Now that is some expensive miso! I highly recommend that you ring in the new year with some daiginjo saikyo white miso if you can get your hands on some.

Nanohana, Ebi Imo, Daikon Radish, Kintoki Ninjin

Yomogi Mochi (mugwort) and Awa Mochi (millet)

Simmered Vegetables and Lightly Grilled Mochi in Bowl (This is about 2 servings worth.)

Honda Miso’s Daiginjo Saikyo Shiro Miso

Saikyo White Miso and Normal Miso

Kyozoni Served
The ingredients that I used are all O-shogatsu, with the exception of nanohana. Nanohana heralds the coming of spring and New Year’s Day is the beginning of spring, so I thought it appropriate. Also, the bitterness of the nanohana is the perfect contrast to the sweetness of the white miso.

This was really good!

My Colorful Ozoni Served

How to Make Kyoto-style Ozoni
Making this ozoni will take about 25-30 minutes. If you can get saikyo white miso and some kind of taro like ko imo, you should be able to get the authentic taste.

Ingredients

• mochi 4 round, bite-sized pieces
• karashi imo 4 pieces
• koimo 4
• nezumi daikon
• hana katsuo threads
• water 400 ml
• saikyo white miso 140 g
• serves 4

Preparation
1. Peel the imo and cut into bite-sized pieces if need be. Simmer about 20 minutes until soft. (Use water reserved from rinsing rice to simmer vegetables. The authentic recipe for Kyoto-style ozoni is to simmer the imo with some uncooked rice as this will make the imo slightly gooey on the surface.)
2. Gently heat the water and dissolved miso paste into it.
3. In a separate pan, simmer the mochi until soft.
4. Add vegetables and mochi to miso and simmer gently for a few minutes, enough time for the daikon to cook.
5. Serve in lacquer bowls and garnish with threads of shaved katsuo.

＊The bowl should not be overfilled as mine is in the photo above. It should be about three-quarters full.

After rinsing rice, use the water for boiling vegetables.

SHARE! Kyoto Support Topic: Where to Purchase Basic Ingredients for Japanese Cooking in Kyoto

Tweet! Tweet! Find out what’s going on in Kyoto right now, follow me on Twitter.

Honda Miso is about a 3 minute walk from the west side of the Imperial Palace.

Map to Honda Miso Honten

View OpenKyoto/KyotoFoodie Map in a larger map

This is a classic Japanese home cooking dish: nikujaga. Nikujaga is based on Western beef stew and I have tried to give a novel Kyoto taste to it. This autumn I have been trying to perfect it and I must say that I am proud of this one. Please give it a try and enjoy!

Get a Kyoto Foodie Present! Please see the end of this article for details.

KyotoFoodie’s Original Kyoto-style Nikujaga with Wagyu Beef Tendon and Kakushi Aji
Nikujaga (肉じゃが) was invented by cooks in the Japanese Navy and is based on beef stew. Niku means meat, as in beef, and jaga (jagaimo) is potato. Nikujaga is now a very popular home cooking dish in Japan. The main ingredients for nikujaga are thin sliced beef, potato, carrot and onion. These typical beef stew ingredients are then simmered in a Japanese style broth of sweet sake and soy sauce.

Beef Tendon: I decided that I wanted to use a non-roast cut of beef for this recipe and decided on fatty tendon. In Japan, beef tendon is popular simmered in sweetened soy sauce and sake. After it is well cooked it is pleasantly ‘mochi-mochi’, or mochi-like in texture. If tendon is undercooked it is just rubbery. After thoroughly cooked it is pleasantly chewy, but more gooey like mochi than rubbery. This cut of meat is called called suji niku in Japanese, literally ‘tendon meat’. This is not just tendon, it is tendon with some meat and fat. Properly prepared, tendon is really good! Give it a try.

Hidden Taste: Next I wanted to add a little non-conventional taste and kakushi aji, or hidden taste. The kakushi aji is cinnamon. Why cinnamon? Cinnamon has been used for centuries to flavor Kyoto’s ubiquitous confection called yatsuhashi that no one in Kyoto actually eats. Today, yatsuhashi is mainly purchased by junior high school students as omiyage when they come to Kyoto on their school excursion. In true kakushi aji fashion, I wanted the cinnamon taste to be there and noticeable but not prominent enough to catch right away as cinnamon.

I was a bit inspired for this recipe by watching Heston Blumenthal’s In Search of Perfection series. This is my perfect Kyoto-style Nikujaga. For the early stages of this dish, I also referred to a recipe in a ‘quick and easy’ type cookbook (村田吉弘の10分でできる和のおかず) that I bought at Kikunoi some years ago written by Chef Yoshihiro Murata. (Mainly the microwaving of potatoes part.)

Here is what it looks like:

Michael's Original: KyotoFoodie-style Nikujaga Wagyu Tendon Beef Stew

You might notice a few things in the photo that are not on the beef stew list of ingredients above. I wanted to add a few non-traditional things; two are ‘Kyoto’ and one isn’t. The ingredients are:

Aburaage: Deep fried tofu used to make the wrapping for Kyoto’s inarizushi.
Yaki Fu: Wheat gluten that has been baked. Various preparations of fu are an important part of Kyoto cuisine.
Kampyo: Kampyo is strips of dried gourd that are most commonly found in sushi rolls.

These three ingredients absorb that flavors of the broth and add contrasting textures.

One last ingredient is ito konnyaku, or threads of konnyaku jelly. Ito konnyaku is often used in nikujaga. While it doesn’t have a lot of taste on its own, it gives an additional contrast of textures.

There is some authentic Kyoto-style philosophical discussion regarding the dashi broth, but lets talk tendon first.

Preparing the Suji Niku Beef Tendon
While it is possible to find just beef tendon in Japan I prefer the part that is a mix of thinner tendon, meat and a bit of fat. It needs more time to cook than the vegetable so I cook it twice before adding the veggies. Sometimes this wagyu suji niku can be quite fatty, the tendon in the photos here is not very fatty though.

I start by boiling the suji niku in salt water for about 5 to 10 minutes, depending on the thickness of the tendon. I am mainly doing this to remove fat, but not the flavor. After giving it a good boil I pour off the water and rinse the suji niku with hot water in a colander and allow to cool. Once cool enough to handle I cut it into bite sized portions and put it in a wok or frying pan. I cover the meat with sake or cooking sake (ryorishu), cover (and use a wooden otoshibuta if you have one) and cook covered over high heat. I cook it down until all the sake is evaporated and I can hear the oil from the meat sizzling in the pan and then remove from heat.

Wagyu Suji Niku (Beef Tendon)

Wagyu Suji Niku Boiled to Remove Fat

Wagyu Suji Niku Simmered in Sake

Wagyu Suji Niku Simmered in Sake

The Other Ingredients
The other ingredients don’t require much preparation. Cut the kampyo strips into bite sized pieces. Simply drain and rinse the konnyaku and quickly rinse the kampyo and yaki fu in hot water and then place in the dashi broth to reconstitute. The before slicing the aburaage, place in a colander in the sink and slowly pour a pot of boiling water over it to wash any remaining oil from the deep frying process.

Yaki Fu and Kampyo

Aburaage and Konnyaku

Sliced Aburaage

The Dashi Dilemma: Clear Soup or Stew
In Kyoto, dashi soup broth is very serious business. Many traditionalists say that (clear) soup is the climax of the meal and even just pretty good Kyoto restaurants make their dashi from scratch every morning. Some fanatical restaurants make it 3 times a day! It is said to lose its freshness after just a few hours. Dashi is the basis of many classic dishes. At Kichisen I was amazed to learn that they cook their sushi rice in dashi! (They don’t really even serve sushi to guests. But when they make sushi, they use their $5 a cup dashi to cook the rice!)

The typical nikujaga usually has a light broth but I decided to go with a more gravy or stew-like consistency (I live in Kyoto, but I am from “out on the edge of the prairie“), I also wanted to make it with the traditional kastuo dashi — and a little inspiration from Heston Blumenthal! (See this video, 4:02, potato skin infusion.)

Thanks to Heston, I decided to develop a ‘potato dashi’, I call it jaga dashi. While jaga dashi may not be ‘Kyoto’ in taste, I think that it is sufficiently ‘crazy about dashi’ to be authentically ‘Kyoto’.

First I simmer the potato skins in katsuo dashi, this infuses the dashi with the most flavorful part of the potato. Also, I overcooked about 1/3 of the potatoes in the microwave and then dissolve them into the jaga dashi to thicken the consistency and add even more flavor.

 About the katsuo dashi, I never use the chemical powdered stuff. I use the dashi packs that contain all the ingredients that go into proper dashi, these ingredients are just ground and put into a tea bag. Making authentic dashi from scratch is just not something done in home cooking now, leave that to the masters. Dashi packs are a reasonable compromise between ‘chemical’ and ‘from scratch’.

After cooking, most of this jaga dashi will be absorbed into the vegetables and meat, but making it more soupy would surely be yummy too. Just add more sake!

Starting Jaga Dashi

Well Microwaved Potatoes Jaga Dashi

Jaga Dashi Broth with Yaki Fu and Kampyo

Cooking: Simmering the Stew
The peeled potatoes should be pre-cooked in the microwave oven for about 5 minutes. Saute the reconstituted fu and kampyo, konnyaku, aburaage slices and onion with suji niku and remaining oil. Saute covered over high heat for several minutes and until browned slightly.

Next come the sliced potatoes and carrots, chuck them in and then add the jaga dashi and ‘top off’ pan with sake or cooking sake. Most cooking sake has lots of salt added to it so that it can be sold in grocery stores. You want to use seishu (clear sake) if at all possible. Just buy the cheapest sake you can find but make sure it is seishu and not synthetic (goseishu). It has been said that I use an insane amount of sake when I simmer this dish.

After you have drowned all the ingredients in sake turn up the heat. I prefer to use a Chinese style wok instead of the typical Western-style stew pot because I don’t want to stir the nikujaga while it is cooking. Stirring will break the potatoes.

Next you add the cinnamon and tare (soy sauce, mirin, sugar, salt and probably some more sake).

Saute the Beef and Other Ingredients

Drown those ingredients in sake!

Bring to boil

Add the Cinnamon and Tare

Disperse Dashi in Ingredients

Cover with Foil and Simmer

Dekita! ... I think this one is a masterpiece!

My Perfect Nikujaga Served

Kyoto-style Nikujaga Served

Kyoto-style Nikujaga First Bite: Kampyo, Suji Niku and Carrot

Kyoto-style Nikujaga Recipe
This recipe will make at least 10 servings and like any stew, nikujaga tastes even better as leftovers. Just half the ingredients if you want to make less. When I make a large portion like this I use less sugar, salt and soy sauce as it is more healthy. The recipe below you may find bland. I think that you could double the amount of mirin, soy sauce and sugar and add another teaspoon or so of cinnamon to rev up the flavor. If I were doing this recipe for guests or for just one meal, I would definitely use more sugar and soy sauce. Try this as your base and then taste and adjust as you cook.

Ingredients

• 500 g beef
• 1.5 k potato
• 1-2 onions
• 3-4 carrots
• 1 cup sliced aburaage (deep fried tofu)
• 1/2 – 1 cup konnyaku (thin sliced or ito konnyaku)
• 30 g kampyo (dried gourd strips, unbleached if possible)

dashi

• 1 liter water
• 2 katsuo dashi packs
• skins from peeled potatos
• 1/3 of the potatoes, well microwaved and lightly crushed with fork.
• dried kombu kelp (optional)

700 ml – 1 liter of cheap sake (this much ryorishu with salt will ruin the stew)

tare

• 2 teaspoons of cinnamon
• 200 ml sake or cooking sake (ryorishu)
• 100-150 ml Japanese shoyu soy sauce (not thick koikuchi)
• 200 ml mirin (sweet sake)
• 1/4 – 1/2 cup sugar
• salt (pinch)

Preparation
Ingredients: Peel the potatoes and cut into quarters or eighths depending on size, then cover in a bowl and cook in a microwave oven until about half-done. Use about 1/3 of the potatoes for another round of microwaving, cook well. The overcooked potatoes will be used to thicken the jaga dashi.

Peel and slice the carrots and onions.

Drain and rinse the konnyaku. Cut the kampyo into bite sized strips and rinse with hot water with the baked fu and then reconstitute in jaga dashi.

Pour boiling water over aburaage and cut into strips after cooling.

If necessary boil the beef once to remove excess fat. (See above for details if you are using tendon. If you are using roast or similar cut, this step is probably not necessary.) If using tendon or other tough cut of beef, simmer in sake.

Dashi: Simmer about 1 liter of water with several katsudashi packs and the peeled skins from the potatoes. After 20 minutes remove dashi packs and potato skins. Gently mash the over-microwaved potato slices and add to dashi and simmer covered for about 20 minutes.

Saute the beef with other ingredients except potato and carrot until lightly browned then add the jaga dashi. Next add the potatoes and carrots and fill pan with sake until all ingredients are covered and bring to a gentle boil.

Tare: Over a low flame, heat the tare ingredients gently until sugar is dissolved.

Simmer the over medium heat and add tare and cinnamon. Use a ladle to mix the tare with the dashi well. Avoid stirring to not break the potatoes. Cover with foil, leaving a small hole for steam to escape. Simmer and reduce dashi to a thick gravy-like consistency.

Flavor Balance and Kakushi Aji
Either a thick gravy or a light broth for this recipe would be nice, I think. The amount of salt and soy sauce is very important, so do like real chefs do and taste as you go. You can always add more but you can’t take it away.

The most important point in the recipe for me is the cinnamon. I want it to be a hidden taste. I want the person eating it to say, Uh, what is this? I know this taste but I can’t quite place it. If they say something like; Wow, cinnamon flavored stew, that’s interesting. Then, I think have used too much cinnamon.

Help Spread Kyoto Culinary Culture and Get a Present from Kyoto Foodie! If you make and adapt this recipe and publish it on your blog, I will send you box Kyoto foodie goodies. (If a lot of people do it, I think I will have to choose just a few winners and not send everyone a prize.) Send a trackback and/or comment with a link to your nikujaga! Be daring!

Reference and Links
Nikujaga
Dashi
Aburaage
Fu (wheat gluten)
Kampyo
Yatsuhashi

SHARE! Kyoto Support Forum: Food and Drink in Kyoto

Tweet! Tweet! Find out what’s going on in Kyoto right now, follow me on Twitter.

Donabe Yakiguri Gohan (Roasted Chestnut Rice) 焼き栗ご飯

Kuri-gohan and O-koge
Kuri-gohan is an autumn favorite, as are yaki-kuri (yakiguri), or roasted chestnuts. This dish is slightly novel in that combines the two. Kuri-gohan is wonderful but it lacks the smokey aroma of well roasted chestnuts. Peeling chestnuts is a bit of a pain, but it is worth the effort and cannot be beat. Roasting and peeling chestnuts can be done with family or friends and makes for a nice time. This dish goes well with seasonal tsukemono pickles and grilled fish.

This dish has a good deal of sugar content from the chestnuts, sake and mirin, so if cooked in a donabe earthenware pot you can be sure that you will get a nice crust of o-koge (お焦げ), slightly burned rice, at the bottom of the donabe pot.

Yakiguri Gohan – Roasting Chestnuts Over Open Flame

The same effect can be accomplished with charcoal, an electric broiler, or even a torch.

Yakiguri Gohan – Roasted Chestnuts, Still Smoldering

These are a bit underdone.

Yaki-kuri Gohan Recipe
Using roasted chestnuts makes this recipe different from the usual kuri gohan.

Ingredients

• 20-30 medium size fresh chestnuts
• 1 1/2 – 2 cups short grain white rice
• fresh water, equal to amount of rice after washing (if using donabe)
• 2 tablespoons sake (ryorishu cooking sake or sake)
• 1 tablespoon mirin
• 1/2 – 1 teaspoon salt
• dashi kombu (kelp for dashi broth)

Preparation
Peeling the chestnuts: There are numerous ways to peel chestnuts in Japan; boiling, roasting and just peeling raw with a sharp paring knife. Yakiguri (roasted chestnuts) gives a more kobashii (smokey and aromatic) flavor so we flamed the chestnuts to peel them. A charcoal grill could be used as well, the point is the infrared heat.

Chestnuts can be peeled easiest when they are hot, the hotter the better. Try roasting them in small batches to keep them hot while peeling. I burned away most of the outer shell over the gas range and then peeled away the inner skin with my fingers and sometimes favorite ceramic paring knife.

I returned the peeled chestnuts to the flame for just a few seconds to give them some additional ‘yaki’ roast flavor and aroma.

Donabe: Rinse the rice with water several times and place in colander while preparing the donabe and other ingredients. Remeasure rice and add to donabe. Add the same amount of water as rice. Then add sake, mirin and salt. Mix chestnuts into the rice and liquid and place small sheet of dried dashi kombu on top. You could use up to 1 cup of sake in place of water if you want to be very luxurious. Don’t skimp on salt, chestnuts need a good deal of salt to bring out their sweetness.

Heat until near boil and cover donabe. Reduce heat and set timer for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, remove heat (if you are using an electric range, move the donabe from heat source) and set timer for another 10 minutes.

Uncover and mix gently with shamoji rice paddle and break chestnuts into pieces. You could leave them whole if you like, but that creates a presentation conundrum, or at least in Kyoto it might.

Yakiguri Gohan – Roasted Chestnuts, Ready to Peel

These are well done, the shell has almost been burned away completely. The trick is to peel the inner skin while the chestnut is still hot.

Yakiguri Gohan – Peeled and Roasted Chestnuts

I put these to the flame again for a few seconds after peeling.

Cooking Yakiguri Gohan in Donabe

Cooking Yakiguri Gohan in Donabe

Cooking Yakiguri Gohan in Donabe – Boiling and Ready to Cover

Cooking Yakiguri Gohan in Donabe – 20 Minutes Later, Dekita! (Done)

Generally the kombu is discarded, but I (Peko) like to bite off a chunk and chew it while I am serving the meal.

Yakiguri Gohan – Two Ways to Serve

The Presentation Conundrum
The presentation conundrum is with the whole chestnuts, on the right. Some will probably have been broken in the peeling process and the rice sticks to the tops and sides of the chestnuts in an unnatural and icky way. While the whole chestnuts look much more sexy, gently breaking them with the shamoji rice paddle solves the presentation conundrum and creates a uniform taste. This dish has only three main flavors: rice, chestnut and salt. If you don’t have whole chestnut in every bite, you might be disappointed.

Yakiguri Gohan – Whole Chestnuts

Nice o-koge charring on rice from the bottom of the donabe, this maybe a little too much. The o-koge should never make the rice become hard nor black, golden brown is what you are after. A tiny bit less heat would have made the o-koge come out perfect.

Yakiguri Gohan – Rice and Chestnuts Mix

The bit of rice at the top right of the bowl sticking out is very bad form, you can tell a foreigner served this! Everything inside the bowl, no stray rice sticking grains to the mouth of the bowl!

SHARE! Kyoto Food and Drink Forum

Tweet! Tweet! Find out what’s going on in Kyoto right now, follow me on Twitter.

Aomikan (Green Tangerine) Marmalade 青みかんマーマレード

The Taste of Green Tangerines

Aomikan, or ‘green tangerine’ mark the beginning of autumn. They are more sour than sweet and make a wonderfully refreshing snack in the still hot late afternoons and early evenings of this season.

The early autumn aomikan has a delightful, berry-like ‘tingle on the tongue’ tartness to it, similar to the sensation of a perfectly fresh strawberry.

In this season though, mikan are not quite ripe, but that makes them all the more tasty! Aomikan is one of Peko’s favorite fruit of all time. Aomikan only stay ‘ao’, green naturally for a short time, so this is the time to enjoy them!

source: KyotoFoodie End of Summer Aomikan article

Aomikan – Green Tangerines

Aren’t these absolutely gorgeous?

I love aomikan! Last year I tried to make aomikanshu liqueur (like umeshu, yuzushu, karinshu), but it didn’t turn out very well. I think that I didn’t add enough sugar and I bought cheap aomikan that weren’t very juicy. Since early this year I have made a lot of marmalade with Japanese citrus, like this yuzu marmalade, and had been looking forward to aomikan season so that I could make some aomikan marmalade.

Slicing Aomikan

Sliced Aomikan

Ready to Simmer – Aomikan and Sugar in the Pot

How I Made It
I followed this quick and simple recipe by a Japanese foodie blogger that called for the entire mikan tangerine being used, as is. I was a little disappointed with the result. The marmalade looks pleasantly creamy, but that is the pith, I think. The pith really needs to be removed and the peel needs to be boiled at least once to remove the bitterness. I don’t think that there is a quick and easy way to make excellent marmalade.

I used 10 large, beautiful, juicy aomikan.

Tangerine Marmalade Recipe

• 5 aomikan (substitute ripe mikan tangerine)
• 100 g sugar
• 500 ml water

Preparation
Scrub tangerines with brush and slice thinly as seen in photos. Simmer sliced tangerines in water for 1 hour and then add sugar and simmer for another 1 hour.

How I Would Make it Next Time
Start with 20 aomikan or ripe tangerines.

Wash the whole aomikan with a scrub brush. Miwa found information in the internet saying to wipe the peel with a towel soaked in shochu (substitute vodka or similar alcohol) to remove wax and (some) chemicals.

Peel aomikan and scrap the inside of the peel with a knife or spoon to remove the pith (see this yuzushu article for photos).

Hand-chop or mix tangerine flesh in blender and squeeze through course woven cloth. You want to separate the juice from the pith and fiber.

Select about half the aomikan peel and boil for 5 minutes and strain. Repeat this process 1 to 3 times, with new boiling water each time. (Thick peel citrus requires a good deal of boiling, aomikan peel is quite thin and delicate so I think that once ought to be sufficient to take the bitter edge off.) You can make candied peel with the remaining peel.

Mix juice, sugar and peel with 500 ml to 1 l of water and simmer for 1 to 2 hours.

Normally, I wouldn’t use white processed sugar, but I wanted to try to bring out the freshness and tartness of the aomikan without complicating the taste with brown or black sugar. Wasanbon sugar, though expensive, could be incredible combination with properly prepared aomikan.

Aomikan Marmalade Served

I am enjoying this marmalade on my bread in the morning and have done a taste test with other marmalade that I made this year and this really is quite bitter. Too bad. Once again, the easy way turned out not to be the best way. By the way, there is no ‘quick and easy’ way in Kyoto cuisine.

Fruit Store in Shopping Arcade

This is the shop where I bought the aomikan. They have some cheap ones out front, but I went in and dug around and found some big, juicy aomikans. They were well worth the extra few hundred yen that they cost. This little old guy that works at the fruit shop is so old that he can’t stand-up straight! I bet he knows everything there is to know about fruit by now.

SHARE! Kyoto Food and Drink Forum

Tweet! Tweet! Find out what’s going on in Kyoto right now, follow me on Twitter.

Home Cooking: Kyoto-style Sweet Potato (Sui-to Poteto) with Cinnamon

Classic Modern Japanese Sweet: Sui-to Poteto
Sui-to Poteto is a classic that was invented in 1949 by Matsuzo Inoue, the patisserie at the exclusive Imperial (Teikoku) Hotel in Tokyo. Though he was based in Tokyo, his philosophy about food seems informed by Kyoto’s culinary culture; select quality and seasonal ingredients and endeavor to bring out the taste of the ingredients. Chef Inoue’s creation can now be found in confectionaries and bakeries all over Japan.

The sweet potato came to Japan some 300 years ago and is now a very common ingredient in many wagashi confections. (See below for details.)

Kyoto Cinnamon Omiyage: Yatsuhashi
Cinnamon came to Japan in the 8th century. At that time cinnamon was considered more a medicine than a spice. It was used to cure stomach aches, fever, improve blood circulation and warm the body. Yatsuhashi is Kyoto’s ubiquitous confection, it is omiyage, or souvenir. Yatsuhashi comes in numerous variaties but is invariably mochi, either fresh or baked, that has been flavored with cinnamon. There are countless companies and stores in Kyoto that make and sell yatsuhashi, at least three have been in business for more than 300 years!

Therefore, we added cinnamon to our sui-to poteto to make it Kyoto-style.

Japanese ‘Satsuma Imo’ Sweet Potato

Steaming Satsuma Imo

Mashing with Butter

Mixing in Cinnamon

Kyoto-style ‘Sui-to Poteto’ Recipe

Ingredients

• 2 sweet potatoes (about 500 grams total)
• 6 tablespoons sugar (we like natural brown sugar)
• 30 grams butter
• 3 tablespoons milk
• 2 egg yolk (one for potato mixture one for glaze)
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• pinch of salt (if desired)
• sesame seeds

＊Our measurements are approximate and we assume that our readers are foodies, so please taste along the way and adjust as you see fit.

point: To be Kyoto-style the final product should not be too sweet and the cinnamon should not overpower any of the other tastes. You want to bring out the natural taste of the sweet potato, enhance it with sweetness and richness. The cinnamon should be the grab your attention immediately but be the finish. Complexity and subtlety is the point, but by no means be dull!

Preparation
Wash the sweet potatoes. Cut into 2 cm thick slices. Steam gently for 0ver low heat for 20 to 30 minutes. Place in mixing bowl and remove skins after the slices have cooled enough to touch. It is important to gently steam the sweet potatoes at a relatively low temperature as this will increase the natural sweetness of the potatoes. (Best not to cheat and use the microwave!)

Mashing and mixing by hand, stir in butter and sugar. (A mixer can be used but we liked ours with a little chunkiness left. See last photo below for interior detail.) Mix in egg yolk and milk. Taste and add sugar and/or butter if needed. Stir in half the cinnamon and taste. Add remaining cinnamon as needed.

Gently form into roughly ping pong sized balls. Squeeze chakin shibori style if you like. Simply use damp muslin or similar cloth for this and rinse occasionally.

Brush on egg yolk glaze and add several sesame seeds on top. The second time we made this, I used white sesame seeds for some and sprinkled sugar on others.

Cook for 15 minutes in oven with broiler at 200 c or oven toaster. We tried both and definitely liked the oven toaster sui-to poteto best. You aren’t really cooking it through and through like a chocolate chip cookie, just getting it hot and browning the top.

Chakin Shibori – Twist and Squeeze in Muslin Cloth

Chakin shibori (茶巾絞り) is used to shape many wagashi confections.

Chakin Shibori Formed Sui-to Poteto

Notice the delicate texture imparted to the raw ‘sui-to poteto’ from the chakin cloth.

Egg Yolk and Black Sesame Seeds

Baking Sui-to Poteto

Sui-to Poteto – Served

Sui-to Poteto and Milk

Sui-to Poteto – detail

Sweet Potatoes in Japanese Culinary Culture
Sweet potatoes are more ubiquitous in Japan than you might imagined. They are used in all sorts of dishes, especially confections. Sweet potatoes came to Japan from South America through Southeast Asia, China and the Ryukyu Kingdom, present-day Okinawa and landed in Kyushu about 300 years ago.

Production of satsuma imo soon flourished on the southern tip of Japan (called Satsuma then) because of the volcanic soil and hot climate. Kyushu’s famed imo-jochu, the shochu distilled alcohol of the region, is made from these same sweet potatoes. Farther north in Japan wheat and rice is used.

Production of sweet potatoes was limited to the Satsuma region for some time until a horrible famine swept Japan. The people in present-day Kagoshima and Nagasaki prefectures fared significantly better than other areas because they had an abundant supply of rich and hardy sweet potatoes. After the famine, satsuma imo production was promoted by the Tokugawa Shogunate in Tokyo and quickly spread throughout the country.

from KyotoFoodie article Satsuma Imo (Sweet Potato) Caramel

SHARE! Kyoto Food and Drink Forum

Tweet! Tweet! Find out what’s going on in Kyoto right now, follow me on Twitter.