yohshoku

Layered Cabbage Casserole - Kyabetsu no Kasaneni (an everyday favorite)

maki — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 10:00:42 +0100

(From the archives. A perfect leave-to-cook, warming dish for a cold evening! Originally published December 2008.)

Some dishes dazzle you with their prettiness. Others may look plain, but are just plainly delicious. This simple, filling yet healthy winter dish belongs to the latter group.

Stuffed cabbage rolls are a staple of Japanese home cooking, believe it or not. I’ve loved it ever since I was little, but I would beg my mother to make it for me. It’s a perfect winter dish, but it can be just a bit fiddly to make.

This stovetop casserole type dish is called キャベツの重ね煮 (kyabetsu no kasaneni) or stewed layered cabbage. It’s basically a deconstructed cabbage roll, made into a round dome and served sliced into wedges. I’ve called it Layered Cabbage Casserole, because ‘stewed cabbage’ in English brings back memories of the greyish limp stuff served in a pool of water that I occasionally had for school lunch in England. (I usually ate lunch at home, since we lived next door to my school, but sometimes when my mother had to go out she’d pay for me to have school lunch. The only things I remember from those school lunches were terrific sausages, and that grey cabbage goo.)

Layered Cabbage doesn’t look very pretty on its own, though it does make an impressive lump. Sliced into wedges though and served with the cooking liquid, it almost looks like a cake, doesn’t it? The cabbage becomes meltingly soft and infused with the flavors of the stuffing and the poaching liquid, which also becomes the sauce.

Here is the big lump (which looks like a rather flat cabbage), with a wedge cut out of it.

It’s a perfect main dish for a cold winter’s night. It’s also very well suited for the slow cooker.

Recipe: Layered Cabbage Casserole (kyabetsu no kasaneni)

This makes a big ‘cake’, enough for at least 8 servings. This is sort of intentional, because leftovers taste even better the next day. You’ll notice that it combines both Western and Japanese flavors, so it belongs in the yohshoku (imported and adapted Western food) category of Japanese cooking.

1 medium to large cabbage

For the stuffing:

1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 small carrot, finely chopped
1 lb (450g) ground beef, or mixed ground pork and beef (In Japan all pork is used, but in this case I prefer the flavor of beef or a mix)
1 small firm tofu (about 300g / 10.5 oz), crumbled
1 egg
1/2 cup breadcrumbs (or use about 1 cup cooked rice)
1 tsp. salt
Pepper
1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg

For the sauce/cooking liquid:

About 4 cups Chicken stock (canned or homemade or even stock cubes will do)
3 Tbs. tomato paste
3 Tbs soy sauce
2 Tbs. sake or sweet sherry (you can leave this out if you can’t use alcohol)
1 Tbs. white wine or rice vinegar
1 bay leaf
1 tsp. dried thyme, or a sprig of thyme
Pepper, and additional salt to taste

Equipment: One of the following:

A slow cooker/crockpot
A heavy enamelled cast iron casserole pot such as a Le Creuset
Any heavy-bottomed pot

Plus, a pot lid or heatproof plate that is a bit smaller than the circumference of your pot.

Peel off the cabbage leaves, in as large pieces as possible. Don’t worry if some get torn up though, you can still use them. For presentation purposes, you may want to have at least one or two big, intact leaves to place on the top. You will want to have about 20 leaves worth or more. If the stalk part is very thick, shave them down a bit with a knife or vegetable peeler.

Reserve some of the torn-up cabbage leaves. Blanch the rest of the cabbage leaves for a few minutes in plenty of boiling water. Drain and cool.

While the cabbage leaves cool, make your stuffing by combining all of the stuffing ingredients well.

In the bottom of your pot, put down the uncooked cabbage leaves in a layer. This uncooked cabbage layer will prevent the bottom of your stack of cabbage from burning (if the protective layer burns, you can just throw it out). On top of the uncooked layer, put a layer of cooked cabbage, then a layer of stuffing, and repeat until the pot is almost full. The top layer should be a below the top of the pot, with space enough for that small pot lid or plate to sit on top. For aesthetic purposes, try to make the shape of your stack round like a cabbage, and finish up with a large, intact leaf.

Combine the sauce/liquid ingredients, and pour around the cabbage. The liquid should just barely cover the top of the cabbage cake - add some water if it doesn’t. Add the bay leaf, thyme, pepper and salt if needed. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and place the small pot lid or plate on top of the cabbage. This is to weight it down a bit and ensure that it stays intact. (This technique is used often in Japanese cooking; the small lid is called an 落としぶた　(otoshibuta), meaning ‘dropped lid’.)

Simmer gently for at least 1 hour, or longer. (If using a slow cooker, you can set everything and let it cook all day.)

Taste the sauce/liquid again before serving and adjust the seasoning.

Slice into wedges and serve in a shallow bowl or soup plate with some of the sauce, with plain rice (the Japanese way), or bread.

Notes

The tofu in the stuffing mixture lightens it up. You can omit it and use a bit more meat or vegetable instead.

I have not tried it, but you could probably cook this in a heavy casserole dish in the oven too. Just make sure the surface doesn’t dry out.

Try putting a little bit of miso in the liquid (about a tablespoon) to make it richer.

Spaghetti Napolitan

maki — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 10:44:34 +0200

Continuing my yohshoku mini-marathon, here’s the infamous Japan-ized pasta dish called Napolitan or Naporitan. (Japanese doesn’t have an L or R sound, which is why Japanese people often mix them up when speaking Western languages.) As far as I know, there’s nothing remotely Neapolitan about Napolitan, except for the use of spaghetti. It is made with a creamy ketchup-based sauce, and has the salty-sweet flavors that Japanese people love.

According to Wikipedia Japan (Japanese link), Spaghetti Napolitan was invented shortly after World War II, by the head chef of the hotel in Yokohama that was used as the U.S. military headquarters by General Douglas MacArthur. He allegedly got the idea from the spaghetti and tomato sauce eaten by the U.S. troops. Over the years the recipe was tweaked, using ketchup instead of the tomato puree in the original recipe for example, since the latter was hard to come by for most Japanese people at the time. There are some Napolitan recipes calling for crushed tomatoes or tomato puree, but using ketchup is, as odd as it may sound, the more ‘authentic’ way.

To make Spaghetti Napolitan that is as ‘authentic’ as you might get in Japan, you’ll want to cook the spaghetti a minute or two over the al dente stage. Up until pretty recently (say the last 20-30 years or so), Japanese people preferred their pasta to be soft, like other noodles they were used to like soba, udon or Chinese style noodles (and as Chinalily commented here, the ‘soft pasta’ preference is seen in other Asian countries too.) You can even cook the noodles in advance and then re-heat them in the pan, something that purist Italian cooks would gasp in horror at but is the standard way of dealing with Japanese style noodles. Do remember that this is an adaptation by one culture of the food of another to suit existing tastes.

I have to admit, I hadn’t made Napolitan in years. I’m more used to the Italian style al dente pasta now. But I made this for Sunday lunch, and found it surprisingly tasty - it brought back all kinds of memories of my childhood.

Recipe: Spaghetti Napolitan

For two rather generous servings:

150g / about 5 oz. dry spaghetti (no. 8 thickness)
4 wiener sausages or frankfurters
1 large sweet pepper (here I used 1/3rd each of red, yellow and green pepper for color)
5-6 button mushrooms
2 Tbs. butter or light cooking oil
1 medium onion
Salt and pepper
1/2 cup ketchup (Heinz is what I used)
2 Tbs. Bulldog tonkatsu sauce
2 Tbs. heavy cream

Boil the spaghetti while you’re cooking the other ingredients in plenty of salted water. Cook it a minute or two beyond the al dente stage for authenticity, or stop at the al dente stage if this bothers you.

Slice the onion, pepper and mushrooms thinly. Slice the sausages in thin, diagonal slices (you can cut them into octopus shapes and the like if you’re entertaining the kids).

Heat up a wok or large frying pan with the butter or oil or a combination. (Using lard here would make it closer to the original version.) Sauté the onion until transclucent, then add the peppers and mushrooms and sauté until it’s all limp. Add the sausage slices and sauté until lightly browned. Season lightly with salt and pepper.

In the meantime, combine the ketchup, Bulldog sauce and cream in a small bowl.

Drain the spaghetti once it’s cooked. Add to the pan. Add the sauce mixture and toss well to combine.

Serve immediately, optionally topped with plenty of grated cheese, and/or a dash of Tabasco.

Kids love this - at least, Japanese kids do.

Notes

If you don’t have Bulldog sauce, use steak sauce and add about a teaspoon or so of honey.

You can use ham or bacon instead of the wieners (or in addition to).

Canned mushrooms are often used in this, but that’s where I draw the line.

Napolitan, the original Wafuu pasta

I’ve written here previously about wafuu pasta, pasta with Japanese ingredients and flavors. I think it’s safe to say Napolitan was the original wafuu pasta - even though it uses Western ingredients, the dish as a whole was adapted to Japanese tastes of the time. (The kind of wafuu pasta that are on this page were developed much later, probably in the 1970s, and use actual Japanese ingredients such as tarako (salted cod roe) and natto (fermented soy beans).

Menchikatsu

maki — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 19:35:36 +0100

While I make Japanese style hamburgers all the time, I rarely make menchikatsu, its breaded and deep-fried cousin. I guess it’s the breading and deep frying that deters me - it’s a messy process, and I’m not sure it’s worth the effort. So I made these ones for the blog! Fortunately they were consumed very eagerly.

The name is a combination of menchi or minchi, which comes from mince(d meat), and katsu, which comes from cutlet. So it’s a minced meat cutlet.

The recipe for the meat mixture is the same as for the hamburgers, though you may want to moisten the breadcrumbs a bit more to give it a quite loose texture. You will also want to make each ‘cutlet’ smaller than the hamburgers. I made size little ones out of the same amount of meat that I made 4 hamburgers from. After dipping in flour, beaten egg and then breadcrumbs (panko are preferable here), it helps to let them firm up a bit in the refrigerator before frying.

Then deep fry them in cooking oil (here I used peanut oil) at a medium-high temperature, about 150°C / 300°F, turning several times, until golden brown on the outside. If you put a discreet hold in the center with a skewer or chopstick and the juice that runs out is clear, it’s done.

The best sauce to put on these is plain old Bulldog tonkatsu sauce, sparingly. They’re best freshly made and piping hot, but are also not bad cooled, so they are popular for bentos.

Making these brought back memories of growing up in suburban Tokyo. Menchikatsu and korokke (potato croquettes that are similarly breaded and deep fried) were commonly available at a butchers; I think the menchikatsu were 100 yen each, and the korokke 80 yen each. They were my mother’s fall-back okazu, when she was too busy to make something else. I remember being sent on emergency early-evening runs to the butcher for menchikatsu and korokke for dinner. My mother never liked to resort to them, but us kids loved them. Nowadays local independent butchers are quite scarce in suburban Tokyo, but menchikatsu and korokke are easily available at convenience stores (kombini) and supermarkets, readymade or in pre-fried, frozen form.

Hambaagu or hambaagaa: Japanese hamburgers

maki — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 14:38:29 +0100

As promised, here is my recipe for making Japanese style hamburgers or hamburger steaks, one of the quintessential yohshoku or Japanese Western-style dishes. They are called hanbaagaa or hanbaagu in Japan, and are very popular for lunch or dinner, and are eaten as a side dish to rice (okazu) in Japanese homes. In fancier restaurants that specialize in yohshoku, they might be eaten with a knife and fork, but at home they’re eaten with chopsticks. Whenever Japanese food magazines have a poll about popular okazu, hamburgers are always in the top three, especially amongst kids.

They don’t have much in common with the American style of hamburger, except for the fact that they both start off with ground meat. A Japanese hamburger has more in common with meatloaf, and a rather similar texture. They are similar to the old TV dinner standby, Salisbury steak, but I think a lot better.

Recipe: Japanese style hamburger (Hambaagu or hambaagaa)

This makes 4 small hamburgers, serving 2 to 4 people depending on what else you are serving.

200g/ about 7 oz. ground beef (from a cut that has a fair amount of fat in it - very lean beef will not work because it will be too dry.)
100g / about 3 1/2 oz. ground pork
1/2 medium onion
3/4 tsp. salt
About 1/2 tsp. ground black pepper
About 1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
1 cup soft white breadcrumbs (Make the breadcrumbs from regular white bread slices with the crusts off. The crumb of a baguette is really good for this.)
2-3 Tbs. milk
1 egg
Oil for cooking

For the sauce:

1/2 cup dry red wine
1/3 cup ketchup
1/3 cup Japanese tonkatsu sauce such as Bulldog brand

Chop the onion very finely. Sauté the onion in a little oil until translucent. Let cool.

Moisten the breadcrumbs with the milk. Combine the meat, cooled onions, moistened milk, egg, salt, ground pepper and nutmeg. Your hands are the best tools for this. Combine well until everything is amalgamated.

Divide into 4 portions. Form into patties, slapping each with your palms until the surface is smooth. Indent the middle with your thumb - this makes sure the middle gets cooked evenly. It should look like this:

Notice that the texture is not crumbly.

From the side:

Heat up a large frying pan with some oil over high heat. Place the hamburgers well apart in the hot pan, and fry until browned. Turn over and turn the heat down to low. Put a tight fitting lid on the pan and steam-cook the hamburgers for about 10 minutes until the middle bounces back if you press down on it. Take out and keep warm.

Pour out any excess oil from the pan and turn the heat up to high again. Add the red wine and deglaze the pan with it (scrape off the brown bits and blend). Add the ketchup and the Bulldog sauce and blend. Pour over the hamburgers.

They are best served piping hot, but they are also very popular for bento boxes.

What to serve with hambaagu

As I’ve noted above, hamburgers in Japan are eaten with plain white rice. So it’s fine to serve them just so on their own plate, maybe with a garnish. A popular side to them is glazed carrots (boiled carrots which are glazed with butter and a little bit of sugar). Another popular side is kofukiimo, boiled pototoes that are dried out in a hot pan, and tossed with a little butter, salt and pepper and chopped parsley.

You could also serve some plain boiled broccoli and so on with them too. As part of a typical Japanese meal, you’d serve some soup, salad and/or pickle, and perhaps one more side dish besides the hamburgers. (See Anatomy of a Japanese meal.)

Sauce variations

The sauce I’ve used here is very easy to make and fits perfectly with the hamburgers. Other sauces that are often used include demiglace (most often seen at yohshoku restaurants, though home cooks can buy canned demiglace), teriyaki-style sauce, or just a little soy sauce and grated daikon radish.

Somewhat lower fat variation suitable for bento

See the tofu-meat mix variation for hambaagu that are not as juicy, but still good, and which arguably hold up better taste-wise when cooled (as in bento boxes). But really, once in a while you just have to have a real juicy hambaagu.

Yohshoku in the New York Times (but it's not Hambagoo!!!!!)

maki — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 19:05:32 +0100

The New York Times has an article today about yohshoku, Japanese-style western food. Long time readers of Just Hungry will know that I’ve been slowly introducing you all to yohshoku for some years now. Here’s the original article where I explained what it is back in 2004, which links to all the yohshoku style recipes on the site, such as omuraisu (omu rice or rice omelette) and hayashi rice. Unless I missed listing something, the number of recipes is pretty small yet. This is because most yohshoku dishes are pretty high in calories, especially from fat, and in recent times I’m a bit more into rather healthier eating. But I’ll try to increase the number, yes yes I will.

A couple of things about the New York Times article: first of all, it isn’t hambagoo (which I think most people would pronounce as ham-Ba-GOO….wtf), it would be correctly pronounced hambaagu - though I would dispute their assertion that hambaagaa is reserved for the Golden Arches meat-on-a-bun variety and hambaagu for the Japanese kind. Both terms are used for either kind really. As several readers over the years have pointed out, a Japanese style hamburger is very much like a “hamburger steak” or a Salisbury steak. Given that we do actually have hambaagu for dinner quite often, it shames me that I still haven’t put up a recipe. I’ll remedy that ASAP.

I’d also dispute the claim that spaghetti for napolitan is cooked and then left for a while. Restaurants may do that but home cooks don’t (and I would say good restaurants don’t either). The key difference between Japanese style spaghetti and Italian style spaghetti is simply that Japanese people prefer their noodles to be a tad softer than al dente. This is because traditional noodles like udon and soba are a tad on the soft side. Until fairly recently, even so-called Italian restaurants in Japan would cook their pasta a few more minutes beyond the al dente stage to suit their customers.

As I noted in my original article about yohshoku, the main reason why it’s become newly popular and hip in recent years is because of nostalgia. Japanese ‘gourmet’ magazines (food mags that focus on eating out more than cooking, aimed at a mainly male audience) like dancyu and Shokuraku frequently have features about ‘Showa retro’ yohshoku cooking. This nostalgia is a little like the one for ’50s diner food in the U.S., or ‘good plain British food’ in the UK. (I explained a bit about ‘Show retro’, a dewy eyed nostalgia for the good old times of the former emperor Hirohito’s reign,
on Just Bento recently.)

And for me, a Japanese person who’s lived so long outside of Japan, yohshoku still has a special place in my food life. Even if it is damn fattening.

Hayashi raisu (rice): Japanese beef stew

maki — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 07:59:03 +0100

I have not added a yohshoku (Japanese-adapted Western food) recipe in quite some time. The main reason for this is I haven’t been making any…since most yohshoku dishes tend to be a bit heavy on the butter or cream or rich sauces.

I do sometimes crave this classic yohshoku dish. Hayashi raisu (or hayashi rice) is a Japanese version of a rich beef stew, and in terms of popularity it’s second only to the mighty curry rice, Japanese style curry. Just like curry, you can buy hayashi raisu roux blocks at Japanese grocery stores (look in the curry roux section).

Incidentally, the hayashi part sounds like the Japanese word for a wood (as in a smaller version of a forest), but it’s derived from “hashed”, as in hashed beef. I think the origins are a hashed beef stew. I can see influences from beef bourgignon, stroganoff and various British stews in there.

The beef used is not tough old chewy meat - it’s usually made from cuts that are tender enough to be cooked quickly. The kind sold for ‘minute steaks’ is fine. Sukiyaki beef is great if you can afford it. I’ve seen recipes around that suggest using pork instead of beef, but…that’s just not right to me. Hayashi rice = beef! Beef!

Making hayashi rice from scratch can be easy or tremendously complicated, depending on one thing: whether you make your own demi-glace or not. Demi-glace is reduced, concentrated beef stock that is thick and paste-like. In Japan you can buy demi-glace in cans. You can buy it elsewhere too, though the good kinds can be very expensive. The only other substitute is to make your own strong beef stock from beef bones, meat trimmings and so on and reduce it down and so on. Using stock cubes just won’t do it, I’m afraid, and forget about the usually insipid beef stock in a carton or can.

I’ve given instructions for making hayashi rice from handy roux blocks (which can vary in quality) and using demi-glace.

Hayashi raisu (Hayashi rice)

450g / 1 lb thinly sliced beef
4 medium onions, thinly sliced
About 10-12 mushrooms, sliced
1 medium carrot, thinly sliced
Butter or oil
1 garlic clove, chopped
1 cup (240ml) red wine
2 bay leaves
1 tsp. dried thyme
1 Tbs. Worcestershire sauce or Bulldog chuunou sauce
1 Tbs. soy sauce
Parsley or green peas for garnish

The sauce ingredients:

1/2 cup demi-glace or 4 cups strong beef stock
1 16-oz or 440g can of canned tomatoes
1 Tbs. tomato paste
2 Tbs. butter
3 Tbs. flour
Water

6 blocks (or more if you like it thick) from a hayashi rice roux packet
Water

Equipment: a large frying pan or sauté pan, a heavy bottomed pot for stewing or a crockpot

Cut the meat up into bite-sized pieces. Heat up a frying pan with butter, oil or combination of both, and sauté the beef until browned. Take out the meat and set aside.

In the same pan, add a bit more butter (no this is not diet food) and add the onions. Sauté over medium-low heat until limp and slightly brown. Add the garlic, mushrooms and carrot. Sauté until the mushrooms are turning limp.

Put all the vegetables in a heavy-bottomed stew pot (a crockpot will do nicely too).

Add the wine. If you’re using the hayashi rice roux blocks, add about 4 cups of water (don’t add the roux at this point yet). If you’re using the other sauce ingredients, add either the demi-glace plus 3 cups of water, the canned tomato and tomato paste, or 4 cups of strong beef stock and the canned tomato and tomato paste. Add the bay leaves and thyme.

Let it all simmer until the liquid has reduced to about half. Add the beef to the pot and contine simmering - the beef should be very tender.

If you’re making your own sauce, make a roux by melting 2 Tbs. of butter in the frying pan and adding the flour. Stir until the flour is grainy and a little bit browned. Add to the stew and stir. Add the Worcestershire sauce and soy sauce.

If using the roux blocks, add them now and stir well to melt.

Add a little water or stock to thin out if it looks too thick. Simmer a few minutes.

Taste and add salt or pepper as needed. Take out the bay leaves.

Serve over rice that’s been mixed with a little salted butter. Garnish with chopped parsley or a few green peas.

This makes 6 to 8 servings.

Hayashi omuraisu

Leftover hayashi makes a very rich sauce for omuraisu (rice omelettte) instead of ketchup. Use plain buttered rice instead of ketchup-chicken rice as the filling.

Wafuu Pasuta (wafuu pasta): Japanese style pasta

maki — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 16:25:48 +0100

The word wafuu may sound like someone trying to say yahoo and not quite succeeding, but it actually means “Japanese-style” in Japanese.

Italian style pasta has been popular in Japan since the post war period. In the beginning it was served with Italian, or at least Western European, style sauces, but some time in the ’70s or so people started to experiment with Japanese flavors. Essentially, things that are usually eaten with white rice were mixed into or put on top of spaghetti and other pastas. These are known as wafuu pasuta or wafuu supagetti (say these out loud and you’ll know what they are), and became popular on the menus of Japanese cafés (kissaten) and the like.

There is at least one restaurant in the U.S. that I know of that has a couple of wafuu pasuta dishes on their menu - Basta Pasta (warning: icky Flash-only site!), in New York. They don’t really go far enough in my opinion though. If you love Japanese flavors you’ll probably love wafuu pasuta too.

Most wafuu pasuta recipes are very quick and easy to make, so they are great for quick dinners. Incidentally, to achieve a more Japanese texture cook the pasta about a minute or so longer than you might otherwise, so it’s a bit past al dente. Japanese people generally prefer softer pasta.

Following are three of my favorite quick and easy wafuu pasuta dishes.

Tarako and ponzu capellini

Tarako is salted cod roe. It can be eaten uncooked in its soft state or cooked until it separates into tiny little balls. You may only have encountered cooked tarako in furikake or as onigiri fillings, but the real thing is much better of course. In its uncooked state it has a rich, rather unctuous texture - and the flavor of concentrated salty fish egg. The ponzu cuts through the richness a bit.

To make this dish, mix together 1 pair (two pieces) of tarako with the membrane removed with 1 to 2 tablespoons of softened butter. Mix this well with about 2 cups of hot capellini (angel hair pasta) until the pasta is thoroughly coated. Mix in about 2 teaspoons of ponzu vinegar, and finely chopped green onions. Serve topped with more chopped green onions.

Since this pasta is very rich, I prefer to serve it in small portions as an appetizer on its own.

For a spicy version, use mentaiko instead of the tarako. Both should be available, often frozen, at Japanese groceries.

Hijiki and dried shiitake mushroom spaghetti

This dramatic black and white pasta has no added fat. But it has lots of carbs of course. The hijiki and shiitake are both full of fiber and umami.

Rinse and then soak about 3 tablespoons of dried hijiki (here I have used mehijiki (hijiki shoots)) and two dried shiitake mushrooms in warm water until they are softened and swelled. Sliver the shiitake cap, removing the stem. Cook them in a cup of the soaking liquid, 2 tablespoons of soy sauce, 2 teaspoons of sugar and 1 tablespoon of mirin while you boil the spaghetti. Toss into the hot spaghetti and sprinkle with some 7-flavor pepper powder (nanami tohgarashi).

To make it even healthier, use whole wheat, soy or other alternative spaghetti.

Natto, shiso and green onion spaghettini

Natto lovers will love this pasta dish, and natto haters will, well, hate it. The combination of warm pasta and natto really brings out the distinctive odor and flavor of the fermented soybeans.

Mix a regular sized packet (50g) of natto well, until the sticky strings form. Add 1 tablespoon of soy sauce, the mustard pack if the natto came with one, a handful of chopped green onions and a big handful of shredded shiso leaves (use parsley or shredded nori if you can’t find shiso). Toss with hot spaghettini and top with more shiso. Optionally add a little sesame oil.

Sticky, smelly and fragrant goodness! However, I recommend you don’t use grated cheese on this, because natto and cheese combine in a very unsettling way.

Corn cream soup with intentional lumps

maki — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 15:03:33 +0200

What’s the soup of your childhood? The one that your mother made for you when you had a cold, needed cheering up, or just as a treat? For me, there’s no question: it’s corn cream soup.

Corn cream soup (and yes, it’s called like that, not ‘cream of corn soup’ or ‘creamed corn soup’) belongs to the yohshoku category of Japanese home cooking. It’s an old fashioned, milk based potage, with creamed corn in it. It smells milky, and tastes sweet and savory. It’s loved by Japanese kids.

Now, while my mother was a pretty good cook generally, she did have trouble getting some things right. Her curry for instance was always rather watery. And her corn cream soup, instead of being silky smooth, always had little lumps of undissolved roux. I loved those little lumps though - they tasted like tiny dumplings. Later on when I started to make my own corn cream soup I followed recipes, so my corn cream came out smooth and lumpless. That was fine, but I missed the lumps from my childhood memories. So, I incorporated them back.

Everyone uses canned corn to make a corn cream soup. You can be fancy and use fresh, but that lifts this humble soup into the realm of gourmet special-occasion big deal cooking, which is not what my memories are about at all. I have adjusted the usual way of making this soup by using whole corn rather than creamed, since whole corn cans have more actual corn in them and I suspect less added sugar, and I like the mixture of crushed/creamed and whole corn niblets. Besides, creamed corn cans are unheard of here in Switzerland.

Corn cream soup with intentional lumps

1 can of whole corn kernels
4 cups (about 1 l) milk, whole or 2%
1 medium onion
1 Tbs. butter
1 medium potato
1 bay leaf
1 stock cube
salt and pepper

Optional lumps:

2 Tbs. butter
4 Tbs. white flour

Equipment: immersion (stick) blender, regular stand blender or food processor

Slice the onion thinly. Cut the potato into small chunks.

Heat the butter in a thick-bottomed pan. Add the onions and sauté until the onion is translucent. Add the milk and all the other ingredients, reserving about 2 tablespoons of the corn kernels for later. Heat up slowly over medium-low heat, and simmer until the potato is totally tender. Take the bay leaf out.

In the meantime, make the lumps. (This is basically a badly made roux.) Melt the butter in a small non-stick pan over medium heat. Add the flour. Blend and stir until you have a rather lumpy mix. Set aside.

Blend the soup with an immersion blender, or in a regular blender or food processor, until smooth. Add a little water if if it’s too thick. Add the reserved corn kernels.

Add the lumpy roux and stir briefly, but not too well - you don’t want it to disperse evenly in the hot liquid, you want it to remain in little lumps.

Season with salt and pepper (taste first since the stock cube is salty). Take off the heat (if you let it keep cooking it will curdle).

Makes 6 servings.

You can make it prettier by sprinkling some chopped parsley on top, but I like the minimalist butter-yellow look.

Japanese Dry Curry

maki — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 11:22:03 +0100

While the standard curry dish in Japan is a kind of curry stew served on plain rice, dry curry, which is a sort of fried rice with curry flavor, is almost as popular. And unlike the stew-type of Curry Rice it’s very fast and easy to put together.

What makes it Japanese really is the use of japonica (medium-grain) rice. Dry curry made with Japanese rice makes a great obento lunch, tasty at room temperature or warmed up in the microwave. The stick-together moist quality of the rice keeps it edible where a dryer stay-apart rice like basmati might taste too dry. Dry curry also has the mixture of sweet and savory, which appears quite a lot in Japanese food, especially the kind that comes from the Kanto (Tokyo-area) region where my family is from.

Japanese style dry curry

225g / 8 oz ground beef or other ground meat, or vegetarian substitute
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 small piece fresh ginger, finely chopped
1 Tbs. tomato paste
2 Tbs. raisins
Olive or vegetable oil
1-2 Tbs (or more, depending on how hot you want it) curry powder
Salt and pepper
4-5 cups cooked Japanese rice

Optional garnishes:

1 boiled egg, finely chopped
2 Tbs. finely chopped fresh coriander or parsley

Heat a little oil in a sauté pan or wok. Sauté the onions, garlic and ginger until the onion is translucent and a bit browned.

Add the meat, and brown.

Push the meat and vegetables to one side of the pan. Put the curry powder in the empty part of the pan and stir-roast until darkened and fragrant.

Add 1/2 cup of water, raisins, and tomato paste. Simmer rapidly over high heat until the moisture is almost gone.

Add the hot rice to the pan and mix until thoroughly incorporated. Season with salt and pepper.

Serve with the garnishes on top.

Notes

If you’re bringing this as an bento lunch, be sure to let it cool to room temperature before putting it in your bento box or plastic container. Pack the boiled egg, if you’re adding it, separately, and crumble it on top of the curry rice just before eating.

Here I have used ground beef, but you can use any kind of ground meat - or, if going vegetarian, use your favorite vegetarian imitation-ground-meat. Crumbled firm tofu that’s been slowly dried out over low heat in a pan should work well too.

Japanese beef curry (Curry Rice)

maki — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 14:43:13 +0100

Japanese curry belongs to the group of typically Japanese foods that have origins in European cuisine, called yohshoku. Curry is tremendously popular in Japan - it's on the menu at just about every 'family' restaurant and department store restaurants, and there are curry-only restaurants as well as ones that specialize in high class yohshoku in general.

Japanese curry, called curry rice (or kareh raisu) since it's always served with rice, is not much like the curries from India, Thai or other places with better known curries around the world. The best way to describe it is probably to say it's like a English style stew with curry. (It's not at all like the curries you get in modern Britain, which are firmly in the Indian or Pakistani curry families.)

If you've ever been to a Japanese grocery store, you've probably seen the blocks or bags of curry base taking up an inordinate amount of shelf space. Competition amongst curry base makers in Japan is fierce. The bases are pretty convenient to use, but these days I use them less and less, since I discovered that making curry properly from scratch is not that much more effort than making curry with a readymade curry base. Commercial curry bases contain things like sugar or corn syrup as ingredients, plus some of them use mystery fats (always check the ingredient lists). I add sweetness just via the vegetables, especially a huge mound of slowly sautéed onions.

Either way, to get the most flavorful curry takes a long time. This is definitely a slow-cook meal.

This recipe for beef curry can be adapted to other kinds of meat, or to vegetarian options too. I've included instructions for using a store bought curry base as well as making your own curry roux base.

Japanese style beef curry

Makes about 6 to 8 servings.

450-500g / about 1 lb stewing beef cubes (chuck works well; it should be a cut with a bit of fat in it and not too sinewy)
6 large onions, or about 6 cups sliced
3 cloves garlic
An adult thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger
2 cups of crushed tomatoes (1 small can, or 400g)
1 beef or vegetable stock cube (I prefer Knorr)
1 bay leaf
1 star anise
2-3 Tbs. garam masala (see notes)
3-4 large carrots
1 medium eating-type apple
3-4 medium potatoes
Oil or butter
Optional: 1 cup frozen green peas
Salt and pepper

For the curry roux:

3 Tbs. butter, ghee, clarified butter or oil, or a mixture
4 Tbs. white flour
1 1/2 to 2 Tbs. curry powder, or more to taste (see notes)

To serve with:

Plain white steamed Japanese rice, or plain brown rice
Garnishes: fukijin zuke, rakkyou

Special equipment recommended: a heavy-bottomed enamelled cast iron pot (Le Creuset etc.) (but any decently heavy pot will do. A thin walled pot leads to burned curry. Burned curry ranks near the top of things that are Not Nice.)

If the meat is in one big chunk, cut into cubes about 2 cm / 1 inch square. Pat dry with paper towels, and brown in a little oil on all sides in a frying pan. Set aside.

Slice the onions thinly. Grate the ginger and either grate or finely chop the garlic. (A microplane is great for this task, if you have one.) Peel and cut the carrots into chunks. Don't peel the potatoes yet: this will come later.

Heat your heavy-bottomed pot over medium heat, and heat up some butter, ghee or oil. (Butter or ghee will add some richness but oil is fine - you will barely notice the subtle difference since the curry will overwhelm it.) Add the onions and a pinch of salt, and lower the heat to medium-low. Now comes a period of long, slow cooking of the onions that can take up to an hour or so (the salt helps it along as it extracts the moisture in the onions). At the end you want to end up with a much reduced mass of onion that is a light caramel brown in color, as in the photo.

Once the onions have reached this stage, add the ginger and garlic and cook a few more minutes. Add the canned tomato and 6 cups of water, the browned beef, the stock cube, the bay leaf and the star anise. (If you are particular you can put these in a bit of cheese cloth or a tea ball for easy extraction later.)

Peel and grate the apple and stir in. (This is optional, but adds to the depth of flavor.)

Bring up to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer for at least 1 hour, or more if your meat is a bit tough.

About 30 minutes into the cooking process, dry-roast about a tablespoon of garam masala powder in a small frying pan until it starts to get very fragant, and add to the stew pot. Add the carrots around then too.

In the meantime, make the curry roux. In a small frying pan, melt the butter or ghee or clarified butter (note that ghee is basically clarified butter) and heat until any foaming subsides.

Add the flour, and cook the mixture over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, until it becomes a light brown in color. (See these very detailed instructions for roux if you aren't sure.)

Take the pan off the heat, and add the curry powder (the more the hotter.) Stir until the whole kitchen and beyond smells like curry. Set aside.

When the meat is about as tender as you want, peel the potatoes, cut them into chunks and add to the curry. Continue simmering until the potatoes are tender.

Take the pot off the heat and fish out the bay leaf and star anise. Stir in the roux carefully until it's completely melted into the stew and the liquid is thick and very brown. Return to the heat and simmer a few more minutes.

At this stage you can dry roast another tablespoonful or so of garam masala and add it to the curry.

At the last minute, add the optional frozen green peas, and stir - they should cook almost instantaneously. Serve immediately.

There are two ways of serving curry in the "yohshoku restaurant" way. One is to put the curry in a sauce boat, and serve the rice separately. The other is to put the rice on the plate, and cover just one half with curry, You can of course just pour the curry right on the mound of rice.

Usual garnishes are fukijin zuke, a sweet mixture of mystery pickled vegetables, and rakkyou, small pickled shallots. Other garnishes include chutney and grated cheese.

Notes

I don't go to the trouble of grinding my own curry and garam masala, much as I'd like to in theory. I use pre-ground powders bought at a store that caters to Indian and Sri Lankan expats. The most common Japanese brand of curry powder is S & B, but the Indian kind is quite a bit cheaper and just as good quality. Garam masala is not commonly sold in Japanese groceries anyway, but it is of course in Indian groceries.

Update: I have written up the Japanese curry powder formula for people who would like to experiment with mixing their own. (Includes a recipe for garam masala too.)

If you want it to be yellower, add some turmeric. If you want it hotter, add some chili pepper powder, or more curry powder.

Instead of, or in addition to, the grated apple, you can add some chutney, a tablespoon or so of honey, Worcestershire sauce, ketchup, and even a bit of soy sauce or miso.

Using a readymade curry base

If you are using a curry base instead of making your own curry roux, just add it in exactly the same way near the end of the cooking process, making sure to take the pot off the heat first. If you have the block that looks like a chocolate bar type, break it up into smaller chunks and stir in to the stew mix until all is melted. The bagged powder type melts in faster. The curry should not be stewed for a very lengthy time after adding the base or spices or the flavors will dissipate somewhat.

Many Japanese housewives individualize their curries by combining two or more commercial bases.

Using other meats

Pork curry is made in the same way as beef curry, but you may want to try making the curry a bit hotter (by adding more curry powder or chili pepper powder).

Chicken curry is best made with the dark meat parts (thigh works great). I also prefer to take the skin off first - curry-stewed chicken skin is not that nice. The stewing time for chicken curry is shorter since you don't want the chicken to get dried out.

Quick and easy ground beef curry

If this all sounds like too much work, you can still make a quick and easy curry using ground beef or other ground meat, and a commercial curry base. (Commercial curry base blocks are so big because they have a ton of flavor enhancing ingredients in them already.) Adam Kuban has posted a quick and fairly easy method for making a curry this way, though I would recommend sautéeing the onions a bit longer than he does, and adding the potatoes somewhat later in the process.

If you are in a huge curry..I mean hurry, you can buy readymade curry in a pouch. They vary quite a lot in quality so try some until you find a brand you like.

Making it vegetarian

You can omit the meat and use oil instead of butter or ghee, and have a vegetarian curry. If you want some protein, try a can of chickpeas. Cooked soy beans also fit very well. You can go the TVP - quorn route if you like too. Or go for an all-vegetable curry and add more carrots, or some sliced eggplant (aubergine), cubed turnip, etc.

Freezing curry

Curry freezes and reheats very well, as long as you leave out the potatoes. Frozen potato turns into a mealy, watery, inedible mush. Just add some boiled potatoes to the reheated curry. Since it does take a long time to cook it does make sense to make a big batch at a time and freeze extra for quick meals in the future.

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Japanese style beef curry

Notes

Using a readymade curry base

Using other meats

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Making it vegetarian

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