Dotmoll's Daikon Patch

Taralli
Son 2 had an extra school holiday, and wanted to do some baking. He picked this recipe for Taralli from a Japanese Italian recipe book. It contains so much oil that it turned out to be very easy for a yeast-dough novice to handle.
Ingredients - would make 1 western-size oven-sheet full of tiny bagel-like knots. Wish I could figure out how to post pictures...
200g "strong" (bread) flour
150g "weak" (cake) flour
15g dry yeast (at 3g per tsp, that's a lot of yeast. We used 1 tab and that was PLENTY).
2 eggs
50cc water
1 tab white wine
100cc olive oil or plain oil
2 tab honey
Mix flours and yeast, add all other ingredients and knead 10 minutes. Rest, covered, for 20 minutes or so at 26-28deg.C.
Divide dough into 8 pieces, and roll with hands to ropes about 1cm in diameter.
Cut into 7-8cm lengths, and form each length into a ring, pressing ends firmly together. Set aside.
Bring pan of water to a rolling boil, and add 1% salt (e.g. 1 liter of water needs 10g salt. Roughly).
Put a cloth on a tray, and start dropping the taralli into the water. If they are really small, they can be scooped out and laid on the towel as soon as they rise, if larger, wait about 1 minute.
Preheat oven to 180deg.C, line with baking paper, and bake for 15-20 minutes, depending on size of taralli and degree of crunchiness you want!.
Best fresh, but if they dry out, eat with wine (dip in the wine), drop into soup, or soak in tomato juice and add to a salad, just like croutons.

Dotmoll's Daikon Patch

Tonkatsu – Pork Cutlet

4-6 slices of pork

1 cup flour, preferably seasoned with a good pinch of salt.

1 egg, ¼ c milk, pinch of salt and 1 grind of pepper

2 cups of dried breadcrumbs, or 1 cup each of breadcrumbs and sesame seeds (unhulled)

Trim fat off pork, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Beat a few times with a pestle or rolling pin. Lightly tap all over with a knife to make shallow cuts over the surface.

Place flour in a bag and shake the pork pieces in it.

Beat egg and milk together, dip floured pork pieces in the egg mixture.

Next dip in breadcrumbs and seed mixture, and set aside. You can allow to stand for 1 hour if you wish.

Bring a pan of oil up to heat (170deg.C, or until a string of fine bubbles (but not a mass of bubbles) appears from chopsticks lowered into the oil.

Fry until golden, 3-4 minutes on one side, then 1-2 minutes on the second side.

Drain, then slice and arrange on plate with sides such as potato salad, shredded cabbage, or greens.

Potato Salad

4-6 potatoes, preferably steamed in their skins, then skinned and dressed while hot with:

3 tabs plain yogurt

3 tabs mayonnaise

¼ onion, sliced finely and soaked in water, then drained.

Black pepper.

2 pickles, chopped, or 1 Japanese cucumber sliced, salted, and squeezed.

Add these ingredients to hot potato and mix, allowing potato to be partially squashed so that salad is a creamy mass with lumps of potato in it.

Add extra ingredients as you wish: Grated carrot, green peas, ham, hard boiled egg, green beans.

Cabbage salad

¼ cabbage, shredded finely and soaked in ice cold water.

5 shiso leaves or 2-3 sprigs of parsley or 1-2 spring onions, ditto.

When ready to serve the meal, drain, toss together, and serve.

Sauces

Tonkatsu is normally served with tonkatsu sauce, a thickened Worcestershire sauce.

Here are some alternatives from a Japanese magazine a few years back:

Red Miso and Sesame Sauce: 4 tab red miso, 1 tab ground sesame seeds, 2 tab sugar, 1 tab mirin, ½ c dashi. Bring all to boil in a pan, and simmer until thick.

Ketchup Plus Sauce: 4 tab Kewpie mayonnaise, 3 tab tomato ketchup, 1 tsp wholegrain mustard, 2 tab finely chopped onion. Mix all together.

Granny Suehiro's Apple with Fluffy Dumplings

I got this out of a "Kyo no Ryori" magazine about 10 years ago, and make it every winter. You can make the same recipe as an upside-down cake too - Put the raw apple on the bottom, pour over the batter, and bake 20-25 mins at 180deg. C. But for dumplings...

Stewed Apple:
3 large apples
up to 100 g sugar (roughly 1/2 a Japanese cup), raw (aka-zarame) or white.
2 tabs butter
2 tsp cinnamon
2 thin slices lemon
Peel and core apples, cut into 1/4s or 1/8ths and slice thinly.
Put all ingredients in a wide pan, add water just to cover and simmer covered about 5 minutes.
Batter:
100g flour (1 scant Japanese cup)
2 tsp baking powder
1 egg
4 tab sugar
2 tsp lemon juice
2 tab milk
1/2 tsp vanilla (US type), few drops vanilla oil or strong essence
2 tsp melted butter or oil
Sift dry ingredients together.
Stir egg, add sugar, beat thoroughly till pale and fluffy.
Add liquid ingredients alternating with sifted dry ingredients, adding butter/oil last.

Bring apple to a steady simmer, checking that apple is still covered by water and adding more if necessary. Drop tablespoonsful of batter into the simmering apple. Try not to let the dumplings touch each other.
Cover (For best results, put a cloth around the saucepan lid and use a peg or elastic band to gather very firmly over the top of the lid, so that there is no risk of the towel catching fire) and simmer 5-10 minutes until dumplings are risen and fluffy. 6-8 servings.

Chrysanthemum Rice

Success! I'd never been pleased with chrysanthemum petals in rice....but this works!

Chop a few daikon stems finely (with or without leaves, in fact the stems alone make a pretty pale jade contrast to the bright yellow petals), rub in a teaspoon of coarse salt and leave to drain. When limp, squeeze dry and set aside.

Pull petals off half a dozen or so yellow edible chyrsanthemum flowers (most are edible anyway, if not sprayed with insecticide) and toss into a pot of boiling water with a spoonful of mild vinegar. Drain, cool under running water, squeeze gently, and toss with a tablespoon each of mirin (sweet sake) and mild vinegar (preferably rice vinegar, but cider or wine vinegar will do). Set aside.

Into a pot of cooked rice, mix the chopped daikon stems and then the chrysanthemum petals. Don't squeeze again, just drain gently and toss with the rice.

A pretty consolation for tonight's chilly temperatures!