Revival!

Must be about time I posted to my blog...

Home-made Preserved Sardines"

This comes from Masako Sato's "Watashi no Hozon-shoku Note", a book that preserves a whole era, not just a few foods. I made it again recently, and it's so simple to make and tastes so fresh that I wondered why I'd forgotten about it.

10 smallish fresh sardines (get the ones labeled "for sashimi", and if you can get them filleted as "sanmai-oroshi" when you buy them, so much the better).

Make the following dressing and allow to cool.

Heat until the garlic sizzles:

1 clove garlic

50-75 cc olive or other vegetable oil

Allow to cool before mixing in:

50-75 cc mild vinegar (rice vinegar, white wine vinegar, mild cider vinegar)

Fresh lemon juice or lime juice

1 t coarse salt

Set aside to cool while you prepare the fish.

Scale and wash the sardines, cut off heads and tails, open and remove guts and blood along spine. Drop into a bowl of salted water as you work.

Pull off the tough outer membrane, leaving the inner skin. It's easiest to do this working from head to tail. Remove fins at this stage.

Lay opened fish skinside up on a board, and run your fingers firmly down both sides to loosen the vertebrae. Flip fish over, and pull the backbone off, working from tail to head.

Slide a knife under the fine rib bones, and cut off in one layer. Trim each fillet neatly, and line up in a bamboo or metal colander, or failing that, a plate or stainless-steel/enamel tray.

Sprinkle with the following, and leave for around half an hour:

1-2 t coarse salt

several grinds of black pepper

Bring some water to the boil, making a court-bouillon by adding:

a few peppercorns, black or white

1-3 bayleaves, to taste

several parsley stalks

at least 2 slices of lemon or a dash of vinegar

Lower the entire colander into the gently boiling water, and leave immersed for 3-4 minutes. If this is not practical, slide a fish-slice under several fillets, without separating them, and immerse the fish slice in the boiling water.

Remove the colander or fish slice when the fish are just cooked, and allow to drain. Pack neatly, head to tail, into a suitable container, layering with:

1/2 to 1 onion, in rings or coarse shreds

1/2 lemon

Parsley to taste (not too finely torn up, so that it doesn't stick to the fish but just flavors it)

Pour over the "dressing", cover with wrap or greaseproof paper and weight lightly with a plate, etc. Store with a lid in the fridge at least overnight before using.

Great with salad as a light summer meal, great on toast, and even better with a side of caponata.

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!