Narrator: "The cultural renaissance of meiji also had a great influence on cuisine, creating a variety of new dishes. Among them, beef-pot, or gyunabe (sukiyaki) was seen as representative of European foods, and was affordable to the general public."
Book: Rurouni Kenshin by Nobuhiro Watsuki
Recipes: The Complete Book of Japanese Cooking by Emi Kazuko
Tokyo Style Sukiyaki
6 eggs, at room temperature, beaten one each into individual ramekins
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 lb marbled beef or pork, sliced thin
6 spring onions, sliced into short lengths
12 shiitake mushrooms (any kind of mushroom will do, really)
4 Japanese cabbage leaves, roughly chopped
10 oz firm tofu, cut into bite sized cubes
14 oz dried udon noodles, cooked according to the package directions
For the wari-shita sauce (stock):
5 tbsp shoyu
1/2 cup mirin
1 tbsp sake
1 tbsp sugar
Heat all the ingredients for the wari-shita sauce in a small sauce pan over medium heat.
Cook until the sugar has dissolved. In a large, deep skillet, heat the oil in the pan over medium heat.
Add half of the wari-shita sauce and when it started bubbling, add the vegetables, tofu, and noodles, keeping all the ingredients more or less separated in the pan, reserving an open space for the beef. Cook until the onions become tender. Add the beef and remove it from the pan immediately after it starts to change its color.
Serve immediately by dipping each ingredient into the beaten egg before eating.
Ideally this dish is prepared at the table in an electric skillet. Each guests serves themselves from the pan, and the meat is cooked and eaten as it's needed. We made it on the stove top and missed the "room temperature" bit about the eggs since we were more or less mixing recipes. Osaka style uses only sake and soy sauce for its stock, but uses udon noodles. We followed the Tokyo style which has the Wari-shita sauce but uses shiritaki noodles which we didn't have available. One recipe mentioned the room temp eggs, one did not.
We were also completely uncertain how to use the eggs as it wasn't entirely clear that you were in fact dipping your hot food into raw egg. To avoid the past recipe typos and mistakes, we consulted the internet experts, and my new favorite cooking show, Cooking with Dog who does a masterful job explaining how to make this dish. I will be working closely with this web site for all things Japanese that they cover. Mostly because the dog is hilarious. Francis the cooking dog says, "I'm not sure if you are supposed to eat raw eggs in your country, but here is how you are supposed to eat sukiyaki." I cannot think of a less "Western" recipe, but it's actually quite delicious. The whole benefit of having a hotpot at your table is that the ingredients are piping hot when you dip them into the egg, relieving any doubts you might have about its rawness. As the soup gets cooler, it's not quite as tasty.
About the book:
I had to make this recipe because the main character, Kaoru, discovers some hidden money and shouts out, "and now we're gonna splurge at the beef-pot house for lunch!" The narrator gives the aside mentioned above that reveals that not only did Japan open her doors to western weapons, a sort of western democratic philosophy, and western military practices, but they also wanted to integrate western foods. Wikipedia tells us, "in the 1860s when Japan was opened to foreigners, new cooking styles were also introduced. Cows, milk, meat, and egg became widely used, and sukiyaki was the most popular way to serve them. The first sukiyaki restaurant, Isekuma, opened in Yokohama in 1862." The beef pot houses were extremely popular, almost a status-enhancer to be seen in one, hence the main character's rabid desire to make all her new friends go there.
This anecdote serves my theory that there's a great deal of history to be learned from comic books that is just as valuable as the entertainment they provide.
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