"After just arriving in town, how can a murder be my fault?"
Book: Rurouni Kenshin by Nobuhiro Watsuki
Recipes: The Complete Book of Japanese Cooking by Emi Kazuko
Obimaki Enoki
(Bacon Rolled Enoki Mushrooms)
1 lb fresh enoki mushrooms
6 strips of thick cut bacon
4 lemon wedges
Ground white pepper
Cut the root part of the enoki mushrooms from the end. Divide the mushrooms into 12 bunches. Cut the bacon in half lengthwise. Wrap the bacon around the middle of each mushroom and secure with a toothpick (or not, I didn't have any handy and found that my rolls stayed together just fine).
Set the oven to broil and cook the mushrooms, turning on all sides, for about 10-13 minutes or until the bacon begins to crisp and the mushrooms begin to char a bit. When they are cooked, cut each mushroom bunch in half, slicing through the center of the bacon. Arrange the mushroom tops so that they are standing up and lay the other half on its side.
Tsukune
(Grilled Chicken Balls on Skewers)
For the meatballs:
1 lb ground chicken
2 eggs
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp flour
2 tsp cornstarch
6 tbsp breadcrumbs
1 inch piece of fresh ginger, grated
For the Tare (sauce):
4 tbsp sake (rice wine)
5 tbsp shoyu (soy sauce)
1 tbsp mirin (cooking rice wine)
1 tbsp sugar
1/2 tbsp cornstarch blended with 1 tsp water
8 Bamboo skewers soaked in water for a few hours
Mix the ground chicken with the eggs, salt, flour, cornstarch, and bread crumbs. Wet your hands (this actually kind of helps and was a trick I'd never known before) and shape the meat into golf ball sized balls. Bring a pan of water to a boil and add the ginger. Add the chicken balls and boil for about 7 minutes, or until the color of the meat changes and the balls begin to float. Scoop them out and drain them on a paper towel.
In a small pan, mix all the ingredients for the sauce, except the cornstarch and water. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for about 10 minutes, or until the sauce has reduced slightly. Add the cornstarch mixture and stir until the sauce has thickened to about the consistency of barbecue sauce. Pour the sauce over the meat balls.
Thread the meatballs onto the skewers and broil until they start to brown. Brush with any leftover sauce and turn them until they are browned on all sides.
Onigiri
(Rice Balls)
2 1/4 cups Japanese short grain rice (sticky rice)
2 1/2 cups water
2 sheets of Nori (dried seaweed) cut into thin strips
Black sesame seeds (or brown, if that's all your Spanish Harlem grocery store carries...)
Rinse the rice in a sieve until the water runs clear. Drain and put into a heavy bottomed pan and pour in the water. Let the rice soak in the water for 30 minutes. Cover with a tight lid and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 12 minutes. When you hear a crackling noise, remove from the heat and leave to stand another 15 minutes.
Cool the rice completely (about 30 minutes). Shape the rice balls using the inside of a small bowl, a rice mold, or by hand (you will really want to keep wetting your fingers, it's not for nothing they call it sticky rice!). When the onigiri are all shaped, you may wrap them with the strips of nori, or dip them in the sesame seeds, or do both, as you please. We even had a few exotic shapes like bears and dinosaurs with sesame seed eyes, as designed by my wonderful kitchen helper, Ally.
There are a number of suggested fillings for these, none of which we tried this first time around but which will be featured in later posts (flaked cooked salmon, umeboshi [salty plum], chopped olives, etc.)
Not filling the rice balls made them a little plain. Not bad, just a little boring by themselves. The mushrooms were scarfed down in a matter of minutes. They were simple, elegant, and delicious, as were the chicken skewers. I especially liked the trace taste of ginger from the boiling process. We served this alongside some delicious Peanut Noodles cooked up by the Fabulous Reva. Alabama football night has never been so exotic!
Special thanks to Ben for his food photography!
About the book:
You read it from right to left! It's so confusing. The letters go left to right as usual, but when there are two text boxes in the same panel, you read the right one first. It's taking an absurdly long time to get through it. The book is a Manga, a Japanese comic, that was loaned to me by a former student of mine. He's a senior now, and was unable to get into my comic book class due to schedule conflicts.
A few years ago, he showed me a Manga that was about 100 pages of people being hacked and ripped apart; body parts flying everywhere. This fall, I accidentally bought a Manga that turned out to be all about women killing babies and men killing women. I was ready to give on Manga completely, but decided to challenge my students to show me some that wasn't completely grotesque. This young man rose to the challenge admirably.
Rurouni Kenshin is a Samurai tale about a warrior who does not want to be a warrior. He helps the weak and helpless, he befriends the poor, and he aids a young girl in the quest to save her father's school for swordsmen. That's as far as I've gotten, but I have a few more recipes to blog this weekend, and I've promised my student that I'd return the book on Monday (I've had it for almost a month!).
No comments:
Post a Comment