Bad Idea Fridays: Wasabi Peas

The wasabi pea snack is gross. I don't know why I had high hopes for a dish based on the snack- but I did! Look how washed out the photo is- washed out like my failed dreams.

Note the quick watermelon radish pickles from the last post.

Basically, one tosses a pound of snap peas in a cup of hot broth and a tablespoon each of soy sauce and butter. When the peas are warm through, they are done.

This part of the dish is fantastic. It could use a little bit more salt, but if you deploy the radish pickles, you have litle salt bombs spread throughout. Do that. Serve that.

Do not invest a lot of time in hunting down horseradish. (Because the wasabi on peas is actually horseradish, and it's basically a clever conceit dish.) When you do hunt down horseradish, and the smallest root weights a pound and a half, don't buy it. When you buy it, wash and peel it before grating it over the dish. If you grate it, don't keep grating until the flavor is obvious.

Next up, I find things to do with my seventeen pounds of fresh horseradish.

Salt and Sugar Pickles for Rice Bowl

The photo of these pickles looked far too similar to my mirin pickles. As 40% of what I actually cook is a bowl of rice with things on top of it, I figure it's time you realize that I eat a.) chicken and b.) not all that many pickles at once. It's also time that I realize that I can buy less than five pounds of any sort of produce.

Thinly slice about half a cup of cucumbers (wash if waxed) or watermelon radishes or daikon. Mix with a tablespoon of sugar and a tablespoon of kosher salt. Let sit for ten minutes. Serve.

Bad Idea Friday: Homemade Udon

Every time my father-in-law gets to dictate a menu, he requests homemade ravioli stuffed with osso bucco. He dictates a menu fairly frequently, and I am still at the stage in the daughter-in-law relationship where I sometimes do trial runs of dishes before feeding them to my in-laws. (I'm not totally cowed, I am proud.)

Long story short, fresh egg pasta from scratch is excellent, but it's also a terrible pain to make.

So let's take out all of that irritating protein and fat, and make pasta with flour and water! How could this go wrong?

We invited Gyozilla over for dinner, because he's pretty understanding about catastrophic cooking failures and terribly late meals. We made plans for a takeout based fallback.

Recipe from lafujimama. They probably also have better pictures and instructions.

Mix 4 cups white flour with one tablespoon salt. Add 1 cup water and mix into a shaggy ball. Knead for 3-5 minutes. (If you were making egg noodles, you'd just keep kneading and kneading- for about 10 minutes. If you want to skip the next step- you shouldn't, it's brilliant- just keep kneading for 10-15 minutes. After everything is a smooth shiny ball, just keep kneading and kneading for eternity.)

Put ball of dough into a heavy duty ziploc and seal. Wrap in dishtowel or grocery bags, and stand on it. Squoosh that dough out into the far reaches of the bag. Open the bag, roll the dough into a ball, and repeat- do a total of 4 times.

Oh goodness, you guys, this is delightful! All of us enjoyed squashing dough with our feet, and believe you me, it's like six times more fun than kneading for eternity.

Let the dough rest for at least 30 minutes. (You see how they say 3-4 hours in the other place? They weren't hungry. Half an hour is fine.) This is a great time to prepare the things that will be served with the udon. We made wonderful tamago, chopped cucumbers and tomatoes, steamed some sweet potatoes and chicken, pulled some kimchi out of the fridge, and made a peanut sauce.

Now, take out your pasta maker. (Of course you have a pasta maker. It justifies its shelf space each and every Christmas, saint's day, Fathers' day, and C's dad's birthday. If you don't, I'm sure you have a recently married friend who has like five.*) Dust the dough with flour and roll it through the thickest setting. Slice into thick noodles. Boil in ample water until translucent and firm- bite through a noodle to make sure it's cooked in the center. Serve- either in broth, or with all sorts of exciting vegetables and sauces.

*Fine, you don't have a pasta maker. Get a inch thick dowel, about 2-3 feet long. Roll out the dough until it's about 1/8 inch thick, you poor unlucky sod, and then follow the rest of the instructions.

So, how does this stack up as a bad idea? For a recipe where you throw something on the ground and stomp on it, it's pretty good. The udon is not ground shaking. It's pretty good- better than store-bought udon, but not by the order of magnitude that homemade ravioli is better than store-bought ravioli. The dough is much easier to work with. It's worth a try, especially if you don't live two blocks from an excellent noodle house.

Winter Squash Salad

This is what I did with the other half of the winter squash from the oden recipe. This one was better. Well, C and the dinner guest were not super fans, but they don't count. It was pretty good.

Halve and clean a winter squash. Slice it into thin strips, leaving on the skin for cohesion purposes. Boil in ample water for 5-10 minutes- until fork tender. Drain and season with 2 tsp soy sauce and 7 drops sesame oil. Sprinkle with 2 tsp. sesame seeds.

You could add a little mirin or a little sugar, if you so desired. It depends on how sweet your squash is.

Winter Squash Oden

See? See? Winter squash. For A.

I believe that the colloquial name for this is "hot pot". Like many squash dishes, it has an unexpected stick-to-your-ribs quality.

Take one kobucha or other thick skinned winter squash. Hack it in half and scrape out the seeds. Cut half into 1 inch square pieces. (Leave the skin on.) Place squash chunks in a large pot, skin side down.

Put the other half squash in the fridge. I'll have to come up with a way to serve it later.

Add 1 and 1/2 cups dashi or broth or water, 2 tbs. soy sauce, 1 tbs. mirin, and 1 tbs sugar to the pot. Simmer gently for about 20 minutes, uncovered. Add 2 cups cabbage chunks and/or daikon discs. Simmer for five more minutes.

You could add a dozen gyoza with the cabbage, because you're an adult now. There's no reason not to have potstickers for dinner once a week.

Kale Gomae

Gomae is traditionally made with spinach, but I don't like spinach. C doesn't like kale, but he was born to suffer.

Put a large pot of water on the stove and bring to a boil. Wash and stem one bunch of dinosaur kale. (I think pretty much any kind of kale would work, though purple kale might be strange.) When the water is boiling, cook the kale until tender- 2-5 minutes. (Frequent tasting is necessary. Also, this is possibly a waste of very delicate kale. Make tabouli.) Drain the kale and rinse with cold water to cool. Squeeze out the water, leaving the kale in ever so appetizing green wads. Cut wads into half inch slices.

Toast 3 tbs sesame seeds over medium heat. Reserve 1 tbs and crush the rest lightly with a spoon. Mix 1/2 tsp sugar, 1 tsp water, 2 tbs soy sauce, and 1 tbs mirin until the sugar dissolves. (If you don't have mirin, add a full tsp of sugar and an extra tsp of water or white wine or sake.) Add crushed sesame seeds and mix with kale. Arrange dressed kale on plates and garnish with remaining sesame seeds. Add two drops of toasted sesame seed oil to each plate. Eat.

Onigiri II

This time of year is confusing for me- it's split between January asceticism and Christmas indulgence. I have no idea what most people eat this time of year, other than throwing rum balls at each other. My parents- displaced Midwesterners in California- would pack us up for the annual four hour drive two hour hike to a place that might possibly have skatable ice. I don't think you'll let me get away with family recipes for instant cocoa and camp stove ramen.

C and I are working out of our apartment, like good little third wave employees. I have been shoveling a steady supply of onigiri into his maw. As such, I have tips and refinements on the original recipe.

I still use seasoned vinegar, even though it is not correct. I am adding an extra half teaspoon of salt for every 3/4 cup of uncooked rice. I'm also garnishing each rice ball with 1/4 sheet nori and a pinch of sesame seeds. I cannot figure out how to make adorable triangle shapes without a mold.

I've found two excellent fillings. One is sweet potato, steamed above the cooking rice and mashed with a little salt. The other is chopped and fried button mushrooms with a little soy sauce. Three mushrooms are perfect for five onigiri.

And yes, I fried them in bacon fat.

Sushi

Light foods. That's the ticket for the next few days. No cream, no sugar, no butter... Let's allow my intestinal flora to adapt to a lower calorie world.

I love fish, but I don't eat it very often. It's up there with why I don't own diamonds and why I eat only organic pork as my pathetic consumer activism. Woo, my participation in the decline of society is slightly less than average for my social group. I'm such a martyr.

A couple of months ago, I read an article on making fish free sushi at home. I believe they suggested egg and prosciutto as ideal toppings. Not vegan. Happily, their advice on rice making was spot on- sushi rice really does go with most things. And if it doesn't work as sushi, it can quickly be turned into onigiri.

So yes. Cook a cup of short grain rice- since stickiness is not as essential, I sometimes use brown rice. Let's not go halfway when we're debasing the cuisine that brought us the noodle sandwich. Please don't cook the rice in a pressure cooker- it's what my mother does, and it always makes me sad.

Add seasoned rice vinegar- or rice vinegar and sugar and salt. A couple of dashes should be sufficient- frequent tasting is essential.

Now, I either compact the rice into nigiri type blocks or make rolls. I have a spiffy little press for this the nigiri: before they hold together the rice usually must be compacted by almost half. They can be hand shaped, but you must be really awesome.

Not ready to invest in sushi hardware? Buy a few sheets of nori, cut them in half, and put a stripe of seasoned rice down one long edge. Add filling and roll up- dabbing the nori with water at the end. (Some people toast the unfilled nori by waving it over a burner on high. There should be no rational likelihood of the nori catching on fire.) Slice the sushi into bite sized bits with a sharp knife- it may need to be cleaned partway through the process. Serve with soy sauce. If wasabi and gari are available, use those too.

What sort of fillings are delicious? Avocado, of course. And cucumber is traditional. I like to use a little bit of seasoned tofu, or some carrot pickles or mirin pickles. I like fried shiitake mushrooms and bell pepper and cilantro and toasted sesame seeds and dabs of miso and green onions. Kimchi might not be bad. Thin strips of kale might be nice. Shiso leaves would be slightly decadent. I don't like pickled plum paste, but I suspect various ripe fruits might be good. Stand in the produce aisle (or at the market) until something strikes you as a good idea. Don't prepare more than a cup or so of assorted fillings, or there will be all sorts of leftovers.

As concrete advice, I suggest bell pepper strips, cucumber, and a thin layer of red miso.
Or fried shiitake mushrooms and cilantro and sesame seeds. Or avocado. Avocado is always good.

Nikujaga

When Europeans first landed in Japan, they brought beef stew with them. The Japanese thought that it could be pretty good if it weren't so patently disgusting. Thus was nikujaga born- a hearty dish with very little meat content.

Serves 4.

Wash 1/2 pound potatoes. I've also used combinations of sweet potatoes and winter squash- go for a half pound total. Traditionally, the potatoes are peeled, but it's just fine if they aren't. Remember to peel the winter squash. Cut into rough chunks- just a little larger than bite sized. Peel one large carrot and one half onion and cut into slices. Slice 6 oz. beef or pork into very thin strips- tritip is a good cut for this, as is a pork chop. Place the above ingredients into a pot.

Add three tablespoons soy sauce. (There are recipes out there that add six or eight. Gross.) Add either three tablespoons of sake and one tablespoon of sugar or three tablespoons of mirin. Add one cup or broth or water.

Simmer uncovered for about 40 minutes. The uncovered part is important, so that the broth can cook down into a salty sweet broth. Stir frequently so that all of the potatoes are stained golden brown. When the potatoes are so tender that they are beginning to fall apart it is done.

Serve over rice, because we love starch beyond reason.

The Stuff That's Not Sushi

I love this meal because it solves a small problem with vegan food- the lack of a William Tell option. Leftovers from various meals tend to molder in the fridge: It's a rare person who grabs some kale salad as a snack, and the typical chili/hash/frittata path is not an option.

So- this is my adaptation of a traditional Japanese dinner. We had some brown rice, some miso soup, some quick pickles from the cucumbers hanging around the fridge, some of the ever-present greens that I put in a steam basket over the rice (with toasted sesame seeds), and I believe the tail end of some take-out Chinese eggplant. It's a great way to use all the odds and ends around the house.

I do feel bad about treating Chinese take out as Japanese food. And for taking a cuisine known for an obsession with fresh ingredients and using it to dispose of leftovers.

Mirin Pickles

Wash two pickling cucumbers or one English cucumber or one Japanese cucumber. If the cucumber has been waxed, consider peeling it or scoring the skin with a zester. Slice into rounds.

Mix two tbs rice vinegar with one tbs mirin and a healthy pinch of salt. Pour over the cucumber slices. If at this point you think "aha, Jane, you have underestimated the amount of liquid required to cover these slices", add more of both in the appropriate ratio. Let sit for at least an hour- although they'll remain happy in their pickling liquid for at least three days.

Californicated Miso Soup- Traditional Style

It's not quite the same without the shaved dried fish.

Although I've had only one kind of miso soup ever, there's apparently a theory of appropriate ingredients. You should have one ingredient that floats and one that sinks, one with a strong flavor and one with a mild flavor. I've been happily thinking of combinations ever since.

Serves one.

Heat 12 oz water in a small pan. Add two chopped scallions, about 2 oz. sliced silken tofu and 1 tsp dried wakame broken into tiny little pieces. (The things that make this recipe Californicated are leaving out the large fish flakes because of overfishing and feeling guilty when one realizes one has purchased California grown wakame- one of the top 100 invasive species in the world in your own precious ecosystem.) Simmer for five odd minutes, until the wakame is unfurled and edible. Take two tbs. fresh red miso. (Most packages have serving sizes neatly delineated. Trust them in case I'm wrong.) In a separate bowl, blend miso with some of the pathetic excuse for broth you made. Remove the rest of the broth from the heat, and gradually blend in the miso mixture. Never ever let the soup boil after you've added the miso- it'll make everything gross. Put into a bowl and consume.

If you have personal objections to wakame, or cannot procure it, cilantro is a reasonable and tasty alternative.