le sauce

spicy mushroom hot pot

grilled onigiri in a green tea broth

(Ochazuke with Yaki-Onigiri)

I'm going to tell you what you might be thinking as you read through this recipe anyway.... this is seemingly odd combination of mild, punchy, salty and sweet flavours. I agree. But, you know how people are always talking about balancing flavours? There's a lot of complimentary tastes happening here, and a predominently warm, soothing texture. It requires you to perhaps get one or two ingredients that you might not always have in your kitchen, but substitions are welcome. But before we get to that, and in case you're unfamiliar with it, let's say hello to onigiri.

Onigiri are balls of rice made with freshly cooked, starchy, sushi rice or other glutenous, short-grain rice, and they often hide a little treat in the middle. Tuna, seaweed and, as in the case here, omeboshi (pickled plum) paste, are common fillings, and onigiri are often triangular in shape. Here's how to make them and here's why mine are rectangular:

1. Cook your rice.


2. While the rice is hot, use wet or oiled hands to form your shape, or better yet, an onigiri  mold. Create an indent in which to add a tiny amount of fillling, then enclose the filling with rice and work the shape while the rice is still hot, otherwise the grains will not stick to each other well or be easily maliable.


3. Hot rice is too hot to handle! Having no onigiri mold, I tortured myself for as long as it took to make two onigiri and they were less of a triangular shape and more shaped like the outline of searing pain. I couldn't bear to work the shape long enough and when they cooled to just punishingly hot, the grains were no longer cooperating. Thus, I turned to the smallest little yet deep enough mold I could find to accomodate a 1-cup scoop of rice, and that ended up being a rectangle plastic container. Yours might be a measuring cup, single-serving yogurt container or you may go out and get an onigiri mold! In any case, make sure to oil your mold so you can tap the packet of rice out easily.

If you are running out to get seaweed, just the right tea or that onigiri mold (wow, you are hardcore) for this recipe, please do get omeboshi paste. I recently wrote about its sharp, deep, briny flavour which I love, and combined with that subtle, warming tea, salty seaweed and those caramalized shallots and scallions...well, you'll have highly pleasurable, balanced spoonfuls in your bowl.

the ingredient: umeboshi paste

Ripe Japanese ume plums, salted and stewed down with shisho leaves. That's all this is but I can't really imagine a substitute and despite eating it semi-regularly, I still struggle to describe it. It's pickled, so its flavour is concentrated, briney and sweet--and overwhelming in large amounts, in my opinion. But it seems not everyone thinks so, since I've read that in they're often eaten for breakfast in their whole, pickled form. Wow. That would definitely wake me up. The whole umeboshi are also sometimes added to the bottom of a glass of shōchū, which is more up my alley.

I've found the perfect place for umeboshi in a new recipe that I'll share with you in a few days. But in the meantime, I highly recommend spreading a little of the paste onto toasted nori, topping it with shaved beets, carrots, sliced avocado, crunchy sprouts and a drop or two of balsamic vinegar. Talk about the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

the ingredient: shishito peppers

Please excuse this blurry iPhone photo. Although I ate one hundred of them in one week, it seemed every time I was served shishito peppers in New York, it was at night and I might have had a drink or two before aiming my mobile camera. But poor or not, I had to show you this photo so you'd have a better chance of finding Japanese shishito peppers.

They're a little spicy but it's a slow heat, sort of like a serrano chili but much milder--though every once in a while I bit into one with a lot more heat than the others. They taste a little like a cross between a serrano and a jalepeno, with looks to match--not super thin or pointy, not fat either. I had them deep fried with yuzu salt at Ippudo and pan fried with cilantro and Persian lime at Five Leaves (my favourite of the two). I want to try them grilled, breaded, raw, sautéed and every other way imaginable but first, I need to find them. I called one Japanese grocery store and they said "Yes!" They carry shishitos! "Oh but, no. No, not this week." Apparently these have been trendy and on many menus in New York last fall. If they aren't all the rage in your town yet, start asking for them. Maybe you and I will eventually find raw shishitos so we can enjoy them at home, but it can't hurt to hedge our bets.

sesame somen noodles with enoki mushrooms, napa and sprouts

Soba noodles are wonderful for many reasons, but the two that matter to me are that they're delicious and they play so well with others--meaning they suck up any flavour thrown at them. After a very quick boil in little water (because they're short, I don't boil them in huge pot of water like I do with linguine, even though you're probably supposed to) and a dip in a no-cook sauce of soy sauce, sesame oil and scallions, you have a meal on your hands. Great soba noodles can be hard to find, because instead of being 100% buckwheat flour, or close to it, they've often been cut with a lot of wheat flour, making the texture and taste different from better quality, more pure soba. However, there are times I want a more subtle, less sweet noodle than buckwheat noodles, like when I have a slightly more complex sauce, and one that does the same great job of absorbing flavour. Enter the somen noodle.

Made entirely of wheat flour (and salt and water), they're thin like soba noodles and springier than pasta, and they suck up a ton of sauce. They seem just as starchy as soba noodles so I rinse them in cold water after cooking them too. They're my noodle of choice for this tangy sesame sauce but if you can't find somen noodles, rice noodles would work really well too, or by all means, use soba. 

The sauce here has a big job, to flavour the food it touches long after it's not around to be sipped itself anymore, just like a marinade.  So, like a marinade, it's got big flavour: heat from that minced garlic and ginger, sweetness from a little sugar, tartness from orange juice and, most importantly, that sesame oil used both in the sauce and to sautée the vegetables is my must-have flavour with somen and soba noodles.

Unlike most recipes, this is not one you want to serve immediately, because the sauce makes everything slushy before its had time to be absorbed. You can eat this after a half-hour with the noodles sitting at room temperature or after a chill in the fridge. Essentially, this is a noodle salad, a perfect make-ahead meal, and it's kind of pretty too. The beautiful white colour of the somen strands made me opt for enoki mushrooms, sprouts and napa, as opposed to shiitake mushrooms or red cabbage for crunch. Feel free to make your palette more noisy where mine is neutral. And leave that red chili out if you want too. Red or not, you know I wasn't ever going to leave chilies out of mine. 

Sesame Somen Noodles

For the sauce:
2 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp grated garlic
1 tsp grated ginger
1 c orange juice
2 tsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp mirin
1/2 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp kosher salt

For the noodles:
1 tbs sesame oil
1 red bird chili, destemmed, thinly sliced (optional)
300 g napa cabbage, thinly sliced on a bias, a small handful of leaves reserved for garnish
1/2 tsp salt
125 g bean sprouts, tails tipped, a small handful reserved for garnish
170 g enoki mushrooms, trimmed, a small handful reserved for garnish
180 g somen noodles, boiled and rinsed under cold water and drained well
3 tbs toasted sesame seeds

First, make the sauce. Heat sesame oil in a small saucepan over medium heat. Add garlic and ginger, stir and sautée for 1 minute. Add the remaining ingredients, bring to a boil and then reduce heat to a simmer. Simmer, uncovered, for 15-20 minutes or until the sauce has reduced by more than half (to about 1/2 cup.) Set aside to cool.

Meanwhile, proceed with the rest of the recipe. Heat the sesame oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Add the red chili, if using, for 30 seconds. Add the napa and half the salt, and cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Add the sprouts, toss well and cook for 30 seconds, then add the mushrooms and the remaining salt and stir well. Cook just until the mushrooms have wilted slightly. Set aside to cool slightly. 

Transfer noodles to a large bowl. Pour half of the sauce over them and mix with chopsticks or two forks, separating the noodles and coating them well. Add the napa and mushroom mixture and stir well. Pour a little more of the dressing over top, reserving about 1 tbs for serving, and mix the vegetables into the noodles. Set aside for 15 minutes to allow the mixture to cool to room temperature and absorb the sauce, or refrigerate if you wish to serve it cool.

Before serving, add the reserved vegetables, pour on the reserved dressing, and sprinkle with the toasted sesame seeds.

Makes 4 small servings or 2-3 large servings. 

j-town

Where else can you get mini cookie as awesome as EVERY BURGER but a Japanese store? Note the cheese under the sesame seed bun. J-Town, a Japanese mall at the northern tip of Toronto, also has fresh pastries that look like animals, fried croquettes and onigiri, econo-sized bags of panko crumbs, aisles of soba and somen noodles, green tea, seaweed, ramen noodles and rice. I was excited to find dashi kombu and a really decent decaffeinated green tea. But seriously, we've been talking about the tiny burger cookies in this house for days.

sesame soba noodle lunch

if packaged ramen noodles weren't, possibly, the worst thing to consume, i would eat one every day for lunch FOREVER and be extremely happy. but they're equally irresistible and scary, so i'm always trying to come up with ways to imitate and curb my cravings for them. a broth of water flavoured with dried shiitake and seaweed is usually where i start, and miso soup has often followed. but this time i turned to a sesame paste in my freezer from a recipe i made months ago. this particular sesame paste was flavoured with tomatoes and herbs, which i think is why it worked so well to round out the broth. and the nutty sesame itself made the soup luscious and aromatic. it was never intended to be a soup base so i can't fault this paste for not being perfect in this, but it was enough to get me thinking about how to create a healthy, vegetarian, ramen (or soba noodle!) soup option. something to work on, and i can't wait to get started.

sometimes i stir an egg into my soup while it's simmering, but in my lunch pictured above, i decided to poach one whole in the soup. toasted sesame seeds and scallions are always nice but do you ever put seasoned nori on your soups? that's nice too. do you have favourite additions? if you want to share them, i'd be grateful, as well as any ideas for that soup base. maybe we can come up with the perfect recipe before there's snow on the ground and we want need this soup every day.

zaru soba feast

it's been hot in the city! so on monday, i served dinner cold. ok, truthfully, dinner at my house has to sit for a portrait most nights, so it's often served cold. but this time, it was supposed to be cold. that's the beauty of zaru soba noodles on a busy, hot weeknight.

good noodles are key. i am lucky enough to have several unique kinds in my pantry--a gift given to me by a sweet co-worker. i used black rice (therefore technically not soba) noodles and very subtly flavoured green tea soba noodles. they were delicious, but i would still say that 100% buckwheat soba noodles are my favourite.

after noodles, it's all about the sauce. i turned to the amazing japanese food blog "just hungry" for tips on making a vegetarian dashi (i used both seaweed and shitake in mine) and kaeshi to combine for my sauce. this may sound fussy, but the hands-on time was, oh...about five minutes.

after that, it was just a matter of boiling, rinsing and serving the soba noodles. making the little bundles took an extra couple of minutes but it was so worth it. you can pick up a perfect little serving to dip into your sauce, instead of having to battle tangled noodles each time. 

i had a a bunch of water spinach and some napa cabbage that needed to be used up. i steamed the spinach over the same water i was boiling for the noodles, and sprinkled toasted sesame seeds and a drizzle of sesame oil on top. the napa cabbage was sliced and served raw to be dipped and crunched. the only thing missing was a cold beer. how i could have overlooked that, i don't know.

ramen noodle week pt. ii

i almost ruined the whole soup while i watched the canadian women's hockey team take the gold medal! but i salvaged tonight's shiitake and white miso ramen, thickened with egg and topped with dumplings, chinese water spinach and some leftover seaweed from tuesday's ramen soup.

i think i prefer tuesday's seaweed broth but i like the addition of the egg tonight to thicken the soup. and, um, i took a picture of my hot sauce-stained soup to show you. i know, it's almost sacrilege. but i do have a few spoonfuls pre-hot sauce dousing to enjoy the broth in its natural state, i swear.

 

   

ramen noodle week pt. i

i bought fresh ramen noodles so i'm experimenting with a couple of homemade ramen soups this week. tonight, a seaweed-steeped broth, with red, coarse miso added late, and pak choy, a few strips of the boiled seaweed, a mollet egg, toasted black sesame seeds and hot sauce. though the amount of hot sauce pictured is not even a quarter of what i end up using. my ramen broth, like my pho broth, ends up the colour of tomato water, i'm slightly embarrassed to say. can't help it, it's just the way i'm used to it. maybe i'll show you in part ii...