Salmon Nabe

Steam hotpot

This is an elegant but no fuss one dish meal, best for a busy workday. I love the color palette and it looks impressive  served on a claypot.  My folks will never figure out that it took a cool 30 minutes from stove to table and I am going to keep it that way!

For 2.

Ingredients :

1 ( soup ) bowl of water

Carrot, thinly sliced

Cabbage, sliced, 1 cup

Inoki mushroom

Salmon cut to bite size, 2 cups

Seasoning :

Shoyu, 1 Tbsp

Miso, 1 Tbsp

Mirin, 2 Tbsp

Sake, 2 Tbsp

Misc :

Rice flour

Method :

Toss the salmon piece in rice flour. Deep fry at medium heat.

Drain and set aside.

Bring water to a boil.

Cook vegetables – carrot, cabbage, mushroom until almost cooked.

Add salmon.

Add seasoning.

Transfer the nabe to a clay pot to keep warm.

Serve with rice.

Fish head soup in chrysanthemum tea

This dish was meant as an experiment and so I was so surprised at the outcome. Everyone at the table could not have enough of it. The soup was robust, complex and downright tasty. Could it have been the chrysanthemum tea that was actually the soup base?

The original intent was to make a spicy Korean themed fish soup ( aren't most Korean food spicy? ). I decided to make some sort of white soup instead, since my girl cannot tolerate anything spicy.  Glad it was a stroke of genius. Cough.

I chose watercress for its crunch, color ( jade green  when freshly cooked ) and herby aroma which goes well with the fish head. An alternative will be Chinese TongHo.  Like most soups using scalded vegetables, this dish must be consumed  immediately for freshness.

Ingredients :

1 bowl of chrysanthemum tea

1 T miso

4 bean puffs, bite size

1 knob of young ginger

5 straw mushrooms, halved

Bunch of watercress, cut to bite size

1 salmon head, halved

 

Method :

Bring tea ( minus chrysanthemum ) to the boil.

Add miso to the water.

Add ginger, bean puffs, mushrooms. Boil.

Add watercress and salmon.

Boil until the fish is cooked.

Serve hot.

Miso soup

It is a wonderful thing Daiso's always to my rescue because I can never have enough of anything with bonito. Those 5 packets for $2 bonito flakes are a godsend because it imparts the addictive smoky taste in soups.

The following is how I use bonito stock to prepare miso soup, japanese style. The most important thing about miso soup is that the flavor of miso actually deteriorates when it is over heated, so care must be taken not to let the miso soup boil.

You will need :
1 block of soft tofu, cubed
4 tab miso paste
1 packet bonito

Bonito stock -
3 cups of water, bring to a boil.
Add 1 packet of bonito flakes, 2 g , and continue to boil for 5 minutes, uncovered.
Sieve stock, discard bonito.

Reserve 1/2 cup of stock. Stir and dissolve miso paste in cup. Set aside.
Bring bonito stock back to the boil. Add tofu.
Reintroduce the cup of miso into the hot stock.
Turn off heat immediately.

Garnish wth scallions before serving.

Minestrone soup

Minestrone soup, the what-to-cook and what-to-do-with-veggie-odds-and-ends soup has just moved up the soup social ladder. This, I did by adding cubed beef for dimension and sour cream for richness. To increase the repertoire of texture, add a handful of spiral pasta 30 minutes before serving for an interesting twist to the otherwise predictable dish.

For 4.

2 carrots, cubed
1 cup fresh corn
3 stalks of celery, chopped
3 tomatoes, chopped
100g beef, cubed
1 onion, chopped, sauted
1 T tomato pasta

Put everything into the slow cooker, add 4 bowls of boiling water and set to high power. Cook for 3 hours. In the last 30 minutes, throw in a handful of spiral pasta.

Serve with a dollop of sour cream.