Miso soup

 

I got 2 new bowls as presents a while ago, and I have always wanted to use them. 

Well I was thinking of miso soup this morning… so I decided to make miso soup for dinner.  And… FINALLY! I got a chance to use my new bowls! 🙂 hehe!

I won’t write too much about this recipe coz… it’s only miso soup, nothing fancy.  You can pretty much follow the instruction on the miso package that you buy.  You just throw in whatever you like into the soup. 

This particular soup that I made, I put in onions, mushroom and tofu, boil for a while, and then sprinkle the 7-flavour powder on top for more flavour.

Enjoy!

Ozoni (お雑煮)

  

Experiment: Ozoni (お雑煮)

Introduction:
Ozoni (お雑煮) is a dish that’s usually eaten on New Year in Japan.  Usually this dish consists of mochi (Japanese rice cake), meat and vegetables.  I found this recipe in a book, so I decided to give it a try on New Year’s day. 

Materials:
Chicken, cut into cubes
Carrots, cut into rectangles
Daikon/white radish, cut into rectangles
Fish cake, cut into thin slices
A bunch of mitsuba
Mochi
Yuzu peel or yuzu powder
Soup – 2 cups of dashi stock, a bit of soy sauce and mirin

Procedure:
1) Preheat oven.  Put rice cake on aluminum foil and put into oven.  Watch it puff up.  (It’s fun!)  Make sure that it doesn’t burst.

2) Boil the dashi stock, put in the mirin and soy sauce.  When the soup boils, put the mochi, chicken, carrot, dashi and fish cake in.  Bring to boil, then reduce heat to medium.  Simmer for a few minutes.

3) Put in the mitsuba and the yuzu peel/powder.  Turn off the heat.  Serve.

 

Result:

 

Discussion:
1) I was too excited watching the mochi puff up, and I was hoping that they’d grow bigger and bigger… then both the mochi bursted.  >.<  So when I boiled them, the shape didn’t hold anymore.  So remember to WATCH the mochi and make sure that they don’t BURST!

2) I totally forgot to put the soy sauce and mirin in… so the Ozoni was actually a bit blend.

3) In case you’re wondering what Yuzu is… it’s actually a citrus fruit… I wiki-ed it but there’s no English name for this fruit.  >.<  Yuzu can be used for cooking or making drinks.  I got this package of powder in Kyoto, Japan. 

 

Conclusion:
It wasn’t a successful experiment… Sigh… but I guess it’s not bad for a first timer making Ozoni.  365 days later I’ll give it a try again!   I’ll remember not to let the mochi burst, and I’ll make sure I put soy sauce and mirin in the soup! 

Reference:

Pork soup (豚汁)

 

Experiment: Pork soup (豚汁)

 

Introduction:

I mentioned a few days ago that I made dashi stock for something yesterday.  I have leftover dashi stock.  I flipped through a few magazines to see if there are any dishes that I would like to try.  I saw this “pork soup (豚汁)” recipe, and it happened that I have all the ingredients at home.  So… I made this soup for dinner.

 

Materials: (serve 2)

80-100g Sliced pork

1 tbs miso paste

2 tbs of chopped green onions

100g thinly sliced daikon
Shichimi tougarashi (七味唐辛子) to taste

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Procedure:

1)  Cut the pork into small pieces, and cut the thinly sliced daikon in quarters.

2)  In a pot, boil the dashi stock. Put the daikon in the pot and let it boil for a bit.  Then put in the sliced pork.  When the meat changes colour, add the green onions and miso paste.  Stir the soup until the miso paste is well dissolved.

3)  Serve the soup in bowls.  Sprinkle the Shichimi tougarashi as you like.

 

Results:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Discussion:

1) I’m not a big fan of pork, and I really don’t like cooking pork.  I always think that pork has a stinky smell, and I can’t usually get rid of that taste/smell when I cook.  I wasn’t expecting much from this soup, but when I tasted it… To my surprise, wow, this soup actually tasted very good!  Even Mr. Clam liked this pork soup.  🙂 

2) By the way, in case you’re wondering what Shichimi tougarashi (七味唐辛子) is… here’s a picture of it:

This powder contains 7 ingredients, and it’s spicy.  You can find it in most of the Asian supermarkets.  I usually use it on noodles, or bonburi (rice bowl dish) at home, and now I know I can use it on soup too.  🙂

When I went to Japan in November, I went to a store that has been selling Shichimi tougarashi in Kyoto for 350 years.  They sell many varieties of powders… When I was thinking of which powder to get, I saw this:

 

Hahaha I didn’t have to think which one to get as I am a BIIIG Hello Kitty fan! 😛  I haven’t opened it yet so I don’t know how it tastes like… but I’ll definitely post it up when I open this package! 🙂

 

 

Conclusion:

It was a good and easy soup!  Will definitely make it again! 🙂

 

 

Reference:

Lettuce Club (レタスクラブ) April 25, 2009, Vol. 671

Dashi stock 出汁

My friend is coming on Wednesday to make Zoni (雑煮), and we’ll need dashi stock for it.  Since we’ll be drinking the soup, I don’t wanna use dashi powder to make the soup.  Well, I’m afraid that I’ll screw up on Wednesday, so I decided to “practice” first.  If I fail, at least I can still use the stock powder to make the soup (of course that’s not ideal… I don’t wanna drink MSG soup). 

So, I made my very frist dashi stock from scratch. 

Dashi stock is not hard to make, it just takes time. To make the stock, you only need bonito flakes and konbu.

Konbu (left) and bonito flakes (right)

I was making about 2L of dashi stock, and I used about 20cm of konbu, and about 50g of bonito flakes.

 

 

1)  Wipe both sides of the konbu with a wet towel.  Then put the konbu in a pot with 2L of water, and let it sit for about 20 minutes.

 

 

2)  Boil the water.  Just before the water boils, take the konbu out.  Then put the bonito flakes in the pot.  Let it boil for a few minutes, then turn off the stove.

 

3)  Take the bonito flakes out.  It’s not easy to take the small pieces out, so you can drain the stock through a sieve.

Tada!  That’s the dashi stock!

When I first saw this recipe, I was reluctant to make it because a) it takes time, b) it’s a lot of stock, and c) I usually only need a little for cooking,  so I don’t know what to do with the rest of the stock. But I read somewhere that you can acutally pour the stock in an ice cube tray and freeze it.  When you need it, you just take the ice cube out and defrost it.  WOW, how come I never thought of it?  So now, if possible, I think I’ll make my own dashi stock instead of using those powder! 🙂