chibirisu

::drooooooool:: I can't do this at home, because all the burners are tilted on my apartment's stove and I'm SO not getting a big vat of TILTED hot oil going full blast; but when I'm at friends' houses with functioning stoves I like sashimi-tempura. Mix together rice flour and green bean starch so it'll get really crispy fast, dust it over the sashimi, just a few seconds in the boiling oil to crisp up the crust but the insides are still nice and raw, crunch away... I've seen places do maki-tempura (sashimi grade fish into sushi rolls into tempura batter into fryer) but my maki tend to fall apart if I juggle 'em wrong getting 'em to the plate so I doubt they'd survive a tempura run. But that might be fun too...

Had a bunch of roasted chestnuts last night - yum! Planning to roast more to make kuri-kinton later. Or throw some in the rice cooker. Or maybe in with the daigaku-imo on the menu tonight, just for fun. Anyone else have favorite chestnut recipes? (Been meaning to figure out kuri-manjuu for a while, never got around to it...)

Thanks - do you know the appropriate proportion of granules to water? ← I tend to think of a serving as between a cup and a cup and a half of water, so I start with that as a calculating base for their ratios -- but then I also tend to taste-test it before adding the miso (get the water hot, add dashi, taste-test and add more dashi or water as needed, then add the miso). I really should be organized enough to measure one of these days, but it seems like every brand's got a slightly different strength...

That's dashi granules - the Japanese in the red area says Shimaya dashi no moto; it's like bouillon only in grain form instead of a block. In other words, yeah, you can put it in miso soup. (You'll need miso too, of course.) Happy eating!

Based on Kris's recipe, I came up with a no-milk muffinish version (mostly because I was out of milk and butter and couldn't manage to not tear the skins when trying to make hollows for the second baking! Ooops...) About 3 cups of baked satsuma-imo insides 1/2 cup sugar 2 eggs 1/2 tsp vanilla 2 Tbsp mirin Good pinch of salt I washed and scrubbed half a dozen smallish satsuma-imo and baked them in a tinfoil-covered casserole dish for about 45-50 minutes at 375 (while roasting some pork for chashu ramen). Once they were cool enough to handle, I scooped the insides out and put them in a mixing bowl with the rest of the ingredients. I smashed 'em up with a potato masher (didn't feel like getting out the whole mixer rig). Ran the results through a sieve to catch any bits of peel I'd missed. Then I put 6 aluminum muffin cups on the tray of my toaster oven and divided the "batter" up between them and tried to smooth off the tops like the pics show in the pages Kris linked to. Thinking of creme brulee, I sprinkled some more sugar on the tops of a couple to caramelize and turn crispy. They're baking in the toaster oven right now; my guess is 375 for about 15 minutes. Will report back on how they turned out... ETA: Yum. Should've put 'em on the broil setting instead of the bake setting in order to get the top-sugar to caramelize, but otherwise yum - kind of turned out like warm baked custard. I'm thinking about trying a version that's satsuma-imo and banana with caramelized sugar on top next time... I should really pick up a blowtorch...

Oyako-don's great stuff. Took me some experimentation to come up with the right proportion of egg to broth to chicken the first few times I made it... Since it sounds like the over-sweet broth's the biggest problem with the sukiyaki, here's another angle I'd try: disassembling the thing! Q1. How cooked are the vegetables? If they'd take another reheating without turning to mush, see option A. If they're pretty thoroughly cooked, see option B. Option A: Sukiyaki-don (I actually saw an idea like this in a Japanese-language cookbook, which surprised me, but I do it with leftover sukiyaki a lot. The cookbook version involved cooking the sukiyaki specifically for the donburi, but it's good with leftovers too) Drain the extra broth off the leftover sukiyaki, and make a couple tablespoons of replacement broth out of soy sauce and dashi to try to cut down residual sweetness. Heat the leftovers together with the replacement sauce and put over a bowl of hot rice and sprinkle some sesame seeds and chopped green onions on top. Option B: Two separate meals (pseudo-Korean donburi meal and fried rice meal): I've done this one before with some sukiyaki that had been simmering for quite a while at the end of a party. First, separate the meat from the vegetables. Pseudo-Korean donburi: Quick-reheat the leftover sukiyaki meat in a bit of canola oil scented with a few drops of sesame oil, and sprinkle sesame seeds on top. Put on rice along with some kimchi. (This works best if you like kimchi, of course. I love the stuff...) Dolsot-bibim-bab-style fried rice "hash browns": Reheat some leftover rice in the microwave. Cut up the vegetables and stir them through. If you have any shrimp handy, especially the tiny ones, toss those in too. Heat some sesame oil in the bottom of a nonstick skillet, pat the rice-mix into a pancake shape, and sizzle until golden brown and crispy, then flip and sizzle the other side. Top with anything you like -- a fried egg and gochuujang will make it more like a dolsot-less dolsot, but my dad likes his with ketchup and mustard (the heathen! Of course, I'm not one to talk since I invent transcontinental food all the time...)

Cooooool... I didn't know about Kappabashi last time I was in Japan. Must fix that on the next trip! Finding a real block of katsuo and a real shaver is high up there on my fantasy-kitchen wish list. Because I am SO not going to get a real block of katsuo-bushi and then try my grandpa's wood plane on the thing, however much I might improvise in other areas. (I've discovered that an emptied-out Spanish-Catholic sanctuary candle glass (the tall narrow cylindrical ones I never knew the name for, the ones they leave burning all the time) -- those make great skewer-dipping sauce holders for yakitori etc. You can dunk 'em without getting the ends of the skewers sticky AND without making 3 gallons of yakitori sauce at a time to fill up a pot deep enough to dip 'em vertically under normal circumstances. Those candle-holders hold about 2 cups of yakitori sauce, they're great... But on the other hand there are also some things I don't experiment with, too. I've never gotten mochi-gome to cook correctly in a rice cooker somehow; I always do it with the bamboo steamer method instead, especially when making sekihan for a party, and real katsuo's one of those things that I'd really hate to mess up by improvising too much...)

YUM! ^___^ (I have to confess after prep-cooking for Monday's class all day today -- simmering down a huge batch of teriyaki sauce, running around shopping for ingredients, etc -- I didn't have the patience to do the puree-and-rebake thing. So I "cheated like a mub" (to borrow a phrase of my brother's that I've never quite understood): 1) Wash and scrub satsuma-imo, prick with fork, put in microwave on "baked potato" setting 2) Pull it out, smash it up with a couple forks, mix in some milk, sugar, and a drop of Welsh ginger-honey (didn't have the cream or eggs on hand). 3) Scarfed down about as fast as I could while still managing not to burn my tongue. ^__^ Probably not too authentic, but tasted much better than oatmeal in the "looks like mashed potatoes meets porridge" department! (Must try the real version after the one-bowl class on Monday's done with...)

That sounds INSANELY good. Any particular proportions, or is it like mashed potatoes in the US where everyone's mom makes it their own way and never writes down a recipe? ^__^ (going to dig for info on how to make the other suggestions too - since my dessert class is going to be right before Thanksgiving, I'm figuring "variations on things to do with sweet potatoes & cousins" will go over pretty well...)

I've just rediscovered satsuma-imo (had 'em in Japan, couldn't find 'em here for the longest time, now two of the local Asian groceries have 'em) and I'm looking for fun stuff to do with 'em for one of my Japanese cooking classes. I'm already planning on making kuri-kinton the REAL way (it just turns out bizarre when you do it with canned sweet potatoes) and daigaku-imo and as close as I can get to yaki-imo without setting off school fire alarms. I'm also thinking about making satsuma-imo paste to stuff into manju like koshi-an, and I've seen little tartlets with satsuma-imo filling and a few black sesame seeds sprinkled on top that I'll bet I could duplicate with a little tinkering. Anybody got more ideas?