Japanese Foods--nabe

[nakji]

lameware just means pottery which has materials and a firing temperature suitable for cooking on a flame or direct heat source. Pottery which is not designed for this purpose is more prone to cracking, but even flameware can crack if there is an internal defect or a temperature shock. I've had one very nice pot that Hiromi picked in Japan die a premature death, unfortunately, with a hairline crack that leaks.

In the metal nabe category, there are two styles, including thin metal and cast-iron. Thin metal is often used in restaurants and ryokan for serving at the table, because it heats quickly, though heat retention is bad. Cast iron has similar heat retention to clay pots, but has somewhat fallen out of favor.

I've actually been served yudoufu in a hinoki-based box, which was, I presume, using an induction heat source. So there's plenty of variation in how to serve nabe. It's a simple food; no need to fall for any particular brand of snobbery, but there will be differences in how each type of pot retains heat, and how well it holds in heat with the lid.

I use a donabe, but it's partially for presentation reasons. For certain categories of dishes, such as takikomi gohan, I think donabe are better than the thin metal nabe designs because the flameware pots retain heat better and hold steam better.

Thanks! This helps a lot. I love takikomi gohan, and make it quite often in the fall, since my husband doesn't really care for plain rice. And since I love pottery anything, I'll probably end up getting one of that style.

If you have some Le Creuset-style pots, they would work, as well

Ah!Ha!hahahaha! *sigh* No, I don't, sadly. Right now my kitchen equipment consists of the 900 yen wok from Ikea, one very cheap saucepan with glass lid, that I currently use to cook rice, and a sad little non-stick frypan that cooks pretty much everything, but is too small for liquids.

[JasonTrue]

I may be wrong about this, but flameware should generally be less porous than most Japanese stoneware. Hagi-yaki, for example, is incredibly porous, but doesn't leak under normal conditions. Hagi ware is often accompanied by instructions to soak the pots in water "to prevent stains", but not to prevent leakage.

If you read between the lines in the same instructions, you'll see that it's advising you to soak the pots in water so that some of the natural cracks in the glaze (not the pot) change color, so that you can see the first gentle transition in the 7 stages of Hagi ware. It does little, as one potter in Mashiko suggested, to actually prevent stains.

Adding liquid to a vessel and soaking would do little to prevent leakage, but it may expose a defect before you have an entire pot of boiling water spilling out onto your dining table. A little starch may fill tiny, invisible structural gaps, but wouldn't do much against more serious cracks. (Hiromi tried the starch trick with our more seriously cracked pot, to no benefit).

Earlier forms of pottery that were placed over flame, predating most anything that any Japanese would have used in the last several hundred years, were sometimes soaked and then rubbed with oil to reduce leakage, but these were actually quite porous, sometimes more so than what we now know as terra cotta ware.

By the way, if your fry pan is at least 4 cm deep, that's certainly adequate for many nabe... a lot of individual portions of yosenabe or yudoufu are servced in relatively shallow vessels. You could probably serve up to 2 people in a typical skillet. The long handle getting in the way would be the biggest source of frustration.

[torakris]

I just saw this in the store:

Curry nabe

Not sure what I think, how different is this really from curry rice?

[nakji]

How would I go about making a nabe with a sesame broth? I am thinking of adding sesame oil and ground sesame seeds to a basic dashi-mirin-soy stock. Has anyone ever made a nabe like this before? How did you go about it?

[helenjp]

Kansai-style chanko nabe!

My favorite proportions are roughly based on an internet discussion in Japanese I read:

water or chicken stock or water + 1-2 tsp chicken stock powder (the gara-soup stuff is best) or cubes

70 g miso (very roughly 1/3 of a Japanese cup, or 1/4 of a US cup)

1 T soy sauce

1 T mirin/sugar

(or 2 T noodle soup concentrate instead of the soy/mirin)

1-2 cloves garlic, grated to a pulp

1 T toasted sesame seeds

2 t Japanese toasted sesame oil

1 t ginger juice, or grated/shredded ginger to taste

Mix all that up till smooth, heat in your nabe, and away you go! A little chicken and a lot of tofu and vegetables is the way to go. In theory, udon noodles are nice to finish, but we rarely have enough appetite by then, as the rich miso/sesame broth is very good to drink too.

[nakji]

Oooooh ..... spooky. I freestyled it, and ended up doing almost exactly that. Miso, sesame seeds, sesame oil, ginger, garlic, shoyu, mirin and stock. Except I used dashi, not chicken stock. We put in tsukune, mushrooms, negi, cabbage, and some chicken wontons I made to celebrate getting my right hand back. We finished it with a pack of ramen noodles - my husband likes udon, but I like ramen noodles, so we compromise and do what I like.

It was most excellent. Now I know I'm on the right track, I'll have to try it again.

I'd also like to do a Korean shabu-shabu mushroom nabe - has anyone ever tried this? You stir up a broth with lots of chili and garlic, and dump in a giant plate of assorted mushrooms and greenery. When that has reduced a bit and the mushrooms are tender, you start to swish your beef around. There's a sweet/spicy dipping sauce - made with soy and wasabi, I think. Then after the beef has gone, you add udon noodles. If you're still sitting upright after all this, you pour the soup out. In another bowl, mix up cooked rice, a raw egg, chopped green onion, and bits of nori. Smear it around the inside of your oily nabe, and let it crust on over a low heat. Chip it off with your spoon.

[nakji]

Oh, wow, has it been a year already?

Two happy events coincided recently to get me making nabe again. First, my dear friend visited me from Japan, bringing a nice-sized bag of Ajinomoto dashi powder. Second, I won a hot plate burner at our school's year-end party, bringing the table-top technology home to me. I know it's not strictly necessary to make nabe on the table, but I think it adds to the fun. I usually make a yuzu-flavoured broth, but that's not available any more, more's the pity. My friend showed me how to make a miso-nabe, but I'm wondering what else might be a good base for my broth.

[Hiroyuki]

As you may already know, tomato nabe has become very popular these days.

Search for トマト鍋, and you will get lots of recipes!

[nakji]

Tomato nabe! Brilliant! No doubt delicious with a range of mushrooms - have you tried it, Hiroyuki? And do you think diced tomato or tomato juice yields a better result?

[Hiroyuki]

No, I haven't, so be sure to report back!

[nakji]

I'm throwing a nabe party tonight, since winter has finally arrived. I've got all the vegetables and meats sorted, but what kind of side dishes should I be putting down for nibbles while we're waiting for the main ingredients to cook?

[helenjp]

Isn't this something that is determined more by the size of your table than anything else?

Since nabe is hot, and often mild and mellow in flavor, I like to go for intense/crisp/crunchy/sharp/fresh.

That means lightly-pickled pickles with lots of citrus to me. But it could mean oysters simmered in soy, ginger and mirin until they are shrivelly, or crunchy slices of octopus alternated with tomato slices and drizzled in a lemony vinaigrette (except that I put chili rather than parsley with mine).

Also, herby salads using seri or mizuna are refreshing. Also neatly avoids the problem of people who hate strong flavors like seri in nabe.

What did you have in the end? I'm considering a wonton/gyoza nabe for tomorrow night, and could do with some fresh "go-with" ideas too.

[nakji]

Actually, I'm making it right now - I'm going to use your chanko nabe base.

Sides are daikon quick pickled with lemon zest (in lieu of yuzu) and some soy; bean sprouts sauteed with mirin, Korean chili pepper and sesame oil; carrot kinpira, and edamame.

Beer; sake.

[helenjp]

daikon quick pickled with lemon zest

That is actually precisely what I had in mind! I had forgotten about the chanko nabe, but wandered on to eGullet intending to dig up a nabe thread, only to find that the East Asian weather or sunspots or some such thing had led you to do the same thing.

There is just NOTHING like nabe (except maybe noodles and ochazuke) for quick and tasty but healthy dining...working fulltime away from home again and also not being quite up to slicing and dicing has fully revived my nabe-tastic enthusiasm.

Kiri-tanpo nabe is my current favorite for early winter - shoyu base, lots of fungi, chewy rice sticks, and fat negi.

[nakji]

Well, we battled our nabe for a full ninety minutes last night but it eventually won out. I used the chanko nabe base with enoki, shiitake, and bunai-shimeiji; pork meatballs; negi; napa cabbage, beef rolls; qing cai, tofu puffs, and finished with Chinese noodles. It seemed like there was still a full table of vegetables left when we couldn't eat any more. My husband brought out a good bottle of Hakkaisan Ginjo to accompany, and we had it in our seasonal snowman flask. Very nice for the onset of winter.

Bring on nabe season!

[racerken]

I have a question on Konbu usage.

Why is it that almost all Japanese cookbooks direct you to remove Konbu after several minutes of cooking? Why not leave it in the nabe?

[helenjp]

Because it can make the whole dish taste over-sweet and bland!