Osechi ryouri

[torakris]

since we are asking why's..

Yesterday I was driving past a self service gas station, these are very new to Japan and have been popping up quite a bit in my area, and it was packed, there were lines out on the street! Two corners down there was a regular full service place with only two cars. The things that boggles me is that the price for gas is the same at both places!!

I am sorry but I would much rather go to the full service place where they clean all my windows, check my oil and tires and even give me a wet towel to wipe down the dashboard while I am waiting......

to keep this post food related, both places had vending machines...

[torakris]

We will be going over to my inlaws house to enjoy osechi tomorrow and this morning I called to see if there was something I should make, my MIL requested a meatloaf.......

I think it will be an interesting meal..

looking forward to pictures from everyone's meals!!

[Hiroyuki]

Sorry, text later. We're going to have an asa buro (morning bath) first!

Edit to add:

Taking a morning bath on New Year's Day is something I have inherited from my father.

I always want to hold our New Year dishes (osechi ryouri) to a minimum, and my wife buys some ready-made items at the supermarket.

(As a native Japanese, I am already sick and tired of most osechi ryouri.)

First photo:

Top left: Fukumame (simmered and sweetened broad beans),

Top right: Kuromame (simmered and sweetened black soy beans)

Bottom left: Kamaboko, red and white, and datemaki (sweetened fish paste and egg roll)

Bottom right: Salmon kobu maki (Salmon kelp roll)

Second photo:

My wife made zouni with hakusai (Chinese cabbage), daikon, chikuwa (type of fish paste), salmon, yaki dofu (grilled tofu), and soy sauce (not miso). I always grill mochi, but my wife prefer to boil hers. She says that people here boil mochi rather than grill them.

Note that Niigata is in the salmon culture area. My wife usually puts salmon to zouni.

Edited January 1, 2005 by Hiroyuki (log)

[torakris]

We had a lovely brunch at my inlaws house yesterday with the following osechi feast, alsmost everything was bought at Costco.....

The sashimi platter, my FIL slices this all up on his own

salmon and squid on the left, katsuo, maguro and taco (octopus) on the right

various traditional dishes that no one but me ate....

and my meatloaf contribution

after the meal we feasted on peanut M&M's for dessert and then proceeded outside to have a snowball fight followed by a trip to Toys 'R' Us for the kids to spend their otoshidama (cash gift) from their grandparents.

[Kiem Hwa]

Me, MIL, and MIL's mother (grandma) cooked all day yesterday..... the results were pretty yummy... but now we are all on strike from cooking for the next week.

The three of us made everything here except the kamaboko.

Made by me:

Sekihan: mochi rice steamed with azuki beans and satsuma imo (sweet potato).

Kuri Kinton: sweetened mashed Satsuma imo with chestnuts (Kuri).

Clockwise from upper left:

Nishime, grandma's Kinpira gobo, potato-macaroni salad, triple plate (clockwise from top): Kuri Kinton, my kinpira gobo, sekihan, Tako steamed in sake (miso sauce not shown), kamaboko, and namasu.

Clockwise from top:

Grandma's Inari (cone sushi) and sushi, konbu maki, kuromame, kinpira gobo (cut off), Rafute (Okinawan shoyu pork).

[torakris]

wow, what a spread!

I guess no meal in Hawaii is complete without a macaroni salad....

[Kiem Hwa]

wow, what a spread!

I guess no meal in Hawaii is complete without a macaroni salad....

←

Yup, in Hawaii we definately have to have our mac salad!..... All this food (over half of it wasn't even plated) was supposed to be for only 6 people (who had also just eaten ozoni)!

I guess we really don't need to cook for several days....

Edited January 2, 2005 by Kiem Hwa (log)

[zeitoun]

On the other side of the planet, in New York City, my wife prepared a delicious Osechi to celebrate the new year.

The table:

Preparing some Hempen (minced fish) for the date-maki

Rolling the date-maki

Making itame-namasu (stir fried veggies)

Clockwise starting with tazukuri/gomame on the lower right hand corner which is caramelized fish with sesame seeds.

Su-Gobo, Burdock root seasoned with bonito flakes, ground sesame seeds and vinegar.

itame-namasu, stir fried veggies (lotus root, daikon, carrots) and abura-age in yuzu "vinaigrette"

kamaboko, steamed fish paste

In the middle: kuro-mame, sweet black beens

(my favorite ) shime-saba, kelp/vinegar cured mackerel and date-maki, sweet eggs with minced fish

Onishime, seasoned vegetables (carrots, gobo, taro root, take-noko, konyaku, shiitake, snow peas, lotus root, koya-dofu)

and kuri-kintoki, sweet white potato (satsuma-imo) with chesnut

Ozouni (kanto style ), fish/chicken broth with vegetables (carrots, daikon, taro root), chicken thighs, mochi, naruto and mitsuba

And it is almost a tradition, now we are on eating left overs for 3 days....

[torakris]

WOW! gorgeous, down to the table settings!

[Hiroyuki]

Great photos! Homemade datemaki, using hanpen! That sounds nice. Store-bought datemaki is just too sweet for me. Your wife is quite a cook. My wife? I guess she would make osechi ryouri for me if I asked her to. The fact is, I ask her NOT to make any!

[zeitoun]

Great photos!  Homemade datemaki, using hanpen!  That sounds nice.  Store-bought datemaki is just too sweet for me.  Your wife is quite a cook.  My wife?  I guess she would make osechi ryouri for me if I asked her to.  The fact is, I ask her NOT to make any!

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Well, i do most of the cooking at home, but when she cooks, it is a blessing... I do have to beg her though!!

Osechi is just one of those things that i will never be able to make, most of the recipes are her mom's.

So far, the closest i came to making japanese food is probably waving a "uchiwa" to cool down sushi rice! oh.. and i did grate daikon once or twice, that's it.

Kris - thanks for the picture tip, took a little practice but i got it!

[helenjp]

First time in 15 years that I haven't made osechi! We spent New Year in Hokkaido, gorging ourselves on crab, scallops, sukiyaki, yakiniku, and a big tray of hors d'oeuvres ordered from a local Chinese restaurant. Son1 celebrated his arrival with a big bowl of ikura-don, and that set the tone for our entire visit.

However, no New Year's cooking of any kind took place, except for a very simple ozoni - a clear broth with shredded negi, shredded naruto-maki fish sausage, and grilled mochi.

Zeitoun's ozoni looks like what we normally have, minus the taro and plus some greens. Impressive spread there, zeitoun!

For our sons, the biggest feature of a Hokkaido New Year was hiding mikan in the snow for a few hours, then running outside to see who could dig up and eat the most frozen mikan in the shortest possible time...

[zeitoun]

We spent New Year in Hokkaido, gorging ourselves on crab, scallops, sukiyaki, yakiniku, and a big tray of hors d'oeuvres ordered from a local Chinese restaurant.

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Well, i very much enjoyed my osechi but i have to say, this does make me envious too!!

Never been to Hokkaido, it must be beautiful (and cold) in the winter!

When I think of Hokkaido, I think of the pictures I was drawing in my mind while reading Yasunari Kawabata's Snow Country.

Just gorgeous!

[torakris]

well Christmas is over and it time to get ready for New Years. I have started my cleaning and have 6 large bags to go in the trash today plus an additional 3 bags I am giving to people... and I am only 1/4 of the way through my house.

I can spend so much time cleaning/organizing because my MIL does the food shopping for our osechi every year. Two days ago she reminded me that I will be making meatloaf for osechi this year again.. and I should bring along anything else that would go with it.

So what is everyone else doing/preparing?

[helenjp]

A huuuuuuge pile of basic namasu, so that I can make different variations to it over New Year.

Edited December 26, 2006 by helenjp (log)

[helenjp]

Everybody agreed that we didn't need too much osechi: just this...and oh yes, that...and so on, to a list of twenty or so items!

So this is what we made - what did everybody else make for themselves (curious to know what items people think are worth making/better made at home)?

* huge pile of namasu, served with home-pickled salmon, ikura, and kazu-no-ko

* big, enormous pile of kuri-kinton, already sadly diminished

* vinegared lotus root flowers

* tazukuri (oops, forgot to serve them - I don't make them sweet, so they will go fine with DH's beer, luckily)

* grilled yellowtail

* simmered vegetables, scattered with carrot cutouts, ginnan, and quail eggs

* gingered black beans, served with wolfberries (kuko no mi)

* marinated green vegetables as a side dish

Bought: konbu rolls (big mistake, horribly sweet), datemaki, extra thick egg just because son2 is fond of it, ham, kamaboko, small fish pickled with millet, squid dressed with roe.

P.S. Best innovation in recent years - a light jelly to refresh after long hours in the kotatsu. Last year I made a yuzu kanten jelly, this year a soft red wine jelly with a Japanese vegetable jelly powder.

Edited January 1, 2007 by helenjp (log)

[torakris]

As usual we had osechi with the in-laws, as requested I made meatloaf...

I also baked a banana bread for my MIL as she really loves it and I had some bananas that were way past their prime.

For 6 adults and 4 kids my MIL purchased a 3 dan (level) osechi box of which less than a 1/4 was probably touched. The main part of the lunch was ozouni (traditional New Year's soup) and the crab. My FIL had purchased two huge taraba kani (king crabs) that were almost as big as my son. I could live on this stuff. He had also prepared some plates of sashimi with maguro, tai, salmon and octopus.

I forgot to take my camera...

[Hiroyuki]

Uninteresting, all store-bought:

Kuromame

A set of red kamaboko, white kamaboko, and datemaki

Seasoned octopus

Kombu maki (with salmon inside)

My wife made chikuzen ni.

[SuzySushi]

As excerpted from my Tropical Christmas in Hawaii foodblog, this was our New Year's osechi:

I ended up cooking only one dish from scratch -- kimpira gobo, a side dish made from shredded gobo (burdock root) and carrots sauteed in soy sauce and sugar. I was going to cook datemaki, a sweet omelet, but no one was that keen on it.

Despite all the delicacies I picked up in the market, when it came to filling the jubako, they only took up two tiers, and that's after adding some non-traditional foods I had in the house, like leftover teriyaki chicken wings and a sliced avocado. I wish I had thought to buy snowpeas as a symbolic substitute for the shape of green bamboo leaves in the Japanese sho-chiku-bai (pine - bamboo - plum blossoms, symbols of the winter season).

The jubako was harder to arrange than I imagined, because the ingredients are supposed to be packed tightly together and they kept falling over!

My top tier combines appetizers and grilled dishes:

Clockwise from the top left, kuromame (sweetened black soybeans), kombumaki (kelp scrolls tied with edible gourd cords), golden grape tomatoes, teriyaki chicken wings, kamaboko (fish cake), and grilled shrimp on skewers.

The bottom tier contains vegetables:

Again, clockwise from the top left, seasoned lotus root, sliced avocado, more kelp -- this time with bamboo shoots (this was surprisingly sweet), and the kimpira gobo -- decorated with carrots cut with a tiny vegetable cutter to resemble plum blossoms.

Would I do it again? Probably not! It's a lot of work -- even when most of the dishes were bought ready-made -- and the flavors are too similar (either soy-salty, sweet and salty, or fishy-salty -- I had thought that the kelp and bamboo would be vinegary). But I'm glad I did it once, and we'll nibble off it for several days.

[helenjp]

Time to get the colored pencils out and start planning this year's o-sechi!

Would anybody like to help me with my homework? I need to make a few small packs of o-sechi for local "home-alones". Ideas welcome please, for nice serving ideas as well as food that is neither boring nor scarily "unusual".

Ideas for foods that are festive without being hard to chew, or too sweet or salty, or too harshly vinegary particularly welcome!

Also thinking of packaging up one hot meal.

[Hiroyuki]

Time to get the colored pencils out and start planning this year's o-sechi!

Would anybody like to  help me with my homework? I need to make a few small packs of o-sechi for local "home-alones". Ideas welcome please, for nice serving ideas as well as food that is neither boring nor scarily "unusual".

Ideas for foods that are festive without being hard to chew, or too sweet or salty, or too harshly vinegary particularly welcome!

Also thinking of packaging up one hot meal.

←

That greatly depends on how old these home-alones are, as well as their individual preferences, right?

As I mentioned somewhere else, osechi ryori is much of a thing of the past for me, and I only buy a few favorite items every shogatsu.

Are there any osechi items that aren't too sweet or salty?

[helenjp]

Are there any osechi items that aren't too sweet or salty?

That is the million dollar question, sir, and you collect the jackpot! I think that's why Chinese-style osechi is often popular. I like to include some fucha-ryouri (Chinese-inspired temple cooking) things in osechi for the same reason - they often include sesame or poppy seeds etc, so they taste rich, but are not fried, or drowned in mirin and shoyu.

Line-up: two elderly man (?? one maybe alcoholic??), two elderly women (one fussy, likes only white fish), diabetic parent with hungry teenage son. (Plus one person who doesn't like Japanese food - she wants beef stew, I know!) .

If it comes to storebought osechi, I'd give up serving osechi - it just doesn't taste good, no matter how expensive it is.

Apart from osechi, what do you like to enjoy at New Year? Are there some dishes you never prepare at any other time of the year?

I don't know why, but steak with herb butter is something we only eat at New Year.

For my husband New Year = mochi, grilled or in soup, though my boys also like it with fried golden brown in butter, or grilled with cheese on top.

For me, "gochisou" type okayu (congee) is always a treat, and I look forward to nanakusa-gayu.

[Hiroyuki]

Are there any osechi items that aren't too sweet or salty?

That is the million dollar question, sir, and you collect the jackpot! I think that's why Chinese-style osechi is often popular. I like to include some fucha-ryouri (Chinese-inspired temple cooking) things in osechi for the same reason - they often include sesame or poppy seeds etc, so they taste rich, but are not fried, or drowned in mirin and shoyu.

Line-up: two elderly man (?? one maybe alcoholic??), two elderly women (one fussy, likes only white fish), diabetic parent with hungry teenage son. (Plus one person who doesn't like Japanese food - she wants beef stew, I know!) .

If it comes to storebought osechi, I'd give up serving osechi - it just doesn't taste good, no matter how expensive it is.

Apart from osechi, what do you like to enjoy at New Year? Are there some dishes you never prepare at any other time of the year?

I don't know why, but steak with herb butter is something we only eat at New Year.

For my husband New Year = mochi, grilled or in soup, though my boys also like it with fried golden brown in butter, or grilled with cheese on top.

For me, "gochisou" type okayu (congee) is always a treat, and I look forward to nanakusa-gayu.

←

I must say you have some interesting company. I wish I could join them!

Sorry, my wife and I are not very imaginative about New Year's dishes. The same old mochi, zoni, and osechi ryori.

Why not simply make (or buy) several osechi ryori just to keep up the appearances, and serve sashimi (white fish!), beef stew, lots of (cheap) sake, and greasy deep-fried food (for the hungry boy)?

[Culinista]

We're about to leave for our first New Year's in Japan. We have a reservation for the osechi at the Tokyo Park Hyatt--sounds so homey

Maybe we will go visit all the relatives after all.

My husband is really curious about osechi, now that he has learned to pronounce it. Oddly enough, growing up in our very untraditional house we never had osechi besides oshiruko and homemade mochi, so it will all be new for me as well.

[smallworld]

Time to get the colored pencils out and start planning this year's o-sechi!

Would anybody like to  help me with my homework? I need to make a few small packs of o-sechi for local "home-alones". Ideas welcome please, for nice serving ideas as well as food that is neither boring nor scarily "unusual".

Ideas for foods that are festive without being hard to chew, or too sweet or salty, or too harshly vinegary particularly welcome!

Also thinking of packaging up one hot meal.

←

I have no particular advice Helen, but I just wanted to say good for you! What a wonderful thing to do.

Is this something you are doing by yourself, or are you part of some kind of organization that helps these folks?