New Year "Osechi" Dinners

New Year has arrived, and I've had wonderful first days making and enjoying traditional Japanese New Year dishes with festive feelings!

Prepping of dashi stock. Jason helped me with shaving dry bonito while watching a football game..haha. I made dashi with a little more kombu than I usually use in my classic-style donabe, "Hakeme". The aroma was so gorgeous that I wanted to bathe in it.


Because we were going to have a New Year party on the 3rd day, on New Year's Day, we had a rather quiet celebration just two of us. the new year soup ("ozoni") was made with the rich dashi stock, and it tasted so soothing.


On January 3, we invited friends for a big New Year celebration ("Osechi") dinner. We started with sake and traditional New Year appetizers. I made egg and fish rolls ("date-maki"), Satsuma-yam puree and sweet chestnuts ("kuri-kinton"), and burdock root in savory vinegar and sesame sauce ("tataki-gobo"). I also made braised black beans ("kuromame-ni") and spinach in black sesame sauce ("horenso goma-ae"). I forgot to garnish the black beans with gold leaves!


Tai snapper, cured in seasoned shaved kelp ("tororo konbu"). Tai is a lucky fish, so we gotta have it!


Middle course was donabe-braised root vegetables and chicken ("chikuzen-ni"), made in classic-style donabe, "Hakeme".


Main donabe course was with house-cured pork belly hot pot! I cured a big block of pork belly with "Moshio" seaweed salt for 4 days, and sliced into thick pieces.


In the donabe, I cooked konnyaku shirataki noodles, tons of cabbage, shimeji mushrooms, and white wood-ear mushrooms with pork belly. The kombu-base broth was infused with all the vegetables and meat flavors and so wonderful. The final "shime" course was with Inaniwa udon from Akita and extra pork belly. I used my large donabe steamer, "Mushi Nabe", without a steam grate for these, and everything was gone quite quickly among 7 of us. I was so happy that everybody enjoyed the hot pot!


The ending was Tanba black beans, coated in Uji matcha, Satsuma sweet potato and peanut crackers, and donabe-steamed matcha cakes . We had such an amazing evening together...ate, drank (emptied 6 bottles of sake and wine!), chatted, and laughed for 7 hours until almost 2 am!

HAPPY DONABE NEW YEAR!!

Super Izakaya Night...Fried Chicken Cartilage ("Nankotsu Karaage"), Handmade "Ju-wari" Soba, etc.

A friend of mine, who is a soba maker, just returned from Tokyo and came to our place for dinner. She showed up with a lot of gourmet foods from Japan, as well as her freshly-made "Ju-wari" soba noodles, made from freshly ground soba flour from Japan. "Ju-wari" means 100%, so this style of soba is made from 100% buckwheat.

So we did a fun izakaya night.

Yes, I made more "karaage"...and this time, I found Chicken "nankotsu" (cartilage between breast meats) cuts at a Japanese market. So, I was really excited and made a Chinese-style fried chicken.


For the batter, I also used Chinese five spice and whole egg. Once they were fried, I served them simply with lemon wedges. They came out really good, with the thin crispy breading and nice crunchy texture. I love chicken "nankotsu" so much!


I also fried her leftover end cut soba noodles. They make such a nice snack. We also had some special ikura (salmon roe) from Hokkaido, fava bean miso, natto kombu, etc.


With a big tarako (salted cod roe) from Hokkaido, I quickly fixed a dish with avocado, Tokyo negi, and irizake. It was so nice with Junmai Ginjo "Tamajiman" from Oume, Tokyo, which she also brought back from Japan.

  
Then, we had the special soba time. Her handmade "Ju-wari" soba was superb! We enjoyed with dipping sauce and some ground walnuts from Niigata, Japan.

Fantastic night.
Thank you, Sonoko-san.

Donabe Dinner in Sonoma 2...Tofu, Matsutake, Yuzu, Duck and more!

December 27 (Thurs)

On the second night in Sonoma, we had a couple of guests for our donabe dinner. They have never tasted donabe dishes before. Kyle and I made all the dishes with donabe.


A little snack with Champagne aperitif...my donabe steam-roasted fingerling potatoes with Yuzu-kosho mayo dipping sauce. It was cooked with tagine-style donabe, "Fukkura-san". (recipe is here) It was just a pre-dinner snack, yet these simple donabe-cooked potatoes made a huge impression on our guests already! Donabe cooks potatoes so good that they turn to something special. With Henriot, Champagne, Brut Souverain, it was so hard to stop eating these little potatoes.


Another course with tagine-style donabe, "Fukkura-san", was my donabe steam-fry sizzling tofu and mixed mushrooms in miso-sake sauce. They turn to donabe paparazzi!


With donabe smoker, "Ibushi Gin", I did simple smoked duck breast and eggs with creamy wasabi sauce. As soon as they tasted, one of our guests tweeted about it! Smoked duck and 2010 Quivira Vineyards, Old Vine Zinfandel, made beautiful mariage. Part of the vines are from pre-prohibition era!


Kyle did an amazing steamed dish with donabe steamer, "Mushi Nabe". It was chicken meatballs and matsutake mushrooms, steamed over deep chicken broth. As soon as they were steamed, these ingredients were divided into bowls, then the broth in the donabe was poured over. Great presentation, super deep flavor.


Rice course was yuzu butter rice, which was cooked in double-lid donabe rice cooker, "Kamado-san". I used my home-polished brown rice, so they were first surprised by how fresh the rice tasted, then they just loved tasting this super aromatic rice with such simple ingredients.

It was a great fun, and great success. Everybody loved everything. That's the donabe spirit.

Happy donabe life.