"Matsutake Suimono" (Quick Donabe Matsutake Mushroom Soup)

Yes, more matsutake mushroom cooking, while it's still in season!

Clear matsutake soup (Matsutake Suimono, or Matsutake Dobinmushi, if it's served in a clay tea pot) is another very popular matsutake dish.

I wanted to serve it as a "hot pot" style, so I made it with my classic-style all-purpose donabe, "Yu-series, Kizeto". (Sorry...this donabe is temporarily out-of-stock. But, you can make it with any of the classic-style donabe.) There are sliced matsutake, chicken tender, tofu, ginko nuts, and mitsuba herbs. So aromatic and soothing. Wow, this soup brought my heart back to Kyoto. It's really easy to make, as long as you have the ingredients, and tastes like a high-end kaiseki dish. Here's the recipe:

Matsutake Suimono (Clear matsutake mushroom soup)

Ingredients (2 servings)

1/2 medium-size matsutake, thinly sliced

10 ginkgo nuts, shelled

3 small chicken tender, sliced into bite-size pieces

1 tablespoon sake plus 1/2 tablespoon potato starch ("katakuriko"), mixed together

1.5 - 2 oz medium-firm tofu, cut into small cubes

some mitsuba herbs, coarsely minced

yuzu zest, if available

(broth)

1 3/4 cups dashi stock

2 tablespoons sake

1 tablespoon white soy sauce ("shiro shoyu")

1 teaspoon light color soy sauce ("usukuchi shoyu")

a pinch of salt, if necessary

Procedure

1. In a small bowl, combine the chicken with sake/ potato starch mixture. Mix well by hand. Keep it in the refrigerator for 15-20 minutes.

2. In a donabe, combine the dashi stock, sake, both kinds of soy sauce and bring to low simmer. Add some salt, if necessary.

3. Add the matsutake, ginkgo nuts, and tofu cubes.

4. Meanwhile, in a separate small pot, boil the water and blanch the chicken tender until almost cooked through. Drain and add the chicken to the broth.

5. Turn off the heat as soon as all the ingredients are cooked through. Sprinkle mitsuta and serve at the table.

Happy donabe life.

Autumn Tempura...More Matsutake

I picked up more matsutake, and this time I made tempura. Besides matsutake, I also made tempura of satsuma-imo (Japanese sweet yam) and shishito peppers.

You can find my basic tempura recipe from this posting.

Instead of tempura sauce, I served the tempura simply with the plum salt (sea salt, infused with pickled plum vinegar), grated daikon, grated ginger, and lemon. They were all wonderful with the tempura. Matsutake tempura was so meaty and aromatic. Satsuma-imo was so sweet and dense. Shishito peppers had the nice light texture with the hot kick.

Gochisosama deshita.

Donabe steam-fried foil-wrapped Matsutake

Here's another matsutake mushroom dish I made on the same night I made the donabe matsutake gohan (matsutake mushroom rice).

I sliced medium-size matsutake mushrooms in half and wrapped in aluminum foil (no seasoning at this point). It was then laid on the skillet of the tagine-style donabe, "Fukkura-san".

The donabe was covered with the lid and brought over high heat for 3 minutes on the gas stove. Then, it was turned down to low-medium and continued to be cooked for about 7 minutes. I opened the lid and foil very quickly and sprinkled a pinch of salt and 2 tablespoons of sake over the sizzling matsutake (at this point, matsutake was just cooked through - the cooking time may vary according to the size of the mushrooms). I closed the foil, covered donabe with the lid again, and turned off the heat. After 3 minutes of resting, I uncovered the lid and opened the foil. The simple steam-fry matsutake was ready.

The matsutake mushrooms were served simply with yuzu kosho, lemon, and grated ginger. The aroma was just amazing. Matsutake loves the simple donabe preparation like this, and I loved it, too.

Happy donabe life.

Donabe Matsutake Gohan (Matsutake mushroom rice)

Matsutake~!

Since my last purchase of this year's American matsutake, I'm going crazy about it and buy these super-seasonal mushrooms almost every day. This year has an unusually huge harvest and the price is crazy cheap. At Nijiya Market, they were only $15/ pound (later, they increased the price to $20/ pound, but still insanely cheap). I also learned that this year, people are enjoying an abundant crop of matsutake this year, too. The retail price of domestic matsutake Japan this year can go between $100 - $400/ pound depending on the grades, the lower end of which is 1/10 of regular years! I hope I can eat a lot of matsutake when I go back to Japan next week. Japanese matsutake boasts the most premium quality and has the bigger aroma (very earthy and cedar-like) compared to matsutake from other countries.

This evening, I made Matsutake Gohan (matsutake mushroom rice) with the double-lid donabe rice cooker, "Kamado-san". Matsutake Gohan is probably the most famous matsutake dish for Japanese people and our favorite. I sliced more than 1/4 pound of matsutake for this dish...how decadent!

Making the dish is very easy. Also, what you want to be careful about (when cooking any matsutake dishes) is not to play too much with it. You don't want add the heavy seasoning or mix with too many ingredients. It's because we want to smell/taste the natural earthiness of Matsutake itself without masking it with other flavors too much. So, the only other ingredient (besides seasoning) I used for the dish is thinly sliced blanched abura-age (fried tofu pouch) for its texture and gentle flavor. When the rice was ready, the aroma was indescribably wonderful.

I would've also sprinkled some yuzu zest, but I didn't find a good yuzu at a market. So, I simply topped the rice with some chopped mitsuba herbs. The dish totally hit my heart and soul. The "okoge" crust was perfect, too. Here's the recipe.

Matsutake Gohan

Ingredients

1/4 pound matsutake mushrooms, cleaned (*) and thinly sliced

*To clean matsutake, use a damp paper towel to wipe off the dust. Shave off the very thin layer of the hard bottom part.

1 piece rectangular abura-age (fried tofu pouch), blanched, squeezed out excess moisture, and thinly sliced

2 rice-cups (360 ml) short grain rice

2 tablespoons sake

2 tablespoons light color soy sauce ("usukuchi shoyu")

1.5 teaspoon mirin

1/4 teaspoon sea salt

320 ml dashi stock

some chopped mitsuba herbs

some yuzu zest, if available

Procedure

1. Rinse and drain the rice.

2. Combine the rice, sake, soy sauce, mirin, salt, and dashi stock in "Kamado-san". Let stand for 20 minutes. Cover the rice with the sliced abura-age and matsutake.

3. Place both lids on "Kamado-san", so that the holes of the lids are positioned perpendicular to each other.

4. Set "Kamado-san" on the gas stove and turn the heat to medium-high (medium-heat for the professional use high calorie burner). Cook for 12-15 minutes. (Or, cook until 2-3 minutes after the steam starts puffing out of the top lid.)

5. Turn off the heat and let it stand for 20 minutes.

6. Toss the ingredients with a spatula. Serve the rice mixture into individual bowls and top each with chopped mitsuba and yuzu zest.

I also posted the recipe on toiro's website.

Happy donabe life.

Donabe Steamed Tofu and Matsutake Mushrooms

Matsutake is in season now!

Matsutake is a highly seasonal mushroom (autumn), and in Japan, the domestic matsutake is considered to be the most highly-regarded and most expensive among all the mushrooms. The high price (could go up to about $1,000/ per pound) is due to the very limited harvest. But the Japanese domestic matsutake has the amazing aroma, and we enjoy it in simple forms of cooking (grill, add to the soup, cook with the rice, with the very light seasoning) to best enjoy the full "matsutake" aroma.

In recent years, we've seen more and more imported matsutake in Japan, and they are so much cheaper, although you can't expect as high quality as the domestic kind. In any case, living in Los Angeles, I was very happy when I found American "domestic" matsutake at Nijiya Market the other day. And, it was so cheap! There were 4 medium-size pieces for only $6!

So, I didn't have a very high expectation, but I thought I can give a try.

I sliced the matsutake (after wiping the surface with damp paper towel - never rinse matsutake in water) and steamed with soft tofu (from Meiji Tofu) in our donabe steamer, Mushi Nabe. After about 5 minutes, I could smell the wonderful aroma coming out of the donabe. It was a good sign.

We did the steaming table top, and once cooked, we served the matsutake and tofu into plates with the black sesame sauce and minced scallion. Wow, the American matsutake was so surprisingly wonderful!! I was so impressed. Simple steamed matsutake, tofu, and black sesame sauce...what a wonderful combination. This has become one of my favorite donabe steamed dishes of all time. I got to go back to Nijiya to buy more matsutake!

Happy donabe life.