Grilled Jamaican jerk pork chops with avocado shio-koji dip

Sunday night was our Santa Maria BBQ Grill night.

We still had about half jar of the precious Jamaican jerk seasoning paste, so we marinated thick cuts of pork chop over night and cooked on the grill.

With the corn...

In about 8-10 minutes, the meat was ready. Smelled so nice.

Colorful condiments. For the dip, I twisted my recipe and added my homemade Shio-koji. Mmm..the dip got upgraded with the umami-filled flavor. Sides were donabe-steamed cauliflower and chick pea in shio-koji vinaigrette, and donabe rice (infused with konbu).

Avocado and Shio-koji Dip

Ingredients:

1 medium-large avocado

1 tablespoon tahini paste

1/2 small lime, juice only

1 tablespoon kefir

1/2 to 1 tablespoon olive oil

1/2 tablespoon shio-koji paste

salt and pepper to taste

Procedure:

Put all the ingredients in a food processor and puree until they become a fine paste.

This dip was so great that we enjoyed it with both pork and corn. I smothered the corn with a lot of it.

Great Sunday supper. The meat was perfectly cooked and tender.

Happy donabe life.

Shio-koji donabe kimpira gobo (donabe steam-fry burdock root in shio-koji)

I tweaked my regular Donabe steam-fried Kimpira Gobo recipe with Shio-koji.

For steam-frying root vegetables like this dish, tagine-style donabe, "Fukkura-san", always does the best job.

Instead of usual julienne-style cut, I made oblique-style larger cuts of both burdock root and carrot. So, I cooked them longer in the donabe. 2 tablespoons of light-color soy sauce ("usukuchi shoyu") in the recipe was simply replaced with the same amount of shio-koji. That's about it.

And, the result was excellent! Shio-koji gave the nice round flavor to the dish. I loved it so much.

Happy donabe life.

Tonight's donabe dish...Housemade sake-kasu and miso nabe

Since I had this wonderful housemade sake-kasu (sake lees) as a "byproduct" of making makkoli (rice wine), I wanted to use it for my donabe cooking tonight.

We did a sake-kasu nabe hot pot! I made the broth with sake-kasu and cooked salmon filet and some vegetables I already had in the kitchen. For the broth, I also added my homemade miso. So it gives additional depth in the flavor and also more enzyme power!

For this, I used my super light-weight handleless donabe, "Yu Kizeto".

Unfortunately, the picture of the entire dish (in the donabe) came out too dark, so I just post the recipe below. It's very easy to make.

Salmon Sake-kasu Nabe
Ingredients – 2 generous servings
(for medium-size classic-style donabe, “Yu Kizeto")

(for the broth)
4 oz sake-kasu (sake lees) paste
2 tablespoons miso
1 tablespoons light-color soy sauce
1 teaspoon grated ginger
3.5 cups (about 800 ml) dashi stock

a pinch of salt if necessary

2-3 oz daikon, sliced into disks and quartered

1 small carrot, sliced into disks

3-4 oz konnyaku (yam jelly), thinly-sliced into strips (and twisted into knots if you like)

3-4 oz tofu, cut into cubes

1 package (3 oz) enoki mushrooms

1 small bunch mizuna, cut into 2" length

6-8 oz salmon filet, cut into 1.5" pieces

(condiments suggestion)
some thinly-sliced scallion
some shichimi pepper

Procedure
1. In a bowl, whisk together sake-kasu, miso, soy sauce, grated ginger, and a ladleful (or two) of the dashi stock.
2. Combine the whisked mixture and the remaining dashi stock in the donabe. Bring it to simmer over medium-heat.
3. Add the konnyaku, daikon, and carrot to the broth. Cook until vegetables are tender.
4. Add the fish and simmer.
5. Once the fish is cooked through, add the enoki mushrooms and mizuna. Cook for one more minute.
6. Serve into individual bowls. Enjoy with some condiments.

Happy donabe life.

Shio-koji recipe...Salmon Carpaccio with Shio-koji & Olive Oil Sauce

I'm loving my super Shio-koji (salt fermented rice koji)!

Koji has a nice deep flavor and great health benefits at the same time. (here is one of English language descriptions about koji I found online).

To start, I made a very simple salmon carpaccio with shio-koji sauce.

I sliced a small block of sashimi-grade salmon, and drizzled sauce made with shio-koji, olive oil, lemon juice and salt.

The sauce was so tasty that before I started drizzling it over the fish, I couldn't stop tasting it on its own. And, with the fish, it was like all the flavors multiplied and tasted so rich in umami. Perfect. Here's the recipe.

Salmon Carpaccio with Shio-koji & Olive Oil Sauce

1. For the sauce, whisk together 2 tsps shio-koji paste, 1 tablespoon olive oil, 1 tablespoon lemon juice, and a pinch of salt.

2. Thinly-slice a small block of sashimi-grade salmon and spread in a plate.

3. Drizzle the sauce over the fish. Ground some black pepper if you like. (You can also garnish with some schiffonade shiso leaves...I forgot to buy that night.)

What a healthy tasty appetizer.

Homemade Shio-koji (salt-marinated rice koji)

I've been so fascinated by the power of kome koji (or "rice koji"; malted rice with koji mold). My passion for rice koji is growing bigger and bigger. With rice koji, I make my own miso, and just lately, I made my first makkoli (rice wine), and this time, I made Shio-koji. It's basically a simple salt-fermented rice koji, which can be used for a wide variety of dishes for marinade, seasoning, etc.

It's very simple to make Shio-koji. You just need some patience to wait for it to be ready to use.

Only 3 ingredients are required. 400 grams dry rice koji, 120 grams sea salt, and 400 ml water (room temperature).

Just like making homemade miso, first, pressed rice koji was broken into grains by hand.

Salt was added and mixed by hand throughly.

Water was added and stirred. The mixture was transferred to a container.

You can use a regular plastic container, but make sure it's only loosely covered (so that the mixture won't explode during fermentation). Let the mixture ferment at a room temperature for 7-10 days (it's different from alcoholic fermentation, so no alcohol would be produced). Meanwhile, you can stir the mixture once a day. In the first few days, you might think the mixture is not wet enough, but as the grains start to break down, it will become more moist.

Here's the finished Shio-koji after 10 days! It's so beautifully soft and smooth. The aroma has the nice "fermented" koji smell. I tasted it just as is, and it was so unique and so fantastic! It was, of course, salty, and also had the sweet sake-like flavor. With the magic of koji mold, the grains were almost completely dissolved into smooth paste.

You can keep the finished Shio-koji (in a tightly sealed container) in refrigerator for a few months. I'm going to make many different things with it and want to post pictures in t his blog.

LA Dowtown meals...

So much to do in LA Downtown...

Breakfast at Nickel Diner on Main St. Huevos Rancheros was perfectly gooey and wet.

Sunday supper at Lazy Ox Canteen in Little Tokyo. Crispy rabbit liver, and braised beef tong were among the favorite of the night.

Izakaya night at Aburiya Toranoko, which is right next to Lazy Ox. Grilled duck breast and grilled chicken thighs were especially fabulous.

Another Little Tokyo meal...at Hama Sushi. It was worth a 35-minute wait for three of us. Chefs are always friendly and also funny there. We started with ankimo and fried soft shell crabs, then ate so many kinds of sushi. Kamasu (barracuda) sushi was served with its skin on, and the skin was lightly broiled. Very nice.

I enjoy art scenes in Downtown, too. Art in The Street exhibition at MOCA was very uniquely interesting. I want to go back there again.

Homemade Makkoli (Korean rice wine) made from donabe rice

After doing some research on various websites, I decided to make my own version of Makkoli (or Makgeolli), which is basically Korean-style rice wine. It's like Japanese nigori (cloudy) sake, but the basic difference is that Makkoli is made mainly from sweet rice (mochi rice). I had a real fun making it.

Making the nice chewy rice is an important part of making good makkoli. I decided to make it with 100% sweet rice, with my double-lid donabe rice cooker, "Kamado-san". It's a simple sweet rice...3 rice-cups (540 ml) of sweet rice ("mochi rice") with the same amount of water. Rice was pre-soaked in water for 30 minutes. The rice was cooked so nicely and I just couldn't help tasting it...it tasted so delicious. I wished I could've just eaten a big bowl of it.

The cooked sweet rice was mixed with 1 liter (1 quart) of filtered water.

At this point, the mixture is 105-120F (40-50F) degrees. Then, 200 grams of dry rice koji (chunky crumbles were broken by hand to separate grains) was mixed in. I used very nice rice koji from Komego from Fukui, Japan. Some vendors sell dry rice koji online here in the US also. Rice koji is an essential starter for not only makkori or sake, but also miso, soy sauce, etc. 1/2 teaspoon of dry yeast and 1 gram kefir culture (yogurt starter can be substituted). All the ingredients were stirred well together. *Too hot temperature would kill koji, yeast, and kefir culture. Too low temperature would prevent them from working properly.

The mixture was transferred to a container. I had to make sure sure the container was not tightly sealed, as it needed loose area for the gas to be released during fermentation. (The content could explode if it's put in a tightly-sealed container and it might be very dangerous.)

It's then left at the room temperature for 4 days (no direct sun light). On the 2nd day, I did a "punch down" once.

On the 3rd day, the aroma was quite milky and nice, but I decided to let it sit for another day.

On the 4th day, it was time to strain the liquid. It smelled so nice and very makkoli-like. I used a regular strainer and cotton bag for straining. The solid (donabe-cooked sweet rice and dry koji rice) were broken down to very soft sediment. Once most liquid was strained, I squeezed out the remaining.

Here's the freshly made Makkoli!

And, here's the wonderful by-product..."sake kasu" (sake lees). After squeezing out the liquid, there was only about a little over 1 cup of sake kasu was made. I transferred it to a container. I can use it for making sake kasu marinade for fish, sake kasu cake, sake kasu hot pot, etc. I'm so looking forward to using my first house-made sake kasu for my cooking.

Voila, the final version of my homemade makkoli. Total almost 2L (2 quarts) amout was made. I had a glass and it tasted really delicious! It had the nice milky flavor, combined with fresh sour/ tartness. I finished a glass and realized it tasted higher in alcohol than a commercial kind. It was still in the morning, but I was feeling like a party.