286 recipes. Page 12 of 12
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A quick winter supper from farm kitchens in Kagawa, uchikomi-jiru cooks fresh, slightly thick noodles directly in a root-vegetable miso soup. Kagawa's celebrated handmade udon is boiled on its own; this everyday dish skips that step, and the flour on the noodles thickens the broth. Low rainfall made the region good for growing wheat, and the Seto Inland Sea supplied the dried sardines for the dashi.
Instead of sushi vinegar, the rice gets a generous amount of akumochizake, Kagoshima's ash-treated local sake, and is layered with separately cooked dried daikon, shiitake, butterbur, bamboo shoot, sea bream, shrimp, and fish cakes. Traditional versions use raw cured bream and rest for half a day at room temperature; this home version cooks all the seafood through and rests the covered sushi in the refrigerator for 6 to 8 hours so the aromas meld. Because the sake is never heated, its alcohol stays in the dish, which makes it adults-only and unsuitable for pregnancy, children, or anyone driving afterward.
Without any meat, japchae leans entirely on its vegetables: spinach, carrot, shiitake, bell pepper, and onion each keep their own color and sweetness because they are stir-fried one at a time. The spinach only needs to wilt over high heat and is spread out to cool at once, or it dulls in color and turns tough. The glass noodles soak up soy sauce, sugar, and sesame oil before anything else joins them and come out glossy, chewy, and seasoned through. Tossing them with vegetables straight from a hot pan makes the noodles slump and clump, the usual way this dish goes wrong. It works as an everyday side dish or on a holiday table.
Brown rice is topped with pan-seared salmon, blanched spinach, shredded carrot and avocado, then dressed with soy sauce, lemon juice and sesame oil. Against the chewy rice, the salmon is cooked only until its center is still faintly translucent and stays moist.
With no broth at all, a soy, oyster sauce and mirin glaze clings to thick udon, salty with a little sweetness. Udon still wet from rinsing drops the pan temperature and ends up steamed and soggy rather than stir-fried.
Fernbrake, bellflower root and chwi-namul (aster greens) each get their own treatment: the fernbrake turns soft in sesame oil, the bellflower root is salted to draw out bitterness yet stays crisp, and the aster is blanched just until bright green. Cooked separately, they still taste and bite differently after mixing, and the gochujang sauce is served alongside to add a little at a time.
Yakisoba sauce, built on Worcestershire, coats the noodles in a sweet, tangy glaze, and bonito flakes laid on the hot plate sway in the rising heat and add a smoky note. The noodles come precooked and need only about thirty seconds of warming to loosen before they fry, keeping some bounce instead of turning soft. Cabbage, onion, and carrot hit a very hot pan briefly and stay crisp under the sauce. The sauce is poured around the edge of the pan only at the very end, which protects that crunch, and a quick toss coats every strand evenly.
Browned ground beef gives this fried rice its savory base, with onion, carrot and zucchini diced just a little larger than the rice so they keep some bite. The beef is left alone in a hot pan before breaking it up, and the browned bits stuck to the bottom carry much of the flavor.
A split hot dog bun, buttered and toasted on the inside, gets packed with saucy stir-fried noodles: carbs inside carbs, a Japanese street snack. The cabbage, onion, and carrot come off the heat before they wilt, leaving some crunch between the soft bread and the glossy noodles. A shake of dried parsley adds color and a light herbal note against the sweet-salty sauce.
The filling is just four things: beef marinated in soy and sugar and stir-fried, spinach, carrot and strips of thin omelet. The beef is sliced thin against the grain and cooked until the marinade clings with no liquid left, which keeps the rice dry and the cut slices clean.
Ground beef and rice are toasted in sesame oil before the water goes in, and a tablespoon of soup soy sauce does the seasoning. The 160 g of rice in the ingredient list is its weight after soaking and draining; starting from dry rice adds about 30 minutes of soaking.
Shiitake, carrot and burdock, cut into thin matching strips, are spread over the rice and cooked in dashi seasoned with soy sauce and mirin. They stay on top until the rice is done. Heavy vegetables mixed down into the grains keep the liquid from circulating and leave underdone patches.
The soaked hijiki is rinsed twice in cold water to cut its saltiness and any off smell, then sauteed in sesame oil with shiitake and carrot before the rice goes in. As the pot cooks, the deep sea flavor of the hijiki gets into the rice, and shrimp seasoned with soup soy sauce and garlic sit on top. For a crust on the bottom, turn the heat up a little for the last minute.
Cutting each seaweed sheet in half makes rolls small enough to fit tuna mayo, pickled radish, carrot and spinach into a single bite. With only half a sheet to close around everything, the rice is spread thin and the fillings kept in a narrow line down the middle.
Thin strips of burdock root, soaked briefly in vinegar water, are sauteed with onion in sesame oil before the soaked rice, carrot and chicken stock go in. The burdock's earthy aroma and faint crunch are what an ordinary chicken porridge does not have. The chicken tenderloin is added after the rice has broken down and cooks only briefly.
Strips of beef round marinate in soy sauce and cooking wine for 10 minutes, get stir-fried with burdock and carrot, and then the soaked rice is toasted in the same pot before the water goes in. The marinade carries over into the rice, so no sauce is served on the side. The burdock, soaked briefly in vinegar water first, still has its crunch after cooking.
Chewy wild rice is tossed with red cabbage, carrot and edamame in a soy and brown rice vinegar dressing, with seaweed chips on top. The chips go soft as soon as the dressing touches them, so they are added on the plate right before eating.
Carrot gets a one-minute head start before the onion, zucchini, bell pepper and corn follow. The order goes by how long each vegetable takes to cook, not by how much water it holds. Everything is cut to about 5 mm so it spreads evenly through the rice, and the corn kernels give little bursts of sweetness.
The spinach is dressed with sesame oil and salt, the carrot is cut into strips and sauteed, and the burdock is braised in soy sauce, then all three are rolled with pickled radish and thin egg strips. Each filling is seasoned on its own, so the colors stay separate and sharp when the roll is sliced.
Potato, zucchini, carrot and shiitake are minced very fine and toasted in sesame oil with the soaked rice, then simmered in water over low heat for 30 minutes. A little soup soy sauce and salt at the end leave room for the sweetness the vegetables give off. By the time it is done, the potato is soft enough to mash along with the rice.
Perilla oil is the only source of aroma. Shiitake, carrot, the rice and the lotus root are all sautéed in it before cooking, so the grains come out glossy, with thin slices of lotus root staying crisp throughout.
Small enough to eat by hand in one bite, these pouches turn up in lunchboxes, at picnics and as snacks. Inside the sweet-savory braised fried tofu, the vinegared rice is mixed with finely chopped carrot, cucumber and sesame seeds, so there is a little crunch under the soft tofu. Imitation crab or burdock root can go into the filling as well.