Pickled Radishes

I almost forgot about these fantastic pickled radishes I made the other night. They didn’t take more than 1/2 an hour to pickle, since I sliced the radishes in 1/4″ slices. I love pickled things and these were a nice addition to my Japanese dinner the other night. By this afternoon’s lunch, they were all totally pink and still delicious, albeit a bit more pickled!

• 1 bunch of radishes, trimmed
• 1 tsp kosher or other coarse salt

Wash the radishes and trim the ends. Slice into quarters and put in a ceramic or glass (non reactive) bowl. Sprinkle with the salt, rub it in a bit, and let sit for 5 minutes or so. You will see some moisture, “sweat”.  Toss, press and squeeze the radishes to get rid of excess moisture, then rinse under running water to remove the excess salt. Squeeze dry again and put back in the bowl.

• 1/2 cup rice vinegar
• 3 Tbs sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 slice of kombu, 1″ square (I had none so left this out)

Mix the sweet and sour sauce together and pour over the vegetables. In just half an hour, you’ll have a nice lightly pickled radish. If you let it sit overnight, in the frig, the whole sauce becomes bright pink, as do all the radish pieces. The flavor is more intense and the texture changed. They are delicious if you like pickled things!

Tokyo Fried Chicken

These were really good! I wish I had the shiso leaves to garnish, as suggested in Japanese Women Don’t Get Old or Fat: Secrets of My Mother’s Tokyo Kitchen, where I got this recipe.

The chicken is briefly marinated , then drained, tossed with cornstarch (or potato starch), then fried. She calls for 4 chicken breasts to serve 4 but if you’re having soup and rice I think that’s a bit much. I used 1.5 last night and it made 2 servings easily.

• 2 – 4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
• one 2″ piece of ginger
• 1 Tbs soy sauce
• 2 tsp sake
• 1 tsp mirin
• cornstarch (about 1/4 – 1/2 cup)
• 1 -2 cups canola oil (enough to deep fry)
• 4 shiso leaves cut in ribbons if you can find some

Cut the chicken into bite size pieces and place in a bowl.

Grate the ginger and squeeze either with your fingers or with cheesecloth. You want about 1 1/2 tsp of ginger juice.  Mix that juice with the soy, sake and mirin and pour over the chicken, stirring to coat. Marinade 10 minutes or so. Drain the chicken, then place a few pieces at a time in the cornstarch and stir to coat. Remove the coated chicken to a plate so they’re ready for frying.

Heat the oil until it hits about 350 F. You can test by dropping a small piece of bread in. It should sizzle. Fry the chicken in batches until cooked through, about 2 minutes total. Stir the chicken pieces so all sides get cooked.  Drain on a layer of paper towels.

Transfer to a serving dish and garnsih with the shiso leaves if you have any. I did not, alas. ;(

You can see how I cooked this chicken as part of a meal that included eggplant in miso sauce, rice, and miso soup here.

Eggplant and Green Pepper in Miso

This is from Japanese Women Don’t Get Old or Fat: Secrets of My Mother’s Tokyo Kitchen which I’ve been enjoying.  I just used one small Japanese eggplant and half a green pepper because I was only feeding two people, and I cut back a bit on the sauce ingredients as well. It came out quite good. Well, I liked it. My youngest wasn’t so crazy about it but then she likes neither eggplant or green peppers, so I didn’t have high expectations!  I’ll post her quantities below since I winged and eyeballed my adjustments.

Oh, I just realized I forgot to garnish mine with the sesame seeds and oil!  Still tasted good.

• 1 pound Japanese eggplant
• 2 Tbs mirin
• 2 Tbs red miso
• 2 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp sake
• 1 cup canola oil
• 1 green pepper, cored and seeded, cut into bite size pieces
• 1 tsp toasted white sesame
• 1/2 tsp sesame oil

Soak the eggplant in some salted water while you prepare the sauce.

In a small bowl, mix together the mirin, miso, sake and sugar. Set this aside for the end of the recipe.

Start the oil heating in a wok if you have one. I used a medium saucepan so I could get by with using less oil and still having some depth. Drain the eggplant and blot dry with a paper towel. You want the oil about 350. If you drop a cube of bread in, it should sizzle.

Gently slide some of the eggplant pieces in and fry a few minutes until golden brown and cooked through. (A fork or skewer should easily go through.) Remove and drain on paper towels as small batches are done.

Now if you’re not frying anything else, drain the oil from the pan and reserve for another use. Since I was also going to fry some chicken, I just added a small bit of oil to a small frying pan.

Cook the pepper until crisp-tender, about 2 minutes. Add the eggplant back to the pan, then stir the miso sauce over it all and cook while stirring a few minutes to blend flavors and coat the vegetables.  Transfer to a serving dish and garnish with the sesame seeds and sesame oil.

You can see my whole menu here.

Clear Soup with Mushrooms, Tofu and Daikon

I picked up a used copy of Japanese Women Don’t Get Old or Fat on a whim. I enjoyed the stories and her descriptions of various foods and cooking guidelines.  I didn’t really pick it up for the recipes but this easy soup was worth the $3 I spent for the book!  We all love Japanese soup and the instant miso packages are okay but not great.  This soup calls for dashi (made from seaweed and bonito flakes) but when I went to our Asian grocer I saw a packet of dashi soup base and used that.  Everything is in a bag and you simmer it for 10 minutes in 3 cups of water, then remove the bag. (The bag is like a tea bag.)   The soup was fantastic.  Her original recipe called for just tofu and shitake mushrooms. I used the regular small mushrooms from our grocery store because I had some and added some daikon (Japanese radish) cut in matchstick pieces because I saw that in another soup and it sounded good to me.

• 3 cups dashi (her recipe called for 4 but my instant stuff made 3)
• 8 ounces tofu
• 4 button mushrooms, sliced thinly
• 1/2 cup of daikon, peeled and sliced into matchstick pieces
• 1.5 tsp soy sauce
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp sake
• 1 green onion, sliced thinly

Rinse the tofu gently and cut into cubes. She called for heating the tofu and cooking the mushrooms in separate pans, then placing the tofu in one half of the bowl and the mushrooms in the other half and covering with the dashi broth. I just heated the tofu and cooked the mushrooms in the broth.

So make the dashi by simmering the tea bag of goodies for ten minutes in 3 cups of water.  Take the bag out and add the soy, salt and sake. (Note: we found this a bit salty and I had already cut the salt back so you might even eliminate the salt. I think the fact that this was “packaged” probably meant they added salt), add the tofu and simmer gently for a few minutes, then add the daikon and simmer a few more minutes, and finally add the mushrooms and cook just another 3 minutes or so (so roughly ten minutes for the tofu in total, 5 minutes for the daikon and 3 for the mushrooms).

Oh, I think I had some dried roasted seaweed out because I was making onigiri too and threw in a few flakes of it. That’s the dark green.

She says that cooking the ingredients separately helps keep the broth clear. I might try that next time but it’s not very cloudy and it tasted great this way!

Ladle into 3 or 4 bowls and garnish with the green onion slices.

NOTE: I didn’t really want leftovers so probably used more tofu than needed if this is a side dish. It was fortuitous though. I was winging some steak to go with this, along with some rice and spinach. The steak had been frozen in marinade and was just blah. So we filled up on soup and rice!