Oden adventure

The first time I tried oden was in the Hama-Rikyu Teien garden in Tokyo, nearly two years ago. It was a cold winter's day, and although I hadn't long ago eaten an exquisite sushi lunch at the Tsukiji Fish Market, the scent of simmering broth filled with daikon, konnyaku, fishcakes and other goodies was too good to resist. I ate it with hot mustard from a sachet, accompanied by a cup of sweet, milky ama-zake, and it was delicious.

It's perfect oden weather here now: cold and a bit misty.  So as I was browsing the refrigerator section at the supermarket and marvelling at the array of fishcakes, tofu and other tasty fried things, I decided to make oden as my first Japanese-cooking-in-Japan project. Although it takes a while to cook, simmering for at least 45 minutes to get the daikon nice and soft, and then for the best results, being cooled and then reheated so that the flavours blend, it's simple to make. The broth doesn't require a lot of ingredients, just seasoned dashi, and then you throw everything in and just let it cook.

-daikon radish, peeled and cut into largish chunks

Here's what I put in mine:

kabocha, skin on but seeds removed, in thick slices

tubular fishcakes, or "chikuwa"

kakiage, sort of like a fried vegetable cake -
I chose the ones with burdock, or "gobou"

oops, these are upside down in the photo. They're a kind of fishcake
but all I can read is "white-something-fish-age".

Kyo-age, a deep-fried tofu sheet that is a Kyoto specialty

forgot to take a picture of my konnyaku twists, but here's the rest in its packet

I also put in some eggs. Everyone knows what an egg looks like, right?

The recipe is so simple it's not even really a recipe: put about a litre of water in a pan, bring to boil. Meanwhile prepare daikon and kabocha. When the water is just boiling, add a packet of powdered dashi, about 3tbs of soy and 2tbs of mirin (to taste). I also added some prepared ginger (shoga) from a tube -- this is totally unauthentic as I haven't seen it in any traditional recipes, but I love ginger and I think the flavour goes together well.  Put in all the other goodies, cut into appropriate-sized pieces, and simmer for about an hour, or until the daikon is soft. While this is happening, cook the eggs until just boiled (either in the broth, or I did them in my hot-water boiler for the easiest boiled eggs ever) then cool and peel. Take off the heat and leave to cool; steep the cooled boiled eggs in some broth as well.

Ready to heat and eat!

Next day heat up, throw some chopped spring onions over the top (also not really authentic but I like them) and serve with a squeeze of hot "karashi" mustard. 

My Japanese workmates were well impressed when I brought this for my lunch the next day!

Beef rendang the slow cooker way

If there's one thing slow cookers are very useful for (as well as keeping food warm to feed hungry hordes when prep time is short), it's producing stews and other dishes with fall-apart tender meat, and the latest dish to benefit from this treatment in my kitchen is beef rendang. 

This legendary Malaysian curry features fragrant spice paste and creamy coconut milk that cooks down over hours into a thick and rich sauce, while chunks of beef soak up the flavour and become toothsomely tender.  In the past I have been put off trying to make it because many recipes have an intimidatingly long list of ingredients, some of which can be hard to find (buah keras, galangal) or challenging to handle in a home kitchen (shrimp paste -- I can never work out what to do with the rest of the block, and although I am a fan of strong flavours, toasting it really does make the house smell). 

A few years ago, though, I found this recipe over at Rasa Malaysia.  I am too lazy to peel shallots very often (and besides they are much more expensive than red onions), I had chilli flakes rather than whole dried chillies in the cupboard when I first tried this, and see above re galangal, so I made some modifications to the ingredient list; also I like my rendang with potatoes -- not very authentic, I suspect, but what can I say, I like potatoes -- so I added some.  With these few small adaptations, this recipe makes the preparation manageable and produces what I consider to be an adequately authentic (apart from the potatoes -- shh!) rendang. 

It does, however, still take quite a while to cook, simmering on the stove.  I made a triple batch for a curry party and my notes show that it took five hours to reduce and reach the right consistency!  This is fine when you have nothing better to do than read a book and stir occasionally, but sometimes food needs to cook itself.  This is where the slow cooker comes in, and is perfect for this purpose.  Reducing the amount of liquid by halving the coconut milk and adding extra dessicated coconut, cutting the potatoes bigger and letting everything cook together for eight or so hours, and then adding extra lime leaves and seasoning as needed a shorter time before serving, worked to produce a version that was just as good as my usual method and much more convenient!

Below is my usual recipe, followed by the slow cooker modification.  I might not bother to use the slow cooker for a single batch (it is huge and hard to clean) but when feeding a few people, it's worth it; the double recipe served 7 with rice and a couple of vegetable side dishes, and there was enough left over for me to eat on toast the next day... even better.

Spice paste 

1 red onion [or 5 shallots]

5 cloves garlic

2-inch fat piece ginger [or 1 inch each ginger & galangal]

3 stalks lemongrass, white part only, sliced (save tops for later)

1 tbs dried chilli flakes (or 12 small dried chillies) soaked in hot water

1 tbs curry powder

2 tsp cinnamon

50 ml oil

3 cloves

3 cardamom pods

3 star anise

1.5 lb stewing beef, cut into 1-11/2inch chunks

tops of lemongrass, pounded

30g tamarind paste, soaked in about 1/3 cup hot water

1 can (400g) coconut milk, rinsed with a little water (1/4 can)

1/3 cup desiccated coconut

6 kaffir lime leaves, finely sliced

2 tbs brown sugar

2 medium potatoes, cut into 1 inch cubes

~1 tsp salt or to taste

Whizz the ingredients for spice paste together until well blended.  Heat oil in heavy-based pan over medium-high heat and fry spice paste and whole spices for 5 minutes or until fragrant.  Add beef and stir until all pieces are well coated with spice paste and starting to cook on the outside in places.  Add lemongrass stalks, coconut milk and tamarind pulp dissolved in soaking water (remove any seeds); bring to boil.

Simmer briskly until meat is almost cooked. 

Meanwhile toast the coconut in a heavy-based pan or wok over medium-high heat, stirring constantly to make sure it doesn’t burn, until it is a deep golden brown colour.

Add toasted coconut, lime leaves and sugar to beef, reduce heat to low and simmer half-covered for 60-90 minutes or longer.  Check consistency of sauce and cover or uncover as required; ideal consistency at end of cooking time should be thick.  Stir occasionally to prevent sticking.  With 30 minutes to go, add potatoes, taste and season with salt as required; continue to cook until meat is very tender, potatoes are done and sauce is thick.  (Double recipe makes a big panful.)

Slow cooker version (double batch)

Double the quantities of ingredients except for oil to fry spice paste (75ml should do) and coconut milk (leave at 1 can); use 1 cup of dessicated coconut; and cut the potatoes into bigger chunks (about 2 inches; they're going to cook along with the beef so need to be bigger in order not to fall apart).

Set slow cooker on high to preheat; chop potatoes and throw them in.  Make spice paste, fry with beef, add coconut milk and tamarind water and bring to boil as above (meanwhile toast coconut) then add all remaining ingredients, mix well and pour over potatoes in slow cooker.  Poke everything around a bit to even it up and leave to cook for 8 hours on low.  (If I have time, I like to leave it on high until it starts to bubble around the edges and then switch the heat to low.)  

At the end of this time the meat and potatoes should be very tender.  Stir carefully and taste for seasoning -- I found it needed a bit more salt and added about 2 tbs fish sauce and a bit more sugar.  Add another few lime leaves, roughly torn, to freshen it up, and leave to keep warm for a while longer before serving so that the flavours blend.

Chocolate caramel dessert thingy

Is it a pie? (Not really, no pastry.) Is it a cake? (Not baked, no crumb, probably not.) Is it a torte, tart or pudding? (Who the hell knows? But it's a dessert, and that's what counts.)

Last Friday I went round to my friend Rachel's place for dinner. What I'd forgotten, when I said I'd bring dessert, was that I had 28 student papers to mark that afternoon, that I desperately needed to wash my hair and that I hate making desserts. Lack of time, lack of creativity and lack of suggestions from other friends (no, Yo-Han, "go to M&S" does not count) resulted in the following...

This recipe, as usual without photos, brought to you by the letters W, T and F, the number pi (not pie, see above for explanation), my need for an express dessert to take to dinner that doesn't involve a visit to M&S, and the fact that my digital camera is still broken.

Base
1/2 packet digestive biscuits
125g butter

Melt butter, meanwhile squash biscuits, combine and mix well. Press into base of 20cm springform tin.

Caramel layer
225g (1 scant cup) sugar
60g butter
1/2 cup cream

Method 1: Place sugar in saucepan over medium heat, shaking occasionally to distribute heat as sugar melts. Continue to cook until golden brown and bubbling. Whisk in butter and cream (be careful in case it boils over) and continue to stir vigorously and heat until the mixture is a uniform texture.
[Alternatively, Method 2: if in a hurry, start sugar over too high a heat so it browns before it's all dissolved; swear and stir, hoping it won't be too lumpy; whisk in cream and butter before it burns; swear some more as the mixture seizes; continue to stir, heat and swear continuously under your breath while you become later and later as you wait for the giant lumps of seized caramel to dissolve; finally give up and leave some crunchy bits in. Method 1 is definitely more highly recommended.]
Pour caramel mixture over crumb base.

[Optional extra step: if now running so late you're in danger of not being able to get there at all, postpone next steps and take remaining ingredients with you in carrier bag to friend's house so you can complete it there. Alternatively, if you're actually a vaguely organised and grown-up person with time management skills, you can skip this step, cool your caramel in the fridge like a normal person and then go on.]

Chocolate layer
250g dark (70%) chocolate
475ml cream (this seems like an odd amount til you realise cream comes in 300ml pots)

Whack chocolate and about half of cream in microwave til melted (1:30-2:00 depending on your microwave). Mix til smooth and stir in rest of cream thoroughly. Pour over set caramel layer and jiggle until surface is adequately smooth.

Chill in fridge at least a couple of hours if you can; if you're too disorganised even for that, chill until you hope it's set enough to cut, or until you think dinner guests are too drunk to notice; slice and serve.

Fish-flavour fish

Fish-flavour aubergine contains no actual fish, nor does it actually taste like fish; the sauce is a common way of cooking fish in Sichuan cuisine, apparently. I've posted about this dish before and succeeded in making a decent version in the past; recently, however, I've discovered an even better recipe from Kenji at Serious Eats (who is totally my Food Idol). This version is simpler, tastier and also accidentally vegan! With a few tweaks to suit my tastebuds, it's pretty much become my new Favourite Thing To Cook, and judging by the reactions of the Sunday gang a couple of weeks ago, its popularity is rapidly spreading.

There's only so many times I can feed aubergine to people before they get suspicious, though (no, I don't own shares in an aubergine farm, I just love eating the stuff. Really) and besides, we were already having aubergine in black bean and chilli sauce, so I had to find another use for this spicy, tangy, delicious sauce. What better than going back to its supposed roots and serving it with some golden-fried pieces of white fish in a crispy coating?

Even the avowed non-fish-eaters liked this one...

Sichuan Yu-Xiang Sauce (modified from Serious Eats)

2 tbs rice vinegar
2 long red chillies, chopped
2 tbs shaoxing wine
2 tbs chinkiang vinegar
2 tbs sugar
1 tbs soy
1 1/2 tbs chilli bean paste
1 1/4 tsp cornflour

Heat vinegar in microwave in a small bowl or mug until hot; add chopped red chilli and allow to cool. Add remaining ingredients and mix well until sugar and cornflour are dissolved.

4 cloves garlic, finely minced
4 tsp finely chopped ginger
4 spring onions, white part finely chopped, green part sliced into 2cm lengths and set aside

Heat wok and stir-fry aromatics until fragrant. (If making for aubergine or other food that requires further cooking, add that now and cook until nearly done; if making as a toss-through sauce, continue). Add sauce mix and keep cooking, stirring constantly, until glossy. Add green parts of spring onion and any toss-through ingredients (like fried fish pieces), toss well to coat with sauce and serve.

When making with aubergine, I use Kenji's brining method, with 2 tbs fine salt per 4 cups water (enough to brine 2-3 good size aubies; the above quantity of sauce is just right for 2), but then brush the pieces with oil and grill until browned and mostly softened. The grilled aubergine can then hold until just before cooking, then gets tossed in the wok for its final softening and to heat through before adding the sauce and finishing the dish.

For the fish version, the above amount of sauce was about right for around a pound and a half of white fish fillets, sliced into good-sized pieces and tossed with potato starch seasoned with salt and pepper before deep-frying in two batches for 2-3 minutes until a nice golden colour.

Sweet and Sour Insert-protein-of-choice-here

Occasionally I embark on a quest to replicate with reasonable results at home the things we often order at restaurants or as takeaway.  My excuse for doing this is the vague and somewhat unrealistic eventual aim of not having to resort to these methods to obtain food -- unrealistic because the usual reason for obtaining food in one of these ways is either (in the case of the former) to go out for its own sake, not just because of hunger, or (in the case of the latter) because we are hungry and can't be bothered to cook.  In either of these cases, simply being capable of cooking the food we would otherwise order probably won't help.  On the other hand, sometimes you just have a craving for a particular dish, regardless of where you obtain it and whether you have to (or can) make it yourself, and then knowing a copycat version comes in handy as well as saving money.  My wallet is definitely fatter for the discovery that all I need to make a Japanese kare raisu indistinguishable from that available in your average restaurant is some carrots, onions, hot water and a block of instant curry roux; so too is my waistline.

One of Lee's favourite things-to-order-from-the-local-Chinese is sweet & sour pork, so this was an obvious one to attempt.  I have actually made sweet & sour a couple of times in the past, but it involved quite a bit of dash-of-this splash-of-that taste-and-adjust, and was sufficiently long ago that I had no idea of what I eventually used.  Since the goal is to produce replicable and reliable results that can be made quickly without having to spend too much time tasting and adding this and that, I decided a more scientific approach was in order, and started with measured quantities designed to approximate the sweetness and sourness as well as saltiness and appropriate red-but-not-fluorescently-so colouration.  There was still a bit of adjusting required but this was more or less what I came up with after that -- some further testing may be needed but for now, this is a good draft version.  Given the results produced even by this first attempt, I expect needing to make this again (FOR SCIENCE!) will not be a problem...

Sweet and sour sauce

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 tbs finely chopped fresh ginger
2 spring onions, finely sliced
1 small onion, sliced into wedges
1/2 red capsicum, chopped into bite-size chunks
1/2 yellow capsicum, chopped into bite-size chunks
1/2 tin pineapple slices, chopped into chunks (reserve juice for sauce)

1/2 cup pineapple juice
1/4 cup rice vinegar
3 tbs soy sauce
2 tbs shaoxing rice wine
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup tomato ketchup
1 tbs cornflour

Over medium-high heat, stir-fry garlic, ginger, spring onions and onion until fragrant and slightly softened; add capsicum and continue to stir-fry until capsicum is also slightly cooked.  Meanwhile mix together all the other ingredients (apart from pineapple pieces) in a cup or bowl until sugar, ketchup and cornflour are dissolved.  (This is where you start to understand why so many Chinese recipes have 'Set A' and 'Set B' ingredients...)  When vegetables are just cooked, stir sauce mixture to homogenise (in case cornflour has settled) and then add pineapple pieces and sauce to wok and allow to boil for a few minutes, until sauce is glossy and translucent.  Toss with your choice of deep-fried crispy thing (see below).

The sauce can be made in advance and reheated just before tossing the fried stuff in; the vegetables will go a bit soft, but if wok/burner space is limited this saves precious minutes during the critical time just before serving, when you're trying to get six different dishes all hot and on the table at the same time.  Cooking the vegetables less before adding the sauce mix might help keep them crunchy and bright-coloured -- I will try this next time.

The advantage of covering things in crispy batter and deep-frying them is that it doesn't much matter what's inside, so I also decided this was a good opportunity to try sneaking in a cheeky faux-meat substitute instead of pork.  Marinating about 450g of Quorn chicken pieces with some egg white, rice wine and dark soy sauce and then tossing it with potato starch before deep-frying gave a nice dark colour and a reasonably crisp coating, and then all that was needed was to toss it in the hot sauce.  Result! 

(And everyone thought it was pork.  Ah, the power of suggestion and deep-frying.)

A month of Sundays

For the last several weeks, a group of young men have been coming around to our flat on Sunday mornings and beating each other with sticks for two hours in the abandoned second floor (there's an explanation for this that is less dodgy than I've made it sound, but this is a food blog so I'm not going to bother with it :D ) before coming back upstairs to revive themselves with tea and what has turned out to be an ever-increasing variety of food.

It started with snacks to accompany tea -- steamed buns, dumplings and stuffed pork rolls -- but one week, returning from a tropical holiday to the wintry climes of a Manchester January, I decided something more substantial was required and threw together some soy-simmered chicken with daikon and carrots (I was really craving oden, the Japanese brothy stew with all sorts of delicious root vegetables and other goodies, but nobody except for me likes those wobbly chewy things and anyway I don't know where to buy them, so I had to make do) and some leafy greens with ginger and garlic sauce.  Since then, snacks have turned into full-on lunches, which is proving to be simultaneously an opportunity to exercise my culinary repertoire and test out new recipes, and a challenge for my ingenuity, as I try to cook something different every week -- even when I'm not there to prepare it at the time!  The slow-cooker and rice cooker are getting a workout for their keep-warm properties, as is our new microwave.

Menus so far have included

- red curry chicken with pineapple; stir-fried vegetables with sweet basil and chilli; pan-fried pork dumplings (this would have worked better had I left explicit instructions, since in the absence of these nobody thought to put things in the microwave.  Nonetheless, cold dumplings still appeared to be adequate, since the plate was empty when I came home...)

- slow-cooked beef stew; mashed potatoes kept hot in the rice cooker and green beans and carrots in the steamer insert on top

- gyoza; karaage fried chicken; green beans with sesame sauce; chashu belly pork with bok choy; Sichuan aubergine (the last was a real hit, with me and everyone else; I may never cook anything else again...!)

- slow-cooked beef rendang; green beans with chilli and garlic; choi-sum and poku mushrooms with oyster sauce (this time with appropriate use of the microwave, thankfully; cold poku mushrooms are a bit wrong...)

This week is an additional challenge, since (due to circumstances beyond just the usual Sunday stick-beating) there might be anything up to 13 people for lunch, or alternatively 9 for lunch and 6 for dinner.  I've decided the best way to deal with this is to lay in enough supplies for lunch, with an additional backup dinner plan of a quick Thai curry, tofu & basil stir-fry and maybe a hasty trip to Chinatown for some char-siu to throw into a sizzling pan with some green vegetables and Peking sauce.  The lunch plan, meanwhile, involves sweet and sour chicken; aubergines with black bean and garlic sauce; mapo tofu; babi kecap; gai-lan with crab; and crispy fish in Sichuan sauce... and maybe some buns and dumplings, for the sake of tradition.

At some point I should really get round to posting recipes for all of these things I now know how to make in a systematic and efficient way suited to having half-a-dozen or more people over for a meal on a regular basis.  Maybe this Sunday I'll even remember to take photos!