No More Japanese Food, I Swear

Whew! That trip to 1st Oriental supermarket sure spawned a lot a Japanese food-related posts. I promise to cook something different next time!

But I had some short grain rice and leftovers from Nabeyaki Udon, so I made rice balls this time. Rice balls are great because they're super quick and easy, you can put basically whatever you have on hand in them, and they look pretty fancy when you're done. 

Now, they're easier and quicker if you have a rice cooker. I, of course, do not have a rice cooker, so as usual I just take my patented "wing it" approach.

Generally, I use 1 cup of rice and 1 + a tiny bit extra cup of water. I rinse the rice til the water runs clear, soak the rice in the cooking water for about half an hour, and then cook it in a nonstick pan.

You need a lid to cook short grain rice. I, predictably, do not have a lid to fit my nonstick pan, so I just balanced another pan on top of my pan. This was probably not the best idea or the most elegant solution, but I managed not to break anything, spill anything, or light anything on fire. I count that as a win.

Jesus, take the wheel!

I bring the water to a boil, reduce the heat to low, and simmer the rice for about 5 minutes. When the time's up, I turn up the heat to high for a couple seconds to burn off any extra water and then leave it to sit for 10 minutes. These 10 minutes are torturous because knowing that I need to leave the lid on makes the temptation to take it off and check on the rice nigh on impossible to resist.

In the meantime, I get my fillings and nori (the seaweed wrapping that comes on sushi) together. My cat was gracious enough to leave me just enough katsuobushi for rice balls, so I soaked that in soy sauce for one of the fillings. For the other filling, I fished some of the mushrooms out of my leftover soup and chopped them up with Welsh onion.

Once the rice is cool enough to work with, you just have to put everything together.

In progress

 I wet my hands with salt water to keep the rice from sticking to my hands too much and also flavor it slightly. Then I take a small handful of rice and flatten it in my left hand. I add the fillings to the middle and then place some more rice over top of the filling before I pack it together with my right hand and shape the rice balls into little triangles. Then I just add a strip of nori, which tastes good and helps with eating the rice balls without getting your hands all sticky, and they're done.  Sometimes, just for presentation's sake, I add a small dollop of the filling on top.

Fancy

And since we're still on the topic of Asian foods, I just want to share this cute little guy real quick:

Awwwww

My mom and brother went to some kind of cooking class and made these adorable little bunny shaped dumpling thingies. The wrapping is, I am told, made of corn starch and water and they're filled with some kind of sweet, green tea paste. They were pretty delicious. Good job, family.

Speaking of Tempura...

I briefly mentioned in my most recent post that the last time I tried to make tempura, the fire department paid me a visit. In thinking about it further, I recall that I wrote a kind of ridiculous poem about that incident. I figured I might as well dig it up from the depths of Facebook past and share it here, seeing as how it's cooking-related and all.  

Disclaimer: I am not a poet.

In any event, for your reading pleasure, I present:

Valentine's Day 2013: The Burnening

Twas Valentine's night, and great plans had been laid.
A wonderful meal was soon to be made.
The rice was well steamed and the cucumbers tossed.
I was just waiting for the shrimp to defrost.

I breaded the pork chops with the utmost care,
And garnished the dishes with stylistic flare.
The oil was heated, and ready to go.
God, this meal preparation was slow!

I doubled my efforts, and tried to make haste,
Without sacrificing the delicious taste.
Into my cauldron, I placed the pork chops,
And watched the oil sizzle and pop.

All seemed quite well, until smoke filled the air.
"Holy crap! Oh my God! Shit!" I solemnly sweared.
The sound of alarm bells rang through the apartments.
And I got a visit from the fire department.

Harrowing Adventures in Japanese Cooking

Before I even begin, let me just say that if you have not had the pleasure of viewing Cooking with Dog, you need to rectify that situation immediately. It is a fantastic youtube channel that is equal parts educational, entertaining, and somehow soothing.

A poodle named Francis "hosts" the videos and, for no readily apparent reason, sits on the counter while a woman known only as Chef demonstrates how to cook various Japanese dishes. The directions are always very clear, alternatives to ingredients that might not be available to you are often suggested, and the exact measurements are provided in the descriptions. It's a great resource and a lot of fun to watch.

Today, armed with the ingredients I purchased at 1st Oriental Supermarket and Chef's loving guidance, I made Nabeyaki Udon.

Here is the video:

This time, I decided to make my own dashi stock. I did this, really, only because I had no idea where I might find instant dashi granules at 1st Oriental Supermarket, but I did know from my previous trip where they kept the kombu (dried kelp) and the katsuobushi (dried bonito flakes).

I found lots of different directions for how to make dashi from scratch, so I went with the quickest cook times and just kind of winged it. I soaked my kombu in 4 cups of water for about half an hour while I prepped my other ingredients. Then, I heated the water until just before boiling, removed it from heat, and added a cup of katsuobushi.

(Side note: Apparently, cats really like katsuobushi. Every time I turned my back, my cat was up on the counter greedily devouring all of my fish flakes! Thankfully, I had enough extra to recover.)

 I let that sit and steep until the katsuobushi sunk to the bottom, which took about 10 or 15 minutes, and then strained it through a paper towel.

Despite the fact that dashi is essentially fish and kelp tea, the resulting dashi was very mild and not fishy at all... which was good because that's how I am lead to believe it's supposed to taste.

After soaking my dried mushrooms (which appeared to be shitake mushrooms, but came in a bag sealed with scotch tape, mysteriously labeled only "mushrooms"...) in the fridge for a few hours, I popped them on the stove with their juices and simmered them with sugar and soy sauce, as directed.

I walked away for a few minutes while the liquid was evaporating and ended up letting the bottom of the pot burn to a nice, black crisp. Thankfully, both mushrooms and pot were able to be salvaged.

With my mushrooms safely rescued from their fiery death and my pot freshly scrubbed, everything was ready to go into the pot.

Pictured: "mushrooms" lurking menacingly

I couldn't find fish cake. And, though Chef always makes it seem like no problem, I thought it'd be a little inconvenient to defrost a bunch of chicken thighs just to get one small piece for my udon or deal with frying up tempura (plus, last time I tried to fry tempura, the fire department came...). So, I thought I'd just stick with Welsh onion, parsley, mushrooms, and an egg.

I boiled some water for my udon noodles and mixed up my dashi, soy sauce, and mirin. The recipe called for about 1 1/4 cups of dashi with 1 2/3 tbsp soy sauce and 1 2/3 tbsp mirin. I wanted to share with my boyfriend, so I put in about 2 1/2 cups of dashi, but I kept the soy sauce and mirin measurements the same. I figured I could add in more to taste, but it looked really dark so I just left it at that.

After draining my noodles, I put the broth on the burner. When it boiled, I added the noodles, Welsh onion, mushrooms, and an egg. 

Once the egg had cooked in the broth for a few minutes, I poured everything into a bowl and added the parsley. 

I must admit, it looks alright, but not nearly as good as Chef's!

Sadly, I don't think it tasted as good as Chef's either. My boyfriend took a few heroic bites, but really disliked it. For my part, I didn't hate it, but it definitely wasn't what I expected. I discovered that I'm not a big fan of raw egg yolk in soup and udon noodles have a pretty slimy texture. (Although, come to think of it, those were labeled "udon" noodles, so maybe they should be viewed with the same suspicion as the "mushrooms".)

The broth was oddly sweet, which was of course due to the inclusion of mirin. But I have a sneaking suspicion that the suggested ratio of dashi to soy sauce/mirin was a little off, since my broth looks a lot darker than Chef's even though I added the same amount of soy sauce and mirin to more than twice the amount of dashi.

All that said, I have made many dishes from Cooking with Dog in the past and Chef and Francis have never lead me wrong before. So either that was how it was supposed to taste or it was just a one-off mistake in the measurement conversions. Plus, some of my dislike was based on personal taste. It wasn't really bad (like the cilantro rice from Blue Apron I made a while back), I just didn't really enjoy it. 

The really important things to take away here, though, are that 1.) 1st Oriental Supermarket stocks really good parsley, and 2.) I ate unidentified fungus and didn't die. And isn't that all that really matters?

1st Oriental Supermarket: Best Thing Ever? (hint: the answer is "yes")

Two weeks ago, my boyfriend and I decided to take a recommendation from some friends who claimed they had found the best phở in the area (phở being a Vietnamese noodle soup). So we found ourselves in South Philadelphia at Phở Ha. And, oh, what a wonderland we had stumbled upon.

First of all, Phở Ha is located in a shopping center which contains only phở restaurants. No kidding, it's just Phở Ha and about 8 other places that serve phở. This shopping center seems to be operating outside the laws of reality as I understand them. How do all of these restaurants not drive each other out of business when they all quite literally share a wall with direct competitors on both sides? I have no idea. It's delightfully weird.

But more importantly! Right across the street we spotted an Asian grocery store called 1st Oriental Supermarket. So after we ate our phở (which was, as promised, delicious) we headed over there.

OK, I just have to say right off the bat that 1st Oriental Supermarket may just be my favorite thing ever. It's huge and it stocks all kinds of crazy stuff and it even has a parking lot. We walked around the store for a solid hour, going up and down every single aisle, marveling at everything.

Then we bought a ton of ramune (which is a Japanese soft drink that Wikipedia tells me is supposed to be lemon-lime flavored, but tastes for all the world exactly like bubblegum to me) and Japanese candy and went home and ate it all in one sitting.

To quote my very articulate boyfriend, "Everyburger, I need you inside me." We had no choice.

But then, last weekend, we went back so I could buy ingredients to make Japanese food and take pictures. Here's a few of those:

I have no idea how one might go about transporting a live eel to one's home, but the option is certainly available.

I can understand the blood, but what does one do with bile?

Also, I give you these ridiculous shots, which resulted from a combination of the hilarity my boyfriend and I inexplicably find in whole, roasted ducks and my boyfriend's complete lack of ability to feel embarrassment.

My boyfriend insisted that the man who worked behind the duck counter take these picture for us. But this purveyor of ducks spoke literally 0 words of English and, as far as I could tell, had never operated a phone camera before.


Here's a picture that was accidentally captured while my boyfriend was trying to show the duck guy how to use his phone camera:

I freely admit that this picture is included only because it is uncharacteristically flattering.

And here is one of the awkward shots the duck guy took for us after my boyfriend abandoned his attempts to pantomime that he wanted the duck guy to move around to the left in order to get the ducks in the frame:

And here is the picture of me and the duck guy that my boyfriend insisted we take:

This picture exists solely because my boyfriend feeds off of the discomfort of others like some kind of embarrassment vampire.

And here is a ridiculous selfie my boyfriend took in front of the whole, roasted ducks:

The duck guy was incredibly gracious.

Anyway, during all of those shenanigans, I did somehow manage to procure the ingredients for Nabeyaki Udon, so I'll be posting about that very soon.