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?