A Culinary Trip To Japan

Since I was young I always enjoyed Japanese food. I have fond memories of going to various Japanese restaurants in Mount Prospect and the surrounding towns and eating bento boxes. At first I wasn’t the biggest fan of sushi but as the years passed I came to love it. I’ve been making nori maki sushi pretty frequently in the last few months and have been getting better and better at it. Still, my maki rolls are not nearly as nice as those served at the many Japanese restaurants in Ann Arbor. I love Japanese cuisine because of the simple, delicate flavors and the minimalist philosophy. Throughout history, Japan’s climate has been such that fresh seafood, meat, fruits, and vegetables were readily available year-round. As a result, Japanese cuisine does not use many overpowering seasonings and spices (like European countries did in the Middle Ages to disguise the flavor of spoiled foods). This Monday I cooked Japanese foods for my friends.



We started the night off with some miso soup. Earlier in the day I made some dashi, which is a traditional Japanese fish stock made from dried kelp and dried bonito flakes, which are made from thinly sliced dried fish filets (they look like wood shavings in the grocery store package). Dashi is made by simmering the dried kelp in water for a few minutes then adding some bonito flakes and letting the mixture steep for a couple of minutes before straining. If you ever watched any of the original Japanese Iron Chef episodes you’ve probably seen this done. The result is a flavorful but delicate stock used throughout Japanese cuisine in soups, sauces, and main dishes. To the dashi I added shiro miso, a sweet, lightly colored miso (miso is a fermented soy bean paste), some cubed tofu, and some dried Wakame, or “sea vegetable,” which is a type of seaweed. I let the mixture heat on low for about 15 minutes until the Wakame had rehydrated significantly. Here is the finished miso soup.

Next up on the menu was tempura. I had made tempura before and blogged about it here. The recipe I used was the same but I made a more traditional dipping sauce from dashi, mirin (sweet cooking sake), and shoyu (soy sauce).

Then came the big ticket item…fresh sushi. Back home in Illinois I was lucky enough to live by an enormous asian food store called Mitsuwa. Mitsuwa sold all sorts of exotic and hard to find ingredients, including fresh Japanese produce and sahsimi quality fish. I finally found a store in the Ann Arbor area that sold sashimi grade fish. Tsai Grocery in Ann Arbor has a good selection of imported products and fresh sashimi grade fish. I knew I wanted to make a spicy salmon roll, so I bought some fresh salmon. I made a mayonnaise from scratch and added sriracha sauce to it. Sriracha is a Asian hot sauce that has become very popular recently. I would be very surprised if any store nowadays didn’t sell it. It’s fantastic on pretty much everything. I combined the spicy mayonnaise with some cubed salmon to make the spicy salmon mix. Then I pressed some sushi rice that I prepared on to a sheet of dried nori, sprinkled it with five spice powder, flipped it over onto my bamboo sushi rolling mat (which I had covered in plastic wrap) and added some sliced avocado and some of the spicy salmon mix. I carefully rolled it up, pressing the roll firmly with the bamboo rolling mat to ensure a solid seal then sliced it with my new GLOBAL knives. I finished the spicy salmon roll with a dollop of sriracha mayonniase on top of each slice of the roll. I also made rolls from cucumber and pickled carrot(which I pickled myselft) and just plain salmon, and included a bit of wasabi in each roll. Here’s a picture of the maki rolls arranged on a plate with pickled ginger and wasabi.

The meal was delicious. I enjoyed some warmed sake throughout the meal and I have to give a shout out to Cara and Bridget for helping out with the meal. If you’d like to cook some traditional Japanese food I would suggest the book “The Japanese Kitchen” by Hiroko Shimbo, a cook book I’ll soon be blogging about. Peace and sayonara.

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