Steamed Chicken and Golden Sauce

This Japanese food is both exotic and familiar. It’s both home-cooked-satisfying and party-pretty.

Steamed Chicken Breast with Golden Kimizu Sauce
Tori now Sakamushi Kimizu-zoe
serves 2, generously (see note at the end)
page 425

• two 5″ square kombu (kelp seaweed—the sort you make dashi with)
• 2 boned chicken breast halves, with skin attached
• salt
• 1/4 cup sake
• 1 lemon, sliced thin
• Kimizu sauce
• a few drops of tamari
• a dozen spears of asparagus, cut away the dry ends, peel off the tough skin on the bottom end, and cut them to fit your steaming dish

Cover the bottom of a metal or glass dish which will fit into your steamer with the kombu. Sprinkle with a little water.
Place the breast halves on the kombu. Pierce the skins with sharp bamboo skewer or a knife point. I’ve made this dish with skinless boneless breasts and it is much better and moister when you leave the skin on; remember, you are not adding butter or oil to cook with and you can always take the skin off when you serve.
Sprinkle with salt and rub it into the chicken. Let this sit for about 15 minutes.
Sprinkle the chicken with the sake. Cover the chicken with the lemon slices.
Get your steamer up to high steam production and start your rice and miso soup going.
Put the chicken into the steamer and cook over high heat for about 10 to 15 minutes—check that the chicken is cooked with a meat thermometer.
Remove the chicken and asparagus from the steamer. Arrange on plates—it’s easier to eat if you slice the breasts, but they should be tender enough to eat with only chopsticks…
Garnish with the kimizu sauce.

Note: In the U.S. plates, bowls, drinking glasses, coffee mugs and chickens seem to be “super-sized!” The 2 chicken breasts I bought were huge! They easily filled a 9″ cake dish! A whole pound!!! Obviously, that is more than a normal person would want to eat in one meal—8 oz. per person is very generous: remember, these have not bones, so “serves 2″ means that there will indeed be leftovers. Luckily, this recipe is easily adapted to leftovers (or as I would say: cooking that you plan ahead).
Recently, I wanted to update my 20 year old cheap dishware and now find that standard dinner plates are 11″ or 12″ in diameter. My old ones are 10″ across. The latest salad plates are 9″ across!!! My regular drinking glasses used to be 12 ounces, but I’ve been replacing them and frankly, I need more cupboard space for the 16 ounce too large oversized ones… end of rant!!!

Kimizu: Egg and Rice Vinegar Dressing

If you want a sauce to inspire your creativity in Japanese cooking, this should get you started. Though kimizu—egg and rice vinegar sauce—is not derived from European cooking, you could almost think of it a Japanese Hollandaise sauce. It compliments the same delicate flavors of steamed vegetables, shell-fish, white fish, or chicken breast. I’m betting it would even be good on poached eggs. There is no butter in kimizu, so its bright flavor adds sparkle to blanched asparagus, broccoli, or spinach. It’s a pretty yellow topping to accent pink shrimp. Or make a luxuious salad with lobster or crab and cucumbers; avocado slices would add even more richness. It is served chilled or at room temperature, so you can easily make it a day ahead of a fancy meal.
Kimizu
Egg-Vinegar Sauce
1/3 cup sauce
page 72
Have ready:

• a pot of simmering water—the bowl in which you whisk the sauce should be able to float in the saucepan. I put a colander in the pan to keep the bowl more stable, yet still floating in the water.
• a large bowl of cold water with ice cubes to stop the cooking quickly

Ingredients:

• 2 egg yolks (Ms. Shimbo asks for 3, but the sauce seems too thick)
• 1/3 teaspoon salt
• 2 Tablespoons sugar
• 3 Tablespoons komezu (rice vinegar)

Whisk the egg yolks in a small bowl. Add, one at a time, the salt, sugar, and rice vinegar. Float the bowl in a pan of simmering water over low heat, and whisk the mixture to prevent the eggs coagulating as they cook. When the sauce has thickened, put the bowl into ice water and continue whisking until the sauce is cool.

I could have arranged this plate with steamed chicken and purple asparagus more carefully, but it would be even better if you could just taste the picture!

leftover ramen

If you live near a restaurant that serves good ramen, you are very lucky.

Making ramen at home really is a lot of work; but the time spent stock-making and chashu-making means I have lots of potential in the freezer
for new incarnations of ramen.

I am very pleased that the shoyu ramen I made a couple of days ago made enough for four—we ate a lot that night, but there was plenty left to have myself
a quick and fresh meal last night.
Once the stock is made, ramen is a swimmingly easy meal!

Nizakana: Braised Fish

Braising fish is a nice way to cook it without added fat. The fish can be whole, filleted, or cut into steaks. I’ve made this recipe with salmon, saba, and now yellow-fin tuna. For mild-flavored fish, make a broth seasoned with sake, mirin, and soy sauce. With strongly-flavored or oily fish, use stronger flavors such as miso, vinegar, salt, pickled plums, herbs, and spices. Elizabeth Andoh has a recipe for Ao-Zakana no Miso Ni which will be interesting to try.

Experiment with various greens as well. Spinach, rapini, mustard greens, chard, or dandelion greens are all tasty, but adjust the cooking time; mustard greens should be cooked longer than baby spinach.

Braised Fish in the Japanese Way
Nizakana
serves 4
page 385
Garnish:

• 1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, julienned
• vegetable oil for frying
• 10 ounces spinach

Heat 1/2″ oil in a skillet over medium heat until hot, and cook the julienned ginger until crisp and lightly golden. Drain on paper towels and reserve. In a medium pot of salted boiling water, parboil the spinach until barely done, 1 to 2 minutes. Drain and cool under cold running water. Squeeze gently to remove excess water.
The Fish:

• 4 yellow-fin steaks (about 6 ounces each)
• 2 slices peeled ginger
• 1 cup sake
• 3 Tablespoons mirin
• 1 Tablespoon sugar
• 3 Tablespoons shoyu

Place the fish on a rack over the sink. Pour boiling water over the fish. Turn the fish carefully, and do the same on the other side. This process is called shimo furi, or frost falling, because the fish becomes whitish. The water removes any strong fishy taste and foreign matter, especially if the fish has skin. There will also be less foam as you begin to cook the fish. Wipe gently with a paper towel.
Arrange the fish in a large shallow pan without overlapping. Add the ginger slices.
In a small saucepan, bring the sake and mirin to a slow gentle boil. In a kettle, bring 2 cups of water to boiling. Add the sake mix to the fish. Add enough boiling water to barely cover the fish. Bring the pan to a boil over medium heat and skim off the foam until no more foam appears.
Reduce heat to medium low, and add the sugar. Cover with a drop-lid, and cook for about 5 minutes. Add the shoyu, cover again, and cook with a very gentle simmer for 15 to 20 minutes (don’t over cook the fish!). While the fish cooks, occasionally tilt the pan and spoon some of the liquid over the fish.
When the fish is cooked, add the spinach to the pan and let it absorb some of the cooking liquid.
To Serve:
Place the fish and spinach side by side in shallow bowls, and top with crisp ginger strips. Pour the remaining broth into each bowl.

This meal included rice, miso soup with fu, dried ebi, and wakame, and turnip and persimmon tsukemono.
I forgot about making the ginger.

Tsukemono: Turnip and Persimmon

Acharazuke: Turnip Persimmon Pickles
serves 3 to 4
from Japanese Pickling, page 48
The following is an adaptation of the recipe in the book in order to use ingredients on hand. My version has more persimmons or less turnips than the original, and I used more chile peppers. If you can’t find dried persimmons, dried apricots would be a possible substitute.

• 12 ounces turnips
• 1 teaspoon salt
• about 3 ounces dried persimmons (a very generous 1/4 cup, coarsely chopped or julienned)
• 2 dried chile peppers (remove seeds and membranes—mine were Japanese)
• 1 Tablespoon rice vinegar (be a bit generous if your fruit is a bit dry)

1. Peel turnips and cut into sticks, about 1/4″ x 1/4″ x 1 1/2.”
2. In a bowl, sprinkle the turnips with salt to draw out liquid. Let them sit for 15 to 20 minutes, turning them occasionally. Drain and squeeze to get rid of the salty water.
3. In another bowl, combine persimmons, peppers and vinegar.
4, Finally, add the drained turnip sticks to the fruit, chile, vinegar bowl. Mix and let sit for at least 1 hour.

Note: these tsukemono hold up better for eating as leftovers than most quick pickles. In fact, they tasted better to me the second day!