Nabe with Swordfish

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Mr. Tess made his famous Kajikimaguro no Yuan Yaki (Swordfish in Yuan style) accompanied with fried potatoes. The kitchen is still in the process of moving, so there was only one frying pan to cook with. It was an opportunity to test the warming drawer on this stove: we have been cooking with gas for decades and it’s a learning curve to understand how to cook with electricity. His wonderful fried potatoes were tasty if not as crisp as usual. The warming drawer, however did it’s job perfectly. He usually makes two large swordfish steaks, but the frying pan was not large enough. The recipe serves four, so one (half-pound) steak was plenty of food for the meal.

Mr. Tess is adding drawer slides to a couple of the old sticky wood on wood drawers in the kitchen, so we will be able to bring some things: it won’t feel so much like camping here in the new house.

I still had mushrooms to use up from the previous nabe, and now some lovely swordfish that wouldn’t go to waste. This recipe was the natural result.

Kajikimaguro Nabe Swordfish Hot Pot  6 cups dashi t Tablespoon vegetable oil 4 cloves garlic, grated Ginger, roughly the same amount as the garlic, grated 3-5 dried chili peppers, cut into rings, seeds removed 2 negi (Japanese long onion, cut into 1″ pieces) 3-4 green onions (cut into 1″ pieces) grated rind of half a lemon about 1 Tablespoon white miso, to taste ½ clump/stalk enoki mushrooms, trimmed and cut into 2″ lengths (about 1 cup) ½ package oyster mushrooms, trimmed and sliced bite-sized (about 1 cup) 2 heads of baby bok choy, coarsely chopped about ¾ cup fried potato slices ½ pound swordfish steak Heat vegetable oil in your nabe. Cook the garlic and ginger over low heat. Add the hot peppers and continue cooking while stirring constantly. Add ½ of the total amount of mushrooms and the onions. Cook while stirring until slightly softened. Add the lemon rind. Then add enough dashi to cover and simmer gently. Use a miso koshi strainer to add the white miso (or remove some of the soup into a small bowl, mix the miso in there, then return it to the nabe). Start by adding a few teaspoons, then taste. Continue adding miso until the soup tastes flavorful but not overly salty – the goal isn’t to make miso soup but to add another dimension of subtle flavor. Add the rest of the mushrooms, the baby bok choy, the potatoes, and the chunks of swordfish, arranging them nicely inside the pot. Mound the greens in the center of the pot and arrange the potatoes and swordfish around the edges. Add more dashi to cover, but you don’t want to submerge all the ingredients – they should peek out from the broth. Cover the pot to cook the ingredients. Bring the nabe to the table and set it on the portable stove. Turn the table-top burner as low as necessary to maintain a very gentle simmer. To serve, provide each person with a small dish and have them use chopsticks or a ladle to select their own vegetables and fish. Note: I don’t have a nabe table-top ring, so we served from the simmering pot in the kitchen.

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