Japanese cooking technique: miso and creamy soups
The winter sun-light, reflected by new white snow, makes harsh shadows on our grey and brown landscape. This amplification of the brightness is false. It’s neither warmer nor cheerier, a vision without substance.
I want the pleasant consolation of color! This pale yellow Japanese soup, with bright red and green accents and the tang of a summer sea, is a perfect recipe for this season.
The Japanese love corn:
on pizza, pasta, at McDonald’s, in gyoza, in soup, …so why not add it to miso soup?
As for cabbage in Japan, it is used in one of their most famous dishes: okonomiyaki, the cabbage-stuffed “as you like it” pizza.
Cabbage is also popular in soups, pickles, and as a side dish for deep-fried foods.
So why not enjoy it in miso soup?
Add a pat of butter, and you’ll experience sweetness and richness if only in a meal.
Miso soup is simple, a blank palette, which can be transformed with the addition of extra ingredients. When choosing the gu for your miso, think about contrasting colors, whether ingredients float or sink, strong flavors and bland; think about seasonal ingredients; most important: please your palate!
Miso soup is a traditional Japanese soup based on dashi stock mixed with softened miso paste.
Good for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, miso soup is a comfort food.
This post has lots of information about making dashi and about miso as an ingredient.
Mr. Tess often cooks, but rarely cooks Japanese foods. We, neither of us, were feeling great. I suggested miso soup with salmon (which was in the freezer—neither of us wanting to go to the store). So I gave him some instructions and had a nap while he produced a lovely meal.
 A few weeks ago, we hosted a dinner for Mr. Tess’s “new” brother, his wife, their neice, and her boyfriend. We don’t know these folks very well, and I get nervous whenever we have guests. I wanted to have most of the dinner ready when they arrived, just in case an unanticipated kitchen disaster meant I’d have to resort to pizza delivery… Yes, Mr. Tess always tells me that it’s the company and not the food that is important, but none the less, I wanted to make a nice evening where things went according to plan.My solution was a menu which I could prepare the evening or morning before, with only a small bit of close attention in the kitchen just before serving. |
☛ → ♪ night and day ♪
☾☆★☆★☆♥♥Ô♥♥☆★☆★☀
iboshi are baby sardines (anchovies in some translations) that have been boiled once then dried. Compared to katsuobushi, stock made with niboshi has a fishier flavor. They vary in size from about 1.5″ to over 3″long with the smaller ones having a milder flavor. This stock is used in both Korean and Japanese cooking for miso soup, hot pots (nabemono), and strongly flavored noodle dishes. Some bloggers note that niboshi dashi is more commonly 
in the Tokyo area than in Osaka/Kyoto; and katsuo dashi is used more in the summer, niboshi in the winter.https://1tess.wordpress.com Miso Soup with Mixed Mushrooms and Udon Buna-Shimeji, ブナシメジ (or ブナしめじ), Brown Beech Mushroom, Brown Clamshell Mushroom, Hypsizigus tessellatus. These mushrooms are native to East Asia, though the cultivated mushrooms look different from the wild ones. They are sometimes white, but they are the same species. The mushrooms are grown in bottles or cups…
Tess's Japanese Kitchen 