Monday 31 December 2012

A Christmas Feast of Crabs and Lobsters


On the day before Christmas Eve, Mr. A bought two Dungeness crabs and two Maine lobsters on impulse.  Only when he placed the sea creatures in his kitchen sink did he realize that he and Mrs. A would be eating shellfish for days.
 
Mr. A immediately went to work.  He killed the live crabs by pulling off their top shells.  He proceeded to clean the bodies and steamed them whole.  Next, he poached one lobster in a large pot of boiling water with heat off.  He severed the tail from the head of the second lobster and placed it in a bowl of icy cold water to firm up the meat for sashimi.  He saved the crab miso and the green lobster tomalley for later use.

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Mr. A wasted no time to made lobster sashimi.  The chilled meat was firm, crunchy and sweet.  The flavor became more complex when the pieces were seasoned with a little bit of wasabi and dipped gently in tamari.  The sashimi was followed by roasted quails with sautéed rapini.  The quails were marinated briefly with a dark soy sauce and Kosher salt before being pan roasted in olive oil.  The rapini was sautéed with bacon, pancetta and red chili pepper.  The wine for dinner was a grower-Champagne from Avize.



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Mr. and Mrs. A feasted on more crab and lobster dishes the rest of the 2012 Christmas week --  egg custard in crab shells, lobster instant noodle, crab and lobster risotto, lobster chowder (twice), Chinese scrambled egg with crab, and finally udon with crab and mushrooms.  

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Egg custard in crab shells:  Mrs. A placed some crab meat in the two empty crab shells.  She filled up the shells with beaten egg mixed with crab jus, crab miso and chopped cilantro, and steamed them for a few minutes.  The result was different from chawanmushi  (the Japanese dish of egg custard with chicken, shrimp, and ginkgo nut steamed in a small lidded ceramic bowl) -- the color was not a pure soft yellow because of the crab miso, and the surface was not mirror smooth because the shells were too shallow for the egg to cover the solid ingredients.  Nevertheless, the dish was a success.  The aroma was intense; the flavor savory and totally umami.  Despite the small portion, its richness made the dish a meal by itself.  


Lobster and sardine instant noodle: Mr. A fried some shallots in olive oil from a can of “Parthos” brand sardines.  When the shallots were soft and slightly browned, he added pieces of lobster head and legs, cilantro and negi.  He warmed the small whole sardines in the pan to finish off the cooking.  The sauté was then placed over bowls of spicy hot “Boku-Uma” brand ramen noodle.   It tasted good.  (“Parthos” from Portugal is the only brand of canned sardines that Mr. and Mrs. A like.  It was packed in olive oil with red chili pepper, clove, a slice of cucumber, a slice of carrot and salt.  The texture and flavor of the fish are impeccable.)  

Crab and lobster risotto:  The idea was inspired by a dish Mr. and Mrs. A eaten not too long ago at Namu Gaji, a New Wave Korean restaurant.  The restaurant version was crab risotto with white truffle from Alba shaved tableside.  Mr. A’s version had no white truffle (sigh!).  He stirred Carnaroli rice in olive oil with chopped onion and garlic, and cooked it with lobster stock and clam jus, adding linguica, lobster tomalley, lobster tail and crab meat, and cilantro along the way.  The risotto took on a green colour from the tomalley.  Yum!  The wine: Roederer Estate l'Ermitage Brut 2003.
 

Lobster chowder:  Mr. A made the base with roux and lobster stock, seasoned it with paprika and white pepper, then added cream, cream style corn, beaten egg, and at the last minute some lobster meat.  The bowl was garnished with fingerling potato roasted with rosemary and thyme, linguica, cilantro, and fried sage on the lobster claw.  Following the chowder, Mr. and Mrs. A shared a piece of beef filet.  They drank a Fixin, which went well with both dishes. 

 
Mrs. A liked the lobster chowder so much that Mr. A made it a second time with some modifications.  He used a bottle of supermarket clam juice to supplement the remaining lobster stock.  He skipped the cream, potatoes and linguica to stay healthy.  But at the last minute, he put in chopped “4504” hot dog, the infamous bacon studded hot dog (so much for being healthy) and garnish of chives.  Mrs. A liked that version too.

Chinese-style soft scrambled egg with crab meat:  Mrs. A stirred slowly and gently beaten egg, mixed with crab meat, chopped yellow chive, in a Chinese wok over low heat until it was no longer runny.  Chopped cilantro was added before the egg was completely set.  The scrambled egg was fluffy and moist, the chunks of crab meat sweet, the herbs fragrant.  It was Mr. A’s favorite dish. 


Crab udon:  It was Sanuki udon in a kombu broth seasoned with kanro (a thick dark soy sauce), topped with hedgehog mushrooms and maitake, juliennes of abura-age (deep-fried tofu pocket), negi and crab meat. 
Dessert for the week was of course Christmas cake, the pannetone of RubiRustichella d'Abruzzo, made with sultana raisins, candied citron and egg.  It was supplemented by the rich Walker’s shortbread.


Sunday 30 December 2012

Eat Fresh at Subway in Tokyo


The Marunouchi area sits between Tokyo Station and the Imperial Palace.  It is the financial center of Tokyo. It is also the premium shopping area for the affluent.  Practically all buildings in the area are skyscrapers.  The street level shops are boutiques of big name Japanese and foreign fashion designers.  The interconnected basements of these buildings have many small restaurants catering to office workers.  

One day I happened to be at the basement of the Marunouchi Building.  There I found a unique shop of the Subway Sandwich chain.  It was growing its own lettuce in an enclosed hydroponic “Subway yasai lab” (yasai is Japanese for vegetable).  To me that was an interesting concept.  Even though the “yasai lab” could hardly produce enough lettuce, it supported the advertising slogan “Eat Fresh at Subway”. 

Apparently I was the only person who had any interest.  From the picture, you can see that people eating lunch at the counter paid no attention to the “lab” at all.  I found out later that the”lab” was installed two years earlier in 2010.  Its novelty must have worn off long ago.  


Saturday 22 December 2012

Amochinmi Onomichi Ramen 阿藻珍味の尾道ラ一メン


A girl friend of Mrs. A sent her a present recently.  It was two boxes of Onomichi ramen (尾道ラ一メン) manufactured by Amochinmi (阿藻珍味).  Inside each box were four packs of nama ramen (熟成生麵) and four packets of concentrated soup stock.  

                     
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Onomichi is a small scenic port city on the Seto Inland Sea side of Hiroshima Prefecture.  It has its own ramen style -- the noodles are straight, moderately skinny with smooth surface; the soup is shoyu (soy sauce) based, clear, made with stock of chicken and fish from the Inland Sea, and loaded with lard.

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Amochinmi’s nama ramen is made with flour and egg white, and processed with kansui (lye water) to be chewy and resilient.  It has not been dried by heat and can be kept in a cool dark place for up to forty days.  Its ramen soup contains pork extract in addition to chicken stock.  It is blended with a broth of katsuo (鰹節 dried bonito), saba (鯖節 dried mackerel), konbu (昆布kelp) and local hirako iwashi (平子鰯 young sardines) for depth and flavor.  The soup packet also contains the secret weapon of lard and small pieces of solid pork back fat (see the pictures below).

       

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I emptied the soup packet to 300 ml of boiling water and to melt the lard.  In a separate pot I cooked the loosened ramen in boiling water for a little over a minute.  Instead of the usual ramen toppings, I added just some nama wakame (塩蔵生わかめ a kind of raw seaweed packed with salt) to the assembled bowl of ramen.  Despite the simplicity, It tasted very good because of the lard and pork fat pieces (the little pieces floating in the soup in the picture).

      
Mr. and Mrs. A finished the box of ramen within days.

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Besides its ramen, Onomichi is well known to many Japanese as it has appeared in novels, such as Anya Koro (暗夜行路) by Shiga Naoya (志賀 直哉), as well as movies that include the famed Tokyo Story (東京物語) directed by the great Ozu Yasujiro (小津 安二郎). 

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Note: 1 Typical ramen toppings are
·         a couple of slices of chashu (叉焼 Japanese pork filet, not the Chinese BBQ pork)
·         menma (麺碼 seasoned fermented bamboo shoot)
·         a slice of kamaboko (蒲鉾 fish cake)
·         a sheet of nori (海苔 a kind of seaweed)
·         thin slices of negi ( Japanese scallion with long and thick white stem)
·         an ajitsuke tamago (半熟味付け卵 soft boiled egg marinated in a soy sauce mixture)

Note 2: Amochinmi has recently introduced a healthier version of Onomichi ramen with reduced amount of lard for customers who are conscious of calories intake.