Week 2: Dashimaki Tamago

This week’s recipe was Dashimaki Tamago, from Kihon no Washoku, pub. Orange Page (2000)

Ingredients (for 2)

Egg mixture:

Eggs 3

Dashi (stock) 2 large spoons

Mirin 1 large spoon

Sugar 2 large spoons

Salad oil 1 large spoon

Grated daikon

Soy sauce

Break eggs into a bowl, and remove white lumps with chopsticks

Beat eggs and add the rest of the ingredients. Mix.

Heat up square pan and add salad oil, removing excess with a paper towel.

Pour 1/3 of the egg mixture into the pan over a medium heat

Pop any bubbles that appear with chopsticks

Before the top dries, roll the egg towards you with chopsticks

Then wipe a little oil on the empty space in the pan with the paper towel

Move egg to the side of the pan away from you and add oil to the pan in the same way

Add half of the remaining egg mixture and move the pan a little to ensure the liquid runs under the egg you have already rolled

Roll the egg back towards you, again doing this before the top of the mixture dries.

Repeat with the rest of the egg mixture

Take it out of the pan and cut into slices. Arrange on a dish, add grated daikon and a little soy sauce.

Breakfast in the Ivory Tower

My apartment is a feng-shui-ist's nightmare. Mountains of books and documents threaten to collapse and engulf me, my houseplants are in a pitiful state since I have been using a kerosene heater (this is worrying) and a heap of empty cardboard boxes obstructs one of the doorways into the hall - over-eager, early preparation for my move later this spring. All week I've been immersed in working on medieval liturgy, and making preparations for tomorrow's talk on clockwork dolls. Which sounds studious and quite romantic but housework in this ivory tower has rather taken a back seat and hence it seemed prudent not to invite friends over for dinner this week. In any case, according to my sources, dashimaki tamago, this week's challenge is strictly speaking, part of a breakfast menu. So this week's challenge was enjoyed by me on my own and was a practice run for a full Japanese breakfast to shock and awe my house guest next week. According to Jay Raynor in today's Observer, "eating alone requires a carefully balanced combination of commitment, enthusiasm and self-adoration". Check, check, and, hmmm... well, as self-adoring as can be expected at seven on a damp Sunday morning.

Japanese breakfast is essentially quite simple and healthy: soup, rice, pickles and fish. The dashimaki tamago, a kind of rolled omelette, is one of the optional side dishes. It looks very simple to make but appearances are deceptive… The first task is to get hold of one of these rectangular pans and if you are slightly fetishistic about cookware like I am you’ll be well pleased with it (even if you find, like I did, that it takes a little getting used to). I managed to butcher my first attempt by pouring too much of the egg mixture into the pan. It is meant to coat the bottom of the pan quite thinly. You roll it up trying not to poke holes in it with your chopsticks, and leaving it at the end of the pan, pour in another coating. Then you roll your already made dashimaki back over the new coating, rolling it all together. And so on. I’m not entirely sure what happened to my dashimaki tamago but it doesn't look like the photo in the book! It looks like some sort of canape or crepe. Still, it tasted very good but the crushed daikon (radish) on top was certainly necessary to offset the sweetness created by the sugar and mirin.

As for the rest of the menu, I never have been a big fan of miso soup or green tea even though both are staples here in Japan so for breakfast I made sesame miso soup with tofu (from Harumi’s Japanese Cooking) (still miso, but with a rich sesame flavour) and jasmine tea. To accompany that, salmon, tsukemono (pickles) - radish, aubergine (with red chili – so good!) and cucumber, natto (fermented soy beans) with egg yolk, goma-dōfu (sesame tofu) and of course the ubiquitous white rice and umeboshi (pickled plum). By the way, goma-dōfu is typical of Buddhist temple cuisine, and if you want to know where (some) monks get their sensual kicks, look no further, for this is a certain source…The supermarket version I used was good, but temple-made stuff trumps it. I was pleased with the results, as well with the rare chance to have a slow breakfast with an LRB I hadn't had the chance to read yet. Certainly worth getting up early on Sunday for. However, I couldn't manage to eat all of it by myself, and it took me one and a half hours to make it. I fear I'll be back to the coffee and toast tomorrow....

Pictures:

1) Over-poked dashimaki, cowering at the end of the pan while second layer is cooking

2) Canapes? Crepes? Not sure…

3) Btm: rice, sesame-miso soup, natto, tsukemono

Top: goma-dōfu, some mysterious object, salmon

Artfully arranged literary review paper.

It's a wrap!

Dashimaki tamago translates roughly ‘broth-rolled egg’, which doesn’t make much sense, but then neither does the dish really. Not only is it one of those items that manages to be sweet and savoury at the same time, but it seems unnecessarily fiddly to make. It involves a special rectangular pan (a makiyaki nabe), which is rendered redundant and sits at the bottom of the pots and pans drawer until one feels the need to roll up some eggs again, begging the question: why not just make an omelette? Indeed the dish is usually translated something like ‘Japanese rolled omelette’ but this does not do it justice.

When I was young I couldn't stand eggs, and when I came round to them at university, I handled them with the help of an electronic omelette maker (whip, pour, plug into wall, wait). This time round, I had to be attentive throughout the process: first pour a third of the sugar-broth-egg mixture into the pan (bought specially – and hurriedly - 15 minutes earlier), watch for nascent bubbles and puncture them pronto, then roll the whole flat layer up (with chopsticks) once solid enough and before it burns. This is shoved to one end of the pan and the process is repeated twice, each time making sure the mixture reaches under and binds to the growing roll. The first time two times I browned the underside a little too much, and as a result didn’t let the last layer set enough, so it clung on reluctantly when wrapped around, leaving eggy bald patches.

Actually, part of the reason for the browning was another accident: in adding my dashi, I forgot to dilute it to the appropriate concentration. While dashimaki is usually a nice soft pastel yellow, mine was verging on a darker French toast sort of colour all over. However both my husband and my guest thought it was tasty, as I did, whilst remarking on the slightly unusual colour. The daikon oroshi (grated daikon) accompaniment helped I’m sure to flatten out any potentially overpowering flavours.

The dashimaki accompanied:

• Yamato imo (using it up from last week) and pork salad with sesame dressing (a trusty Nintendo DS recipe and very good)
• Miso Soup with burdock root and carrot
• Komatsuna Age (One of the few Japanese dishes we have regularly at home – a leafy vegetable cooked with fried tofu in a soy/sake/mirin sauce)
• Genmai (Brown rice)

And for pudding were strawberries with condensed milk from a tube, a ‘traditional’ Japanese strawberry condiment. This was all washed down with Moet, generously brought by my guest, friend and editor C. Originally sake was on the menu, but when the champagne arrived there was no contest. I had a thoroughly enjoyable evening, only mildly spoilt by all the washing-up after (Japanese cooking involves so much crockery).

So why not just make an omelette in a big round pan? For one thing it wouldn’t fit so neatly into bento boxes, and besides, as an anthropologist I suppose I should know the significance of wrapping in Japan, even of an egg.

Week 1: Burdock Kimpira

The recipe we followed this week was from 'Authentic Japanese Cuisine for Beginners' by Sabi Shinojima (2003).

Burnt burdock, itchy hands and other teething problems

My first cook-off challenge, although it all turned out fairly well in the end, was for a while threatening to turn into a catalogue of disasters. There was:

1) Going to the far-ish away, big scary supermarket (I am supermarket-phobic) to source Yamato imo (‘Japanese potato’) for my tofu burgers, only to find a couple of days later that they sold them in the friendly, small supermarket that is on the first floor of the building I live in.

2) Thinking going to the big scary supermarket was worth it when I found a sticky long Yamato imo that cost a reasonable 270 yen, only to find when I got home that I’d misread the exorbitant 720 yen price tag. (They cost about 270 yen in my 1^st floor su-pa-).

3) Sticking my hands into the tofu/sticky potato mixture, and quickly pulling them out again when a painful prickly sensation spread over my skin (turns out these imo are irritants when raw). Spend the rest of the meal with tingly itchy hands.

4) Concentrating so much on the bloody tofu burgers that I completely burnt and overcooked the whole point of the exercise, the kimpira.

Having said that I the tofu burgers did turn out rather nicely, as did the miso soup and the egg mayonnaise stuffed peppers. I found the kimpira edible, but then as my husband always notes, I do like strong flavours. My guest G, looking somewhat pensive in the above photo, was less impressed (I blame it on her being pregnant and having some strange taste aversion that afternoon). Oddly enough, my husband liked G’s kimpira leftovers, which he tasted cold the next day (domestic diplomacy?). Turns out most of the burnt bit remained stuck to the side of the pan anyway, although the supposedly crispy gobo (burdock root) and carrot were rather flaccid. I sautéed them for far too long at first, then simmered for too long as I fussed with the burgers.

Living in central Tokyo it’s so easy to pop out for meals, which is what we normally do. The first floor of our building has a supermarket and convenience store, and the second floor is the ‘family restaurant’ chain Denny’s, open 24 hours. It’s far too tempting just to pop downstairs and eat, what is admittedly, some pretty unhealthy reheated rubbish, especially when subsidised by coupons and promises of free glasses (we now have 6). But a whole host of things have conspired to make me determined to cook more, especially Japanese food: moving to a lovely new, big flat a couple of months ago; trying to be more health conscious (reading ‘In Defense of Food’ at the moment); getting into the domestic groove; saving money and learning Japanese things in Japan.

I chose the recipes to complement the kimpira from different sources: the tofu hamburger came from a magazine-like Japanese book and the egg mayo stuffed peppers came from my Japanese Nintendo DS cooking software. I chose the latter by inputting my fridge contents into my DS and asking it what I could make. Pretty nifty.

I’m not sure that having two books and one DS open helped affairs, but I started cooking at 1pm and by the time G came at 2pm the peppers were well on their way, but the smell of burning was strong and the tofu burgers needed making. The miso soup was a little weak – I was being extra-domestic and made it with miso paste without any dashi (broth) in it, so I made the dashi by bunging some seaweed in water.

In terms of this week’s challenge, the kimpira, there is definitely room for improvement. But overall I was very pleased with my healthy and colourful four dish meal, something of a first for me. Bring on the next dish – things can only get better!

Muzak, Maitreya and Puppet Fare: Kinpira

It might turn out that this once a week challenge will be the once in a week I eat well when I’m at home. This is because I am not much of a cook. Or rather, not much of a shopper. I have a muzak fear-induced dash-and-grab shopping policy for supermarkets, which when matched to intimidation by often baffling Japanese produce means I'll more often than not cook with anything familiar-looking, or just buy imported European food. I did for a time frequent a good local organic store (I’m sure there are more but I’m lazy), but was gradually driven away by the owner's obsession with the return of Maitreya and his insistence on sharing this news with me. I just want to quietly buy my carrots, please, minus the muzak and Maitreya. Nevertheless. In spite of being a reluctant cook, I am obliged to make food for myself, so I ought at least get a grip of the basics of Japanese cuisine. And in April I’ll be moving to the mountains (more Maitreya, but probably a different kind, and more on that another time), and will henceforth have little choice but to feed myself using the most basic of ingredients. And I do enjoy it if I'm honest – once the shopping bit is over. In fact I love cooking, but more than that … I love cooking and entertaining.

Hence the blog.

The first challenge: kinpira. Apparently the word comes from the name of the hero of an old puppet play and by association signifies something “strong”. By the way, kinpira is actually the technique, not the dish itself. R laughed out loud when I told him this was the first Mugwort project, as if it were something utterly unimpressive and undeserving of “challenge” status. I can now confirm that (for me at least!) it was a challenge and it was really fun to make as well.
Traditional kinpira is made with gobo which is burdock root and looks just like an old muddy stick. Witchy, like mugwort. You scrub it and soak it for a bit in vinegared water, and julienne it before sautéing it with your muzak/Maitreya carrots. If you’re in Kyoto you can get these long, deep red kintoki carrots (the word kintoki is strangely enough related to kinpira as, according to my trusty dictionary, Kintoki is the father of Kinpira in the eponymous puppet play, and connotes ‘red’). Gobo has a very wholesome, nutty kind of aroma. After sautéing very well so that it’s crisp and not soggy, you simmer it all in a shoyu (soy sauce)/sake/sugar mixture. Unfortunately I used too much of the shoyu mixture and it was a bit too deeply flavoured. As with all cooking if one flavor overpowers all the rest it’s unpleasant, so I guess the trick is to let the flavours of the gobo balance well with the shoyu etc. Which I didn’t manage very well…Another important part of the kinpira cooking process is eliminating the liquid by simmering it until it all evaporates. Anyway, for dinner I made to go with it yellowtail (buri) teriyaki (which was divine), white rice, age-ponzu (deep-fried tofu with yuzu (citrus) juice vinegar), and also a modern version of kinpira which uses asparagus instead of gobo and a little chili pepper. My neighbor and dear friend Yumika came over to eat with me, bearing cakes for dessert, and some raspberry and green tea macaroons from the lovely Kyoto patisserie, Monica.

In an attempt to find a more pleasant place to purchase my vegetables I’m planning a trip next week to the Nishiki ichiba, a great covered food market downtown. It will of course be subjected to the all important “shopping soundtrack and spirituality” test!