こんばんは!(Good evening!)
Ignoring the fact that this is going up very late... welcome to my little section of the food blog! As a Japanese major, I'm using this course as an excuse to learn the fundamentals of Washoku (和食), or traditional Japanese cooking. Since it's a style of cuisine that's got many different staples than most Western/Anglo/European centered cuisines, you'll likely see a lot of stuff you've never seen before in these recipes. As much as possible, these recipes will be coming from as authentic of sources I can find and acquire. Obviously a number of foods may be hard to find locally, but as much as possible the meals will be made according to the tastes and standards of native cooks. To the best of my paltry abilities of course. To this end, the pantry I am building up will consist of mostly Japanese staples, and thus is extremely paltry at the moment. A giant bag of rice and a few essential types of cooking oils and base items
Regardless, let's get onto the food!
The ingredient list is fairly simple. The paper plate on the left has the konbu and katsuobushi used to make dashi, while the rest is for the miso soup. It really is that simple! Granted, they're not ingredients you have lying around the house, but once you do this is an extremely quick dish to whip up, needing only a couple tablespoons of miso, and whatever vegetables or other stuff you want to throw in it. The dashi is made much like any broth is made, by boiling ingredients in water and then straining the resulting liquid aside and using it as the base for whatever else you're cooking. In my case, the dashi came out a bit strong.... but it should more or less look like this when done.
Ignoring the fact that this is going up very late... welcome to my little section of the food blog! As a Japanese major, I'm using this course as an excuse to learn the fundamentals of Washoku (和食), or traditional Japanese cooking. Since it's a style of cuisine that's got many different staples than most Western/Anglo/European centered cuisines, you'll likely see a lot of stuff you've never seen before in these recipes. As much as possible, these recipes will be coming from as authentic of sources I can find and acquire. Obviously a number of foods may be hard to find locally, but as much as possible the meals will be made according to the tastes and standards of native cooks. To the best of my paltry abilities of course. To this end, the pantry I am building up will consist of mostly Japanese staples, and thus is extremely paltry at the moment. A giant bag of rice and a few essential types of cooking oils and base items
Regardless, let's get onto the food!
Week 1: Dashi and Miso Soup
If you've ever eaten at a Japanese restaurant, you've probably had miso soup (味噌汁) before. It's a style of soup made from fermented soybean paste that's one of the foundations of Japanese cooking, and its versatility and ease of making means that it's something that even a paltry beginner like me can make without screwing up. Probably. Dashi (出汁) on the other hand, is a broth made from konbu, a type of dried seaweed, and oftentimes katsuobushi, or bonito flakes. This broth is the basis of a lot of the flavors in Japanese cooking. For this week, I made dashi from scratch and a simple miso soup with potato and wakame seaweed, a very homely comfort-food style of miso soup. On to the cooking!The ingredient list is fairly simple. The paper plate on the left has the konbu and katsuobushi used to make dashi, while the rest is for the miso soup. It really is that simple! Granted, they're not ingredients you have lying around the house, but once you do this is an extremely quick dish to whip up, needing only a couple tablespoons of miso, and whatever vegetables or other stuff you want to throw in it. The dashi is made much like any broth is made, by boiling ingredients in water and then straining the resulting liquid aside and using it as the base for whatever else you're cooking. In my case, the dashi came out a bit strong.... but it should more or less look like this when done.
(and ideally shouldn't take too long unless you forget to soak the konbu for at least a half an hour, which I definitely did not do.....)
Once the dashi is complete, all that was left to do was dice and boil the potatoes, and when those became soft, add the wakame. Adding the miso was interesting, because instead of putting the miso directly into the pot you're cooking in, instead you dissolve it in the broth separately on the side, THEN add the dissolved miso into the soup. Right at the end. You don't actually cook the miso paste! I found that rather interesting. The end result?
Some old-fashioned homestyle Japanese cooking. Normally would be accompanied by much more of a meal.... but after adding extra cook time to my food by not soaking the konbu like a dingus, I didn't have much time, or energy, left in me to make much but instant rice with some furikake, a rice seasoning made of various flavors, in this case a more traditional seaweed and sesame flavoring. The soup turned out a bit grainy and strong, likely due to not accounting for the boiling off of some of the dashi while making the broth, but I thought it was quite tasty, and perfect for the colder rainy days we've been having lately.
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