Home prepared herbal olive oil

There are few condiments and sauces that I cannot ever allow to run out at my home.
Asian line-ups are as you can imagine, but not limited to.
This is what I have to have all year around, one thing that I can't allow to run out.
A lot of shops sale herbal olive oil with the different spiced version, but in my opinion, homemade one is the best. You know what's in it, which kind of olive oil is in, and you can keep making it.
And the biggest difference, it is as fresh as you make!
I use the rosemary from my garden in summer, the taste of pleasure from my own home.

I lined up the ingredients in my favourite balance, but it's totally up to you what to include and how much in the bottle. Try to choose "hard" things (e.g. dried chili, condiments, nuts etc.) and better to avoid the ingredients easy to spoil (e.g. meat, fish, leaf salad etc) unless you meant to use up in once.

Ingredients:
1 stem rosemary
2 small bay leaves
1 small garlic clove
4-5 black pepper corn
1 garlic - pealed
about 10 fennel seeds

Method:
Just bottle it. You can feel the herbal flavour from the right next day.
Basically you don't need to replace the all things in the bottle every time, because the olive oil preserves the ingredients in the bottle quite well.
Point is, keep adding more oil to the bottle whenever you use more than the line of ingredients in the bottle and keep all things under the oil.
Rosemary leaves will come off from the stem but it will not going to get spoiled.
Yet, I do change them about once per about 5 times full refill usage.

This is just when I bottled it. Both the rosemary and olive oil are shinny green.

Then this is the next day, you can see that the rosemary green already started to melt into the olive oil and the oil has fresh rosemary aroma.

By the time, the taste will change to more mature and stronger flavour, and that's the another fun.
I use them for pizza dough, salad dressings, meat-sauces, pastas and more.
My latest best favourite way is, dipping a piece of freshly baked foccacio or crunchy baguette in the dish of this oil from the first 2-3 days with freshly clacked black pepper, sea salt and grated parmigiano cheese. This cannot be starter, because you can't stop eating it :-)

Tzatziki - Greek cucumber & yogurt cream

Tzatziki is the one thing I learnt before knowing the name of the dish.
There were excellent Greek restaurant in Pasadena LA, it was near to our home and we went there for all good occasions. So much great memories at the restaurant and it was with completely new type of taste for me at that time. I even never had an idea of using yogurt for cooking so at the beginning, I couldn't tell what even was the base of cream.
Once I moved UK, I realise that Greek food is not cheap here (or any eating out is not cheap compare to US), so my stomach forced me to learn all good taste I could recall.
So the recipe was from several books and people, but the taste adjusted to what I liked.
Nice to serve with all other great Greek foods especially with the oven grilled lamb meatballs in a pita bread.

Ingredients:
1 cucumber - skinned and grated
300g yogurt
1 garlic - crushed and chopped
about 5-7 leafs of mint - sliced and chopped
1/4 tsp salt
some black pepper as you like

Method:

1. Prepare the vegetables: cut in half and skin the cucumber until near the end (leaving a bit at the end allows you to hold the cucumber easier) then grate it with a grater (I use the one for grating the parmigiana cheese). Put it out on a strainer, squeeze them as much as you can to drain out all liquid.

2. Crush the garlic by a side of your knife, then chop it to very fine mince.

3. If you’ve got a bunch of mint, take only the soft leaves, wash it under water then drain the water out. I like the mint short thin strings in this cream, so once slice them all finely then turn it and chop them roughly.

4. Combine all in a bowl then keep it in the refrigerator for few hours.

5. Serve them with some grilled meat or fish; our favourite is to have some with the oven grilled lamb meatballs in a pita bread.

like this :-)

ささ身のサラダ - Chicken breast salad

This salad is a long running favourite dish for our family, usually heavily routine through the hot summer. It can be nice nibble for serving with drinks, also quite adequate for serving as a main dinner plate on its own, or with some white steamed rice, especially during the hot summer days like now. It looks very simple, but the threaded chicken absorbs the fresh sauce and a hint of sesame oil invites you to eat more. Because you can leave it for overnight, it's nice for party and pot-luck-lunches.
My mom's original recipe uses threads of Zha Cai, is a spicy Sichuan pickles, but the Japanese adapted seasoning one (means not-so-spicy), which either not easy to find or very expensive even you find in here UK.
My recipe uses cucumber for replacement, and actually has gained the better response from my guests here.

Ingredients (3-4 people):
2 big slices or 3 small slices of Chicken breast
2 slice ginger
1 leek - green part only

4 x 5cm leek - white part only (about 5cm x 2 per each leek, 2 leeks)
1/2 cucumber
1tsp salt

6 Tbsp sushi vinegar
3 Tbsp soy sauce
1 Tbsp sesame oil
1/2 tsp sugar
some black pepper

Method:
1. Prepare chicken: boil the chicken breast with 2 slice of ginger (with skin but cleaned) and green part of a leek (cut of very end and clean the soil out under running water before use) for about 20-25 minutes, then leave them in the boiled water until all cool down.
2. Meanwhile prepare vegetables: we need 4 pieces of 5cm length white part of leeks, usually you can take up to 2 parts per one whole length. Take the most outside skin off if its not soft enough (US leeks may need to peal 2 skins off...) cut off the very ending with loots, then cut them in to 5cm length, slice them into thin julienne. If the leek is spicy as the one from Japan then you may need to soak it in a bowl of water for 5min before use.
3. Skin the cucumber, cut in half along with the length, take off the center transparent par will seed using either knife or spoon. Cut in to half width again, the slice them in about a half cm width slices.
4. Put all slices of cucumber in a small bowl, add the 1tsp salt and mix them well, then leave it for about 10min.
5. Put the cucumber slices on a strainer, wash out the salt under running water well, then grab a hand full of slices at once and squeeze out all water in your hand. Repeat that for all slices. Doing so, it will prevent making the salad soggy later, and keep the cucumber crunchy in the salad.
6. Prepare the sauce: just mix the listed ingredients well.
7. Once the chicken breast get cool down, then break them into few small pieces, and thread to the string one by one as thinner as your patient can handle. The thinner you can thread the better absorb the sauce and tastier later.
8. Mix the threaded chicken, julienne leeks, sliced and squeezed cucumber in a bowl roughly, then pour over the mixed sauce, mix the whole thing again.
9. Leave it in your refrigerator for at least 1 hour, even better if you can leave it for overnight before serve.

* If you can find a good Zha Cai  then you might want to try my mom's version; you firstly clean the Zha Cai out from soaked spicy juice well. If it is a whole one then slice it, and then cut it into threads. Soak the threads in a cup of water for 5 minutes and drain out the water before mixing it with other ingredients at step 8.

Asparagus cream

This wonderful recipe was from +Loretta Sebastiani, it was a great hit in my family. She has introduced this in foodies+ as a part of Seasonal flavors on canapé top or seafood tartine unfortunately it's not easy to find fresh seafood to serve it together, so I served this simply as a cream with all other Mediterranean style vegetables.
This picture was from my son's birthday, my first trial, that I used LactoFree cheese instead of ricotta for my mother in law's diet. Still the freshly prepared cream was so nice on the crunch toasted slice of budget.

Her recipe page is here.

やきうどん: Fried Udon noodle

I had long break on this blog due to my main occupation, I knew the busy time coming but the last project took much longer than I expected....

Anyway, this is a simple recipe easy to remember. Udon is kind to your stomach and nice for digestion. Good to go as vegetarian without pork in.
Lately the packed soft Udon noodle become easy to reach, it's an "instant" style for us Japanese compare to dried noodles but really useful for this quick cooking.

Ingredients (per person):
1 soft Udon pack
1/4 onion - sliced
1/4 carrot - sliced
1/4 bell pepper - sliced
1/4 leek white part - sliced sliced
1 slice of bacon or equivalent amount of sliced pork berry
cabbage - equal amount as bacon

* Idea is, onion, carrot, bell pepper and leek are about same amount, then cabbage and bacon are in same amount and about double amount of onion.

* 2 kinds of Udon noodle you can find in market in UK

1/2 pot of water boiled in kettle
2 + 1 Tbsp vegetable oil
2 Tbsp soy sauce
2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1/2 tsp salt if using pork berry
black pepper
(Optional) Katsuobushi (dried bonito flakes)
(Optional) Shichimi (seven flavor chili pepper)

* left: Shichimi, right: Katsuobushi - those are sold in Japanese glossary shops.

Method:
1. Slice onion, carrot, bell pepper and leek. Idea is slice them in almost same size/thickness so all can be cooked at same time.
2. Cut bacon to 1 to 2cm width, or slice pork berry thinly.
3. Cut cabbage into about 1 to 2 cm square.
4. Heat up a Chinese wok or a large pan on high heat, then put 2 Tbsp vegetable oil once the wok gets enough hot. Spread the oil all over the wok, then take out the excess of oil out on small dish (not plastic!) If you are garlic lover, put a crushed garlic before taking out oil then take it out with the oil, so the oil gets the garlic aroma.
5. Put onion and carrot in the wok, fry for 1-2 minutes until they are halfway cooked, then add bell pepper and continue cooking for another 1-2 minutes.
6. Add leeks and cook only for 1 minute, take all out in a pat or dish and put it aside.

7. Put back all oil again, spread through and take it off again.
8. Put the pork berry slice or bacon slice, fry until the oil start to melt and getting cooked, then add cabbage and fry until the cabbage slices are cooked. Put all vegetables back once, mix them, add pepper, add salt if it is pork berry. Put all aside again.

9. Prepare the Udon noodle. Majority of packed Udon sold in an individual small package ideal for a person. They are kind of soft but packed. It's so different if you do this trick first: Put the noodle on a strainer and place it in sink, pour over a boiling hot water all over the noodle. After pouring a half the water, then give some wagging by fork or chopsticks. Then pour over the rest of hot water. After that, pour the remaining vegetable oil from the wok and mix them well.

10. Now put the wok back on high heat, once heated up then add the another 1 Tbsp of oil in the work, spread the oil through the wok.
11. Add the noodle in the wok, put all vegetable & pork on top of it, then mix them quickly.
12. Add all soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce then mix them well. Cook until the sauce spread through for about 2-3 minutes.
13. Serve it on a large dish, pour over Katsuobushi freaks on top of it if you have. Put some Shichimi to spice it up as you like. Alternatively a bit of Nori freaks and mayonnaise are other common toppings.

Japanese version here: http://misaskitchen-jp.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/blog-post_10.html

テリヤキバーガー - Teriyaki Burger

The typical "Teriyaki" sauce commonly known in European countries are actually very different sauce from the traditional Japanese Teriyaki taste. The European "Teriyaki" sauce is actually a sauce for sticky rice cake balls on stick, call Mitarashi taste in Japan.
But then about 20 years ago, MacDonald imported back the American "Teriyaki" taste for their local burger line, produced it as "Teriyaki burger" was a great success and became popular term.
Now a days, younger generation believe that's the original Teriyaki sauce in Japan too.
It's a quick and easy dinner for my home when I have very short time to fill my family's hungry stomach sounding loudly.

Ingredients (for 4 people - 2 burgers each):

8 pre-made beef burgers or 800g minced beef seasoned, mixed well and shaped 

(seasoning: salt, black pepper, nutmeg)

8 burger breads

1/2 onion sliced

3-4 leafs of  lettuce, rinsed and drained

for sauce:

1 cup water

1/4 cup soy sauce

1 Tbsp sake

1 Tbsp mirin

3 Tbsp sugar

1/2 Tbsp rice vinegar

1 Tbsp potato starch (mixed with 2 Tbsp water)

Method:

1. In a large frying pan, fry the sliced onion until lightly brown, then pour all ingredients for sauce except the potato starch. Cook it on medium low heat until all sugar melt, then pour in the potato starch (mixed with water well just before use) slowly in to the pan while mixing by a wooden spoon.

2. Once the sauce is thicken (about 30 sec) then stop the heat and put that aside.

* a small tip: regardless you buy a pack of pre-made hamburger stakes or make home made, shape the burgers in about 1 cm thick and make center slightly thinner than out side. At the end, this will make the burgers flat evenly.

3. Using another frying pan, fry the burgers. High heat to start on one side, once the side is cooked (slightly burned) then turn over and turn down the heat to medium, wait until the side also cooked equally. Turn over again now continue cooking until inside is cooked. 

4. Place the cooked burgers into the first frying pan with sauce and continue cooking all burgers. 

5. Once all burgers are cooked, place the burger breads in oven (180 degree), sliced side up. Then turn on the first frying pan with sauce and burgers in. Cook for 2-3 minutes with turning around the burgers in sauce, until the sauce get slightly thicker and get around the burgers.

5. Serve the warmed burger bread, lettuce and burgers with some extra remaining sauce on top. I love to put a lot of mayonnaise on it too. Chips will never be too much to go together. Enjoy.

田楽とうふ - Dengaku tofu - BBQ tofu

Yes, Tofu on BBQ. It's a bit sound strange but one very traditional street food.
A bit crunchy outside, melting soft and burning hot inside, the rich sweet sauce makes the simple ingredient so tasty. Yummy.
Dengaku is the style of BBQ in Japan, and the sauce is called Dengaku-miso, commonly used on boiled or BBQ ingredients. The real sauce requires Hacho-miso, which really difficult to find outside of Japan. Instead I used Hoisin sauce which you'll be able to find at any Chinese glossary stores, but amazingly similar taste.
Unfortunately I had no chance to take photo of the real BBQ ones, it was too difficult to stop people eating them before taking any good shot. So this is a picture from the few left slices, I've repeated using a regular frying pan. Still, it was really good.

Ingredients:
1 pack Tofu (1 pack of Tofu makes 3 servings. Multiply by how much you want to prepare)

for Dengaku-miso sauce (easy amount to mix, for about 2-3 packs of Tofu):
2 Tbsp white miso
2 Tbsp Hoisin sauce
1/2 Tbsp soy sauce
2 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp mirin
(or 2.5 Tbsp sugar + 1 Tbsp sake, or 2.5 Tbsp sugar + 1 Tbsp water)
1 Tbsp sesame seeds

Required tools:
6 BBQ skewers

few kitchen papers

* 2 cutting boards - not too smooth ones

* a plate or kitchen towel

(* or instead, a large strainer, a large plate)

Some weight e.g. 2 coke cans

Methods:
1. Drain water from Tofu. This is a very common basic step for using Tofu when you want to use them for many recipes. Take out the Tofu from package, easily rinse under water.
Now prepare the platform to drain them. Place a cutting board just beside of your kitchen sink; one side to be over the edge of sink and elevate the other side few cm higher than the edge of sink using a plate (up-side down) or rolled up kitchen towel, so the cutting board makes a slope down to the sink. Now place Tofu on the cutting board, then place another cutting board over them, then place some weight - about 2 cans of coke.
1. Alternative step: If above step is difficult, instead wrap the Tofu by a kitchen paper, place it on a large strainer, place something flat like a plate larger than the Tofu, then place 2 cans of cokes.
2. Leave it for at least 30 min, ideally 1 hour. Pat any water around Tofu by new dry kitchen paper and place the Tofu on a cutting board.
3. Cut them into 3 long and thin slices.
4. Place one of the slices on cutting board, the largest surface up, then skew from the smallest surface using 2 BBQ skewers (see the picture for reference). It's easier to handle on BBQ if you make the skewers slightly open at the ending like a long V shape.
5. Prepare sauce. Mix all ingredients well in a small cup.
6. Place the skewed Tofu slices on BBQ - be careful not to turn around, leave them on for 10-15 minutes until the surface start to get slightly burned. Turn the side of Tofu time to time (just like any other BBQ things)
* For the top photo ones, I fried them on Teflon frying pan with high heat for about 15 minutes instead.

7. Place the Dengaku miso sauce over them. Some people brush the sauce on the Tofu and burn miso a bit on BBQ, I like it as the Photo with the miso totally soft. Just eat like any other BBQ things!

Alternative ingredients good with this sauce:
1. Aubergine - cut them into 6 slices, just like how you cut apples. Skew from the bottom of slice, where the skin is wrapping in curve, until top. BBQ in a same way as Tofu.
2. Leaks - cut it in to 3-4 cm longs, skew 5-6 of them from a side.  BBQ in a same way as Tofu.

手羽餃子 - Chicken wing gyoza

This is one of my most favourite dinner, the taste is guarantee great, even better than the ordinal Gyoza, just takes much care and time.

It looks like just a fried chicken wing, but the inside the bag of skin is full of Gyoza meat filled.

Just dip in the same Gyoza sauce and bite on. Can't forget the taste, can't give up making it even it takes so much effort & time. (It took me 2 hours...)

Ingredients:

about 12 chicken wings (we use only the wing tip part)

a) 200 g minced pork or chicken
a) 1/2 Tbsp ginger minced
a) 1.5 garlic cloves minced (I love a lot of garlic in but this is totally how much you can take)
a) 4 cm leak white part minced
a) 1/2 Tbsp soy sauce
a) 1/2 Tbsp sake
a) 1 tsp sesame oil
a)  salt & black pepper

toothpicks - as many as the chicken wings, plus few for spare

Serving sauce
Soy sauce & sushi-zu (1 : 1)
few drops of chilli oil (La-yu)

Method:

1. Mix all ingredients with a) above, leave it a side.

2. Prepare chicken wings. Firstly clean all wings under running water, take off any visible feather or the root remained.

3. Cut out the wings in to 2 parts. We need only the wing tip and the next section, not the meatiest near the body section (I usually use the remained sections for Karaage). Open the joint between the thickest part and the next one, hold the thicker side by your left hand, slide the knife along with the holding thick part - so keep the most of skin on the other side. If you slide the knife straight down along with the thick part, that should hit the joint cartridge and should be easy to cut into two pieces.

4. Take off bones from the next section. Basically the part becomes a bag for the minced meat. Using a sharp knife, slides down the skin and meat about 1cm from the cut off joint, so the junction of 2 thin bones appear. On the junction at just between those 2 bones, slice down the knife and cut off the junction connecting those 2 bones, so those 2 thin bones become disconnected each other and free to move independently. Push down the meat around the top further, trim a bit using knife if you need.

5. Now stand the section - the cut off joint up. There are 2 bones, a thin bone and an even thinner bone there. Pull and open those bones apart from each other, to about 180 degree, with sliding down the meat around the thinner bone. This shouldn't be too hard. Now twist and screw the thinner bone for 360 degree, then the bone will be totally free to take off.

6. Now thicker bone. The skin is connected to the bone at only one side like a line. All other part are with meat just hanging around that. So using the sharp knife, take off the skin connection along the bone until half of the bone length. Now hold the wing tip by your left hand, hold the bone on your right hand, then snap  the joint to front, back , up and down, then twist the bone for 180 degree - now the bone is totally free from joint and easy to pull off.

* If you think the steps until here are too hard, just make them Karaage, because the most painful part is after this. 

7. Prepare toothpicks and a small spoon handy. Each chicken wing now has a cavity to fill with the minced meat mixture. But those still have chicken meat until near the end of the skin bags. Using the small spoon, push off the meat around the entrance of the skin bag and make clear of meat for enough space to close them later. Then using the same small spoon, push enough meat mixture into the cavity - fill as much as you can but think you have to close at the end; the skin is flexible and not easy to break or explode during cooking.

8. Just like sawing the clothes, saw together the mouth of each bag by the toothpick, about 3 stitches, so the open part of bag is closed and the contents cannot come out. Be really careful for not stubbing your fingers.

9. Now easy part. On a frying pan, put about 1 tbsp vegetable oil. If you are using Teflon frying pan, you don't need any oil. Turn on the heat to medium high, place all wings - thicker skin side down. Fry them until the down side gets brown, and then turn them over.

10. Once the other side also get brown, pour about 1/2 cup water in the pan then cap it, turn down the heat to medium and keep cooking for about 10 min. 

11. Take off the cap and continue cooking until the water is mostly evaporated. Keep in mind the water will get reduce, but oil will come out from wings, so drain the oil out if you don't like them. 

12. Serve them with steamed rice. Take off the toothpicks before you dig in!

ひき肉となすのカレーライス - Japanese minced meat & aubergine curry

There is a huge difference between Japanese curry and Indian original curry. Japanese curry is much thicker like stew, mild or not spicy at all compare to any other curries, usually chunks of vegetables and meats are in and served with rice on a plate, garnished by some pickles.
This has a really good reason and history behind it.
Curry was introduced to Japan by the UK trading ship about 200 years ago. That curry was a British curry, the earlier adapted style from colonies, which was more like a mixture of stew and curry powder.
Then after that style is imported to Japan, that British version is adapted again; it has been thickened by the flour and served with rice.

The Japanese Curry Rice is one of the most popular meal in Japan, very close to Ramen.
To make Japanese Curry you don't use spices, you use "Curry roux"; it's a block of instant curry sauce.
There are 2-3 big food makers proving the roux and they are dominating JP market, and, they are all more or less same taste; this means, every family in Japan eat mostly same taste curry at home.
We do mix the different company's roux and make "home special" but that doesn't make that much difference, unlike between masala and tkika. Small percentage of families may add some additional things in it, but not the thing you may consider for making curry; soy sauce, dashi, mayonnaise, and most unusual one, chocolate.

At the end, the real variations are created by what is cooked in the curry sauce.
Most basic ingredients are chunk of: carrot, onion, potato and beef or pork stew meat.
My minced meat & aubergine curry is a kind of unusual variety in Japan, it's much quicker to cook than the regular style one but the taste has nothing to compromise compare to the regular ones.

Ingredients (for 4-6 people):
1 pack Japanese curry roux (better if you can have half pack each of any 2 kinds)
500g minced meat (beef, pork or chicken. No lam. I used pork this time).
1 large aubergine
1 medium onion minced
enough water as the curry roux package states.
3 Tbsp vegetable oil
(optional) 1 tsp sake
(optional) 1 tsp soy sauce


Methods:
1. Dice the aubergine into about 1cm cubes. Put them in a large bowl of cold water, place a plate in the bowl over the floating cubes and push in; so all cubes can sank in the water. Leave it for 10 minutes then drain them by a strainer.
2. Put a large pot on a hob with oil, then turn the hob to medium high heat. Fry the minced onions for 5 minutes until it start to get brown.
3. Put all minced meat, fry them together, separate the minced meat to grains. I like to add sake here because that can reduce meat strong smell, but that's totally optional. Cook until all minced meat change the colour and cooked.

4. Drain the water well and put all diced aubergine in the same pot, fry them together until aubergine cubes get soft, for about 10 min.

5. Pour water in the pot as your box of curry roux says, skim the scum for first few minutes and cook it for another 10 minutes. (Package may say to cook for 1 hour, don't worry, that's the time takes for cooking chunks of veggies and meats, not applicable to today's cooking)
6. Meanwhile, slice the curry roux. Each curry roux box comes with 2 packs of curry bars, each bar is ready to break in to 4 pieces, and most of package says you can just add them as how it is. Truce is, it doesn't melt well always, a remained piece of roux looks totally like a chunk of been in the curry sauce; if you even once hit that in your mouth then you wouldn’t complain for this step. Put the bar on a cutting board and slice them as thin as you can.

7. Add the sliced curry roux in the pot, immediately mix them well in to soup. Cook for another 10- 20 minutes, until the aubergine gets really soft.
8. Curry rice serving style: serve a small mountain of rice on one side, then serve the curry on the other side.

  

Spring Savoy Cabbage rolls in tomato sauce

The season of spring savoy cabbage is on, UK supermarkets are competing some extreme sale between them lately. The price is not the only thing getting my attention, but the colour of the cabbages have changed from the winter dark to bright green of spring, shouting out loud from the shelf to me. 

I love this cooking 'cause those rolls provide plenty of different vegetables and nutrition in one go, they are so tasty, pleasure to handle the all beautiful spring season colours, and at the end, it comes pretty economic (roughly about £3 for all?).

My cabbage rolls are to enjoy the cabbage. The layer of cabbages cooked soft and juicy, well absorbed the taste from the soup come out from the bit of beef makes us pure joy! 

Ingredients (for 8-9 rolls enough for 3-4 people):

250g minced beef (I use 12% fat or more, because that's the only fat comes out in this cooking and even you scoop them out during cooking)

1 medium size savoy cabbage

1 onion finely minced

1 small carrot finely minced (either by hand or food processor)

2 bunch of spring onion (green onion in US) sliced thin or minced by food processor

1 pointy bell pepper minced by hand - is much better taste for bell pepper

condiments for meat mixture

* 1/4 tsp grand nutmeg

* 1 tsp smoked paprika powder 

* 1/2 tsp dried thyme

* 1 tsp dried marjoram

* 1/2 tsp grand black pepper

* 1 tsp salt

* 1/2 cup of water from boiling cabbage

for sauce

- 1/2 can of chopped tomato

- 1/2 tsp dried thyme

- 1 tsp dried marjoram

- 1 tsp dried basil

- 1 bay leaf

- tsp sugar

- salt and black pepper to taste
- all remained water from boiling cabbage

(optional: some butter)

Method:
1. Prepare the cabbage. Rinse the cabbage then peel out the last one layer of dark outside leafs that not tightly closed to the cabbage, leave them aside.
2. Prepare a pot that the cabbage can fit easily in. Put the cabbage in the pot, pour in water, just to cover up near the top of the cabbage, then take the cabbage out. Put the pot on a hob and boil the water up.
3. Stub the stalk of cabbage by a cooking folk, that you can use as a handle of the cabbage. Dip the cabbage in the pot of boiling water, leave it for about 30 seconds - the cabbage leaf on outside become soft and easy to peel. Take the whole cabbage out on a large strainer, peel the softened leafs cut the leaf out using a knife at the near to the stalk. Repeat this process to peel off as many leafs as you can, until it get to very core, about 4-5cm radius ball. Keep the leaf in order of peeling - this will help you sorting them later. Cut the core out from the remaining stalk.
4. Once you peel them until the core, now boil the stalkside of each leafs in the boiling water for another 30 seconds. Keep the order of leafs but in other way around now - so the smallest ones goes to the bottom and the largest ones comes at the top of pile.
5. Boil also the core ball and the very outside leafs kept from step1 until it gets enough soft. Cut them in to mince.
6. Sort the leafs into individual roll set: On your cutting board or clean kitchen table, take the leafs from the top of the pile (means from the largest ones), deal them in to 8-9 piles - the number of rolls you want to make - like cards; deal the leafs up to the number, once you hit to the last one (8 or 9), then return back from the last one to 1st one in back order. Next line go up from the first one again, repeat until you deliver all leafs into piles. (This should give almost equal quantity and surface of cabbage for each rolls)
7. For each group of leafs, go through them one by one and trim the hard center vain of leaf (but keep the order of leafs): place the leaf outside up on a cutting board, slice out the center hard vain to nearly the leaf thickness using a sharp knife. Mince the sliced vain remains very thin and set aside with the minced core and outside leafs.
8. Make mixture of meat. Put the minced beef, the minced cabbage leafs from above, all other minced vegetables and all condiments for the meat except the water from boiling cabbage in a bowl. Mix them well using your hand; the mass should be hard and dry at this point, start adding the warm water remained from boiling cabbages little by little (if you forgot keeping it, don't worry but just use some warm water). Keep adding the water with mixing the meat, until the mixture get quite sticky and soft so you can make the mass together easily, up to about 1/2 cup.
9. In a bowl, roughly divide the meat mixture into number of rolls you are going to make. Take the group of leafs one by one, then fill the center smallest leaf with the divided meat mixture. Don't force to fill the all portion, the amount you cannot fit in to the smallest center leaf. You can make small meat balls with remaining and put them together later.

Isn't it so beautiful, just like blossoming a bunch of spring flowers?

10. Now rolling them. Place number of toothpicks handy. Take one group from them then take the center small leaf with meat mixture in your hand. Pull straight the leaf easily and wrap up the meat by the leaf: if you have some remained mixture and you think you can fit some more in the leaf without opening too much gap, add more mixture to form just fitting wrap. 

11. Open up the second leaf - the center stalk side top and inside up like picture, then place the first roll - opening gap side down,  stalk side up. By doing this, the stalk doesn't come over another stalk so it will be easier to roll, and also the layers of cabbage in the rolls get even when you cut. 

12. If you have enough width going around the core, tack up the side inward at the near end, hold them together then put on the third leaf in the same way. Continue this to use up all leafs from the group.

It's a bit tricky but try to make the rolls as tightly rolled as you can. 

12. At the end of rolling the last leaf, staple the leaf end by a toothpick. Basically stub from a side of center vain over the top leaf, push it through with the leaf under and push it out from other side of stalk. Be really careful not to stub your fingers!

* Extra step if you like a rich taste: you can easily fry them on a fry pan with some butter, until each side gets lightly brawn colour. I don't do this for spring cabbage 'cause I like the sweetness of the spring cabbages as it is. 

13. Once all rolls are done, place them stand and lined in a pot: the stalk end of leaf down. You need to select a pot just to fit them all; the tighter the better because it doesn't get lose during the long cooking. 

Look how pure spring colour they can be! Just feel pleasure looking at them in my pot.

14. Pour 1/2 can of chopped tomato and 1 tsp salt and some black pepper, pour the remained water from boiling the cabbage, then pour over cold water until just the height of rolls.

15. Cover the pot with the lid and put the pot on a hob with medium high heat. Once it start to boil, open the lid and skim the scum for about 5 minutes. If you don't like fat, then continue scoop them out whatever comes out for the next 10 minutes.

16. Add all remained condiments, turn the heat down to medium; to keep the pot simmering a bit hard with the lid. 

17. Keep cooking for about 1/2 hour, check the taste of salt and adjust to your taste, then keep cooking another 1/2 hours, until the sauce reduce to 1/4 in the pot and the rolls are braised with the sauce; if the sauce reduce too quickly, then add some more water and adjust the heat.

18. Once ready, take out the bay leaf. The rolls are very soft, so be extra careful when you pull them out from the pot. 

Serve them hot with some steamed rice or mashed potato, some sauce on them. I love them on some cuscus too. 

Don't forget to remove the toothpick before you dig in!

牛肉のたたき - Beef Tataki

Tataki is a type of Japanese cooking technique; roast only outside of fish or meat to give a nice combination of roasted aroma and fresh raw meat taste together.
You can imagine this is like a Japanese style carpaccio, mixed with the rare roast beef. But it’s more cooked than them because the meat is marinated in a sweet lemon and soy sauce.
Tataki looks as something special, but actually it's quite easy to do.
This is great match to sake as a nibbles, also this can be served as main dish with steamed rice.
I do this with just a regular roast beef meat chunk from any regular supermarket, but you can also do this with good sirloin steaks chunk; of course the taste gets even better along with the price, but not that much difference like when you use them for stakes.

Ingredients (for 2 people as main, or 4 people as starter)
500g beef for roast beef
2 bunch of spring onions (US: green onions)
1 lemon juice (it was 50 ml)
90ml water
30ml soy sauce
2Tbsp sugar
vegetable oil as you need

Methods
1. Slice all spring onions; thinner the better when you mix them with the sauce.
2. Clean meat. Take off the meat from the roasting net and discard the fat (you don't want this), then easily rinse the meat under running water.
3. If you look at the meat, you will see some lines between chunk of meats; basically the roast beef chunk which supper market usually sales comes with few tendon layer within it. Some parts just can separate by pulling off, some can't. Using a good sharp knife, cut out the chunks of meat along with those tendons.
4. Trim all tendons out from beef. If the chunks are still large, then cut along with beef meat string direction and make them into about 4cm thick/up to 6cm width chunks (Imagine, you will slice the meat diagonal to the meat strings direction at the end, and the slice will be 4x6cm rectangular shape).

* I don't discard those trims, cut them into very small bits and that's what I love to use for Sigureni recipe from Azlin this week.

5. Next prepare the sauce. Put water, soy sauce, sugar in a small sauce pan, put on a medium low heat and melt all sugar.
6. Squeeze the lemon, pour the juice into your serving dish. Once the above sauce is cooled down, then pour 2/3 of the sauce in to the same serving dish. (you want to keep the lemon still strong at this point.)

7. Start cooking the beef. Spread a little vegetable oil thinly on a non-stick fry pan, put that on high heat until the smoke start to come out. Place all meat chunks on the fry pan, fry all sides of meat until all sides get cooked easily. This will keep the nice juice of the meat inside the chunk.

8. Turn down the heat to medium then cook the 4 side of chunks that you can see the meat string line until it gets dark blown. When the meat is ready, you can feel the surface is enough hard, you can wobble the chunk to feel the center is not fully cooked, but the shape of chunk remain hard. It takes about 15 minutes.
9. Put the meat on a clean cutting board. Unlike the roast beef, you don't need to wait too long, just few minutes until it cool down to the temperature you can handle.

10. Slice them diagonal to the meat string lines, as thin as you can (about 2mm) then immediately put them into the serving dish where you prepared the lemon sauce earlier. Put all sliced spring onions then mix them well. Leave it for 10 minutes, until those sliced beef become completely cool.

Compare this picture with top one, the raw part of meat is marinated and cooked by lemon.

11. Pour in the remaining 1/3 sauce on the dish.
12. Serve it with some steamed rice.

* and this is the Sigureni I made from the trim - for me I prefer this part 'cause it gets crunchy.