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.

雲白肉 - Yun bai rou - Chinese pork belly slices & パタン - Patan - Dipping garlic noodles

Today 2 dish in one go: Yun bai rou and Patan. Both of them are kind of junk food, awfully indulge you but I cannot label it with "healthy food" ever.

Patan is like an oriental peperoncino, served as a Tsuke men (dipping ramen).  This was a dish introduced in a Japanese drama call "Kodoku no Gurume (lonely gourmet)". The story's about a mid-age business man; one every story, he goes to different restaurant on his lunch break, alone. A very unique drama, the story is just about the food: all through the show, he comments about how the taste of his meals quietly in his mind, along with the long shot of each food and how he eats.

My family sent that to me but the drama is a killer; just indulge my appetite but I'm not in Japan, I can't go to the restaurant to try... I just had to make it up.
So this Patan recipe is totally my own creation based on my imagination from the drama, became one of the most demanded meal at my home lately.

To make the Patan, I need some pork soup, that also comes with this very nice boiled pork belly dish call Yun bai rou. Originally a typical Sichuan cousin, which imported and became popular in Japan.
Yun bai rou means "meat that white as a cloud"; it should be sliced thin as a thin cloud, but my family likes it a bit thicker than that. The sauce contains Tian Jiang you I introduced in the last post, it is really a great match to this dish.



Ingredients
for Yun bai rou (picture is a half of all I made, all gone by 3 people here):
500g a Brock of Pork belly - chose the one flat, equally spread the white fat through the layers, not too thick.
2 slice ginger (with skin but cleaned)
5cm leak (green part)
1 garlic crushed
1.8 litter water

Sauce & garnish:
1/2 cucumber (skin it, take off center seed and sliced thin)
2 Tbsp Tian Jiang You
2 Tbsp say sauce
1 Tbsp white vinegar
1 garlic grand or squeezed
some chili oil if you like it even more spicy

for Patan (for 3-4 people)
6 servings of medium egg noodles
(I use Instant one today, can be raw can be frozen, 2 serving per person for this recipe cause it's never enough for my family, you can have 1 or 2 up to you appetite)
5 garlic cloves crushed and chopped
1cm leak, white part - chopped (forgotten in the picture...)
1 Tbsp soy sauce
1 Tbsp sake
1 Tbsp sesame oil
1 Tbsp salt for soup


Method
Prepare Yun bai rou:
1.Put the pork belly block, ginger a crushed garlic and the green part of leak (cut in halves) in a large pot, with about 1.8 litter of water, bring it to boil then turn down the heat to medium and keep simmering the pot.

2. Skim the scums and keep boiling the pork for about 1 hour, until the water reduce to 1/2. Take out the pork (don't drain the soup out!) and leave them aside.

3. Mix all sauce ingredients. The grand garlic makes the sauce spicy so check the taste before adding any chili oil if you prefer.
4. Cut cucumber in slices, pile it at the center of your dish.
5. Once the pork gets enough cool to handle, slice them - as thin as you can is the proper way, my family prefer it about 2 mm thick. I also trim the skin for my hubby and leave them for my son and I - we love the crunchy skins on.
6. Line up the slices of boiled pork belly around the cucumber, serve with the sauce.

*I usually finish this first then keep it in refrigerator until Patan is ready.

Prepare Patan
1. Prepare the soup first. Strain the soup from the pork belly above to a smaller pot, add 1 Tbsp salt then keep boiling to reduce it until 2/3. Leave it aside.

2. Chop the crushed garlic and leak.

3. Boil enough water as your noodle's package states: the each package of medium egg noodles sold in UK are relatively small, we can have 2 servings per person easily. It's totally up to you how much you boil.

4. Boil a large pot of hot water, put those instant noodles and boil for - the length the package states.

5. Drain the noodles to a strainer, now splash the sake and soy sauce on the noodle in the strainer. Mix them easily using a folk or chopsticks.

6. Now the finishing part: you'll do 2 things in once: heat up the soup again while frying the noodles.

In a wok or a large frying pan which can fit all noodles, put all sesame oil, chopped garlic and leak, heat up the oil on pan for just until garlic start to smell then stop the heat.

7. Place all noodles in the pan, just mix with the garlic and oil. If your noodles are dry and difficult to handle, add extra sesame oil about 1 Tbsp.

8. Serve the soup in a small cup, each portion of noodles in a large bowl.

How to eat:

You can eat the noodles as it is, you can dip it into the soup, you can put the soup on the noodles, that's up to you. I love the combination of the noodles dipped in the hot soup and cold pork belly going together.

甜醤油 - Tian Jiang You - Chinese sweet aromatic soy sauce

This is one of the best useful Chinese base sauce.
It has a great aroma, similar to Chinese 5 spices but even better to me.

In the next post I'll go through a Chinese cousin that is quite popular in Japan - 雲白肉 "Yun bai rou". This sauce is must thing for the recipe.
But not only that, I used this sauce for fried rice, fried chicken, BBQ ribs sauce, boiled broccoli etc usually mix with soy sauce, sake, Shal Hsing rice wine etc.
One spoon of this make any simple stir fry to add some real Chinese flavor.
The quantity makes a lot to use, usually I make this quantity and keep a bottle of the sauce in refrigerator all time; it can store up to 3 months without problem (I believe it can last longer, but it never remained that long in my home).

Ingredients
200 ml soy sauce
100 ml sake
120g sugar
* 2 thumb size orange or clementine peel - dried for few days (or use dried orange when you forgot to eat...)
* a half  thumb size piece of Chinese cinnamon stick (substitute by a regular cinnamon stick but just a long one peel should do)
* 3 pot of star anise,
* 10 - 15 Sichuan pepper corns
* 2 slice of ginger (with skin but cleaned)
3-4 cm leak (white part)

Note: basically same amount of all listed with *

By the way, that's my 200ml coffee cups. I know it is just 200ml 'cause I once checked using real majoring cup. Now I don't need the ugly majoring cup anymore 'cause I know this works.

Method
1. Put all in a pot and put on medium high heat, mix them using spoon and make sure all sugar melt in the sauce.
2. Turn down the heat to low once it start to boil.
3. Continue cooking until the sauce reduce to about 60%, the sauce should be thick as gum syrup.

4. Stop the heat, strain the sauce to a clean container, close the lid and wait until it gets totally cool down.
5. Store the container in a refrigerator; you can keep it up to 3 months without any problem.

  

Sea Bream Sashimi

One of my pressure cooking is to make sashimi from a fresh fish, which not always there and affordable.

My family members are trained to check fish whenever they goes to market. My hubby found a fresh and good price sea beam from ASDA yesterday. Sea beam is the one of the safest fish using for sashimi. According to many authorities, there is minimal chance to contain anisakis or any helminths. Also there are varieties of ways that you can lightly cook them to enjoy the taste, and in the same time, avoiding any contamination depends on the freshness of the fish.
I'm not a professional or sushi master; my sashimi does not look great, and when I do sashimi, I regret I waste a lot on the bones than the one real professionals can do.
So what?
I really wanna eat sashimi!

*This recipe is totally on your own risk to find good fish and do by yourself.

The picture is all I could get from one small Sea Bream

Ingredients
1 Sea Bream (how to check the good fresh fish here)
salt - as much as you need

Sauce
Soy sauce
Wasabi

Tools
Good Japanese knife
Flat cutting board
a lot of kitchen papers

Method
1. Clean the scales and guts; you can ask store to do this, but make sure it is done well at home again. Anyway wash again the fish under running water, make sure there is no scale remained outside, no blood or guts remained inside.
2. Now cutting process. It is really difficult to describe in writing, but I'll try. Basically you'll make the fish into 3 pieces first; 2 meat fillets and one center bone piece (with head and tail together).
Sea beam has very hard bones at the center of each side, so firstly you will make slice from top and bottom of fish.
Few reminders: Japanese knife is for pulling to cut, not pushing. Also you need to avoid cutting a same place many times - that makes fish meat just messy (but still edible).
3. Firstly easy side. Place the fish head down tail top, showing the right side of face up (hope you can imagine this)

Along with top fins, slide in your knife from near to tail. You must feel the bones under down side of blade, which will be your guide. Slide in the knife until near to the center of fish, you must find a line of hard bones there. Along the center born and line of bones under your knife, slide the knife to your side until head of fish, so make a quarter slice of the fish meat still attached by center.

4. Now turn around the fish up-side-down (not flip) then you can see the cavity that made to take off guts. Put the knife tip in the cavity, then find the ending over the bottom fin, start to slide the knife into the meat.
Again you should be able to find the hard bone bead under your knife, slide into center then will find the same center hard line of bones too. Slide the blade along the bones until near to tail, just like other side.

5. Now one side of the fish has a fillet still connecting by the center bone. At the tail side, the center bones are not so strong. Push through your knife - blade facing to head side.

Push in your left hand fingers between bones and fillet, hold the tail with the loop, then cut through the center line of bones along with the both side slides. Some part is really hard, you need to make it happen.

6. Once you could cut the center bone apart, then cut off the fillet under side fins and also at the tail. Wash the fillet wall and put on a dry kitchen paper.

7. Basically do same thing at the other side. Now you should have 2 fillets and center bone part. The bone part is really good to make fish Dashi. Salted well, leave it for 1/2 hour then wash well and put into oven. Making miso soup with that bones are excellent, call Ushio jiru (sea soup).
8. Cleaning the lib bones. The fish lib bones are connecting with center line bones at this stage. you need to slide in your knife under the lib bones, slide down to edge of fillet along with the bone, then cut off the connection to center. Remember, main purpose is to take off the bones, take as many times you need to retry this. Anyway the fish doesn't have much meet around there, but usually that's the really tasty part. If you cannot do well, cut tit off the part and use it for soup.

9. Now skinning. This requires a bit of Technic. Place the fillet skin down on your cutting board. Hold just a skin at the tail side, place the knife just over the skin. Waggling only first few times to make sure you separate the skin and meat; then push down the knife flat over the cutting board and skin, pull the skin from left side by your left hand. More than you think this goes easy.

10. Next step call sakudori -to take sahimi blocks. The center line bone part of Sea beam is not possible to use for sashimi. Make fillet straight so the bones are lined straight, then cut the fillet aside of the center bone line. Turn it around and do the same to take off only the center part, so it become 2 saku (sashimi blocks) and center bone line piece. Discard this part, has too many small bones for even soup.

11. Wash again the fillet under running water and put on a new dry kitchen paper, take off all liquid.
12. Now this step is called shime (cured). Sea bream is the kind of fish has minimal chance of finding anisakis or any helminths in it, yet I recommend to do this for home cooking. This process also makes the fish meat springy and better taste for sashimi. Place them on a clean dish, then cover by enough salt that you can feel the salt layer on the surface of fish. leave the fish for 1/2 - 1 hour (depends on the size of fish). If this process is successful, the fish meet should get lightly harder than before. After next step when you slice, there should not be totally soft part remained. Wash out the salt under a bit of running water then put on a new dry kitchen paper and pat them well.
13. Now the last step, to cut the saku in to sashimi.
*You must have cleaned your cutting board and knife that you used before this step very well.
Place the fillet - tail side on your left, then slice them in about 0.5cm narrow slices. Remember, always only pulling the knife; if you cannot cut it in once then take out the blade from between meat then place the kinfe back again so you can pull the blade and slice it further.

14. Serve them in line and garnish with some veges, eat with wasabi and soy sauce. Nice to have with a cup of white steamed rice. Important, drink Sake with it (by this, surely no bug can survive *if* any could remained).

* If you find them not firm enough by the end of step 10, I strongly recommend giving up the fish for eating by sashimi, but make them cook as below:
*Ceviche*: Follow the step until 13, then marinate them with sliced onion, green bell peppers, lime juice and sugar. After leaving them over night the meat will be totally cooked by lime.
*Tai-cha*: again follow the step until 13 then place them on strainer in a single layer, pour over boiling hot water. turn in over and do the same. place the slices over your steamed rice, then a bit of wasabi and soy source, threaded leak and sesame seeds. pour over tea (sen-cha) or boiling water just to cover half of your rice.