Easter Weekend – 28/03/16

Ah, the traditional four days off with nothing but DIY, bad weather and expensive chocolate going on.  It’s a beautiful thing.

Our non-food DIY involves trying turn a one metre deep, 50 cm wide cupboard into a useable space.  For those needing more useful measurements, that’s longer than I can reach and slightly narrower than a Dan.  Results will not be announced on this blog.  This is for food DIY.

On the Friday we had Mama Lowe and the Bratling over for lunch.  They came bearing gifts.  Bottle shaped ones from Mama Lowe, and a small golden box of delights from the Bratling.

The Bratling is a very accomplished baker of sweet confections.  We believe she may be solely responsible for the rise in diabetes in the City of London.  She also manages to carry cakes, undamaged, into the City, at rush hour.  Mad skills.

In the box were, what can be described as, homemade Reese’s peanut butter cups, but with decent chocolate.  Three layers of them.  They didn’t last the day.

We rewarded this generosity by feeding them the proper version of green beans and mince, but with a mild chilli rather than our usual scorcher.  Then we went for a walk in the very un-british sunshine via some alehouses and the Bratling introduced me to Fentiman’s rose lemonade.  Like liquid Turkish delight.

Saturday, we used up the remains of the blue cheese from the steak sandwich last weekend, and a stray apple, to make a, not very attractive, lunch on toast.

It was very tasty.  It would have been even better with pear, but we only had apples, so *shrugs*.

After that it all went very Japanese.

By some miracle of coincidence Dan suggested we do the Japanese section of the “Around the World” at the same time as one of my best friends has been out in Tokyo.  Between her Facebook posts and the descriptions in the book we’ve been on a massive Honeymoon nostalgia trip.

Saturday dinner was the recipe that made Dan go, “That.  Let’s do that.”  It was “Seared Beef, Shaved Onion and Miso” and it was attempt to mimic Hida beef.

Hida beef is identical to Wagyu beef, but from Takayama, not Kobe.  Here are some gratuitous shots of Takayama, also home to an awful lot of Sake brewers and where we discovered how complex the drink could be.

We did try Hida beef.  It was presented to us raw with a tiny paraffin stove, on which we cooked it our self.  Apologies for the terrible photo, but the pink mottled mass in the middle is the beef.  Which gives you an idea of how fat marbled the beef is.  It is like nothing else.  This causes a few issues if trying to replicate it at home.

Actually that image is so bad we’re including a stock photo of what it should look like from a Japanese tourism website about Takayama.

The recipe required rib-eye steak, which is not our usual cut of choice, but it does have a more even fat distribution than rump, bringing it marginally closer to the Hida.  We shallow fried some very thinly sliced onions, set them to one side and wiped the pan out.  Dan was a little upset not to be using his trusty griddle pan, but the recipe wouldn’t have worked with the ridged base.

The steaks got a quick one minute sear on each side before getting sake and diluted miso added.  It’s an interesting method that means the steak gets slightly pouched.  The steak got another minute on each side and then rested for a couple of minutes.  We sliced the steaks, poured over the miso sauce and finished with the onions.

It was very tasty.  Not sure it was Hida, but we will definitely do it again.  It does need carbs though, which led to a hasty sprint in the very heavy rain to get some bread for Dan.  To which he added hummus.

So tasty, but not exactly filling.

Sunday lunch was “Rising Sun Salad”, a delicious, spicy, massive salad, with carrots, radishes and shitake mushrooms.  The mushrooms are cooked in sesame oil with a sake and mirin sauce.  We modified the recipe slightly to make use of home grown produce.  The recipe required 175g of spinach, which we couldn’t quite manage.  So we made up the mass with chard and beet tops.  It worked quite nicely.

The dressing was particularly interesting as it included crushed salted peanuts, adding an element of extra crunchiness.  Dan put an awful lot of his salad in to the remains of the bread we got last night, but I ate it neat.

For dinner we continued with the Japanese theme (last dish we promise) and made “Sesame Sweet & Sour Aubergines”.  This is incredibly intense, and to do the Japanese justice, usually wouldn’t be served on its own or in such large quantities.  This kind of thing would usually be served as one small dish among many.  Below is an image of one of the set meals we had in Japan, just as an indication of scale.

The aubergine recipe has wiped us out of rice vinegar and left us with only Tesco mirin, so we really need to go to the Chinese supermarket before we do any more Japanese food.  We roasted the aubergines in a sesame seed/ginger/mirin/rice vinegar/light soy sauce/honey mixture and served it with plain sushi rice.  It was really tasty.  And will also be our dinner tonight.

Today we are returning to our green and pleasant land with cheese and bread and pickle.  Dan has made “Beer Bread” using a Paul Hollywood recipe.  The silver fox does make good bread.  As indicated by the name this bread contains beer.  Dan used Adnams Broadside, his favourite beer, so this bread has no excuses.  Nowhere to run.

This bit of the blog is pretty much live.  So I’ve just amused myself greatly by telling Dan to “Get back in the kitchen and make me a sandwich”.  We’re not sure we need an image of a cheese and pickle sandwich, so we’re going to eat sandwiches made of homemade bread, homemade pickle and shop bought cheese.  Dan needs to up his game on the cheese front.  The bread is tasty though, so we forgive him.