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nourishing the body

greg

Shabu Shabu at home

It has been almost a year since I’ve made shabu shabu at home. Although I did report about a wonderful shabu shabu dinner I had in Japan in December. I actually made this meal a few weeks ago but am just getting around to blogging about it now. Please forgive me for being so late with my offering.

Shabu shabu is traditionally made with beef that is sliced paper thin. The name comes from the sound the beef makes as you swish it back and forth with your chopsticks in a pot of boiling broth. This is a wonderful family meal where everyone gets to share in cooking the meal at the table. My sirloin is not as marbled with fat as is usual for shabu shabu. I have some lean grass fed local beef that is still flavorful but also much healthier for you. Since the beef is only barely cooked, the texture still comes out tender even without the fat.
Shabu shabu also requires that you cook vegetables in the broth after you eat the beef. Here are bean sprouts, enoki mushrooms, shitake mushrooms, carrots, baby bok choy and napa cabbage ready to be cooked.
The table is all set with my nabe pot on the burner.

Before we sat down to eat the shabu shabu I fried up some frozen gyoza and served them with a spicy chili vinegar sauce.

The pot is heating up.
I have been soaking this kombu in the pot of water for a few hours to flavor the broth. This was removed once the pot came up to boiling.
I served two dipping sauces for my shabu shabu tonight. The first has soy, vinegar, green onions and grated daikon radish.
The second sauce is made from sesame paste, soy and vinegar.
We’ve eaten the meat and now it’s time for the veggies.

After you have had your fill of meat and vegetables, the broth that has been flavored even more intensely by all the food being cooked in it is used to prepare noodles. These udon noodles were made from scratch and cut just before cooking.
The udon is cooking nicely.
Yum! Comfort food all the way. Perfect on a cold winter’s evening.

Curried Cauliflower and Potato Soup

It’s like aloo gobi in a bowl. This curried cauliflower and potato soup turned out creamy and delicious.

Of course it starts with the spices. Toasting in the pan are cumin, corriander and cardamom.

These were ground up pretty finely into a spice mix.

Also flavoring the soup is some tumeric powder, mustard seeds, hing and (not shown) Madras curry powder.

Onions, garlic, ginger and a couple of medium potatoes (not shown) were cut up to be cooked with the cauliflower.

Here’s the big bad boy.

I first started with a hot pan and a couple teaspoons of oil. I added some mustard seeds and cooked them until they popped. First into the pan were the onions. Of course salt and pepper was added to season the dish at every step of the way.

The onions were followed by the garlic and ginger and after being sautéed for a couple of minutes the spices were added.

Next the cauliflower and potatoes.

Water was added to cover the vegetables.

Everything was simmered together until the vegetables were very tender.

A blender stick made quick work of puréeing the mixture.

Potato and Spinach Frittata

I have not really made a frittata before and I sort of followed this recipe I found for my first one last night which called for adding beer to the mix.

The frittata, of course, starts with potatoes. I sliced about 6 good sized potatoes into 1/4 inch slices using my mandolin. These were tossed with one medium onion, some olive oil, salt and pepper.

This is a good 3 handfuls of baby spinach.
I took a large skillet and cooked the potatoes and onions in olive oil for about 5 or 6 minutes until they just started to get some brown color. Once things were getting to be pretty brown on the bottom of the pan I added about 1/2 of a bottle of a dark cream stout. In hindsight I should have used a light beer as the original recipe called for. The dark stout added just a bit too much bitterness to the dish and the dark color made the eggs in the end look dirty brown. Tasted good but certainly could have looked better.
After the beer was added the potatoes and onions were simmered with stirring every now and then until they were cooked through – about 10 minutes. I added a little water along the way to keep the pan from drying out and scorching. Once the potatoes were tender, the spinach was tossed in.
Immediately after the spinach was added, 8 beaten eggs were poured in and distributed evenly through the potatoes and the whole mess was topped with a cup of shredded cheddar cheese. This was simmered on the stove for just a few minutes and then placed in a preheated 450 °F oven with the broiler on.
After 6 or 7 minutes under the broiler, the eggs were set and the top was beginning to brown.
I garnished these simply with some green onions.
I have to say the frittata turned out pretty tasty and everyone in the family got to enjoy some!

Bread Oven

My wife knows I always love to get cooking related gifts. And with all the bread making we’ve been doing lately she went out and got a great gift for my birthday a couple weeks ago. This is something I have been wanting for a long time but haven’t taken the time to go out and get. I’m talking about unglazed quarry tiles to make a bread oven!

These tiles came from a local flooring store in town. It is important to use unglazed tiles to avoid any offgassing of various chemicals used in the glaze during heating. The store even looked up the MSDS (material safety data sheet) on these tiles to make sure there was nothing toxic in them.

Of course I tried out some of our 5 minute bread dough as soon as I could. The tiles worked perfectly!


One of the reasons I wanted the tiles to replace my standard pizza stone was the size. The tile lined oven has enough room to bake more than one loaf at a time. And the pizza stone was too small to bake a large pizza like the one shown here.

Believe it or not, the
Roasted red peppers and kalamata olives were great together.


See how nicely it fits int he oven?


The 5 minute dough makes great pizza crust!

My forray into 5-minute bread

I’m sure you’ve heard about the book ‘Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day‘ by Zöe Francois and Jeff Hertzberg. There methods have some similarity to the no-knead bread method – like no kneading – but there are some significant difference. A high hydration dough is made simply by mixing the ingredients and storing the dough in the fridge for up to two weeks. Actually waiting a few days before baking improves the flavor immensely and it makes for quick work to make all kinds of bread creations. I’ve been playing around with the basic recipe (1.5 T yeast, 1.5 T salt, 3 C water, 6.5 C all purpose flour) and having some fun making breads and more.

The dough you see on the peel below was made with the basic recipe but I used 1.5 C whole wheat flour and only 5 C of all purpose flour. I cut off a pound or so of the dough and pulled it into a ball forming a skin on top by stretching the dough underneath.

After raising for a couple of hours, the boule was dusted with flour and scored in a scallop shape.

Here’s the result after about 25 minutes in a 500 °F oven on my pizza stone.

I was very pleased with the texture. The crust was chewy and not too hard and the inside was moist and tender. There was a distinct flavor of the whole wheat flour but it was not tough at all when used in this small proportion.

Here’s another one in a batard shape. This dough had 2.5 C of whole wheat flour and 4 C of all purpose flour.

It baked up nice. It still maintained a pretty tender texture inside but it was more wheaty than the prior batch of dough.

You can do all kinds of things with this dough. Here is a flatbread I made with the whole wheat dough. I just stretched it out, brushed it with extra virgin olive oil and topped it with some good Bulgarian feta cheese and kalamata olives.

It didn’t last long!

Please stay tuned for more bread escapades.