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Saturday, October 26, 2013

Mizutaki of a sorts

After enough time, of eating ridiculous food, it was time to make something a little more homey. And since I was going by the Japanese food store, I stopped in to grab a few items. Mizutaki was on my mind, this is a fairly simple dish, that ends up being quite a bit more than one might think, for a boiled dinner. I secured some veggies, and some shaved pork loin. I figured that along with my staples of shiromiso, shoyu, rice vinegar and rice, and I would be in business.

The vegetables were an odd blend, basically what looked good at the market. Some Nappa cabbage, some green onions, some sweet peppers, and some Maitake mushrooms (Hen of the Woods). These were simply broken down into small chunks that would be easily handled with hashi.

The veggie players

The pork was rinsed, which aids in separating the very thin slices. And yes, I could have sliced them myself, but, this was easier. The meat would be added last, and one of the beauties of shopping at the Japanese food store, is that they have small chunks of beef fat, wrapped up for sale, that I was able to use, in a manner similar to Sukiyaki, to grease the pan.

Shaved pork loin, sure, I could have done this by hand

The pan duly greased, the scallions were quikly fried, as well, the stems of the nappa cabbage. When that was all about ready, I added the rest of the veggies for just a quick few minutes, then drizzled about 1/2 teaspoon of shoyu and a sprinkle of sugar, over the veggies, then poured water, just plain water over the entire pan until everything was covered.

Seconds before the water

Once the water is coming to a simmer, the veggies will wilt, and the pork will cook very quickly. Don't want to simmer for more than a few minutes. This would be complimented with a dipping sauce, and I am not at all sure this is traditional, although it was for my family, consisting of mayonnaise, shiro miso, rice vinegar, shoyu and I add some rayu (I use a Togarashi pepper blend spice infused sesame oil). This is about equal parts of the mayo and miso, with just a dash of the other ingredients to smooth things out. I decided to serve this with a chawan of Hijiki-flavored rice.

Din-din!

Oh, and those noodles, those are from a little experiment which worked out great. I tried making my own udon, which worked out fantastically. More on that later.

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