Sendai Beef, and I do mean beef

On Monday I had the good fortune to be treated to a very nice Sendai meal. Even in a small country like Japan regional cuisines abound. In Sendai the local favorite is Sendai beef. Of course they try to rival Kobe beef and I have to say my meal I had recently with my hosts in Sendai was incredible. They brought me to a restaurant that specialized in Sendai beef cooked Korean style on a table gas flame grill. They eat many parts of the cow here and one of the most prized parts here in Sendai is the tongue. Here you can see beef tongue being grilled. I found the taste to be quite good but the texture was a little tough.

After the tongue was all gone, they brought out a plate of nicely marbled meat. This was more to my liking and it was tender and delicious.

Now the thing that makes beef tender and tasty is how well marbled it is with fat. Take a look at the fine grain marbling of this shoulder cut of beef. It was melt in your mouth tender!

Next came the ribs. These were also quite good.

After all that meat I thought we were done until they brought out yet another plate. I said they eat all parts of the animal. This is marinated liver and intestines. They also tasted pretty good but I'm not much of a liver eater. I found the intestines to be very chewy. I guess it's good exercise for your jaws.

Sendai Eats

On Sunday I traveled from Narita to the Tokyo station and then took a shinkansen fast train to Sendai. Here is the local Narita station on a beautiful sunny morning

Here is the Tokyo station shinkansen platform. See everyone queuing up for their cars? You have to know the Japanese system in order to understand it. Instead of questioning it you jut have to go with the flow and everying is ok.


On the way to Sendai it is apparent that every inch of space is utilized in Japan.

Near Sendai you an see mountains in the distance.

They are crazy for this game here.

This is a food blog, after all. So I guess I should talk about some food. Below the Sendai train station there are many restaurants. I found one in particular that did not have a picture menu. I had to drag my server outside to point at the food I wanted in order to place my order. As you can see I found some pretty good shrimp tempura and noodle soup for a very reasonable 880 yen. That's less than $10 US. Pretty good deal.

Onigiri

I've just arrived in Japan for a two week trip. I am looking forward to many wonderful Japanese meals while I'm here. But after being up for 24 hours and finally getting to my hotel jetlagged and stuffed full of awful airline food, I was not in the mood for a fancy restaurant meal. Fortunately the Japanese have convenience stores on just about every corner. I grabbed a quick snack before I passed out from jetlag. A Sapporo and a couple of onigiri hit the spot. Onigiri is a rice ball, usually stuffed with something, wrapped in a crispy sheet of seaweed. The packaging is ingenious as it has layers of plastic to separate the nori from the rice so that it does not get wet and soggy. You peel the package open from top to bottom then pull the two corners and the plastic pops off. You end up with a perfectly wrapped onigiri. I had one with shrimp and one with tuna inside. Wash that down with some good Japanese beer and you can't ask for much more.

Szechuan Green Beans with Pork

I think stir fried green beans are my all time favorite dishes and they are so easy to make. This Szechuan inspired dish is not too hard to make. I started by quickly steaming some green beans in a hot pan with a splash of water and a cover just until they turned bright green. That takes only a minute. You don't want to overcook them. Once flash steamed the beans are quickly cooled in cold water and drained. I like to precook the beans a bit as it makes it easier to stir fry without burning them. Next I took some chopped pork and seasoned it with salt, pepper and Szechuan peppercorn. I added some chopped garlic and ginger to the meat. I heated my wok until it was almost smoking, added some oil and threw in a half teaspoon of red chili in oil. This was the kind of chili that is like red pepper flakes that have been cooked in oil and placed in a jar. The meat was added to the wok and it was fried with constant stirring just until cooked.

The meat was removed from the pan and set aside.

The wok was heated again and the beans were tossed in. The beans were seasoned with just a dash of salt and pepper. They were stir fried for 3-4 minutes until they started to get browned on the sides. I like to add my ginger and garlic near the end so it doesn't burn. So, once the beans were almost ready I tossed in more garlic and ginger. This was stirred for just a few moments and the meat was added back into the pan. A teaspoon of garlic chili paste and a splash of soy sauce. That's it! Serve hot over rice.

Leftover Turkey Soup

On a cold November day after Thanksgiving, nothing is better than a warm hearty bowl of turkey noodle soup. The roasted turkey carcass was converted into nectar of the gods and the noodles were homemade. Thick, rich and creamy, this was the perfect thing to warm the soul. Not much too it, really. I cooked all the leftover turkey bones and carcass with carrots, celery and onions to make the broth. Strained it off. Peeled whatever meat was left on the bones off and cooked it all together with more fresh vegetables and noodles.

Divine Dining Redux #5 - Blueberry Lavender Ice Cream

I have an on-line friend from California who contributes regularly to the recipes and cooking forums over at Gardenbuddies.com. This year she has started her own fantastic blog where she shares her little piece of heaven in California. If you haven't seen Jain's Once in a Blue Moon, you MUST. Last year on Gardenbuddies she shared a recipe for ice cream made from fresh lavender and blueberries. Can I say, this recipe is truly divine? The perfect ending for my Divine Dining dinner. Another Gardenbuddies contributor, Mary, has posted her recipe on her outstanding blog, Once Upon a Plate. You can find all the recipe details there. I only made slight changes.

It starts with 1 cup of blueberries. I used frozen blueberries. Fresh or frozen, it doesn't really matter. They are both excellent. These are cooked with sugar and just a bit of water until the blueberries begin to pop open.

Once the blueberries have broken down I pureed them in a blender and strained it using a fine sieve. The blueberry liquid was returned to the sauce pan. Recipes call for just the flowers but I didn't have enough flowers in my garden so I just chucked in lavender leaves as well. This was cooked gently for a few minutes ton infuse the lavender flavor into the blueberry syrup. This was strained once again and vanilla and cinnamon were added.

Once the blueberry syrup was well chilled, half and half was added and the mixture was frozen in the ice cream maker.

Divine Dining Redux #4 - Meatballs in a Creamy Mushroom Sauce

It's been two months since my Divine Dining dinner and I have yet to post all the details of that wonderful meal. I can't believe I've let this lag so long. I have another dinner to tell you about too so let me finish this up so I can move on. Let's talk about the main course we enjoyed back in September. I served a homemade meatball on top of a bed of garlic rutabaga and potato mash with a rather simple sage-infused creamy mushroom sauce. They were excellent if I do say so myself and really not hard to make.

The meatballs were made from a mixture of ground beef and ground pork. I used 2 pounds of beef and 1 pound of pork. To this I added 2.5 cups of bread crumbs, 4 cloves of chopped garlic, 8 chopped sage leaves, 1 cup loosely packed fresh parsley, salt, pepper and Italian herb seasoning to taste. I also accentuated the flavors with a dash of worschester sauce, a dash of nuoc mam Vietnames fish sauce. This sauce smells really strong but you don't notice it in the dish. It just ads a dimension to the overall flavor that is almost imperceptible. Don't be afraid of nuoc mam. Finally I added a dash of hot sauce. I used a homemade habanero sauce I had on hand.

It couldn't be simpler. I just mixed all these ingredients together well in my KitchenAid and formed good good-sized meatballs by hand. They were placed on a baking sheet and cooked in a hot (425 °F) oven until browned. Be careful not to overcook them as they could get dried out.

The sauce was made by first sautéing chopped mushrooms, onions and garlic. You can use as much or little as you like of these ingredients. I don't recall exactly my proportions but I guess I used one small package of white mushrooms, one small onion and 3-4 cloves of garlic. Season with salt and pepper as these are cooking down. Once the mushrooms and onions were softened, I added a healthy branch of sage to the pan and added heavy cream to cover the mushrooms. This was cooked for just a few minutes until the sauce thickened a little bit. You could added white wine to this dish also. That would be good.

I was fortunate this year to have a bumper crop of rutabagas in my garden. I love the combination of this hearty root vegetable with potatoes. I just diced up both the rutabas and potatoes and boiled them until tender. To that was added a healthy dose of roasted garlic, milk and cream, salt, pepper and butter. Mash just like you would do to the potatoes.

Lamian Noodles, sort of

Lamian (also called la mien) are hand-pulled Chinese noodles. I have been fascinated with the plethora of youtube videos showing Chinese artisans stretching and pulling these noodles. I so wanted to try this myself. The dough is seemingly simple but if you don't have the right ratio of gluten in the flour it will never have the right stretchy consistency to pull the noodles no matter how much you knead it. It also needs a pretty high hydration to be pliable enough to stretch. I tried this just using all purpose flour but it was not stretchy enough. I need to get some lower-gluten pastry or cake flour to make these noodles. I resorted to rolling out the dough and cutting the noodles with a knife. They turned out really tasty but I still want to try pulling them some day.

I made the dough using about 3.5 oz of all purpose flour and 2 oz of water. The dough was kneaded for about 25 minutes the allowed to rest for a few hours. It was kneaded by hand again for 20 or so minutes but it just wouldn't become stretchy and relaxed enough to pull. It was silky smooth though and made for a great texture in the final product.

I made this soup very simply. I used a Korean beef dashi powder to make a broth and cooked some sliced carrots and celery in the broth for just a few minutes before serving. The noodles were cut and immediately thrown into a pot of salted boiling water. They were cooked for about 3 minutes, strained out and placed into large bowls. The soup was ladelled on top of the noodles. Meanwhile I quickly stir fried some thinly sliced sirloin tip, garlic and a bit of chili sauce. This was placed on top of the soup. It was YUMMY, filling and perfect for a cold winter's day.

Divine Dining Redux #3 - Creamy smooth gazpacho

When most people here in the US think of gazpacho, they think of a chunky, tomatoey, thin cold substance that reminds me of bland salsa. However, the authentic dish in Spain is nothing like that. It is creamy, and rich, and delicious. What makes it so? Two things that have been neglected here: bread and olive oil. Let me tell you how gazpacho should be.

First, let me give credit where credit is due. I got this recipe from Lynne Rossetto Kasper's America Public Media radio show, The Splendid Table. It was passed to her by David Rosengarten who was a guest on her show recently. David's recipe can be found here in its entirety. I doubled his recipe and it was more than enough!

I started with about 4 oz of day old French bread. This was ripped into pieces and soaked with cold water for a couple of minutes. The water was squeezed out. The bread is important as it helps to thicken the soup.

Next I chopped up about a pound of ripe garden fresh tomatoes, a medium sized sweet onion, about a cup and a half of cucumber (peeled and seeded), a large green bell pepper and a large red bell pepper.

Everything was placed in the blender and 2 tsp of sherry vinegar was added. The mixture was puréed while pouring in 1/2 cup of good extra virgin olive oil. That makes it rich and creamy.

Once puréed, the mixture was seasoned with salt and pepper and then strained through a seive. The soup was chilled well before serving. I garnished it with more of the basil oil I described in my last post.

Divine Dining Redux #2 - Linguini a la Carbonara

Thanks everyone for being so patient as I navigate my busy life. I promised to be back with details about my dinner so here you go.

My second course was a pasta dish. I was inspired to make a carbonara based on a post over at Peter Minakis' Kalofagas Greek food blog. If you haven't been there before, you are missing out.

I followed his recipe pretty much as written except I doubled it. Instead of Romano cheese I used parmigiano reggiano. I did use pancetta. Worth the extra cost, definitely.

Ingredients (four small portions)

Linguini (I used a good artisan dried linguini from the market ~4 oz)
4 egg yolks
1/3 cup grated parmigiano reggiano
4 cloves garlic
1/2 cup diced onion
1/4 cup diced pancetta
splash of white wine
pasta water
black pepper
chopped parsley

The pasta was placed in a large pot of salted boiling water to cook. In a large pan was added the pancetta. It was cooked until rendered and crispy - but not darkened. The onions and garlic were added to the pan and cooked down until softened. While the onions were cooking the egg yolks were beaten and the cheese was whisked in. A splash of wine was added to the onions. When the pasta was cooked it was added to the onion/pancetta mixture along with a bit of the pasta water. The water contains some of the starch and helps thicken the sauce. You can always add more later if you don't have enough to loosen the sauce. The heat was turned off and the egg/cheese mixture was mixed with the pasta. Finally the chopped parsley and cracked black pepper were added.

That's it! Easy as pie and oh, so tasty.