Wafuu Pasta

The Japanese often take Western dishes and make them their own. This type of cooking is known as 'Wafuu'. Examples of wafuu include Curry Raisu, Hayashi Raisu, Omu-raisu and Hamburger Steak among others. One of the most popular types of wafuu though, is Japanese style spaghetti. Ingredients most westerners would never even dream of adding to pasta become gourmet fair in Japan. For instance, a very popular spaghetti dish mixes spicy pickled cod roe and mayonnaise. Called 'mentaiko' is is my husband's favourite spaghetti dish and it is actually delicious. Some of the more daring recipes for spaghetti use squid's ink, resulting in, you guessed it, black spaghetti.

My above pictured dish was not quite so daring as squid's ink. I have mixed chicken thigh, shimeji mushrooms, shiitake, and green onions with spaghetti. It is garnished with sesame seeds and nori. The base flavour is 'mentsuyu' which is a soup mix for soba noodles. I added just a touch of mentsuyu because the flavours of the mushrooms and chicken are the real stars of this dish. The result was something wonderful that I hadn't tasted since I ate a Saizeriya restaurant in Japan. Oishi! ^_^

Pork three ways

Nimono in Japanese simply means 'simmered dish'. It is a very popular and flavourful method of cooking, where ingredients are simmered in a small amount of broth with various seasonings. Throughout the course of cooking, the broth is reduced to almost nothing and the ingredients absorb the flavour. Often a drop lid is used to preserve the umami (deliciousness).

Pictured above is pork simmered with tofu, shiitake mushrooms, garlic and onions. The broth is a standard Japanese flavour combination of dashi, sugar, mirin, sake and soy sauce. The tofu is on the bottom so you can't really see it... The orange powder on top is called 'shichimi togarashi' or seven flavour chili pepper. It is a very popular condiment in Japan. Obviously it contains seven different ingredients, the main one being ground chili pepper. Added to this is usually mandarin orange peel, black sesame, poppy seed, hemp seed, nori and sansho (another type of pepper). Other recipes may use yuzu peel, rapeseed, shiso and ginger. It is quite powerful and only a little is needed for flavour.

This dish is pork simmered with ume boshi (pickled plum), ginger, garlic, onion and carrot. The broth is the standard Japanese mix, but added to this is rice vinegar and of course the ume boshi. The pink pickled plum gives the pork a distinct pink hue. It also preserves the meat and makes it perfect for leftover lunches. This recipe was originally intended for fish nimono, but it works just as well with pork or chicken.

Here we have pork stir fry with enoki mushrooms, carrot and green onion. It has been lightly flavoured with shiso ponzu sauce. The enoki mushrooms stay rather crisp and chewy, making for an interesting texture. If you can find some, I highly recommend trying them in soup or a stir fry. If you enjoy nabe hot pot, enoki goes well in there too.

Shimeji Mushroom and Chicken Rice

A really easy one-pot meal in Japan is mixed rice. That is, rice cooked with seasonings and other (usually seasonal) ingredients. For example, chestnut mixed rice is popular in the autumn because chestnuts are most plentiful during that time. The mixed rice version I made, contains primarily shimeji mushrooms and chicken thigh. There is however, a bit of carrot and fried tofu in there as well. The garnishes are sesame seeds and nori seaweed. Mixed rice can be made with any type of meat or fish, as well as any type of mushroom and almost any type of vegetable. The only seasonings I used were black pepper, a dash of soy sauce, a dash of mirin and a pinch of sugar. The ingredients are really the main flavours.

First I washed the rice (1 cup) and set it soaking in water with the seasonings. In a pan I fried the chicken (cut into tiny pieces, two thighs), the mushrooms (one packet), carrot (1) and deep fried tofu (just two squares). I tossed on some pepper and just a slight dash of soy sauce. When it was fully cooked, I placed it on top of my rice in the rice cooker. Then... ON. That's it! So simple! When the cooker is finished, the rice and ingredients simply need to be gently mixed.

There was a delightful restaurant in Niigata that my husband and I often went to which served only mixed rice. I brought my parents and brothers there for supper one evening when they came to visit. There were so many different kinds of mixed rice, plus the seasonal specialities. One of my favourites was the chestnut and mushroom rice. Fantastic! If you were feeling wealthy, you could order the matsutake mushroom rice. Matsutake mushrooms are highly prized and super expensive, but quite possibly the most delicious mushrooms on the planet! A soup made of matsutake mushrooms is likely what they serve in heaven. ^_^