I bought locally caught herring from the fishmonger, Blue Moon, last Wednesday. Since Blue Moon won’t come back to the Greenmarket until next April I purchased extra herrings and porgy to freeze them for later consumption. I cleaned and filleted the fish, salted them a bit and placed them in plastic bags for storage. While filleting the herring I was thinking of herring roe – a must have New year food item. None of my fish had roe. It is anyway too early for...
Read MoreBurdock pasta, instead of kinpira?
I found two long (3 1/2 foot each) gobo, burdock, left in my kitchen which I purchased toward the end of last year. I planned to make one more Osechi ryori dish, tataki gobo, but I abandoned the idea. It was too much. One of the most popular burdock dish is kinpira gobo, whose recipe you can find it in my The Japanese Kitchen. Instead of making this homey traditional Japanese dish, I decided to make something with Western flavors. Here is burdock pasta. I have shredded the...
Read MoreVery crunchy and quite! fishy, yet delicious, expensive kazunoko
Kazunoko (herring roe): Kazunoko is a reconstituted dried herring roe. I love the popping crunching noise which echoes in my mouth while eating them. Kazunoko is an expensive delicacy and is an indispensable part of Osechi ryori. Without it Osechi ryori is not complete. Tiny eggs of herring roe symbolizes family prosperity, and its golden yellow color represents gold. Herring roe is sold dried or salt cured. For this year’s special New Year’s party I have...
Read MoreNishiki tamago
Nishiki tamago is a dish in which boiled egg is separately strained through a fine sieve, mixed with sugar and little salt, packed in a mold and lightly steamed. Bright yellow color of egg yolk in the dish symbolizes gold, and egg white, silver. My mother always asked me to help her to make the dish, because pressing through especially firmer egg white (20 of them at one time) through a fine sieve was quite a job. Pleasure and pain always come together. Here is the recipe;...
Read MoreCandid baby sardine (Osechi ryori No. 1)
Tazukuri is a candied whole baby sardines. To prepare this dish you need gomame (dried baby sardines), which can be found only Japanese food stores. The reason why baby sardines are the part of celebration is that in the past sardines were important fertilizer for rice paddies, so they symbolized good harvest, therefore prosperous year. Cannot find Japanese dried baby sardine? Come up with alternative – which food item represents prosperity in your culture? Here is...
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