· James Torr · Personal · 1 min read
Japanese stewed sardines picnic on Brighton beach yesterday. The oysters (not pictured) were also excellent. The cocktail is a barbotage: fizzy white wine, simple syrup, (super) lemon juice.
I've been eating a lot of rice bowls lately and I thought I'd share some basics that I've learned since eating them. I started with some of the donburi style Japanese rice bowls. Oyakodon is lovely, simple chicken vs egg with dashi, sugar and soy, likely ginger and garlic. Gyudon is thin sliced beef with something similar. Korean rice bowls (Bibimbap) are a bit more relaxed and have more variety of toppings.
Here we have a butterflied, salted and dried Indian mackerel, known as aji no himano in Japan. Traditionally eaten for breakfast, however, I ate it for a late lunch today. It was accompanied by smoked salmon skin, crisped up in an air fryer, and some fried rice. The mackerel process is relatively simple once butterflied, and would work just as well on filleted mackerel or sardines. I soaked 4 in 100ml of 10% alcohol (sake or 1 part gin/vodka diluted with 3 water) for about 15 minutes.
Tokyo style ramen noodles made this week. Based on the legendary @ramen__lord's recipe. Subbed soy protein isolate in for the egg white powder. No idea whether this will make much difference but they turned out nice! Broth was a blend of fish / dashi and rich chicken.
This is shichimi togarashi, a Japanese spice blend you may not have heard of. Typically it'll have nori seaweed, bitter orange peel, sesame seeds and dried chili. I think other 3-4 ingredients are changeable. Due to my supply being a bit old, I omitted the nori in mine and went for red/black/Sichuan pepper and dried ginger. Normally the sesame seeds are a bit less ground up, but my hand blend was a bit more effective than I thought.