Spring really makes me want to eat Tai (sea bream) every day. I enjoy it in sashimi, carpaccio, sushi, etc. And, here’s another Tai dish I love, which is Tai Shabu. It’s basically a simple fish shabu shabu and always so good. If you can save enough broth, hope you enjoy the shime (finishing) noodle course, too.
One of my favorite dishes to eat during the spring is Tai Meshi (Sea Bream Rice), made in a donabe. I cook the rice with a whole Tai (sea bream), so it’s not only very flavorful but the dish is perfect for festivity. I usually cook this dish with my double-lid donabe rice cooker, Kamdo-san, but since the fish I got this time was much bigger than my 3 rice-cup size Kamado-san, I decided to make it in my large-size donabe (I used my donabe steamer, Mushi Nabe, without the steam grate). By bending its tail, I could barely fit it in my donabe! To garnish, kinome (sansho leaves) are typically used in Japan. But since it’s hard to find kinome here in LA, I used dill and it paired with the rice beautifully.
Foil-baked seafood is such an easy-prepping and delicious dish. It also requires basically no cleaning of the cooking equipment. I always make it in my tagine-style donabe , Fukkura-san, as not only it distributes the heat perfectly without getting the bottom burned quickly but also it makes a very nice presentation at the table. The dish is flavored simply with sake, butter, and a drizzle of soy sauce and it’s so perfect! When the foil is gently cut open and the dish is revealed, it brings so much excitement, and also the aroma of butter-sake infused ingredients is so irresistible. Smoked soy sauce makes the dish so special but a regular soy sauce can work just fine, too.
Okisuki is basically a seafood sukiyaki dish (“Oki” means ocean and “Suki” is short for Sukiyaki), and I love making this dish with black cod, as the buttery texture and rich flavor of this fish goes so well with the sauce. But, feel free to substitute fish or any other ingredients with your choice of seafood and/ or vegetables. Making this dish is as simple as just piling up the ingredients, pour the sauce, and let them cook in the donabe. It’s so tasty! If you can save the broth after enjoying all the ingredients cooked in it, you can add udon or ramen noodles to make the “shime” (finishing) course.
When I get really fresh fish, I enjoy eating it straight as sashimi, or I also enjoy creating a quick one-bowl meal by topping it over rice. It never goes wrong. You can make it with sushi rice or just plain rice. I also like to quickly marinade the sashimi in soy-based sauce to top over the rice. It’s called Zuke-Don. Zuke means “marinade”, and Don is donburi rice bowl. Here’s my really tasty Spicy Zuke-Don with fresh tuna.
My large donabe steamer, Mushi Nabe, works so hard all year round. Among my favorite preparations with this donabe is a steamed fish dish. This is Steamed Black Cod with Soy-Negi Sauce. I layered black cod with tofu and shiitake mushrooms in a bowl and steamed in the donabe steamer, and poured this aromatic soy & scallion sauce (with a great kick with la-yu oil) over it to enjoy. This dish takes little effort and is really flavorful,and it also keeps your body so warm. Feel free to substitute with different kinds of fish.
Garlic, miso, and butter…they make a brilliant combination of flavors. The main ingredients to cook in the sauce are salmon (or you can use your choice of high quality rich flavor fish) and daikon, and they are piled up with a few other ingredients and quickly simmered in the sauce. The dish has a nice rich flavor with refreshing accent with the yuzu juice. I used cilantro and daikon sprouts as a garnish for this recipe, but dill is also a nice alternative.
This recipe is always popular among friends, and I often involve my guests in the wonton making. Everybody makes her/ his own shape of wontons. They are easy to shape and fun to do. My shrimp wontons don’t contain ground meat (such as pork or chicken), so you can really enjoy the natural sweet flavors of the shrimp and its bouncy texture.
I introduce two kinds of dipping sauces for this recipe. The Yuzu & Ayu Dipping Sauce has the beautiful aroma and it’s quite light. The Sesame Dipping Sauce has the nice rich flavor. The soup is also very tasty, so you can simply enjoy this dish just with Yuzu-Kosho or Kanzuri on the side.
One day, a very good customer of ours stopped by at our shop to give us a block of fresh tuna he just caught from fishing in the Pacific Ocean. How sweet of him! It was super fresh sashimi quality, so we tried some as sashimi with different kinds of soy sauces we have, then for the remaining, I decided to make a donabe hot pot with it. Tuna hot pot in donabe is a popular dish in Japan, and it’s typically made as a combination with negi (Japanese green onion). It’s called Negi-Ma Nabe. The name is short for Negi (green onion) Maguro (tuna) Nabe (hot pot).
This dish is very simple, and all you need is good quality dashi, tuna (obviously!), green onion (for the name’s sake) and any other ingredients you like to add. I like it with my ponzu.
For the shime (finishing course), I like making quick ojiya (porridge) with freshly-cooked donabe rice.
Saikyo miso is a traditional white miso from Kyoto, Japan. The color is pale and it has a natural umami-rich sweet flavor due to the higher content of koji rice (malted rice) in the miso. The sodium level is also much lower than other types of miso, so you can use a good amount of it to enjoy its rich flavor in a soup, etc. without making the dish too salty. This hot pot dish has the combination of dashi, soymilk, and Saikyo miso in the broth, so the flavor is rich and complex. Make sure to use the real Saikyo Miso from Kyoto and pure rich soymilk (with no additives) such as Banrai Soymilk.
Buttery fish like cod is perfect for this broth, other types of seafood or even chicken would certainly work in this dish, too.
