For at least the last year, it's been a goal of mine to master enough cooking-related kanji and vocabulary to be able to follow recipes written in Japanese. With a few exceptions, most English-language Japanese cookbooks focus on time-tested, classic recipes -- excellent for mastering the basic techniques of Japanese cooking, but not so helpful when you want to whip up one of those crazy, modern-meets-ye-olde-Japan dishes you can find at any good izakaya. (My favorite dish at the best izakaya in my town, for example, is a kabocha-stuffed eggroll served with a dipping salt spiked with cinnamon and sugar. It's like a crispy pumpkin-filled savory churro.)
The only solution is to delve into one of the many Japanese-language recipe magazines crowding the bookstore shelves. With this in mind, a year ago (a year ago!) I bought 15分でごはん! (15-minute meals), a collection of quick recipes published by a popular food magazine called オレンジページ (Orange Page). Once upon a time, I set out to make some kind of lotus root-ground pork dish because the instructions looked easy (the picture of the finished dish actually looks completely vile), but never did. Yesterday I decided if I was ever going to conquer a recipe, it should at least be something I would want to eat. So I flipped through the now rather dusty and dented magazine once more and picked out 白身魚の梅あえのっけ丼 (white-fleshed fish with plum dressing over rice). After about an hour with my dictionary and with the aid of the step-by-step pictures, I had a list of ingredients and the instructions pretty much figured out. Minus the rice-cooking time, it all came together in the promised 15 minutes, and nearly as easily as if I had been cooking from a recipe in English.
The resulting dish was simple and light, the flesh of the kanpachi turning buttery beneath its dressing, brightened by the bits of tart umeboshi. This would be a perfect summer meal, much like my beloved maguro no tataki don, but with a hot bowl of wakame soup, it worked equally well as a mild winter night's dinner.
A note on ingredients: The original recipe suggests using tai (sea bream) or other white-fleshed fish; I instead went with the less expensive kanpachi (amberjack), an oilier, less delicate fish. I think this would work equally well with hamachi, maguro and even salmon. Use whatever you like to eat as sashimi.
Kanpachi no ume-aenokke don (Kanpachi with ume dressing over rice)
Makes 2 servings
2 cups (400 g) cooked rice
3.5 oz (100 g) sashimi-quality kanpachi (or substitute the fish of your choice)
daikon, 1 1/2 inch (4 cm) piece
1/5 bundle of mizuna, rinsed and dried
1 large or 2 small umeboshi
1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 teaspoon salt
pepper to taste
Peel the daikon and cut into matchstick-sized pieces. Cut the mizuna into 1-inch (3-cm) lengths. Remove the seed from the umeboshi and dice the flesh. With a very sharp knife, slice the fish into 1/2-inch (1-cm) width pieces.
In a bowl, mix the olive oil, salt and diced umeboshi. Add the daikon, mizuna and fish, then toss together using chopsticks, distributing the dressing evenly. Taste for seasoning and add more salt if necessary. Scoop the rice into a bowl and top with the fish and vegetable mixture, making sure each serving gets a good amount of umeboshi. Sprinkle with pepper and serve.
This is a goal of mine as well. I have sooooo many cookbooks with wagashi and kabocha recipes in them that I want to make so badly!! Someday, someday..........