Tapping into the Japanese pantry

So there’s authenticity, and then there’s having fun with ingredients.  Last night, I was trying to think of how to pit together my dinner.  I had some trout and top round steak, lots of different vegetables, a pile of carrots and onions, and several jars of sauces and condiments I’d made the previous weekend.

I kept coming back to an Asian idea, but not any particular Asian cuisine.  I had a miso-lime sauce that had its roots in Japanese cuisine, the orange-ginger relish you see at every Japanese restaurant and a pantry full of rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, mirin, cooking wine, and so on.  So at some point I decided I’d use Asian flavors to unite the meal and now had to figure out how to treat each individual ingredient.

The trout was easy.  I’d brush both sides of the filets with the miso-lime juice sauce and broil it.  After it came out of the broiler, I’d brush it with more of the sauce to serve it.  OK, one protein down, two veggies to go.

Our favorite Japanese restaurant in Philadelphia is Shiroi Hana, a nice, professionally run sushi restaurant near the Academy of Music, Kimmel Center, Suzanne Roberts Theatre, Wilma Theater, our house, and where I used to work. Regardless of what you ordered, dinner started with a choice of house salad or miso soup.  If you ordered the salad, it came with a bright orange dressing that is absolutely delicious.  I never paid that dressing much mind (except for enjoying it while eating) until I came across [Secret] Sauces by Vanessa Seder.

One of her entries describes a bright orange sauce with lots of bite that is apparently ubiquitous in Japanese steak houses.  She reverse-engineered it, I tweaked it a bit and produced a brilliant all-purpose condiment.  The orange comes from carrots but the flavor comes from LOTS of ginger and a blend of rice wine vinegar, mirin, soy sauce, and sesame oil.  Putting this together was instructive.  I have no idea whether this gingery orange condiment is authentically Japanese or not, but it’s still delicious and it recalls the experience of Japanese restaurants in the U.S.

One of the veggies in the fridge was baby bok choy.  I sliced a couple in half and steamed them a bit until it got soft.  Added a couple of spoonsful of the ginger-carrot dressing and it worked out perfectly.

The final element came from my pile of carrots.  I always have carrots around, as they are the favorite vegetable of both my true love and my Amazon yellow-nape parrot.  I had an idea, but I knew this would be an improvisation.  Step one was to julienne a large carrot.  Julienning carrots is harder than you think, but if you’re patient and have a decent boredom threshold, it can be done.  It means a carrot into thin, uniform strips.  Having done that, I then mixed the carrots with soy sauce, mirin, toasted sesame oil, and rice wine vinegar.  I let everything sit for a couple of hours, sprinkled some sesame seeds on top and served.

I have no idea whether this recipe exists in Japan or not, but as a light side salad to complement the trout and the bok choy, it worked perfectly.  All of these elements worked together in a harmonious way and dinner last night worked together wonderfully.  I’ll just call it Japanese inspired, if that’s OK.

Recipe – Miso-lime dressing

Ingredients

3 tbl red miso

3 cloves of garlic, minced

1 tbl honey

1 tbl toasted sesame oil

3 tbl lime juice

1 tbl soy sauce

Directions

Mix all ingredients together in a food processor or mortar and pestle.  Add water if necessary to thin it out.

Carrot-ginger dressing

Ingredients

3 medium carrots, peeled and cut into small chunks

3 tbl grated ginger

2 scallions, white and light green parts thinly sliced

1/4 rice vinegar

1/4 cup mirin

2 tbl soy sauce

2 tsp toasted sesame oil

1/2 cup vegetable oil

Directions

Put the ingredients in a blender or food processor and puree.  When smooth, taste for salt.  Refrigerate.