Sesame-crusted seared albacore with maitake, asparagus and soba

I made this during a warm spell we had a week ago. It was the kind of weather we ought to be having right now, but Mother Nature is being a bit of a premenstrual dysphoric bitch right now, dumping buckets of rain and unseasonally cool weather our way. Don't get me wrong, I'm from Portland, and am a dyed-in-the-wool Great Northwest kind of girl. But when I see tender tomato sprouts getting mowed down by gastropods and can't throw my windows open in the middle of May, I get a little bitter.

Nonetheless, New Seasons had gorgeous albacore loins, and the usual supply of feathery maitake mushroom clusters, and the asparagus was looking just as plump and green as all get out. I'm such a slave to this succubine vernality. I had some soba and other Japanese things at home already, so dinner was an easy idea away.

I rubbed the tuna loin in sesame oil and then rolled it in black sesame seeds. I seared it lightly on all sides while I got some dressing going: a good, fat tablespoon of grated ginger, a little finely sliced scallion; a drib each of mirin, rice vinegar and sesame oil; and a nice splash of tamari and shoyu (you can use Chinese soy sauce but for seasoning rare tuna I think it's worth going a little nicer with a good Japanese brand like Takumi, and save the dark stuff for porky noodles).

Pull the loin from the hot pan and break up and stir-fry the maitake until they're slightly softened, then toss in the asparagus (chopped into bite-sized pieces). Sprinkle in some sesame seeds and then dump in some cooked soba. Stir around a bit then add the dressing, then plate. Slice the albacore into thick medallions, top the noodles and sprinkle on some furikake (I just like a little seaweed, sesame and chile on everything).

Serve with a cold Morimoto Soba Ale (seriously, I can't drink enough of this these days) and dreams of sunnier climes.

Pork-Shiitake Niku Dango

Niku dango are Japanese meatballs, and are the perfect accompaniment to beer and noodles (two of my favorite things). Meatballs, in general are huge right now - Bon Appetit magazine recently had a whole issue devoted to them. Shit, 20% of all my (granted, now craptastic) blog traffic consistently comes from people Googling Swedish meatball recipes. I love meatballs, and since I've been fiddling with Asian flavors again these days - mostly Japanese and Korean - I thought I'd make some pork meatballs with a Japanese twist.

Flipping through my cookbooks, I saw a recipe for such "meatballs with a twist" in the Japanese Country Cookbook, and this is very loosely based on that (I prefer fresh shiitake to dried, soaked ones). Mix a pound of ground pork with a beaten egg, a small handful of panko, 2 minced shiitake mushrooms, a clove of minced garlic, a couple tablespoons minced shallot and grated ginger, a small splash each of soy sauce, mirin and sake, a tablespoon or so of sugar and a pinch of salt. I also added a pinch of chile flake for posterity. Some minced scallion would've been a nice touch, had I had any around, and I guess some finely chopped hijiki or nori flakes would've been kinda special. Oh well.

I know people will say there are better ways, and I know that grilling would yield the best flavor, but I just portioned these puppies out using a small ice cream scoop and baked them at like 375 or 400 for about 20 minutes. This is just always the easiest way for me to make meatballs, even if frying in butter or duck fat does taste better. The mushroom and all the seasoning liquids (plus the lovely pork fat) keep the interior of the niku dango so nice and moist that you can get away with a higher temp to get a crispier exterior, but I brushed mine with store-bought tonkatsu sauce (pineapple flavor, though you could use a mix of soy sauce, honey and rice vinegar) and returned them to the oven to get all sticky and glaze-y.

Since I cooked these to sate a trashy izakaya jones, I originally served them with udon soup and gyoza, but I had so many leftover that I enjoyed the rest for a fast lunch the next day (reheated in the toaster oven) with shoyu ramen, soft-boiled egg and sprinkled with shichimi togarashi (Japanese chile powder) and nori goma furikake (seaweed-sesame rice seasoning).

Enjoy with a tallboy of Kirin (Marc suggests Asahi for proper Japa-redneckness) and Keyhole TV.

Yaki gyoza

I wanted to make gyoza with some of the ground pork from the quarter hog we bought, but having never made them before, had to thumb through my (only) two Japanese cookbooks for help. One of my books is just a pretty sushi book, but my favorite Japanese cookbook (maybe one of my favorite cookbooks, period) is the Japanese Country Cookbook by Russ Rudzinski. Funny, I never noticed a gaijin wrote that book until just now when I cited it, but it's really moot because these are authentic home recipes. Unfortunately, there's no recipe for gyoza, so I decided to shoot from the hip (my always wont).

Scott and I had gyoza in Tokyo that were incredible (Hakata hitokuti gyoza, a specialty of the Fukuoka Prefecture), and though I knew I'd never recreate the perfectly crusted sheet of potstickers, I figure the worst I'd end up with would be cooked pork meatballs. I could live with that. I got started.

I mixed together the ground pork, a chiff of napa cabbage, some finely sliced scallion, (too much) minced garlic and some grated ginger and a little finely-minced shiitake. I added a splash each of tamari, Chinese black vinegar, sake, sesame oil and mirin, and some pinches of salt.

I just sort of went on instinct as to how to actually make the gyoza, but it worked okay. My Asian friends are probably squeamish at the lack of proper folds - I'm sure their grandmas' nimble fingers get fifty creases along the top edge - but I think I did okay for a gaijin on her first try. I just took the gyoza wrapper, added a spoonful of filling, wetted one edge with a fingertip of water, and then pressed and creased until it was sealed. I steamed them in my bamboo steamer for about ten minutes (next time I will line with parchment to avoid the sticking) until they looked soft on top, then pan-fried them to get a nice crust on the bottom. I served these with a basic dipping sauce of tamari, rice vinegar and mirin and a quickle sopai no daikon that looks like every other sunomono I make, but with daikon instead of cucumber or green muskmelon.

Serve with a cold Sapporo and classic J-Pop hits.

Shogayaki with sunomono

I just lost some of you, didn't I. It's just gingery pork chops and cucumber salad, nothing weird. I have noticed that I get a lot more comments on classic diner favorites and American comfort food than on the Asian food I make, but I'm hoping some of you will come around on that. There's a whole world out there, people.

Some of my friends, blog and real-life, are still mystified by Asian cooking. I was once, too, but started small: Thai curries (with store-bought curry paste, added to coconut milk). Hippie stir-fries flavored only with hoisin sauce and garlic. Pad thai made with ketchup and peanut butter. I eventually picked up Asia: the Beautiful Cookbook and made a real massuman curry from scratch, and it was all downhill from there.

Japanese food is so simple and clean, there's no good reason for you to not be making it yourself, and from scratch. "But I don't have your pantry," some of you are whining. Well, quit yer bellyachin'. All you need to make shogayaki are three ingredients (besides pork): shoyu (soy sauce - I used tamari), mirin (sweet rice wine) and grated ginger. I added a pinch of sugar to hit that sweet spot without being too boozy, but that's optional. Marinate for 15 minutes, then grill.


Sunomono is just any little vegetable dressed in vinegar, salt and sugar, and differs from tsukemono (pickles) only in that it's eaten soon, while it's fresh (not fermented or pressed). The ingredients for mine are all basic: a cucumber, the same mirin (I use Koku Mori, a Taiwanese brand that is pretty good), rice vinegar (an aged version that is malted, also Koku Mori), salt and sesame seeds. Again, you can add a pinch of sugar to sweeten it up a skosh.

Serve with steamed rice and a premium hot sake such as Momokawa Diamond, whose subtly cucurbitaceous, canteloupe sweetness and nectary mouthfeel complement the sunomono.

Misoyaki Maki

We'd been invited to a champagne-tasting party, to which we were instructed to bring an appie or somesuch. Easy, right? Except that I totally procrastinated, and it started snowing. Hard. I didn't want to press my luck and brave a drive to the store for flour (I really wanted to make little empanadas, but couldn't make dough - who the fuck runs out of flour? Pioneers?), so I had to really wrack my brain. What in the hell could I scrape together? I didn't even have something fake to cook and sauce up. Like that one time when all I had was some quince jelly in the freezer and a thawed-out boneless leg of lamb, and hastily threw together "ooh, how 'bout some Moroccan-spiced lamb kebab with cardamom-quince glaze" that were doled out onto a platter with toothpicks and greedily devoured. Turns out a lot of people did their part, thought ahead and brought hummus to that party. A lot of different hummus, and my one platter of spicy, last-minute meat.

I am, if nothing else, the Queen of Pulling One Out of Her Ass. I looked through the cupboards. Nothing. Some fucking cans of fish and tomatoes, a can of lychee and coconut milk, and a can of mock abalone. Gross. Look again, see the jars of starch lined up all soldierlike: cous cous, bulgur wheat, barley, lentils, some aged jau mein (that's ay-jed, not to be confused with the savory patina of proper storage), arborio rice and calrose rice. Sigh. Look again. Grab cans of smoked black cod and sturgeon (from local waters), jar of calrose, then shuffle across the kitchen to the "Asienne" cabinet and grab the teriyaki-flavored nori sheets, the black sesame seeds, tamari and sesame oil, some sake and mirin and gochujang. To the fridge for shiro miso, some scallion and young ginger.

I was going to make mini onigiri, it turned out. With misoyaki filling. I forgot about the jar of umeboshi in the fridge, evidently. I cooked the rice on the stovetop, and then pulled it off to cool in the snow. I chopped together the drained fish, and blobs or glugs of everything else until it was perfectly seasoned and gingery. I sprinkled in some togarashi to give that proper umami, and then we mashed up little fish-filled rice balls until the rice was all gone, wrapping a little fingertip sheet of nori over each. Half the fish was still left. The party loved it, and the hostess even proclaimed it better than the onigiri in Tokyo. It worked well with the champagne, which cut through the rich, salty smoke of the misoyaki, the effervescence pushing past the huge starch molecules on its way into the tickly cilia of the olfactory system.

The next day, while Scott nursed a wicked champagne hangover (I never knew those even existed), I twisted up a fatty nori maki from the last remaining regular sheet of nori in our cupboard, with freshly cooked sushi rice (stirred and fanned with a pinch of sugar and salt, and a splash of rice vinegar). It was a tasty and quiet lunch, and a great way to pat myself on the back for thinking on my feet. It's good to be Queen.

Kare udon

Okay, this is a total phone-in. I will give the concession that I used homemade chicken stock, and sure, I poached the chicken breast with lots of fresh ginger and garlic, some sake, mirin and sesame oil, then added sliced shiitakes, Sweet Nantes carrots and delicate pearl potatoes. I even threw in some heirloom Italian pepper such deep carmine that it resembles raw beef. But this is hardly cooking.

Okay, I added cubed silken tofu, slivered scallions and sliced snow peas, and at the end I folded in some thick, chewy udon noodles (boiled separately so the broth wouldn't go all soapy-starchy).

Come to think of it, what I did was truly cooking, but the act of breaking a couple cubes of Golden Curry into soup made it feel like I was faking it. Sure, I could've just added some curry powder, MSG (yes, I keep a fatty sack of it in my cupboard) and a little sugar and corn starch, and I would've achieved the same result. But I used the cubes. And I feel like a dirty cheater admitting it.

I keep cheapie Gekkeikan around for cooking, but a nice bottle of Momokawa Diamond Junmai Ginjo (I love the cloudy Pearl Junmai Genshu in the summer) for drinking. I know it's probably sacrilege, but I heat osake in the microwave. In exactly one minute it reaches perfect blood-temperature.



Oh, p.s. I'll be in and out a bit until Sunday. My good friend Catherine Wilkinson from The Dish is in town competing at the Tillamook Macaroni and Cheese Cook-off. In case you're wondering, yes, she really is that hot in real life. Today I brought her chanterelles for her recipe, then we sat in the bar of her hotel making fun of Ilan Hall from Top Chef Season 2, who is emceeing the event. Catherine had been mistakenly calling him "Ian" all day, and couldn't figure out why he was so standoffish. For laughs, I went to the concierge and asked her to page Ilan's room to tell him he had two ladies waiting for him in the bar. He never showed up; probably because he is gay, or afraid of starfucking fangirls.

Oh, p.p.s. I'm planning a very special dinner for twelve of my closest friends this weekend. Elk roast with alder-smoked chanterelles, coho loukaniko with Fraga Farm saganaki and Hood River pear galettes with Douglas-fir needle ice cream will feature prominently. Stay tuned, and happy autumn!

Japadog and Guu

Vancouver is to Japanese restaurants as Portland/Seattle is to coffee shops. Which is to say, there is a fuckton of Japanese food here. We sort of knew this; I mean, we knew we couldn't afford to spend as much time in Japan this fall that we feel the flight warrants, and we heard that Vancouver has the largest Japanese population outside Japan. So we did the math, and it turns out to be true. Lucky us! And only an hour flight from home.

Let me tell you about Japadog. You might remember Japadog from such No Reservations episodes as Tony in the Pacific Northwest. We weren't actually intending to come here. In fact, it wasn't until we were in line that we remembered that Bourdain had been here. So, apparently, had Ice Cube. Ten times. No, starfucking wasn't our impetus, it was the smell of kurobuta pork served up as the Misomayo (hot dog slathered in a mix of miso and kupie mayo, with radish sprouts on top) and Oroshi (hot dog with daikon relish and scallions). I wasn't feeling brave enough to try the Okonomi (pickled cabbage, sweet sauce and mayo with nori shreds), but there's always tomorrow.


Kurobuta is called the "kobe beef of pork", and the dog tasted like a really good weisswurst. The toppings were fresh and not really out of left field - pickled crucifers, onions and sweet/salty condiments are all familiar tastes with a hot dog, but this was somehow still quite Japanese. We were lucky to stumble upon this cart (there is a shocking dearth of street food here), and are a steal at only a couple bucks each.

Japadog
899 Burrard St
Vancouver, BC





Guu Izakaya (the O - distinguished from its three other locations) was one of those places that look so great from the outside that you make an audible cooing noise and can't wait to come back when it's open. We did come back later, and after being greeted with enthusiastic screams of "Irrashaimase!" we were seated at the bar.

An all-Japanese staff, mostly Japanese clientele (the English-speakers next to us returned to Mandarin when the waitress left) and the din of knives, grill and wok really reinforced that we were in the right place. Typical of an izakaya, the menu consisted of small plates: a verdant pea shoot salad with slivers of red and yellow bell pepper, pine nuts and soy vinaigrette; grilled squid legs (the tips of the tentacles were charred-crispy) with sriracha mayo; ethereal tako yaki, perfect tender nuggets of octopus within steamy soft dumplings with golden brown exterior and the house udon (suggested when I asked for their mebutsu) - earthy/smoky from the grill, with chunks of beef and scallion. Many glasses of the house sake were consumed, and we stumbled back to our hotel three hours later with wide smiles. I literally have not had such a bliss-inducing dining experience since Honjin in Tokyo.

I, tragically, forgot my camera and didn't remember until we were done eating that I could just use my phone. Scott pulled his out and snapped a few shots of the smiling chefs. But we'll go back again before we leave - it's worth a repeat. Maybe we'll even be brave enough to try the beef liver sashimi.


Guu Izakaya (with Garlic)
838 Thurlow Street
Vancouver, BC
(604) 685-8817

Onigiri is filled with Mother Love

I love onigiri. They're like Japanese arancini. The first time I had it, I was at my friend Kayoko's house. She was my first exposure to real Japanese culture (hentai notwithstanding), and she would frequently host informal dinner parties for her friends and Portland International School co-workers. I was one of the few, fortunate gaijin invited to these events. Sometimes, when the fillings for nori-maki would run out, she and her Japanese friends would just use up the remaining sushi rice with spoonfuls of miso, or umeboshi from the jar in her fridge to slap together some onigiri, which would get passed around on a large plate like some kind of umami brownie.

When Scott and I visited Tokyo a year ago, we struggled to adjust to the time change. We'd wake up at around 4:30am Tokyo time, starving and needing caffeine (the hotel didn't start serving "koh-hee" until like 7:00 or 8:00). Unfortunately, the only thing open that early was the 7-11, which was where we obtained our breakfast every morning. An ice-cold can of Boss cafè au lait and a couple of onigiri triangles from the cold deli case, pull up a curb and eat your breakfast. If it weren't strange enough to be shorts and flip flops-clad, tattooed white people, add 1) being bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at a bird's hour and 2) eating whilst seated at a curb, which is never done (eating outdoors or while walking is somewhat unusual in Tokyo). Fortunately, the only people up early enough to gawk were the taxi drivers and convenience store clerks, and I'm sure they've seen worse.

But those 100 円 (~$1) onigiri were the best! Since I'm illiterate in katakana, it was always a surprise what flavor I was going to get. Sometimes it'd be salmon, sometimes miso, sometimes egg. I loved nibbling through the nori and rice into the interior, and trying to figure out what it was. I tried to make mental notes of what I was tasting, for when we got home.

I make misoyaki quite often - it's such a simple way to enjoy fish, if you keep a tub of miso in your fridge (and a few other common Japanese ingredients in your cupboard). We always have a little leftover, and once in awhile, I end up with enough to warrant re-use. Usually, I'll just nuke it and eat it straight from the tupperware, but this time, I used the leftover shiro maguro (albacore) and the genmai (Japanese brown rice) to pat a few onigiri into a meal.

Just flake the fish with a fork and sprinkle with sesame seeds and a pinch of salt. Then take a ball of rice (cold or warm) into wet hands, flatten slightly with your fingertips, and place a spoonful of filling in the center. Put another pinch of rice on top and form into a ball (covering the filling with the rice). Pat it into a slightly flattened triangle (the usual shape, but you can make any shape you want, really). Then wrap a piece of nori around the outside so that the onigiri may be taken from a plate without the rice sticking to your fingers.

I keep a tub of these teriyaki-flavored nori strips in my pantry. I bought them on a whim, but they're not substantial enough for just snacking. Sometimes I cut them into very thin strips with scissors to sprinkle on rice, but I've decided that their true calling is wrapping onigiri. Instead of making triangles, I formed rounded squares and made a criss-cross with the nori strips. These were neat little packages of umami, ready for a light dinner or a bento lunch.

Next time you have some leftover fish (or any other salty food) and rice, why not try your hand at onigiri? Heck, it's worth cooking rice and fish just to make them. Ittadakimasu!

Green melon pickle (midori-no suikazuke)

I made this up. I don't even know if it's a thing. But I harvested a green watermelon, only in its infancy, and peeled, seeded, sliced and pickled it. And it was fucking good.

Let me back up. I was in the garden, and the mystery cucurbit vine that I never planted was getting big, flowering yellow flowers. I'd seen it growing there for awhile, assuming that I'd either lost some seed while sowing, or that some rogue seed from the compost had germinated and gone gangbusters. I looked closely at the tendrils and twines and saw my vine was bearing fruit. The one I picked was much bigger than the one in this photo, like the size of a softball. I really had no clue what it was - I hadn't planted anything there, but the cucumbers I had planted never came up. Had the seed fallen out of my pocket and gotten some dirt kicked on it? This sure was strange-looking. I picked it, brought it in the house, and sliced it open.

Inside, I saw the familiar cucurbit seeds, surrounded by a white, pithy, endocarp and outside of that by a crisp, pale green mesocarp. (Forgive the technical terminology, but when I'm stumped I always have to break things down scientifically. It's how I do.) I smelled the flesh: green, watery, slightly fruity. More like cucumber perfume than cucumber, but even then, not that cucumbery at all.

I nibbled. Crisp, clean, grassy.

What the hell was this? Anymore, it didn't matter what it was, because it was delicious. I peeled it, seeded it, and sliced it thin. I dressed it with rice vinegar, salt and sugar, and sprinkled some black sesame seeds on top.

As I thought about it while the tsukemono did its thing, I remembered the pig roast back in June. I served succulent slices of glistening watermelon that day. I never buy seedless watermelon, don't believe in it. Now I figure someone stood around the roasting pit, juice dripping down their chin, as they slurped up on that watermelon, lazily letting the seeds slip out of their lips, the way God intended a watermelon to be eaten. Those seeds found a little warm earth to set down roots, and pretty soon I had watermelon vines that I never planted.

I named this pickle midori-no suikazuke, because I thought this would be delicious as a Japanese pickle (tsukemono). Midori-no refers to its being green. Suika is the word for watermelon, and -zuke is a suffix used for many types of pickle. I don't know if this is proper etymology of a pickle, but it sure tastes like one.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Marc at No Recipes has graciously informed me that the word for 'green' isn't synonymous with 'unripe' in Japanese (as it is in English), and that this would more accurately be named aoi suikazuke. Thanks, Marc!

Curry ramen with mun-cha'i ya

...or, Phoning it In

Yes, that's packaged ramen. For dinner. See? I can totally phone it in sometimes. And since I joined the Foodbuzz Challenge (as I'm calling it), my posts are going to continue to erode into the hastily-scrawled chicken scratch of a mad woman for the next four weeks.

What is the Foodbuzz Challenge, you might ask? Most of you Foodbuzzed probably got the email and ran the other way, like smart people. I have agreed to post five times a week from August 11 to September 10 so those nice folks at Foodbuzz can see if there's a correlation between posting frequency and traffic to Foodbuzz. "Quality of Post" is apparently not one of the variables they are examining at this time.

This, friends, is why Japan rules. First, they took ramen, the perfect food, and gave it curry! Also, everything they make is so cute you want to gouge your eyes out with a grapefruit spoon. Look at that little dude! He's hurrying his little ass off to bring you steaming hot noodles in a glass case. Whilst wearing geta sandals!

Mun-cha'i ya (mock duck) is 100% vegetarian wheat gluten from Taiwan. Don't back away slowly, it actually tastes pretty good. I already liked seitan, and that's all this is, but with hilarious bumpy skin texture on it. And it comes with its own gravy! Mmm...gravy. Next time I'm going to try the mock abalone.


So yeah, I made some packaged curry ramen, boiled some potatoes and carrots, and added some canned gluten to it. I dumped a little extra curry gravy mix and togarashi just for shits and gigs. The curry didn't thicken up like usual until I was almost done eating it, but whatevs.

Ittadakimasu!

Hey, man, don't look at me like that. They're testing frequency, not quality!

Nabemono with udon

Okay, it's getting old now. It's the middle of June, and we're still expecting a high temperature of 60-65°. Are you fucking kidding me? I've been checking the National Weather Service to see just how far off we've been from normal June weather, and it's ridiculous. A couple weeks ago we had that freak 95°+ degree weather for two days (record-breaking high), but for the past week we've had an average of 7° below normal (that's ranging from 1-12°). Yesterday we reached a high of 58°. So what the hell am I supposed to do?

Make soup.

I have my requisite fridge full of strange produce: garlic flower buds, Okinawan purple yams (not really in the fridge, but you get it), tong hao/shungiku (chrysanthemum leaves), baby choy sum, chayote, king oyster mushrooms, burdock, ginger, scallion, and half a clove of elephant garlic. I also had a block of tofu and some good udon.

Nabemono is really just a basic hotpot of dashi, vegetables, tofu, and maybe some seafood, meat (e.g., pork belly) and/or oden (fish cakes). We ate motsunabe in Tokyo that included shiro miso and offal like tripe and other grisly bits. Nabe is food of the sumo, although it is very low calorie if you leave out the pork belly (and if you don't eat the whole pot, then get right to napping). The one serving of noodles contains more calories than the whole bowl of soup.

Nabemono
You can pick up a clay nabe pot with lid for about $10 at any Asian grocery store that sells dishes. You can use them straight on the burner, even though they make strange crackly noises at first. I'm going to try braising short ribs in mine next time.

Broth
5 cups dashi (recipe follows)
1/4 c mirin
1/4 c soy sauce or tamari
1/2 c sake
splash Chinese black vinegar or rice vinegar
1 tbsp sesame oil
3" ginger, cut into matchsticks
3" burdock, peeled and matchsticked
pinch salt

Quickie Dashi
5 c water
1 30g pack of dried bonito flakes
1 5" square piece of kombu, rinsed

Simmer these together for about 15 minutes over low heat. Strain.


1 Okinawan purple yam
1/2 pound of tofu (I like Chinese firm tofu because it doesn't disintegrate into the soup)
1 king oyster mushroom or a handful of shiitake (I add two dried shiitakes to flavor the broth)
1/4 chayote
3 or 4 garlic shoots
1/2 clove elephant garlic
handful of choy sum
handful of shungiku
3 or 4 scallions
4 oz. udon, cooked

Cut everything into bite-sized pieces and simmer starting with yam and tofu, moving on to the ingredients that require less time. Add greens and scallions last, then add cooked udon and serve. Top with togarashi to taste.

Crab soba with maitake and pea shoots

This is from last Monday's dinner, but I wanted to go ahead and share it since I feel another wave of good cooking juju coming on and I don't want it to get buried. This was the last of the pea shoots, the last Persian cucumber, some nice buckwheat soba, a half pound of lump Dungeness crab meat and a maitake mushroom the size of my head. This recipe serves four generously.

Prepare the sauce by combining a splash of shoyu (soy sauce), sake or rice wine, and rice vinegar; a dribble of sesame oil and a glug of mirin; 2 or 3 tbsp of grated ginger and a minced clove of garlic, a couple sprinkles of black sesame seeds and shichimi (nanami togarashi). I didn't have any left, or I'da added a tsp of yuzu marmalade.

This time I stripped the leaves off the pea shoots and chopped the stems. Blanch in the boiling water with a whole package (8 oz) soba. Slice the cucumber and a scallion thinly and add to the sauce. Break up the maitake into bite-sized pieces and saute until softened in a little light oil (or sesame). Add to the sauce, and ad the crab. Stir very gently (don't break up that crab). When the soba and pea shoots are cooked (after ~5 minutes), drain and rinse in cold water until they are lukewarm-cool. Strain and toss with sauce/crab/veg mixture. Top with a sprinkle of your favorite furikake (rice seasoning) and shichimi. If you have it, a little grated daikon and wasabi root would be excellent.

Enjoy on a hot day with a cold glass of Kirin or other crisp lager. Ittadakimasu!