June 29, 2014

A post-mortem on yesterday's oden

The weather report for this weekend spoke of rain and low temperatures. So I had decided to make oden for dinner on Saturday.

Unfortunately, yesterday I was in a bad mood for food-unrelated reasons. So contrary to what I had planned, I did not take photos of making the oden. While having dinner, though, my mood cleared up and I regretted not having taken photos. So today, I decided to write quite a lengthy post-mortem of yesterday's oden.

Yesterday's oden contained:

Carrot chunks
Daikon half-moons
Potatoes
Konnyaku
Store-bought ganmodoki (I had finally found them frozen at Nishi's Japan Shop)
Fuku-bukuro (filled pouches of abura age, tied shut with kampyou ribbons)

Funnily enough, I had met my Japanese teacher at Nishi's when I had bought the ganmodoki. When I told her that I had to make the oden without fish products because my husband is a vegetarian, she wondered: "Oden without fish? Is that even possible?" ;)

But now a word about the fuku-bukuro. We blanched four abura age sheets, patted them dry, cut them in half and pried them open. The filling was:

2 dried shiitake mushrooms, stems removed, rehydrated and cut into thin slivers
100 g enoki, trimmed and cut into 2.5 cm lengths
half a cup (125 ml) of shirataki noodles, blanched and cut into 2.5 cm lengths

I still have the other half of the pack of shirataki noodles left. This time, I used this kind:


This is a product from Thailand. What I like about these shirataki noodles is that they come gathered in bundles which are tied with a knot. This makes it easy to lay them out lengthwise for cutting after having blanched them. I simply had to untie the knot.

And this time, we didn't try to make decorative konnyaku braids, but we simply cut the loaf in half horizontally, made shallow cuts diagonally on back and front, and then cut the slab into smaller rectangles. I liked the result much better than the braids - the last time we made braids, they were much too thick. This time, the konnyaku was less chewy and had acquired more flavor from the simmering liquid.

This is the konnyaku we used (the remaining half of the loaf):


 I thought I should have hard-boiled some eggs as well, but Ben remarked that it was way too much stuff to put into the donabe already.

My cookbook had said to tender-prep the potatoes before peeling them and putting them in, but as they were going to simmer for quite a while, we peeled them beforehand and cut them in half. While we were having them, Ben asked if the Japanese cuisine really makes use of potatoes. I told him: "Yes, of course, but as far as I know, Japanese potatoes contain less starch than European ones and thus are eaten not so much as a stomach filler (like rice or noodles), like we do in Europe, but rather as a vegetable."

But the stars of yesterday's oden were these (at least in my view):



This time, I had not made mugi miso dengaku sauce. I had my oden with the Korean mustard I have mentioned in an older post, and the yuzu kosho and the kanzuri in the picture above.
My Japanese friend had brought those from Japan for me :) She had never heard of kanzuri, though, before I asked her if she could get that for me. I told her that it was a specialty of Niigata, and she said that her brother lives in Niigata. Possibly she got it on paying a visit to her brother.

I was surprised how mild the kanzuri was. Yet I found it very tasty :)
And the yuzu kosho is really hot and I liked the citrusy taste of it :)

Yum - I like oden :)

3 comments:

  1. Thank you for your detailed post-mortem report on your oden!

    Food-unrelated reasons... Yes, that happens all the time!!!

    I personally don't care for potatoes in oden. (I do like them in other dishes, though).

    I'm really glad you have a nice Japanese friend! It must have been very tough for her to get a bottle of kanzuri for you!

    One more thing: I've never had oden with kanzuri or yuzu kosho. I have it with karashi (Japanese mustard). I think most Japanese are like me.

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    Replies
    1. Hmmm. Do you have rice as well when you have oden? Or do you use just chikuwabu for carbohydrates?

      Sorry for not being authentic in having the oden with kanzuri and yuzu kosho. I had gathered from your blog that you use these two with many nabemono. As the season for nabemono is technically past, I thought it would be a pity if the kanzuri and the yuzu kosho sat in the fridge until autumn. (By the way, Ben tried our oden with the Korean mustard and the kanzuri, but he didn't seem to like the kanzuri that much. A few items in the donabe were left, and later that night I had the rest of the kanzuri he had taken from the glass with a few ganmodoki and fuku-bukuro I had reheated in the microwave. What startled me was that the kombu from the bottom of the donabe, which I had placed on top, gave off a few loud explosions in the microwave ;)

      Yes, my Japanese friend really is a nice person. (Sometimes I wish I could be as nice as her, but I'm German and I assume it is just not in my blood to be so nice.) I also wish I could see her more often, but she is working and thus on a tight budget with her spare time.

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    2. Yes, I have oden with rice. As you may know, rice is Japan's staple, and the we tend to regard all carb-rich dishes (gyoza, gratin, spaghetti salad, etc., and even okonomiyaki) as okazu (accompaniments) to rice.

      Another aspect is that we tend to have no rice while drinking alcohol. It's only after finishing to drink alcohol that we have rice.

      You don't have to say you are sorry! You never know, there may be some Japanese out there who have oden with kanzuri and/or yuzu kosho.

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