Reza's Shami (Syrian) kebab

When back in Australia recently (or at least "recently" when I started writing this post (g)), I was bemoaning the time it takes to shop for groceries in the town my parents live in. I mean, aside from the sheer number of options for any given product--yogurt, say--the shop layouts are so much bigger and the massive shopping trolleys so much less manoeuvrable than ours here in Japan. Plus the three supermarkets in town all have different goodies, so you have to visit them all! Saffron Papa's comment: It takes so long because of all the weird and wonderful things you're trying to buy! Touche, I guess.

I was keen to recreate the Shami kebab and jewelled rice meal I'd learned at my Persian cooking class for my dear friends in Australia, but was having trouble getting a couple of the ingredients, namely chickpea flour and dried rose petals (for the jewelled rice). Luckily, being Persian cooking and having a whole lot of flavours going on at one time, we were able to get by without them.
I made these patties with 100% beef in Australia and they had quite a different texture to the beef-pork blend we used in the cooking class. It could be a matter of familiarity, but I actually liked the texture of the blended mince better. In Iran, of course, it would be a lamb/mutton-beef blend.

Saffron Papa and Mama were clean out of dried tarragon, so I used about 2 tbsp of fresh and was pleased with the results. Because I'd omitted the chickpea flour, my meat mixture was quite loose, but a few minutes in the fridge before cooking solved that problem.

These are the brassiest "burgers" I've yet to come across. Definitely recommended, whether with jewelled rice, another Persian rice dish, or just for something a bit interesting at your next barbecue!

Reza's Shami (Syrian) kebab

Makes 4 largish ring-shaped patties

300 g beef, pork or chicken mince
1 onion, chopped finely
3 tbsp chickpea (gram) flour
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/2 cup flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
1 tbsp dried tarragon
1 tsp garlic paste (or crushed garlic)
1 tsp ginger paste
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
shake of cayenne pepper (optional)
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
grilled cherry tomatoes and soft fresh herbs to garnish

1 In a large bowl, lightly kneed mince, then add the onion, chickpea flour, egg, parsley, tarragon, garlic and ginger pastes, baking powder, turmeric cayenne and salt. Kneed very well until ingredients become pasty.

2 Divide the meat in 4 and form into round patties. Using a finger, open a fairly large whole in the middle of each patty. Make the outside edges of the patties slightly thinner than the ring in the center.

3 Fry or grill on both sides until nicely browned. Serve with grilled cherry tomatoes and soft herbs and rocket.

Enjoy!

Persian cooking class: Shami kebab, jewelled rice, beet salad & quince preserves

Christmas was fast approaching, so our dear Persian Table cooking class hosts, Reza and Tomoko-san, pulled out all the stops for a culinary red-fest. On the menu were donut-shaped spiced meat patties with grilled cherry tomatoes; a salad of beets, black olives and mint, the piece de resistance--jewelled rice--a dish whose reputation had grown to epic proportions in my mind; and for dessert, two varieties of quince preserves with ice cream.

To a Westerner, the word kebab often connotes marinated meats cooked on skewers or perhaps even veggies or fruit on a stick. But that is not the whole story (or even the actual story in the case of skewered fruit!). Across the Middle East, kebab can mean many things, the only common denominator being meat. Take Turkey, for instance. Kebab can be meat cooked just about any way, from sis (shish) kebab to the vertical spit roasted doner kebab and Iskendar kebab to testi kebab, a meat and veggie casserole baked in a clay pot. What I didn't know that the same ambiguity also reigns in Iran, and that extends even up to hamburger-like patties!

There are plenty of recipes for Shami (Syrian) kebabs in Googleland, and though the shape and size seems to vary from chef to chef and country to country, the common elements seem to be meat and some form of legume, often chickpeas, as in Reza's use of besan (gram or chickpea) flour. His Persian take on the dish is ring-shaped burgers well herbed and spiced with turmeric, parsley, tarragon, ginger, garlic and chilli. The chickpea flour and a little baking powder give the patties an airy texture.

The beet salad featured chunks of simmered beetroot with black olives in a garlic-lemon dressing, accented by fresh mint. A very unusual combination. Beets were previously not often seen in Japan, but they are becoming more readily available, now that they have been elevated to "superfood" status!

Jewelled rice is one of the pearls of Persian cooking. In photos, it always looks spectacular, a spread of basmati crowned with saffron-tinted rice, barberry rubies, pistachio emeralds and golden threads of orange zest. Reza's recipe adds almonds and pumpkin seeds for crunch, a collar of spiced onion squares, and a seductive sprinkling of rose petal powder, making the dish truly regal.

I was so impressed with the kebab and rice together, I decided on the spot to make this for my friends in Australia over Christmas/New Year, and smuggled some Iranian saffron into the country for that very purpose (g).

Quince is a quaint fruit often overlooked in the West, but prized in Japan and China for its throat soothing properties (of all things!). Reza and Tomoko-san had prepared two kinds of quince preserves, using two varieties of the fruit, which they served with ice-cream.

Thanks to one of our classmates who looked it up on her mobile phone, we now know that the Chinese variety of quince ("karin" in Japanese) has a smooth skin, whereas the central Asian variety (marmelo or "Western karin" in Japanese) has a bit of a fuzz. When prepared the same way, the flavour and texture of the two were actually quite different. Who knew there was so much going on in the world of quinces?!

Persian cooking class: Fig salad, mini onions with prawns and tamarind, giant rice meatballs, ferni milk pudding

The last session of the current series of Persian cooking classes was to be in August, but was postponed until late September, as our dear instructors Reza and and his lovely wife Tomoko-san had a series of exhibitions of their artwork on around that time. In the intervening month, summer gave way to autumn and the planned watermelon salad starter made way for a more seasonal fig salad.

Lettuce leaves were tossed gently first with olive oil and then with a zesty dressing of Persian lime juice, yogurt, mayonnaise and honey. Reza has such a delicate hand when it comes to tossing salads, and my classmates and I commented on his precision and artistry. This simple salad was then garnished with quartered ripe figs, roughly broken crackers and lightly toasted black mustard seeds. It was a lovely starter, but would also be a nice weekend lunch dish.

This was followed by a very exciting and exotic dish of miniature onions and prawns in a tamarind sauce. The prawns were marinated in fresh ginger and garlic (unusual in Persian cuisine), coriander leaves and a little black pepper and cayenne pepper for the little kick characteristic of cooking of the Persian Gulf area. The mini onions were fried in olive oil with a dried chilli and then simmered with tamarind water, before the marinated prawns were added at the end of the cooking time. I loved this dish but, as the tartness fiend I am, would maybe double up the tamarind when I make it myself.

Next up was kufte berenj, or rice meatballs in a tomato sauce. Tennis ball sized, these are very impressive on the plate, but are also a complete meal in themselves, with rice, beans and a cube of cheese tucked into their orbs. Spiced with saffron, turmeric and dill, and topped with a mix of sour cream and yogurt (in place of liquid whey kashk, perhaps?) these are certainly not your average meatballs.

By this point we were all feeling quite sated, but there was still more to come! Ferni is the Persian take on that popular Middle Eastern dessert standby of rice pudding. Made with ground rice and milk, and scented with rose water, this pudding is usually served chilled. It's a very different beast from the British rice pudding of my childhood.

As usual, Reza and Tomoko-san had a little gift for everyone who participated in the class. This time it was a little atomizer of rose water.

Although it was the last session of this round of lessons, I'm really looking forward to the next invitation to Reza and Tomoko's "Persian Dining Table". It is clear that these lessons are a labour of love for the two, and their warmth and generosity make these lessons very different from those at other schools. Then again, the combination of Persian and Japanese hospitality was always going to be hard to beat!

Reza and Tomoko in action in the homey studio kitchen

Persian cooking class: Kashk-e bademjan, gheliye mahi, chelo and saffron-scented almond brittle

This month's Persian cooking class was another beauty! The theme was the food of the Persian Gulf (Khalij-e Fars). Unlike the food of other parts of Iran, the food of the Gulf area is spicy, with detectable Indian and Arab influences. Our instructor, Reza Rahbar, is from this part of Iran, and I was super-excited to take this class for a couple of reasons: 1. The food of this area is not so well known, even to this avid Persian cookbook collector, and 2. we were going to make the absolutely mouth-watering stew of fish with herbs, chillies and tamarind (yes, all in one dish!!) that Reza demonstrated on NHK's Asia Crossroads program back in April. Also on the menu were kashk-e bademjan, a starter of fried eggplants topped with a yogurt and feta sauce; chelo steamed rice and sahan asali, an almond brittle perfumed with saffron.

I arrived early and, after having rosewater poured into my palm to refresh my face and hands, enjoyed a nice chat with Reza and his charming wife, who keeps the dialogue going during our lessons when Reza is busy at the stove. A photographer and designer in her own right, she designed the recipe sheet for this month's lesson, and was kind enough to say that my not-so-secret love of the colour orange was an inspiration for the design!

The eggplant starter was a bit of a revelation. There are many eggplant dips in the canon of Middle Eastern cookery, but here was one where the eggplants were pan-fried in oil, rather than grilled over a direct flame. You don't get the smokiness of, say, a mutabbal (baba gnanouj), but with the garlicky-dairy topping, drizzle of hot olive oil and a garish of mint, you certainly don't miss it. The kashk of the recipe name refers to a salty paste of whey, which is a bit of an acquired taste. It's not so easy to get here in Japan, and may not be to the taste of a most Japanese, so creating a similar flavour profile with yogurt and feta cheese was a good option. (Also helpful for those without a Persian grocer's nearby).

I was intrigued by the name of the fish dish, "ghalieh mahi". Mahi is fish in Persian, but what about ghalieh? I asked my dear Iranian friend Hw, who hails from the mountains in the north of Iran. He'd never heard of the word, so I flipped around my Persian-English dictionary till I came up with "qalieh," which was defined as "dish like a fricassee" (don't you hate it when a bilingual dictionary defines a word with another from a third language!). Stew, in other words. Later, I read in my latest Persian cookbook acquisition, A Treasury of Persian Cuisine, that Persian stews were called gholyeh for several centuries under the Arab influence, but the indigenous term, khoresh has once again become the standard term used in most parts of the country, "except for those nearer to the Persian Gulf..." I am now pretty sure that ghalieh, qalieh and gholyeh, are variant spellings of the same word, which translates as stew in English.

If you've had Iranian food before, you will know that there are one or two dishes that are so chock-full of fresh and dried herbs that they take on a worrying dark green tinge. I'm here to tell you that should certainly try any dish like that that you come across, as the odds are that it will be one of Iran's most fabulous dishes, like this one!

Reza's Ghelieh mahi was brimming with fresh coriander and parsley and dried fenugreek leaves. You are not likely to come across fresh fenugreek leaves just anywhere, but it's good to know that Persian and Indian grocers usually have the dried. Ask for shanbalileh if you're getting it from a Persian grocers or kasoori methi from an Indian one. The leaves need to be soaked in water for 10 min, then stir-fried for another 5. To me this seems to defeat the purpose of the soaking, but I am assured that this step does make a difference to the taste in the end.

Although there are many, many fabulous rice dishes in the Persian kitchen, Reza made plain steamed chelo to serve with the ghelieh mahi, which has enough flavour going on not to need a fancy accompaniment. The lovely Afghani (I believe) pottery dish that he served the rice in (photo above) gave the table a festive touch.

As we were all ooh-ing and ah-ing over the unusualness of this dish at the table, I mentioned that the word tamarind in English and Japanese comes from the Arabic for "Indian date". It's a slightly different word in Persian, so our host didn't know this, either, but serendipitously, he had some fresh dates for us as our take-home gift of the day!

Later we had cardamom tea (with a splash of rose water in my case), the almond brittle (which our hosts had made in advance) and a Persian snack of grains scented with what seemed to me to be violet and rose. Delicious! I was so into the food by this time that I forgot to take a picture, but you won't be far off the mark if you let your mind conjure up something from The Arabian Nights (g).

Lovely!

Persian cooking class 2: Nan-cheese-herbs, fesenjan & rose jam

I was super excited about my most recent Persian cooking class, as it was fesenjaan again! After my success with Najmieh Batmanglij's recipe in February, and after seeing our instructor Reza cooking this version on the NHK program Asia Crossroads, I was more than ready for another plate of Iran's classic party dish.

Reza's version, which somehow came to be dubbed "pomegranate curry" in Japanese, is certainly simpler than Najmieh khanom's. Onions and chicken are sauteed, and then spices and roughly chopped walnuts added. The chicken is removed, water added and the onion-nut mixture left to simmer for 20 min. It is then ground into a paste in a food processor or blender, making the sauce base. The chicken is returned, pomegranate paste and saffron water added and the lot left to simmer some more. The food processing bit seemed a bit radical to me, but certainly resulted in a smooth and dark sauce, so it looks like a winner.

None of my Japanese classmates had had fesenjaan before and were, I think, very pleasantly surprised by the combination of pomegranate and walnuts. In any event, there was a great deal of chatter about it round the table. Sour notes are not especially well represented in main dishes here, other than vinegared dishes like sushi, I suppose. No doubt an Iranian would probably have a similar reaction when presented with vinegared rice!

Speaking of rice, saffron rice was also on the menu, and the Iranian way with rice was another hot topic with my classmates. Japan is no stranger to rice, of course, but I can't think of any dish where boiling and draining the rice occurs. Grains that just hold together are preferred to separate grains, which would be much more difficult to corral with Japan's pointed chopsticks.

All of us had a surprise with our teacher's chosen method of cooking the nan for nan panir sabzi (bread, cheese and herbs), which was the appetizer for the evening. Flour tortillas (which being readily available, do duty as all kinds of flat breads) were toasted on a stove-top griller that's normally used for grilling fish here in Japan. Apparently it's the best way he's found of crisping up nan in Japan. There's a bit of a knack to getting the tortillas to puff up, but it works a treat. Must tell my dear Indian friend Sm next time he's in Japan!

Our last treat for the evening was rose jam. How wonderful to know that you can make jam from dried rose petals (or even rose "tea"! The roses here (even in Yokohama, which claims the bloom as it's city floral emblem) don't have a lot of perfume, let alone taste...

The dried rose petals are soaked in water for 3 hours, so you need to plan a bit in advance. Other than that, it's just sugar, rosewater and lemon or lime juice. But oh, oh! What a flavour. Although we had it with ice cream, rose jam is equally delicious on pancakes, bread and stirred into yogurt.

In Iran, of course, fresh rose petals are used, and it seems that when they are in season you get them from the veggie shop. How great would that be??!

Persian cooking class!

A serendipitous series of events led me to discover that a Persian cooking class is being held right here in Tokyo!

And even more exciting, the instructor, Reza Rahbar, is from down south in the Persian Gulf region of Iran. The Persian cookbooks in my collection do not cover this area of the country, and from the recipes Reza presented on the Ajiwai Kitchen segment of the NHK program Asia Crossroads in April, I knew I was in for something a bit different!

The class was held in a private apartment in swanky Aoyama, just a couple of stops by subway from my office. It was a very homey atmosphere, with a dining table set for 6 and a small hob where the cooking demonstration and hands-on cooking took place.

Reza-sensei was a charming host and very laid back in the kitchen, answering my barrage of questions as we went along.

The first dish we made were adorable kupeh fried rice cakes stuffed with a delicious filling of mince, onions, yellow split peas, sultanas, saffron and cinnamon (photo above). The aroma was very much like that of my favourite adas polo (rice with lentils and dried fruit). I wondered if they also eat adas polo where kupeh are from, and it seems they do. A variation on a theme, then.

The assembly of these little parcels is quite fiddly, but the resulting packets were like tah-dig sandwiches. Delicious.

















Next, we made sandali soltan ("the Sultan's seat"), a puree of garlic and turmeric-infused broad beans that was topped with ground dried lemons and sizzling olive oil, giving that unmistakable Persian tartness. I was surprised to know that this relative of the myriad purees, pastes and dips that feature heavily in non-Persian Middle Eastern meze, is considered a borani. I had thought that borani were all yogurt "salads". There you go!

With glasses of wine (at a small extra cost), we ate this with fresh chives and crackers, although it would probably have been lavash in Iran. Great stuff.





















The other two dishes were a delectable stew of layered lamb, vegetables and prunes, which had been prepared in advance due to time constraints; and a dessert of dates stuffed with almonds and dusted with rosewater, coconut and cardamom that Reza prepared while we ate the first two courses, all washed down with Persian tea and saffron sugar crystals.

At the end of the meal, we were all happily sated and eager for the next session.


















This was a trial lesson for me, but I think I was sold the moment I walked in the door to such a warm welcome, knowledgeable host, and the thoughtful offer of wine. A designer by trade, Reza had personalized our recipe sheets with beautiful artwork, and even presented us all with a thank you gift of two dried lemons in a presentation bag with a tag of his own design.

It was a lovely finishing touch to what had been a very enjoyable session of cooking with (new) friends. I signed up for more on the spot (g).

Cooking class 11: Oil free cooking

For my next-to-last cooking class at ABC, the theme was oil-free cooking. On the menu were fluffy tofu-chicken balls topped with onsen tamago ("hot spring eggs", which are cooked slowly at a low temperature so the yolk sets and the white is runny; a soft-boiled egg in reverse) on a bed of rice with 16 grains, three salads, chicken soup made with the cooking water from the chicken balls and an acerola drink with aloe vera.

The main dish of tofu-chicken balls was a take on the yakitori favourite tsukune chicken balls, but simmered rather than grilled. Served with a sweet soya sauce based dressing, the runny egg and strands of nori, which look a little bedraggled in my photo :(, the dish was very tasty.

I'd seen the little bags of mixed grains that you cook together with white rice to boost nutrients and flavour, but never bought any as they can be pricey. Having tried it now, I think I might just get myself a bag as, aside from flavour and nutrition, I really liked the different textures. Overall, this was top nosh.

I don't know what the 16 grains are, but a similar thing, containing glutinous proso millet, pressed barley, red rice, purple rice, hulled barley, soybean, green soybean, azuki bean, germinated brown rice, pressed glutinous barley, sorghum, foxtail millet, Japanese barnyard millet, Job's tears and amaranth, is on sale at Amazon under the name "16-Grain Rice Booster".

ABC often offers classes that put the same ingredients in multiple uses. They call it "eco-cooking". Here tofu got the workout, appearing not only in the chicken balls, but also in the dressings for two of the three salads: gobo (burdock) salad with tofu dressing, mixed bean salad with curry-tofu dressing and mizuna and smallfry with ginger dressing. I especially liked the soy-vinegar-ginger dressing.

The acerola juice with aloe was a bit nondescript to me (I like my tart juices full on, not sweetened into nothingness). The addition of some ginger from the salad livelied it up a bit, and gave my class mates something to gawp at (g).

Cooking class 10: Drinking party snack plate

I took two ABC cooking classes in May, as there wasn't really anything I wanted to do among the June offerings. Actually, I wasn't planning on taking this class, either, but seeing the scrummy-looking plates that another class was tucking into quickly changed my mind.

What we had was basically a degustation menu for a drinking party! Seven more or less healthy snacks, a domburi of sliced bonito topped with Japanese aromatics, and a drink. Nine items altogether. Not bad for a 1-hour lesson. (One hour, by the way, because the teacher cleaned did the cleaning up while we ate and we only had to wash our dishes!)

So, what all did we get? From left to right in the top photo: (back row) deep-fried ginger pork; broccoli dressed in cod-egg mayonnaise; crunchy cherry tomato and rakkyo (Japanese pickled shallot) salad; (front row) octopus with kim chi; deep-fried bonito and cheese parcels; sardine, ume (Japanese pickled plum) and lemon pinchos; and Japanese-style summer rolls.

The cherry tom/pickled shallot combi really hit the spot with me. Tart and crunchy, but still healthy (unlike salt and vinegar chips, say (g).)

The pork was also a bit of a revelation, with the strips of pork basically flung into hot oil still in their marinade. This is the same technique used for frying chunks of chicken, but I'd never come across it for thin strips of meat. The katakuriko (dogtooth violet starch) magically forms a coating when it hits the oil. It's ingenious, really.

I was particularly super impressed with the rice bowl, which was topped not only with my favourite seared bonito, but ginger, myoga (Japanese ginger) and ao-jiso (perilla) and garlic chips as well! A very moorish mouthful. I will definitely be making this again, so stay tuned for a translation of the recipe.

Bonito also showed up arm in arm with cheese in little deep-fried "purses". These fun little bites would probably be perfect for anyone who needs their munchies to be fried.

In case you are wondering, it was not beer, cheap sake or shochu we had to wash this down, but cider vinegar soda. The girls found this a little tart, but it was still a bit on the mild side for me, even with the lemon garnish squeezed in (g). I reckon it also wanted some ginger juice to add a bit of zip.

Saffron

Cooking class 9: A Chinese party banquet

Another cooking class at ABC Cooking Studio. The Japanese pickings have been a little slim since ABC changed their set-up in April, so it was Chinese food this time.

In the old days, the Saffron household had a "live-in" Chinese chef, so there was never really any reason to have a go at it myself. More recently, the mouth-watering film Eat Drink Man Woman has been about the size of it when it comes to Chinese food (or Taiwanese, as the case may be). Being that it has been a long time between Chinese mouthfuls, I was happy to give this Japanese version of Chinese food a go. It certainly looked yummy on ABC's website.

The main dish was youlinji, or deep-fried chicken with a katakuriko ("dogtooth violet starch" if you will; a common Japanese ingredient) coating the same as Japanese karaage. This was served served with match-sticked veggies, wrapped in uncooked spring roll wrappers, with a garlic-ginger dipping sauce. The chicken was really gorgeous and crisp, the result of two fryings: first at 160 C to cook the meat, then at 180 C until the desired rich golden colour was reached.

There were 2 side dishes. The cucumber and zhacai (Chinese pickled vegetable) salad featured lots of different textures: slippery cloud ears (a Chinese fungus also known as tree ears), crunchy strips of reconstituted kanten, and bumpy bashed cucumbers (a common Japanese presentation), alongside the pickle. It was lightly dressed with sesame paste and sesame oil. I thought the salad had potential, maybe with a little more seasoning.

The "mixed" rice, was very tasty and took all of two seconds to make. A little gently fried pork cut into strips, a little salt and soy sauce, and a little sliced spring onion were simply folded into cooked rice and served up. The girls in the class were quite excited by this one.

We also made a sweetcorn soup, but I felt the egg white was a little rubbery and I'm not so fond of the chicken stock granules used at ABC, so enough said about that one, methinks.

For dessert we took an inordinate amount of time to make sweet bean paste-filled sesame-coated rice flour dumplings (zhima qiu in Chinese, goma dango in Japanese). These were lovely to look at and tasted fine, but if I wanted to eat them, I'd probably just nip down to Yokohama China Town and forgo the palaver of making them (then again, I'm not really a sweet person, so it might just be me...).

I did learn about shiratamako and ukiko (aka jin-ko), which Googling reveal to be "non-glutinous white rice flour" and "wheat starch". As a total novice when it comes to rice dumpling-making, I don't know a thing about either of these, but it seems that ukiko is also used in the translucent wrappers for har gao, the steamed prawn dumplings of yum cha fame. Another interesting nugget is that these fried sweets contain lard. For pliability, apparently. There you go, we both learned something today!

Saffron

Cooking class 8: "Home party" menu

ABC Cooking Studio has changed its setup and none of last month's offerings took my fancy, so it's been a while between lessons. Previously I have been taking the Japanese food class, but that option has now changed to a class in basics, and some of it is a little, well, basic. I decided to go for the entertaining class this time. Let's have a "home party" (so called because urban Japanese rarely entertain at home due to space constraints. For the record, I've never let that stop me).

The menu was two kinds of oven-baked rice croquettes, one flavoured with tomato and Camembert, the other with curry and Camembert; taramasalata with pan-fried veggies; a tomato-based seafood soup; and crepes Suzette for dessert.

I liked the idea of the croquettes more than the final result. Baking rather than frying them increased the likelihood of their falling apart, and more than a few of the ones we made did just that.

The taramasalata (hiding under the veggies) was a bit bland to my taste buds, but my Japanese classmates liked it well enough.

But oh the seafood and tomato soup! I'll definitely be making that again. While it only contained 3 kinds of seafood (prawns, white fish and octopus), the taste was rich and unctuous. The secret, apparently, is to blast it in the oven for a bit after it is finished cooking on the stove.

I will also make the crepes again. Big taste with little fuss: my kind of cooking. And the block of butter and slosh of Cointreau in the sauce have absolutely nothing to do with it (g).

My orange zesting skills from Persian cooking came in handy here. I used the veggie peeler rather than fuss about with the chef's knife as the instructor suggested. Life's too short.

Being Japan, this was my opportunity to learn the fine art of flipping crepes with cooking chopsticks. It can be done*, but I'm not sure why you would bother.

* Lay one chopstick across the frying pan and lift the edge of the crepe onto it with the other. Lift the chopstick with the crepe draped over it and with a rolling motion, gently turn the crepe over.

Saffron

Cooking class 8: Buri-daikon, daikon salad, osuimono

I learned a great favourite of Japanese winter cuisine at my last cooking class: buri-daikon, or yellowtail simmered with long Japanese radish. Buri is my go-to fish in the winter. It's flesh is always juicy and the dark part a real delicacy. Plus it's one of the few fishes that the Young Man will deign to eat (g).

We had it with a mild clear Japanese broth (osuimono), which was a little on the bland side for me. The gu, or filling ingredients in osuimono can be virtually anything, but the broth is probably always based on ichibandashi, a stock made from kombu (dried kelp) and katsuobushi (bonito shavings). The redeeming feature of the one we made was a special egg concoction called shimetamago, or "squeezed" egg. This was made by pouring a prepared egg mixture through a slotted spoon so that it falls into a pan of hot water in ribbons, then gathering up the cooked eggy threads in a cotton cloth and rolling it in a sushi mat to produce a light, fluffy egg cylinder. It's a little bit of a performance, but a handy technique to know for when we find a killer suimono recipe (g).

With the theme of daikon, those long white radishes that you might have seen in Asian (i.e. Far Eastern) shops, we naturally had another rendition of daikon salad. I really liked the dressing for this one, which also features pulped daikon. Dikon overkill? Not really. Oxidization works on the pulped (actually grated so finely it becomes a slush) daikon, making it hotter so it's quite a different taste from the crunchy straws in the salad itself.

In the NHK science and food program Tameshite gatten, they found that pulped daikon stays sweet for the first 3 minutes, and then grows hotter, peaking at 6 minutes, after which the heat goes down slowly. So there you go. You can decide how hot you want your dressing and time the pulping accordingly. If you don't have an oroshigane, a metal or ceramic dish with raised "bubbles" that turn daikon, ginger, apple and other such things into pulp, I'm guessing a quick whizz in a small food processor would also do the trick.

And speaking of tricks, this was a clever way of using up the dried bonito flakes used in the dashi for the broth. Stir-fry them with some mild shishito Japanese chillies! There are no fans of shishito at our house, but I imagine you could substitute any other soft veggie with good results.

Saffron

Cooking class 7: Osechi traditional Japanese New Year's treats

In Just Over 24 Hours, I'll be jetting my way back to Australia for the first time in 2 years. Ostensibly it's to spend time with the parents and do the Christmas thing like a good daughter, but it will be so much more than that this time, what with graduations and ruby wedding anniversaries and who knows all what!

But Christmas, as always, is going to be the big one. With all the preparations in the mad trip lead up, you'd probably think I was mad trying to squeeze in one more cooking class at ABC before we leave. I mean I've not even done half the Christmas shopping yet!

Fortunately or unfortunately, the stomach just about always rules the mind in my case, so it was off to learn some more morsels of Osechi ryori, the traditional foods eaten for luck and wealth in Japan at the New Year.

Last year (technically the beginning of this year (g)), I had my first go at Osechi, choosing bites that most appealed to me. It turns out that I chose mainly from the 1st layer of the 2-tier festive box. As luck would have it, ABC was offering selections from the 2nd layer! (They've cleverly set it up so that you need to go two years in order to get the full compliment of recipes (g).)

From bottom left we have tori no matsukaze-yaki, baked seasoned chicken mince cut in the shape of a hagoita, the wooden paddle used to play the Japanese New Year's game of hanetsuki. We topped ours with white poppy seeds and aonori or green laver.

Next is datemaki, a fish-enriched egg pancake that is rolled on a special mat to give it a distinctive zig-zag pattern.

The white and pink ovals are kamaboko, a kind of steamed fish paste. This is eaten year round, but it's red and white colouring makes it an auspicious addition to the New Year's spread.

Crustaceans of all kinds are used in Osechi and the particular one chosen often depends on what the budget is. At ABC, we opened the bellies of some large prawns, sprinkled them with salt and sake, topped them with white and black sesame seeds and cooked them in the frying pan. Ebi no onisudare-yaki, easy and delicious.

The white "blob" in the front right of the top photo is not a bun but a small Japanese turnip called kabu. We cut into the flesh to make the petals of a chrysanthemum, then marinated the whole lot in citron juice and vinegar. I thought the flavour could have been stronger, but it turns out that these are usually left to marinate for a day or two, rather than the 20 or so minutes our lesson permitted. I also thought it would be nice to have yellow chrysanthemums, maybe painted with some gardenia (kuchinashi) dye, perhaps.

Accompanying all this was a different version of Ozoni to the one I made last year. In Eastern Japan, this soup is made with a clear soy-based broth and grilled square-shaped pounded rice cakes (mochi). The filling recipe offered by ABC was in the Western Japan style, which is miso-based, and contains round mochi that is heated in hot water.

Traditionally, Osechi is made over the last few days of the year (in the midst of a top-to-bottom "spring" clean of the house, no less), and eaten cold over the first few days of the year. Having a hot soup would be essential to stave off the cold in the old days.

As it was we, too, did not finally sit down to eat until after 9:40 pm, so we were all starving. Surprisingly, despite the late hour, each one of us was well contented after finishing what we'd made.

Saffron

Foodie weekend: Cooking class 6: Borscht, priozhki and classic chocola

For my cooking class this month I didn't take the Japanese class, but the Russian one. Russian food has been on my radar for over a year, since finding out about Diana Henry's Roast Figs, Sugar Snow, the cold-weather partner to her book on Mediterranean, North African and Middle Eastern food, Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons. I count the latter as a treasure, and waited until October this year to receive what would have been a Christmas present last year!

Not content to leave it there (am I ever?), I ordered another book Russian cookbook (more on which later, as it is my cookbook of the year!) which I was in the midst of reading when ABC Cooking Studio offered a taste of Russia at school.

On the menu: borscht, which is more correctly Ukrainian cooking, gorgeous meat and egg-filled pirozhki and classic chocolat for dessert (not sure about any Russki origins there, but very tasty just the same).

The borscht was okaaay. The meat needed more cooking, but in the limited time available, you'd need a pressure cooker to do more. Once again it used the granulated "consomme" that I dislike so much. I reckon I'll be able to do much better. It was good to know that you can buy beetroot in Japan, even if only cooked in water in the can.

The pirozhki were terrific. The dough was really easy to make and fun to play with. You can make these in the oven, apparently, and I'll be investigating this option as a healthier and less smelly alternative to deep frying.

The classic chocolat was a revelation. I would never have thought you could make cake in such a short time (well, cupcakes anyway). This is a real keeper, and I think I'll look into making it a full-sized cake the next time.

Cooking class 5: Tempura with bean & chestnut rice and tart octopus salad with Japanese egg "mayonnaise"

Tempura, deep-fried seafood and vegetable morsels served with a soy-based dipping sauce, is such a quintessentially Japanese dish it is easy to forget that it is actually a foreign import, brought by the Dutch.

Not one for the oily smell left after deep-frying at home, I was happy to do it in class at ABC, where it was teamed up with bean and chestnut rice and a show-stopping vinegared side dish.

The rice, which had a little "sticky" rice thrown in to give a little more texture, was flavourful and, with it's reddish hue, very autumnal. I wasn't able to pin down why the beans did not need pre-cooking and were merely cooked with the rice, but I suspect they were of a cooked and dried variety. Beans like that are eaten as a snack here in Japan, and are the beans of choice for throwing on Bean Throwing Day in February, when everyone expels "ogres" and welcomes good luck into their homes at the end of winter.

The octopus, cucumber and wakame side dish was superb. Particularly the kimizu (literally egg yolk-vinegar), essentially an oil-free mayonnaise. I learned a new cutting technique called snake's belly, where you make millimetre deep cuts on a slant on two sides along the length of a thin Japanese cucumber. This allows the cucumber to bend like a snake. It's not just for decoration, though: this helps the kimizu to penetrate into the cucumber. Ingenious! I am dying to make this again, but no one around me is game to try the octopus. Perhaps a little steamed chicken might substitute, but it definitely wants to be something slippery.

Saffron

Cooking class 4: Fish simmered in miso, chawan-mushi and vegetables in 2 sesame dressings

If you've been following this blog, you'll know I've been going to Japanese cooking classes at ABC, and might be wondering where the photos are.

I wasn't going to put them up, since they are taken on the hoof under less than optimal lighting, but in the spirit of sharing, I've decided to post them anyway.

For this autumnal class, we learned how to make buri (yellowtail) simmered in in miso, chawan-mushi (steamed savory custard), and vegetables in 2 kinds of sesame dressing (goma-ae).

The buri was a little bit of work, so I had great expectations. It certainly tasted great, but not that much better than tinned fish in miso sauce (which can be had very cheaply in Japan). Not sure that I'll be making that one again...

Chawan-mushi has a reputation for being difficult and not setting properly, it's one of those things people can easily get into a tizz-wazz about--a bit like risotto making. But this version was no bother and looked very impressive on the plate. I'll be making this again, but would dearly love to know what they do with the chawan-mushi at my favourite watering hole. It's really the best!

The goma-ae was a bit of a revelation for me in that I've never had it with anything other than spinach! ABC presented 2 versions, one with white sesame seeds, sesame paste, soy and sugar, the other with black sesame seeds, dashi broth, soy and sugar (sugar is a constant in Japanese cuisine, even in savoury dishes). These dressings adorned maitake mushrooms and still-crisp boiled green beans, respectively. Both were yum and both keepers in my book!

Saffron