Traditional Japanese for Busy Folks: Kinpira Gobo

It's been a busy year. But then again, when is life not busy? As it turns out, that is the beauty of this little recipe. I made it for the first time a few weeks ago and I was pleasantly surprised to find out how quick and easy this is. This dish is actually one of my grandmother's signature sides. Or used to be--she tells me she doesn't cook any more. Maybe I can make it for her when I visit in a few months.

Here's a little background, in case you are not familiar with the main ingredient, burdock root (gobo in Japanese). It is a very loooong and skinny root vegetable with an earthy flavor and crisp, fibrous texture.

It needs to be prepared in order to eat--I would very much recommend that one not bite off and eat a raw, unprepared chunk.  Preparing usually involves allowing it to soak in cold water or cold water and vinegar for 10 minutes or so.

Gobo is also valued for some of its medicinal qualities. Among other things, it helps to draw impurities out of the body and helps with, er, regularity.

But really, it is a yummy vegetable and here is a delicious recipe that showcases it. Please keep in mind that I live at high altitude (mile-high, to be exact) so I've adapted all my recipes accordingly. Also adapted to my personal taste, which is impeccable.

Kinpira Gobo (Simmered Stir-Fried Burdock Root)

Ingredients

2 stalks of burdock root

1 medium carrot

2 small red chiles or dash dried red pepper flakes or dash cayenne pepper

roasted sesame seeds

   Flavoring

1/2 cup dashi stock (other stocks such as chicken stock will also work, but dashi is best)

3 T. soy sauce

2 T. mirin

up to 1 T. sugar (personal taste)

1. Prepare the vegetables. Peel (use a potato peeler) and cut the burdock root into a fine julienne, about 2 inches long, and allow to soak in cold water for 10 minutes. Drain and then rinse and drain as much excess water as you can. 

Cut the carrot into a fine julienne, about 2 inches long.

If using fresh red chile, finely slice, crosswise.

  



2. Combine Flavorings ingredients in small bowl or measuring cup.

3. Heat fry pan to medium high and add 1 T. vegetable oil. Add burdock root and stir for about a minute. Add carrots and stir until oil has coated all vegetables. Add red chiles/chile flake/cayenne pepper and stir.

4. Pour in Flavorings mixture and stir continually until the liquid is gone. Remove from heat, plate, and sprinkle with roasted sesame seeds. Enjoy hot, room temperature, or cold. Great as leftovers, especially in a bento.

Maybe at this point you're wondering where you can get (a) burdock root and (b) dashi stock. I purchase a lot of my Asian ingredients at either Pacific Mercantile downtown or H-Mart in Aurora (Parker and Yale). Pacific Mercantile is a Japanese grocery store and H-Mart is a Korean grocery that carries a lot of Japanese goods. You can also purchase powdered dashi at regular grocery stores such as King Soopers or Safeway. (Just mix with water.) If you're inclined to make your own dashi from scratch, you will need to get those ingredients from one of the Asian stores (if you're in the Denver area, that is).

Sorry, no recipe for dashi from scratch at this time. Gotta run. I'm having a busy year.

The Best Deal in Town: 5280

The best food deals in town ended yesterday, and fortunately, Jake and I were able to take advantage of them twice. I am referring, of course, to Denver Restaurant Week, when the best restaurants in town offer dinners for two for $52.80. (http://www.denver.org/denverrestaurant/) This is an amazing deal if you know the fare at many of these restaurants. Jake and I have easily spent around $100 per person for dinner at some of these places, so $26.40 per person if phenomenal. What I love about the 5280 special is that you get a pretty darn good sampling of what the place has to offer--dinners are usually 3 or more courses.

This year, we hit The Oceanaire and Zengo. We had been to Oceanaire before, so we knew what to expect. It was, of course delicious. We had a crab cake slider, their awesome Caesar salad, Tombo tuna steak, trout generously stuffed with crab and shrimp, and chocolate mousse and key lime pie for dessert. The Oceanaire is also known for their bacon-and-tabasco hash browns, so we ordered that as an extra side. Delicious.

Last week, we went to Zengo, a new restaurant in town--one of the Richard Sandoval restaurants (Tamayo, Sandia, etc.) This one is a fusion of Mexican and Japanese influences. To some of you, this may sound a little iffy, but I can tell you, after having lived in Albuquerque for two years, that the mix of Mexican with Japanese cuisine is an awesome fusion of flavors. Anyhow, we weren't disappointed with Zengo. Jake ordered a spicy yellowtail roll as his first course. Usually, we steer clear of the fancy schmancy rolls, especially if they are labelled as spicy because they tend to be loaded with mayo and cream cheese and who knows what else. This one was delightfully different. None of that filler stuff. Just straight yellowtail and spice, with a generous smattering of green roe on top. We also had steak and tofu as well as dessert in our dinner selections. All delicious.

And all for $52.80. If you have never taken advantage of this, please do next year. You would be a fool to miss out!

Just as a side note, other restaurants we have been to in past years: Panzano and Bistro Vendome.

New Addition: Den Deli

You may have noticed a new addition to my top restaurant list. Den Deli. It is the newest addition to the "Den" trilogy. (Sushi Den, Izakaya Den, and Den Deli.) Thanks to my good friend Julie J. who informed me of its existence and also recommended it.

It's a casual place where you can get steaming bowls of noodles, such as ramen and udon, as well as ready-made deli-style foods to go (or dine-in), such as salads and bentos. They also make fresh Japanese-influenced sandwiches. Seafood and other Japanese grocery items are also available for purchase.

Jake and I took the kids there a couple of weeks ago. Jake ordered the ramen, I ordered the miso ramen, and we ordered one of the udons for the kids to share. Let me just preface my comments with this: it is extremely difficult to find real, Japanese restaurant ramen in this country, particularly if you don't live on the West coast. We were thrilled to find it here, finally. And they did a pretty darn good job of it, too. The kids' udon was quite delicious, also.

We also tried the hijiki salad and shumai (Chinese-style meat-filled dumplings) from the deli case. Both good, even though the hijiki salad was not to my liking. (It's a 'shroom thing. It was made with a shiitake base, and you know me and my thing with 'shrooms.)

Let's see if I can remember what else Den Deli offered: sushi, o-nigiri (balls of rice, wrapped in seaweed and filled with either salmon or pickles), Japanese potato salad, other salads, edamame, miso grilled cod, and Sushi Den's famous banana cream pie.

I highly recommend it. www.dendeli.net (the site is not up as of this writing, but soon to come)

Momo-what?

I got this book from Jake for my last birthday. It is Momofuku by David Chang and Peter Meehan. David Chang is the chef--a New York chef. It's a fun read as well as a cool cookbook. The recipes are things that he has either served in his restaurants or things that he likes to make and eat that he doesn't necessarily serve in his restaurants.

So far, I've made the ramen, one of the ssam recipes, the pork buns, the ginger scallion sauce, and the fried chicken. All great recipes, and definitely a springboard for my own culinary creativity.

Here are some of my thoughts thus far:

1. The ramen recipe--I took an entire day just to make the soup broth and then another entire day to make and assemble all the other ingredients. Also, it was quite a task finding all the ingredients. It involved going to various grocery stores and an Asian market, as well as doing some research at a gourmet food store. But the end result was AMAZING flavor.

2. This is not a cookbook for a casual cook. I think you really have to be into cooking to even want to delve into a lot of these recipes. In other words, there's not a lot of quick-n-easy going on here. But again, the food is really really good.

3. Mr. Chang boasts about how good his fried chicken is. He isn't kidding. I tackled that particular recipe, mostly because I am also a fried chicken nut. (I LOVE LOVE LOVE fried chicken.) Even though the process invoves brining, steaming, and frying, and then also creating the sauce/dressing that goes with it, it ended up not being a particularly difficult recipe. Totally worth it. Seriously, the best fried chicken I have ever made, and I dare say, the recipe is almost fool proof.

I would recommend the book based solely on the fried chicken recipe, even though, I believe, the main draw of the book is its ramen recipe.

So, if you like Japanese/Korean/Chinese-influenced cuisine, and you also enjoy cooking, get this book!

Here's the fried chicken--I may have taken a bite out of it before I thought to grab the camera. Looking at this, I'm just thinking that Safeway has chicken on sale this week--I need to get some.


Here's my little dude enjoying the fruits of my labor.

I wish I had taken a photo of my main dude enjoying the chicken. (He ate half of the entire chicken, by the way--a sure sign that it was that good.)

The Dangers of the Beverage

What do you think the worst problem to crop up from your restaurant fountain soda could be? Gas? Diabetes? I worked a few years in food service and I remember an incident in which a customer claimed that our soda fountain darn near asphyxiated him. I didn't wait on this customer, but my fellow server fetched the requested carbonated beverage for this person and moments later was summoned to his table. The soda fountain nozzle had fallen into his drink and, unfortunately, my fellow (absent-minded) server had the misfortune of having the customer discover the mishap.

The customer was quite upset, claiming he could have been killed if he had swallowed or choked on it. Now, a few things came to my mind at this claim:

1. Could a person really swallow a soda fountain nozzle?
2. For those who have never dealt closely with a soda fountain nozzle, these things are about 1.5 to 2 inches in diameter.
3. The customer in question wasn't so large that I could imagine a nozzle getting down his throat.

I digress. What I'm getting at here is that for some people, choking is a real and probable hazard of drinking a fountain soda.

I am here to tell you that there is yet another danger lurking in that cold glass of sweet refreshment.

POOP.

Yes. I screamed, too, when I first made this discovery. That's what I said, and those of you who have read my other blog are thinking that yours truly has some kind of poop fixation (it happens when you are the parent of multiple toddlers). This is for real.

See this CNN article from a couple of weeks ago. http://http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/01/08/soda.fountain.bacteria/index.html?iref=allsearch

According to a Virginia university research study of area restaurants, (both do-it-yourself sodas and employee-access-only sodas) over half of the samples were contaminated with coliform bacteria, e. coli, or Chryseobacterium meningosepticum. To you or me, who are not mad scientists (like my bro-in-law who has an unnatural relationship with hemoglobin or my good friend Yuriko who thinks lab rats are super "cute") that means that someone got poop in the soda.

And don't think that you're safe if you don't order the soda. The water also comes from the same soda fountain.

This article goes on to state that the same study also found that the soda also fell below basic drinking water standards.

The study didn't go into how the poop got in the soda, and the truth is, the study used relatively small subject matter. (90 beverages from 30 area restaurants, all in one city in Virginia) So here are my thoughts on this issue:

1. Does Virginia have a hygeine problem? I hope that is the case, because I would hate for Denver to have this same issue...
2. How did the poop get there?
3. I have gotten sick after having eaten at various restaurants, and I always assumed it was the food. Now I wonder...was it the poop in my soda?
4. I recently discovered a pho restaurant near my home and I was delighted to see that they do not serve fountain sodas--all sodas come in a can. (Pho Saigon on Quebec and County Line)
5. I don't think the restaurant where I worked had the poop problem. We actually removed the nozzles and washed them regularly in the super-duper sanitary dishwasher. Thank goodness!

Jake just walked by and stated that some things you really just don't want to know. I disagree. Are we not all better people for knowing now that someone got poop in your soda?

Kiki's Review: Not A Strip Club

Have you ever had a meal, and afterward you wished you could take it all back? Somehow remove that food from your body? I had a such a meal tonight. Yikes.

Kiki's Casual Dining. The name should had been warning enough. Kiki's? Casual dining? In my own defense, the name of the place didn't exactly break my cardinal rules of Japanese restaurant names. (E.g., Avoid any place called --Bowl and avoid a place offering sushi and cuisine of an entirely different region on the same menu when the place is not a fusion restaurant. The worst offenders have names like this: East Sea Teriyaki Bowl Asian Bistro, pho and sushi bar.) I was trying to keep an open mind, and plus, the place boasts real Japanese home cooking. (see http://www.kikisjapaneserestaurant.com/) I love Japanese home cooking.

The decor here is summed up in one word: cluttered. This didn't detract me, as I've been in plenty of cluttered Japanese eateries (even in Japan) that were delicious. Kiki's had a mess of trendy tables, chairs, and booths, mixed with old shelving piled haphazardly with large ceramic plates. The wait staff was, well, in a word, unenthusiastic. Kind of depressed, actually. But I took heart because the place was packed. Every table was full. I felt a twinge of disappointment, though, when I realized that the Asian clientele was not Japanese and most of the all Asian employees were also not Japanese. (In my experience, non-Japanese clientele and non-Japanese ownership/cooks at an "authentic" Japanese restaurant usually equals sugary sauces and a plethora of other culinary sins.)

Let's move on to the food. Again, in a word, unenthusiastic. Also unskilled. Two items were good: the fried oysters and the fried chicken (kaki-furai and karaage). That's about it. Their miso soup is made with a mushroom broth, which, if you know me, you know is tres offensive. But even then, I was still optimistic because I know that there are people out there who actually enjoy the 'shrooms. Then my seaweed soup arrived. It was like someone poured soysauce into a bowl of water, added seawed and sesame, threw in some raw onion chunks, and called it soup.

I ordered two different kinds of roasted fish, both of which were obviously prepared by someone who had no idea what they were cooking. Seriously, can we at least GUT THE DARN FISH?!?! And then NOT cook it until it's rubbery? And then the squid--geez! It was presented so unappetizingly that we didn't even want to try it. Giant whole squid, sliced and sliding around on a bed of some kind of soy-ginger-garlic-sugar sauce. But we did. So, so, so not worth the effort. I won't even get into the rest of the meal, my friends. I shall spare you the details.

My poor husband finally just gave up part way through the meal. His exact words: "I can't. I just can't."

I admit, when it comes to Japanese home cooking, I grew up with the best. My Oba-chan (grandma) was an excellent cook. She roasted fish perfectly every time. She fried her fried food perfectly. Her flavorings were impeccable. Not too sweet, always packed with flavor. I know I hold a high standard. However, I still won't be going back to Kiki's. No thank you.

Oh, I wish my dinner wasn't in me!

Hello and Welcome

Hello there! This is my new blog. It's a food blog. I'm just putting it together as of now, but I will note here that lately I have a hankering for pho. This is something new to me, as I have not particularly enjoyed Vietnamese cuisine in the past. Lately, however, my interest has been aroused and I am on a search for a great bowl of pho in the Denver metro area. If you know of any places, please comment. More to come!