Buta Kakuni - Japanese Braised Porkbelly

Pork belly is one of those unctuous guilty pleasures that you know will kill you some day, but you can’t resist taking another bite. Unlike “pork butt”, porkbelly actually comes from the belly of the pig and has layers of glorious fat. Salted and smoked, this cut is called “bacon”… need I say more?Cooked over low heat for a long period of time, much of the fat renders out (which you skim off) and the collagen in the tough bits breaks down into gelatin making the entire thing dissolve in your mouth on contact. While I love porkbelly how ever it’s prepared, it’s so rich that I like simple preparations the best.In Japan, buta kakuni is served as an appetizer along with some beer or sake. Literally translated it means “stewed square cut pork”. While it’s traditionally cut into cubes, I actually like leaving it in longer strips then slicing it before serving.The dried sardines and pork make a flavorful broth while the ginger and garlic evens out any overly fishy or porky tones. The braising liquid has a small amount of soy sauce for added umami and “that Japanese taste”, but it’s mostly seasoned with salt with just a touch of sugar to balance it all out.This goes great with some stir fried greens (flavored with the braising liquid), but I also love having slices of this over udon noodles with some of the braising liquid in the dashi.

Yield:

Serves 4-8

Ingredients

1. small handful of dried sardines (about 2 tablespoons)
2. 5 1/4″ thick rounds of ginger
3. 2 cloves of garlic crushed with a heavy object
4. 1 C water
5. 1/4 C mirin
6. 1 Tbs sugar
7. 2 Tbs sake
8. 2 tsp soy sauce
9. 3/4 tsp kosher salt
10. pork belly cut into 2″ strips

Directions

1. Choosing the right pork belly is important. The meat part should be well marbled, and there should be even layers of fat between the layers of meet (you don’t want thicker meat layers or thicker fat layers).
2. Wrap the dried baby sardines in a cheese cloth and tie with some kitchen twine to make a “bouquet garni” of fish (if you can find them you can also use a fillable disposable tea bag). You can leave them loose, but it’s a lot easier to fish them out of the stock if you do this.
3. Pick a small dutch oven (or other heavy bottom pan with a tight fitting lid) that will snugly fit the pork in a single layer. Combine all ingredients except the pork belly in the pot, cover and simmer for about 15 minutes to release stock from fish.
4. Remove the bouquet garni and throw it out. Add the pork belly (make sure there is enough broth to cover the meat), cover and cook over low heat for 2 to 3 hours or until the meat falls apart and the fat is silky smooth.
5. Ideally you’ll want the pork to sit in the broth overnight putting it in the fridge after it cools off. This will do 2 things: it gives the meat a chance to absorb more flavor and it will give you a chance to easily skim off the rendered fat.
6. Gently reheat, slice and serve with some of the braising liquid and some steamed bok choy.

Notes

Buta Udon - Udon with Braised Pork

Okinawa is the southern-most island of Japan, just a stones-throw from Taiwan and their food takes cues from their neighbors, using a lot of pork and fish.Rather than using a traditional dashi based soup stock for udon, I’ve combined some braising liquid from the pork belly kakuni I made the other night with dashi to create a tasty, though unconventional broth for the noodles. If you’re a ramen maniac or an udon fanatic (or better yet, both), this may be your perfect bowl of noodle soup as it falls somewhere in between the two while tasting entirely different from eitherI used Sanuki Udon noodles which are much thinner than other types of udon, yet they have a pleasantly firm texture when cooked al dente. The soup has a deep almost indescribable savory flavor met right in the middle by a subtle sweetness and a mellow zing coming from the long-cooked ginger. It’s inexplicably light, yet rich at the same time. The slices of pork on top start melting like butter on contact with the hot soup. Putting a slice in your mouth gives it just the nudge it needs to sublimate into a pool of rich meaty goodness.I know it’s not every day you have Japanese braised pork laying around, but to be honest, I actually made the pork last night with the intent to make this udon today (yes, it’s THAT good).

Yield:

Serves 2

Ingredients

1. 2 C dashi
2. 1 C braising liquid from buta kakuni (fat skimmed)
3. 1-2 Tbs soy sauce (depending on how salty the braising liquid is)
4. 2 bundles udon noodles
5. 8 slices of buta kakuni
6. scallions finely chopped

Directions

1. Put the dashi and braising liquid in a pot and simmer. Taste the soup adding up to 2 tablespoons of soy sauce if needed. If after adding 2 tablespoons of soy sauce, it’s still not salty enough, supplement with salt until you’re happy.
2. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Following the package instructions, boil the udon until about 1 minute before they are done. For example, if the directions say to cook for 6 minutes, boil them for 5. This is because the noodles continue to cook once you add them to the soup.
3. Drain the udon and give it a quick rinse to get rid of any extra starch. Put the noodles in 2 bowls, top with 4 slices of pork belly each, scatter some scallions on top then laddle the hot soup over everything. Other great toppings include baby mizuna greens (pictured), enoki mushrooms (pictured), or a poached egg. Serve with a little white pepper to sprinkle on top.

Notes

Niku Jaga - Beef With Potatoes And Carrots

If Japan had cowboys and burly lumberjacks, this would be their meal. It’s a real work horse of the Japanese home kitchen and quite literally translates to “meat and potatoes”. Being high in energy, low on prep time and very tasty, it’s no surprise why. This is also one of those dishes that tastes even better the next day, so you can make it in larger quantities and warm it up over rice for lunch.While each home has their own variation, I’m basing this roughly on my moms version. She typically uses ground beef, but I’ve replaced that here with thinly sliced end-cuts of rib-eye and added a little meyer lemon zest at the end to brighten up the sweet earthy flavor. While this is more or less the base-recipe you could really go on and add just about anything you want, sugar peas, bamboo, shirataki noodles, or even tofu (although if you left out the meat or potatoes, you’d probably have to rename it:-)It makes a great accompaniment to rice, but you could also turn it into a donburi by putting it over a bowl of rice and allowing the cooking liquid to seep in and flavour the rice below.

Yield:

Serves 2

Ingredients

1. canola oil
2. 1/2 small onion sliced
3. 1 tsp minced ginger
4. 1/3 lbs thinly sliced beef
5. 1 carrot cut into small pieces
6. 2 small potatoes peeled and cut into medium pieces
7. 1/4 C sake
8. 1/4 C water
9. 2 Tbs soy sauce
10. 2 Tbs mirin
11. 1 Tbs sugar
12. 1 scallion finely chopped
13. Meyer lemon zest

Directions

1. Put some oil in a pan over medium heat and saute the onions and ginger until wilted and fragrant. Add the beef and fry until brown. Toss in the carrots and potatoes, sake, water, soy sauce, mirin and sugar.
2. Cover and turn down to the heat to a low simmer and cook, tossing a few times until the potatoes are soft. Serve topped with scallions and a little lemon zest along with some rice.

Notes

Gomamiso Yosenabe - Sesame Miso Hotpot

Nabe (pronounced nabeh) is the Japanese word for “pot” and is used to refer to a class of dishes which includes favourites such as shabu shabu and sukiyaki. Yose (pronounced yoseh) means to “put together”, so yosenabe is a dish that’s often cooked in a pot at the table with meat, seafood and veggies put together.Depending on what region of Japan you’re from, the broth can be made from seafood or meat and can be seasoned with miso, soy sauce or salt. All the regional combinations of items that go into nabes, makes it a very versatile dish that’s eaten all over Japan in winter. This is all just a long way of saying that there’s no right way to make a nabe.At its core, it’s a simple hearty stew that’s heavy on vegetables and light on meat. Because it’s typically cooked in a giant ceramic or cast iron pot at the table, it’s boiling hot when it reaches your bowl and is a great way to warm up during the cold months.While I’m no expert on all the regional variations of yosenabe (I doubt anyone could really keep track of all the variations), I’m fairly certain putting tahini into a nabe is pretty uncommon. It’s a weird quirk I have that started with a penchant for putting tahini in packaged ramens to give them a little more oomph. I love it because it gives the soup a white creaminess not unlike the rich pork broth used in tonkotsu ramen. The earthy flavors of are perfect compliments and the rich creaminess provides the stick-to-your-ribs feel without the stick-to-your-ribs calories.

Yield:

Serves 4-8

Ingredients

1. For the Stock
2. ================
3. 3 C dashi
4. 1/4 C miso
5. 2 Tbs mirin
6. 1 Tbs tahini
7. 1 tsp sugar
8. .
9. Root Vegetables (A):
10. ================
11. Carrots
12. Daikon
13. Potatao
14. .
15. Meats
16. ================
17. Chicken thighs cut into chunks
18. Pork sliced
19. Prawns
20. Fish cut it chunks
21. .
22. Green Vegetables (B)
23. ================
24. Ramps
25. Green Onions
26. Yellow Onions
27. Leek
28. .
29. Fungi
30. ================
31. Shiitake Mushrooms
32. Enoki Mushrooms
33. Matsutake Mushrooms
34. Shimeji Mushrooms
35. .
36. Other
37. ================
38. Shirataki
39. Tofu
40. .
41. Lettuces & Cabbages (C)
42. ================
43. Napa cabbage
44. Cabbage
45. Chrysanthemum
46. Spinach
47. Mizuna

Directions

1. In a medium cast iron pot, clay pot, or french oven (like a Le Creuset), add all the ingredients for the stock and whisk to combine. Heat over a table top burner or on the stove until simmering. Add a few items from veggie group A as well as any meat you want to add. After they’ve cooked, add some items from veggies group B, mushrooms, and other. When those are ready, finish by adding some veggies from group C.
2. Serve with an empty bowl and bowl of rice, keeping a ladle and long chopsticks at the table to pick out the bits each person wants.
3. It’s also common to finish the meal by adding a bowl of pre-cooked ramen, udon or rice into the left over stock after most of the veggies and meat have been eaten.

Notes

Before you balk at the long list of ingredients, you don’t need everything, just 1 or 2 from each category.

Sukiyaki

There are many styles of making this, but perhaps the most common way is to cook meat and veggies in a sweet soy sauce based broth at the table. While I’m a big fan of the table top cooking method (especially for Shabu Shabu), I actually prefer to pre-cook the stuff separately and just serve the sukiyaki in a large bowl in the center of the table.Regardless of how you decide to cook it, it makes for a really simple weeknight meal that requires no more than some washing and cutting of veggies. It’s typically made with thin slices of well marbled beef, but you could really use just about anything. Japanese markets tend to have the meat pre-sliced and packaged. I lucked out and got a pack of wagyu end-cuts (kiriotoshi) for a couple bucks. Because they were the end cuts the pieces were kinda irregular (which would be a problem for shabu shabu), but works just fine for sukiyaki. The most important thing is that the meat is tender and has a good amount of fat marbled with the meat.For veggies you can use just about anything. I went mostly traditional using Tofu, green onions, bamboo, enoki mushrooms, and chrysanthemum leaves, but I also added some fresh summer squash I got at the farmers market the other day. It’s a good way to clean out the vegetable drawer in your fridge.   Traditionally it’s eaten by dipping the cooked meat into a raw egg, but due to the potential for getting salmonella I wouldn’t recommend it. You could soft poach or coddle the egg, but I still don’t think that would technically be “safe”. Instead I just grate some raw yamaimo (japanese mountain yam) also known as nagaimo which has the texture and slimy consistency of a raw egg when grated. If all this talk of slimy things is turns you off, or you can’t find it, you could always just skip it.Leftover sukiyaki makes for a great bowl of udon (with some boiled noodles and egg cooked in the broth), or you could turn it into a donburi by reheating it with some beaten egg on top then serving it over a bowl of rice.

Yield:

Serves 4-6

Ingredients

1. thinly sliced well marbled beef
2. aromatic veggies (like onions, leeks, green onions, carrots etc)
3. other stuff (bamboo, tofu, shirataki noodles, etc)
4. mushrooms (shitake, shimeji, enoki, portobello, button, etc)
5. leafy veggies (like napa cabbage, chrysanthemum leaves, etc)
6. .
7. For the Broth:
8. ===============
9. 1/2 C dashi
10. 1/4 C mirin
11. 3 Tbs soy sauce
12. 2 Tbs dark brown sugar
13. .
14. To serve
15. =============
16. small bowl of yamaimo peeled and grated

Directions

1. =- For Table Top Cooking -=
2. If you’re cooking it at the table (I use a fondue pot), double or triple the recipe for the broth and mix all ingredients in the pot and heat. You’ll need enough broth to mostly submerge your food as you won’t get as much heat out of a fondue pot.
3. =- For Stove Top Cooking -=
4. If you’re cooking it on the stove, heat a pan on high until hot then add a bit of oil and sear the beef. You don’t want to cook it all the way through, just enough to brown the meat and get some fond on the pan. Transfer the meat to a plate and set aside.
5. Add the ingredients for the broth into the pan. There should be around 1/2″ of liquid in the bottom of the pan. Double the recipe if you need more. Start with the aromatic veggies then transfer to a serving bowl as they cook. Then move on the the “other stuff”, then the mushroom, then the leafy veggies, and finish by putting the beef into the stock until it’s cooked (careful not to overcook it). Dump the meat and broth over everything else and serve.

Notes