Oooohhhhhh, yeah. I made two recipes for the photo shoot with Jimi Filo. I spent so much time testing and retesting those matcha bars with strawberry jam until they were just right, that I forgot all about the duck soba!

Allow me to “un-forget” it, because it was really good and deserves its time in the spotlight.

I had to retest this one as well, but thankfully I got it right on the second try. The first time I made it, I tried searing the duck thighs directly in the donabe and then shredding them to add back to the soup. Confession time: I had never cooked duck before. I just assumed it would behave similarly to chicken, but I found out very quickly that it’s a bit different.

The duck didn’t cook all the way through in the same amount of time that chicken would have. Also, the meat clung for its dear life to the bone and I couldn’t get much of it off to use in the soup. I knew I was going to have to figure out a better way to cook the duck for this recipe to truly work.

This time, I baked it. I put it skin side up in a deep baking dish and set it in the oven at 400F degrees for 40 minutes, the same way I roast chicken. It came out with golden brown crispy skin, fully-cooked but tender meat, and enough rendered duck fat to keep me in duck fat fries for the next few years.

The meat is still pretty clingy though, definitely not as easy to get off the bone as chicken, but this time I was able to pick the bones pretty clean and have plenty of duck meat for the soup. You’ve really got to get at it with your hands though, none of this dainty fork-shredding nonsense. It’s gonna be quite an effort, but don’t let that duck think he’s bested you! You’ve gotta call that duck by the wrong name, emasculate him in front of his golfing buddies, and them make him do your taxes while you enjoy an ice cream cone in right front of him and don’t offer him any.

Wow, that got weird.

Here’s the recipe for this ducky and delicious soup…

Duck soba

A hot soup of shredded duck and shiitake mushrooms in a salty broth is the perfect dip for cold soba noodles.

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Cook Time: 50 minutes

Yield: Serves 2 to 4

Ingredients

• 4 skin-on bone-in duck thighs
• approx. 20 sliced shiitake mushroom caps (discard stems)
• 3 large scallions (sliced thinly)
• 4 cups water
• 1 and 1/2 tsp. hondashi
• 2 tbsp. soy sauce
• 1 tbsp. mirin
• 4 portions of dried soba noodles

Cooking Directions

1. Roast duck thighs skin-side up in a deep baking dish for 40 minutes at 400F degrees. Allow to cool completely.
2. Pull off skin and scrape off any remaining fat with a butter knife. Use your hands to pull the meat from the bones and shred. Discard skin but keep the bones.
3. Boil soba noodles according to package directions in a large pot of water. When done, drain and rinse under cold water then set aside.
4. In a clay pot or other heavy-bottomed pot, bring water, hondashi, soy sauce, and mirin up to a simmer along with the reserved duck bones.
5. Let simmer for 3 minutes or so then remove duck bones and add in the shiitakes, scallions, and shredded duck meat. Let come back up to a simmer for about 5 minutes to soften the shiitakes and scallions before serving with soba noodles on the side for dipping.

Jimi has also finished his own write-up of the the photo shoot, you can check it out here. This was a really cool experience and I hope we can work together again in the future.

Bonus cat shot taken by Jimi…

Silly kitten.

Have you ever cooked duck before?

April 11, 2013 Alayna Discussion, Recipes 10 comments

It’s lovely out right now. Drippy, gray, and blustery. Maybe most people hate rainy days but I love em’.

I’m on my fifth cup of tea and listening to the hollow patter of the heavy raindrops hitting the roof and echoing through the attic. The air smells metallic and has a weightiness to it that hangs heavy on my shoulders. I should avoid contact with anything soft such as the couch right now or I might just collapse right into it and never get up.

It’s days like these when I want nothing more than to sip on warm broth. Sometimes I wish I’d catch a cold just so I can watch movies on the couch all day while wrapped up in a giant fuzzy blanket and sipping on a bowl of chicken broth with rice and swirls of cooked egg.

This tsukimi nabe was made to be enjoyed on a day just like this.

Tsukimi means “moon-viewing” and is a reference to the addition of an egg to the soup right at the end of cooking. The bright yellow yolk symbolizes the full moon. With a rich broth full of tender vegetables, it is a wonderful meal for a dreary day.

I started by placing all my ingredients in the donabe. If you don’t have one it’s no problem; you can make this in any lidded pot, I’ve even made a soup like this in a baking dish covered with aluminum foil and baked in the oven.

Layered on a bed of napa cabbage are clusters of shiitake mushrooms, enoki mushrooms, carrots, yukon gold potatoes, soft tofu, and a sprinkling of scallions.

The broth is just water flavored with white miso, mirin, fish sauce, soy sauce, and hondashi, which is a dried form of dashi stock.

You pour the broth over everything else and turn the heat up to simmering with the lid on. After about 15 to 20 minutes, check the potatoes and carrots with a small knife, if they’re as soft as you like them then it’s done! The last thing to do is turn off the heat and crack an egg or two over the top, then just clamp on the lid for a few minutes to let the eggs set.

The eggs in this nabe were still runny in the middle and when broken open they added a creamy richness to the hot broth.

The great thing about this dish is you can use whatever vegetables you want or have on hand, as long as there’s a soft egg cracked on top it’s still a tsukimi nabe!

Tsukimi nabe

This "moon-viewing" hot pot features golden-yolked eggs cracked over a hot and satisfying soup of vegetables and soft tofu.

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Cook Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Yield: 3 to 4 servings

Ingredients

• 1/4 of a large napa cabbage
• 4 to 6 shiitake mushroom caps
• a small bunch of enoki mushrooms
• 2 chopped carrots
• 1 to 2 small yukon gold potatoes
• half a block of soft tofu
• 3 large scallions
• 3 cups water
• 1 tbsp. white miso
• 1 tbsp. hondashi
• 1 tbsp. mirin
• 1 tbsp. fish sauce
• 1 tsp. soy sauce
• 2 eggs
• sesame seeds and togarashi to garnish

Cooking Directions

1. Press the extra moisture out of a half block of soft tofu.
2. Cut vegetables into bite size pieces and arrange over a bed of napa cabbage in the donabe, break off pieces of the tofu and add in as well.
3. Heat water and miso in the microwave or over the stove until warm, whisk to break up miso completely. Add the other liquid ingredients to the broth.
4. Pour broth into donabe and cook on medium high heat with the lid on for 15 to 20 minutes or until potatoes and carrots are tender.
5. Turn off the heat and crack eggs over the top of the soup, put lid on and wait a few minutes for the eggs to set before serving.

After photographing, I topped the soup with some toasted sesame seeds and a sprinkle of spicy togarashi seasoning. I could really just drink that broth straight out of a mug though, which I may just do since there are plenty of leftovers and it’s still drippy out.

What is your go-to comfort food for a rainy night?

December 6, 2011 Alayna Discussion, Recipes 5 comments

We all know Christmas is about more than gifts, so lets just skip that whole conversation and get right to talking about just how excited I was to receive one particular gift this year……my very own clay pot!

Avid readers will remember that I’ve been pining for one of these for a long, long time and have resorted to using all manner of western bakeware in its’ stead.

No more shall I simmer soup in a brownie pan!  Now, the donabe makes it’s debut!

It was gifted to me by Jeffs’ parents, Mike and Nancy. I cannot believe how well they did at picking out this adorable little pot! The maple leaf design is a specifically Kyoto design, which makes me even happier. Seriously, there was a moment after unwrapping it where I thought I might cry.

“Donabe” is a contraction of the words “do” meaning clay or earthen, and “nabe” meaning pot. (Thank you to commenter Naoko for this translation, as I thought that it was a combination of “don” meaning bowl and “nabe” meaning soup made in a clay pot.) I was really excited to make a nabe for Jeff and I for lunch yesterday so I looked up how to cook with one online only to discover that it has to be seasoned before you can cook with it! Apparently, the donabe is very porous and covered in tiny hairline cracks that need to be properly sealed or else you risk damaging the pot when it hits high heat.

(Based on instructions I found on KyotoFoodie) Here’s what to do: First, make sushi rice!

I made a cup of rice and added about 3/4 of it to the empty donabe along with enough water to fill it about 80% full. Typically then you would cook it for about an hour over a gas stove eye, however we have an electric stove which is not good for a donabe. It gets too hot and the heat is uneven, it could shatter while cooking.

Instead I put the pot in the oven with a baking tray on the rack below it to catch any boil-over. I started heating it to 200 degrees and just kept upping the heat every 20 minutes or so just so that it wouldn’t get too hot too fast and break. Once I got it up to 425 degrees, I let it cook for about an hour. When it comes out, you have a thick gluey rice porridge!

Now, if I had made this with stock instead of water, I’d have what is called okayu, the Japanese equivalent of chicken soup. It’s commonly eaten for breakfast all over the asian continent and goes by many names: okayu, jook, congee, byohk, bubur, juk, and many more. So good with an egg cracked over the top and stirred in!

Anyway, this was not the delicious okayu, this was basically glue. I spooned it up over the rim to seal the edges while they were still warm.

I let it sit like that for about 20 minutes until the donabe was cool enough to pick up. Then I just rinsed it out thoroughly and dried it well. It’s important to make sure the donabe is absolutely 100% dry on the outside, especially the unglazed bottom, before using or it may break when exposed to high heat. For this reason it’s best to hand dry it and then let it air out upside down for several hours.

I can’t wait to use this little guy! I also got a book full of amazing traditional hot pot meals to learn from.

I wanna make everything in there!

Jeff and I are taking a trip to an asian market today to load up on some items that are hard to find in other stores. Wait til you see what I cook up with my new donabe!

December 28, 2010 Alayna Discussion, How To 9 comments