Japanese Recipes Archives

Udon with Mushrooms and Greens

Udon with Mushrooms and Greens is a simple, but very flavorful recipe that could be a light lunch, or a side dish as part of a Chinese meal.

This little recipe is not wildly exciting from an ingredient standpoint but it does illustrate a useful technique for cooking noodles that works especially well for the lovely thick Japanese variety known as ‘Udon’.

Basically, the idea for this type of stir-fry is to do a preliminary frying of the noodles in a good amount of fat at high temperature so that they become slightly toasted on the outside. This gives them a nice crisp, chewy texture that adds a different dimension to the dish than one gets from adding the noodles only at the end.

Keto-Friendly Cucumber Gunboats

These Keto-Friendly Cucumber Gunboats make a great low-carb alternative to ‘Gunkan Maki’ Sushi by replacing the rice with other ingredients.

For those who haven’t experienced it yet, Gunkan Maki, or ‘Battleship Sushi’, is very much like Nigiri sushi in that it is a topping on top of an oblong pad of sushi rice. In the ‘Gunkan’ case, however, the topping is ‘loose’ rather than a single solid piece, and it is held in place with a collar of Nori wrapped around the rice. The ‘Battleship’ name, comes, of course, from the rather boat-like appearance of each piece.

The fillings I used for this post (shown from left to right in the above picture) are Shrimp Salad, Egg Salad, and a preparation of Smoked Salmon Strips in a light dressing of oil and lemon juice. Practical considerations made it preferable to make ‘rounds’ rather than rectangles, but the ‘Gunboat’ name still works, I think…

Pickled Herring Sushi using ‘Rollmops’

Pickled Herring Sushi using Rollmops

This Pickled Herring Sushi is inspired by a traditional Japanese form of pressed Mackerel Sushi, but uses Western style ‘Rollmops’ instead.. I love the very delicate flavor of Japanese style Mackerel pickled with Salt and Rice Vinegar, but the Western, more aggressively pickled, Herring fillets known as ‘Rollmops’ work very nicely too.

Enoki Beef Rolls with Eel Sauce

These Enoki Beef Rolls are a simple variation on a Japanese classic, but have the additional twist of being glazed with a sweet, umami-rich Eel Sauce

Enoki Beef Rolls are a common addition to Japanese Restaurant menus (here in Canada, at least). Basically, they consist of Enokitake (Enoki Mushrooms) wrapped in thin slices of beef and then grilled with some sort of sweetish glaze. Commonly, the glaze is some variation of a Teriyaki Sauce, but the commercially prepared Eel Sauce from Kikkoman I have used in this recipe works very nicely indeed.

Japanese Recipes (Page 2)