So, armed to my elbows with enthusiasm, I started cooking two days ago. After scouring the internet for dishes I thought I could make with relatively little difficulty I decided on datemaki (sweet egg rolls), chikuzenni (chicken simmered with root vegetables), namasu (daikon and carrot pickles), yahatamaki (burdock root and carrot sticks rolled in beef and simmered in a marinade) and ozouni (a traditional broth with condiments eaten on New Year's Day).
So having already decided what to cook, I thought it would be nice to serve the food on some Japanese looking tableware. This saw us shopping for bowls for the soup and boxes for the dishes at our neighbourhood 100yen shop. Traditionally the dishes are placed in laquer boxes, but as we were doing our shopping in a 100yen shop we settled for plastic look alikes.
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| Can't really tell they cost between RM5-7 can you? |
In the end, cooking took more time and stress than I had imagined.
When making the datemaki, I am supposed to either pan fry or bake a mixture of egg and Japanese fishcake , and then roll it up. I chose to bake it. Although I had followed the instructions closely, I still faced a few problems with the eggroll.
The first was that I found it so difficult to roll up the baked egg because it was so thick, and really wanted to give up halfway. It was only because my husband and sister cheered me on that I stubbornly kept on rolling. The second problm I had was that after rolling up the egg, it started to leak liquid. I panicked, suspecting that I had not baked it through. SO what did I do? I cheated and stuck in the microwave oven. I thank my lucky stars that when I cut it this morning it was fine.
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| On the left is store bought fishcake called kamaboko while on the right is the datemaki that almost went wrong. |
The next dish I made was the chikuzenni. The recipe was pretty straight forward so I didn't think I would face any problems. Well, I hadn't counted on my bad judgement in replacing the chicken thighs with the more fragile chicken fillets. Sigh... the simmering meant that by the time the dish was done, my bite sized chicken pieces had disintegrated into chicken shreds. (-.-)
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| Chikuzenni, chicken with lots of yummy lotus root, burdock root and carrots. I forgot to add in the sugarsnap peas. |
The yahatamaki was also straightforward, but I couldn't have done it without my husband as the instructional video I was watching was in Japanese and the lady spoke too fast for me to understand what to do with the beef.
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| Yahatamaki completed with help from Hubs |
I am personally not very fond of osechi dishes, but there is one particular one that I really do like, mainly because I love all things sour, and that's the namasu. This was in fact the easiest dish to make, but because my husband and my Dad both don't like anything sour, I had to cut back on the vinegar.
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| Store bought black beans- I decided not to cook these as it would have taken too long- and my favourite namasu. |
My husband is from the Kanto area and grew up having clear broth ozouni, so that is what we had this year. The ozouni turned out alright I think, although I would like to try the Kansai version that uses white miso next time.
This dish usually has komatsu (Japanese mustard leaves) and Shiitake mushrooms it in but as I couldn't find komatsu and don't like Shiitake, I left them out. I am not sure if the mochi is supposed to be so puffed up as my husband toasted them, but they tasted much better this way than when I had them in Japan when they were less crispy and a lot stickier!
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| Ozouni. Clear broth made from kelp and bonito flake stock, enhanced with daikon, carrots, kamaboko and kirimochi or mochi. |
The other dish we had were soba noodles. Although soba is eaten all year round in Japan, soba eaten on New Year's Eve is known as toshikoshi soba and the name symbolises crossing over from one year to the next. I was still cooking when the clock struck 12 so we ended up eating it today instead.
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| My husband says people usually have kakesoba (warm soba) as their toshikoshi soba, but as it is warm in Malaysia I decided we would have zaru soba (cold soba) instead. |
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| Traditional Japanese dishes served at a traditional Chinese round table. A marriage of cultures. |
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| My husband's lunchbox for tomorrow. |
It was my family's first time having osechi ryouri and ozouni, but they were very open about it and finished everything!! I was so glad. Although like me, I am sure my Mum and Dad can wait another year before having ozouni again =) The taste of the broth is just too delicate for our Chinese tastebuds I reckon.
The links to the dishes I have made are below. Most of the videos are in Japanese so I will be posting an English translation on the blog later.
1. Namasu- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2fuatmG4AQ
2. Datemaki- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pA995QfIm6c
3. Chikuzenni- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ou4zCvq6Raw
4. Yahatamaki- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJijabOy9OM
5. Ozouni- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TLoD1IzGlU
Happy New Year everyone!
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