Batayaki Fever

I'm finally back at work for a seemingly endless stretch of days.  Its gonna be a brutal stretch.  43 more days of work until the end of the school year, and the only holiday in sight is Memorial Day.  For you non-Zone people, its 40 days and no holiday. . .Memorial Day will be the day just before the official beginning of your summer (I'm so jealous).

I think it was overkill with the anticipation of Easter (to me, Easter=all kinds of candy & sweets), but I feel like the only stuff I've been making has been sweets.  Right now, we have Easter sugar cookies (bunnies, eggs, chicks), orange slice cookies, brownies, hopping bunny buns, and mandarin orange cake.  I HAD TO buy a few boxes of Cadbury creme eggs too.  I wonder how many bags of Brach's pastel malted milk eggs Brucie boy bought this year.  Neither of us have  blood sugar problems. . .yet.  There is also a big box of See's Easter candy and some jellies from Grandma Help. 

I was unable to get motivated to cook dinner on Easter.  My excuse is I had a Dorito Locos taco from Taco Bell in the mid-afternoon, and that put me under.  The Help shelled out big $s for a gorgeous rib eye roast, but I could not bring myself to cook it.  I need to stop tweaking sugar and snap out of this high!  I need to get inspired to cook regular food again. If a rib eye roast won't do it, then maybe batayaki will, after all, the best batayaki is made with thinly sliced rib eye.

The kikukat house loves batayaki nights because there is something for everyone.  Batayaki nights provide an opportunity to exercise will power. . .you need to pace yourself with the cooking-eating cycle.

For those of you not familiar with batayaki, please allow me to explain.  Batayaki goes by several other names:  teppanyaki, yakiniku.  Thinly sliced meats and vegetables are cooked on a griddle which has been primed with butter.  Once cooked, the meats and vegetables are dipped in a shoyu-based sauce and eaten with hot rice.  Batayaki is a cannibalized word:  bata meaning butter and yaki meaning to cook.  Now I'm wondering if batayaki is a Hawaii word.

In the 70s, 80s & 90s, Restaurant Fuji in the Hilo Hotel was THE place to go out and enjoy a teppanyaki dinner.  Yukata-clad servers would bring a giant plate of raw food and a small dish with a block of butter to the table.  There were two options for teppanyaki:  teppanyaki which had an assortment of meat and some seafood and umi-no-ko which had only seafood.  The servers  would fire up the propane and begin the cooking process.  This is not the same as what you get at Benihana.  There were no fire knife theatrics.

To be honest, I never enjoyed teppanyaki at Restaurant Fuji.  I would always be disappointed when we got seated at a teppanyaki table because that meant I wouldn't be able to order anything from the regular menu.  They had two items on their regular menu that were awesome:  shrimp tempura and grilled butterfish.  I would have much preferred those things instead of batayaki.

When I lived in Honolulu in the 90s, there were (and still are) tons of yakiniku places.  Many of my family members would rave about Edokko or Yakiniku Camellia.  I went to one of those places with some friends, and I was not impressed.  It was a little different from Restaurant Fuji in that you went to a long buffet to load up your plate with raw items and then return to your table (with grill) to cook what was on your plate.  Same thing...cook food, dip in sauce, eat with rice.  Boring.

It didn't occur to me until I was older (close to 30) why I didn't enjoy batayaki/teppanyaki/yakiniku.  I never liked the dipping sauce.  The sauces were either too sour or just blecchhh.  The turning point happened when Mr. Dependable's friends suggested a batayaki dinner (I wasn't enthusiastic about this) and they insisted on bringing the sauce.  The sauce they brought was almost perfect and changed my whole take on batayaki.  For the first time in over 2 decades, I realized batayaki was something I could like. 

If you were lucky enough to have disposable income when Restaurant Fuji went out of business (mid/late 90s), you might have been able to score a table with a built-in propane griddle.  I don't think most people were so lucky (there were less than a dozen).  For most people, the most popular way to have batayaki at home is to use a table top griddle (I think mine is made by Presto) upon which a generous pat of butter is placed.  Some people use a frying pan on a butane burner for table top cooking.  If the cooking part isn't so important, everything can also be cooked in a skillet on a range and brought to the table already cooked.  I do the latter when I'm trying to finish the leftovers on the 2nd night. . .after the cooking drama from the 1st night is over.

What gets cooked varies from family to family.  We normally have  beef and pork (batayaki meat is sliced paper-thin).  Sometimes we have chicken.  Salmon is a non-negotiable.  Scallops and shrimp are good too.  I like eggplant (takes long to cook), won bok (napa cabbage), bean sprouts (mung), and mushrooms.  The best mushrooms are alii oyster (eryngii) mushrooms.  I've been told that some families will even cook sliced hot dogs and kamaboko (pink & white fishcake).  Mr. Dependable liked to have zucchini (yuck).  D1 will eat anything except mushrooms and eggplant.  D2 will eat only the leafy part of the won bok.

There is also great variation with the dipping sauce (each diner gets their own bowl. . .a community bowl would be disgusting).  Most sauces have some element of pucker, and in many cases, its too sour for my taste.  Ironically, pucker was the missing factor when Mr. Dependable's friends came over.  The sauce they brought was tasty but lacked any hint of tartness.  I fixed it with some minor adjustment of the ingredient amounts and the addition of lemon juice.  The grated daikon gives the sauce a slight heat, which is also important.

Speaking of heat. . .everytime I think we are going to start seeing warmer weather, a new storm system comes around and gives us days of rain.  I'm still having to turn on the electric blanket every night.  It doesn't matter what the weather is like because batayaki is something that can be enjoyed year-round. 

click on recipe title for printable recipe

KCs Batayaki Sauce

     1 c shoyu
     1/4 c sugar
     1/4 c mirin
     1 c chicken broth
     juice of 1/4 lemon

     5" piece of daikon, peeled & grated

Combine all ingredients, except grated daikon, in a medium saucepan.  Heat gently, stirring until sugar is dissolved.  To serve, place desired amount of grated daikon in a bowl.  Ladle sauce over.  Replenish sauce and daikon as needed.

Regarding the food in the pics:  Costco sells thinly sliced rib eye (yes, they have prime beef).  KTA and Marukai sell thinly sliced beef and pork.  Doesn't the salmon look gorgeous?  Its wild Alaskan king salmon courtesy of cousin Kento and his fabulous, non-fish-eater wife Julie.  They go on a yearly fishing expedition to the Waterfall Resort in Alaska and are generous in sharing their spoils.  Thank you!

Potluck Food: Soba Salad

I have a whole bunch of work-related food needs this week.  Today I'm at a most-of-the-day meeting, and I have a plate of banana bread to share.  Tomorrow's training will either be an opportunity to share more banana bread or perhaps a pumpkin cake.  Wednesday is an office potluck (of course, what else?), and I'm still undecided about what to bring.  Of course, if we don't bring anything to these events, there would be nothing to eat, and what good is a meeting/training without food.

When the Hawaii economy took a downturn for the worse, the DOE cut back by not providing meals at workshops and trainings.  While some people were saddened by the lack of opportunity for a meal on the DOE's dime, I certainly wasn't.  Although free to the participant, the meals usually consisted of tasteless food.  I was working out of a Honolulu-based office at the time, and what we did was pool our $ together and have lunch catered for us or had a potluck.

Pooling $ together was great in Honolulu because of the wide range of places that were willing to cater or provide a bento.  Hilo doesn't have nearly the range of choices as Honolulu, so what we end up doing is having potluck.  Everyone brings something to share.  In spite of not being told what to bring, things always seem to work out.

Soba Salad is something which invariably can be found at most potlucks.  Soba Salad is a variation on Somen Salad.  Boiled Japanese noodles are cooled and topped with things like fish cake and vegetables.  A shoyu-based sauce is poured over just before eating..  Soba is Japanese buckwheat noodles.  It is easily identified by its gray-brown color.  Soba noodles can be purchased at any supermarket (even Wal-Mart and Target).
I used hijiki, wakame, watercress, kaiware (daikon sprouts), uzumaki (rolled pinwheel fishcake which is likely known as narutomaki outside of Hawaii), and shredded red pickled ginger to top my soba, but I've had versions which contained imitation crab shreds, taegu shreds, maui onion, cucumber, and ocean salad.  The idea is to use whatever you have on hand.  This is especially refreshing on a hot day.

click on recipe title for printable recipe
Soba Salad

Salad ingredients:

     1/2 c hijiki

     3 tbsp oil

     3 tbsp shoyu

     3 tbsp sugar

     1/4 oz wakame (this will seem like just a little)

     1 bunch watercress, trimmed and cut into 1" lengths

     4 oz kaiware, root ends cut off

     1 roll uzumaki, slivered

     2 tbsp red shredded pickled ginger

     16 oz dried soba noodles

Dressing:

     3/4 c vegetable oil

     3/4 c shoyu

     3/4 c lemon juice

     5 tbsp sugar

Soak hijiki in a bowl of warm water for 20 minutes.  While hijiki is soaking, combine dressing ingredients in a jar.  Shake well and set aside.  Drain water from hijiki, and press out as much water as possible without mashing hijiki.  In a small skillet, heat 3 tbsp oil.  Add hijiki, 3 tbsp shoyu, and 3 tbsp sugar.  Cook until liquid is absorbed.  Set aside to cool.  In a small bowl, soak wakame in a bowl of cold water for 7 minutes.  Drain, pressing out as much water as possible.  Set aside.  Boil soba noodles for 6-7 minutes.  Rinse under cold water until cool.  Drain well.  In a 9 x 13" pan or other comparable flat dish, arrange soba in an even layer.  Top with hijiki, kaiware, watercress, wakame, uzumaki, and pickled ginger.  Pour dressing over entire salad just before serving.

As an alternative, served dressing alongside salad, allowing guests to dress their salads individually.  If doing this,  make 1 1/2 or 2 quantities of dressing.

Imitation Namako

 Years ago, Mr. Dependable would drive his Pathfinder to Kapoho, and he and his friends would pick namako.  Namako is an edible variety of sea cucumber. He would come home with a bucket of these short, fat, worm-like creatures.  I would make sure Dad would get some because Dad is the absolute best at preparing them.  Dad's namako is sliced thin and pickled in a vinegar-lemon juice-sugar solution, which preserves the namako and prevents it from melting away.  When its time to serve, a small scoop of grated daikon radish is placed in a small dish, along with a generous squirt of shoyu.  Then the namako pieces, along with some of the acidic sauce, is added to the dish.  Yummmm.

But namako is difficult to obtain.  The Mr. Dependable hasn't gone for years (or if he goes, he is not giving me any).  I haven't tried preparing any of the dried namako from the Chinese store, although I did eat some that Uncle Hanok brought from Korea on his last trip here.  But Uncle Hanok cooked the reconstituted dried namako.  I like it raw.

The best approximation of raw namako is thin slices of konnyaku, a gelatinous-like substance often used in Japanese cooking.  By slicing the konnyaku thinly, and preparing the same condiments as in namako, its easy to pretend you are slurping on namako.  The one important thing to remember is that konnyaku, unlike namako, needs to be chewed well, as it will not readily dissolve or melt.  By slicing it thin, the choking hazard is greatly reduced.

click on recipe title for printable recipe

Imitation Namako

     2-3 blocks konnyaku

     1 c grated daikon

     2 tbsp lemon juice

     1/4 c sugar

     3/4 tsp salt

     1 tsp hondashi

     1 tsp shoyu

Rinse and cut konnyaku in half.  Cut each piece in half (butterfly) to make it thinner.  Cut in thin slices.  Salt konnyaku and massage.  Rinse and drain.  Combine with rest of ingredients.  Chill overnight.