Underseer
Contributor
Or if your country has some other big meal coming up around this time of year, what're you doing for that?
Both of my brothers have to visit multiple households, so we decided that this year instead of the traditional turkey and fixings, I'm going to make sukiyaki, which none of us have made in decades.
Right now, I'm making the dashi for tomorrow, and I have to admit, this is only the second time I've ever made dashi instead of cheating and using instant dashi (hon dashi). How's that for a measure of laziness? Making it from scratch just involves boiling dried kelp with bonito katsuobushi (essentially dried tuna bacon), then running the resulting mess through a strainer. It's mildly time consuming but super easy.
I'm such a lazy bastard.
Now that hotpot has become popular in America, it's much easier to explain sukiyaki to Americans. It's basically hotpot, but instead of cooking the meat and veggies in a broth and dipping the results in a sauce, you're cooking them in a watery sauce at the table. Diners just keep adding sauce ingredients (dashi, soy sauce, sugar, sake, mirin [sweet rice wine]), meat and veggies as they please as the meal goes on.
It's funny that if you go back a decade or more and ask any American about Japanese food, usually the only Japanese dish they knew anything about was teriyaki, but I've never made homemade teriyaki, and neither has anyone else in my family, but we did eat a metric crap-ton of sukiyaki when I was a kid.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get any chrysanthemum leaves, but I do have spinach in the 'fridge, and in our house, fresh spinach was almost always my family's substitute for chrysanthemum leaves back before Asian supermarkets were as common as they are now.
Tomorrow, the hotpot at the table is going to be full of:
This will be served with rice, miso soup (admittedly instant), gyoza (admittedly pre-made frozen gyoza) and assorted Japanese pickles.
Traditionally, everyone gets a sauce cup with raw scrambled egg for dipping the food in just before eating. Given that my parents are getting really old, my mom has vascular dementia, and my brother is still recovering from brain damage, it's probably not a good time to risk salmonella just to be traditional. Besides, we never really did the raw egg thing in my family.
Again, this is mostly because we all ate lots of sukiyaki when I and my brothers were children, but none of us have cooked it as adults, so it's a nostalgia thing combined with an effort to make sure my brothers' families don't get sick of traditional turkey dinner this time of year.
For the sake, I bought a giant bottle of sho chiku bai (I know the sake snobs will sniff at that, but it was always my mom's favorite, so toss off; dementia or not, she's getting her sho chiku bai).
Anyhoo, are any of you planning anything interesting for Thanksgiving?
Or heck, if you feel like, share any favorite family recipes you have for turkey or sides or whatever.
- - - Updated - - -
I still want to try my hand at creating a gajar halwa pie for some holiday meal, but I've never made gajar halwa and I've never made a pie, so needless to say I've been procrastinating.
But it just has to taste good. I just know it! And it would fit nicely with a traditional American holiday dinner.
I will create it one of these days.
Both of my brothers have to visit multiple households, so we decided that this year instead of the traditional turkey and fixings, I'm going to make sukiyaki, which none of us have made in decades.
Right now, I'm making the dashi for tomorrow, and I have to admit, this is only the second time I've ever made dashi instead of cheating and using instant dashi (hon dashi). How's that for a measure of laziness? Making it from scratch just involves boiling dried kelp with bonito katsuobushi (essentially dried tuna bacon), then running the resulting mess through a strainer. It's mildly time consuming but super easy.
I'm such a lazy bastard.
Now that hotpot has become popular in America, it's much easier to explain sukiyaki to Americans. It's basically hotpot, but instead of cooking the meat and veggies in a broth and dipping the results in a sauce, you're cooking them in a watery sauce at the table. Diners just keep adding sauce ingredients (dashi, soy sauce, sugar, sake, mirin [sweet rice wine]), meat and veggies as they please as the meal goes on.
It's funny that if you go back a decade or more and ask any American about Japanese food, usually the only Japanese dish they knew anything about was teriyaki, but I've never made homemade teriyaki, and neither has anyone else in my family, but we did eat a metric crap-ton of sukiyaki when I was a kid.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get any chrysanthemum leaves, but I do have spinach in the 'fridge, and in our house, fresh spinach was almost always my family's substitute for chrysanthemum leaves back before Asian supermarkets were as common as they are now.
Tomorrow, the hotpot at the table is going to be full of:
- Thinly sliced beef
- Green onions
- Fresh spinach
- Shiitake mushrooms
- Enoki mushrooms
- Shirataki (yam noodles)
- Udon (kinda like super-thick ramen noodles)
- Yellow squash
- Sliced carrot
- Dashi
- Soy sacue
- Brown sugar
- Sake
- Mirin
This will be served with rice, miso soup (admittedly instant), gyoza (admittedly pre-made frozen gyoza) and assorted Japanese pickles.
Traditionally, everyone gets a sauce cup with raw scrambled egg for dipping the food in just before eating. Given that my parents are getting really old, my mom has vascular dementia, and my brother is still recovering from brain damage, it's probably not a good time to risk salmonella just to be traditional. Besides, we never really did the raw egg thing in my family.
Again, this is mostly because we all ate lots of sukiyaki when I and my brothers were children, but none of us have cooked it as adults, so it's a nostalgia thing combined with an effort to make sure my brothers' families don't get sick of traditional turkey dinner this time of year.
For the sake, I bought a giant bottle of sho chiku bai (I know the sake snobs will sniff at that, but it was always my mom's favorite, so toss off; dementia or not, she's getting her sho chiku bai).
Anyhoo, are any of you planning anything interesting for Thanksgiving?
Or heck, if you feel like, share any favorite family recipes you have for turkey or sides or whatever.
- - - Updated - - -
I still want to try my hand at creating a gajar halwa pie for some holiday meal, but I've never made gajar halwa and I've never made a pie, so needless to say I've been procrastinating.
But it just has to taste good. I just know it! And it would fit nicely with a traditional American holiday dinner.
I will create it one of these days.
edit: He asked to butter and broil some hot dog buns, so that's our rolls. 
