Weeknight Dinner: Japanese Breakfast
Weeknight Dinner has been a keystone of Urban Home Blog since its beginning. As with many of us, I figured out weeknight dinner as part of early homekeeping, when the reality hit that someone was going to have to get something to eat on the table. When I started writing Urban Home Blog, I had been a homekeeper and therefore a dinner-fixer for years. I had a library of recipes, techniques, and dishes to share in service to getting a good meal on the table during busy school- and work weeks. The elements of weeknight dinner include being good to eat and relatively simple to prepare, while navigating the fault line between being just another plate of same ole same ole but not being so novel that it's worthless.
In our urban home, the library of weeknight dinners is the result of learning to cook, both technique and cuisine. Dinnertime is Home Ec 101, but the practice is ongoing, as the realities of the household intercede while the skills and interests of the home cook evolve. I learned early that weeknight dinner is best made from pantry ingredients. A well-stocked pantry is vital to every household; even in households where no one cooks, there will at least need to be coffee, cereal, and milk. I learned to plan for the week before doing the weekend grocery shopping, augmented by a quick grocery stop midweek. I learned to keep fresh lettuces for simple side salads so that however rushed it is, the weeknight table doesn't exclude fresh vegetables. I learned to always have staples, such as eggs and cheese for omelets, on hand for nights when the energy, the errands, or the evening gets away from us. Our go-to meal for those nights is pasta puttanesca, which takes very little time or effort to prepare but, truly in the spirit of the dish, is even more satisfying when one's energy is drained.
Weeknight dinner emerges from Grandma's Kitchen as a bowl of New England Clam Chowder served with cream cheese biscuits, or as a big gloppy serve of chicken rice casserole. Weeknight dinner encompasses light and easy teriyaki, autumnal cider chicken or apples and roast pork, lively chicken soup with pickled jalapenos. Weeknight dinner is burger night whether turkey or green chile and steak night whether Diane or London. It is a savory salmon dinner served with baby potatoes and olive relish or a quick chicken stir fry tumbled over white rice. It is a towering California omelet, a succulent Cobb Salad, an earthy risotto with mushrooms. There is plenty of pasta and pizza, usually there are cocktails or wine, and often there is dessert.
Here is the last of our February of weeknight dinners: salmon garnished with a tumble of seared enoki and served in the tradition of Japanese breakfast.
Here is the last of our February of weeknight dinners: salmon garnished with a tumble of seared enoki and served in the tradition of Japanese breakfast.
Nothing upends the household like travel. When I first
started commuting between New York City and Los Angeles, I would take the Thursday
red eye, spend the night at a familiar hotel at LAX, and the work my way home to Hollywood on Friday morning. This agreed with John's work schedule, and due to
the time difference, I was going to be lousy company for the first twenty four hours
anyway.
Also due to the time difference, I found myself checking in
as travelers from Asia also were. Arguably they were wearier and even more
discombobulated than I was. In the grand tradition of hospitality, the
kitchens were open twenty fours, and took traveler's needs into account to
provide that greatest of kindnesses: something to eat. When I, in the grand
tradition of crossing time zones, opened my room service menu at what my body
thought was breakfast time, I encountered something that I was to learn was as common to
West Coast hospitality as artichoke dip: Japanese Breakfast.
As hotel kitchen fare, Japanese breakfast developed, primarily in
California and Hawaii, as a gesture to welcome business travelers from the east.
It is ubiquitous at frequent traveler hotels at airports, at business towers and
conference centers, and at resorts and spas. For west coast travelers, Japanese
breakfast fulfills the same office as the American breakfast buffet: something
familiar to ground travelers as they recuperate between periods of motion. Japanese breakfast is a buffer between the
culture left behind and the one headed into.
Moreover, Japanese breakfast is what is served for
breakfast in Japan. In the traditional practice, Japanese breakfast is laid
upon a bamboo mat as follows: a piece of grilled or steamed fish, a bowl of
rice tossed with milk or egg, lightly pickled vegetables served alongside seaweed,
and either a bowl of miso soup or the hot egg custard known as chawan-mushi. It
is a light, clean meal meant both to welcome the day and to ground one in preparation
for it.
Hotel food though it was, I began to look as forward to
Japanese breakfast waiting at the end of the Los Angeles leg of my travels as I
did to the deli egg bomb and coffeemilk waiting at the end of the trip back east. I like to adapt favorite cooking for home, and as covered in the previous
column, one of my favorite dinners is breakfast. I decided to learn about
Japanese breakfast in order to prepare a version of it at home. Here is my
original recipe for Japanese breakfast. I omit the egg custard as a matter of
personal preference, and serve the fish simply with brown rice and tiny enoki mushrooms, though since it is breakfast, sometimes I serve with a fried egg topped with shishimi togarishi. This
Japanese breakfast has become a favorite weeknight dinner in our urban home,
but it is an adaptation to be sure. I have no claim to Japanese culture other
than appreciation and admiration. And the shared experience of traveling for
hours for our lives, individually and collectively, to converge, and ultimately
transform, in the Port of Los Angeles.
Japanese Breakfast
Brown rice cooks beautifully in a rice cooker; click here
to learn the rice
cooker we use in our urban home. Enoki are tiny Japanese mushrooms; you may
need to trim them at the bottom from the wedgelike body they grow from. Be sure
to use plain rice vinegar, not seasoned.
For the salmon
Two boneless, skinned salmon filets, 6 ounces each
1 bunch enoki mushrooms
Unsalted butter
Ground sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper
For the cucumbers
2 - 3 cucumbers
4 tablespoons rice vinegar
1 teaspoon sake
1-1/2 teaspoons ground sea salt
1-1/2 teaspoons granulated sugar
1 bunch fresh dill
For the brown rice
3/4 cup brown rice
Salt
Soak the rice
The night before
- Measure the brown rice into a medium bowl. Add a pinch of salt to the rice.
- Add 1-1-/2 cups cold, filtered water to the rice. Swirl the rice so that it all soaks into the water.
- Cover the bowl. Soak the rice overnight.
The night before or early in the day
- Safely use a paring knife to cut away and discard the stem and blossom end of each cucumber.
- Peel the cucumbers so that no green skin remains on the white flesh of the cucumbers.
- Safely cut each cucumber lengthways to form long halves.
- Use a tea- or grapefruit spoon to scoop out and discard the seeds and pith from each cucumber half.
- Turn each peeled, pithed, and seeded cucumber cut-side down on a clean cutting board.
- Cut across each cucumber half to form half-moons about 1/4 inch thick.
- Measure the salt, sugar, rice vinegar, and sake into a medium bowl. Whisk the mixture together until no grains remain.
- Add the cut cucumbers to the bowl containing the marinade.
- Cut across the dill to form tiny, feathery pieces. Add a handful of chopped dill to the bowl containing the cucumbers and the marinade.
- Use a silicon spatula to turn the cucumbers and the dill in the marinade until the mixture is well-coated and incorporated.
- Cover the bowl. Refrigerate the marinated cucumbers until ready to serve, 8 hours minimum.
1 hour before serving
- Set up and plug in a rice cooker.
- Empty the soaked brown rice into a mesh strainer. Shake the strainer to express excess water. The rice should have increased in volume to somewhere between 1 and 1-1-4 cups.
- Shake the strainer to express excess water.
- Use a rice paddle or silicon spatula to scoop the rice into the rice cooker. It is not necessary to get every grain; some will stick to the strainer or the utensil.
- Sprinkle the rice with a pinch of salt.
- Add 2 cups cold filtered water to the rice cooker. Use the paddle or spatula to swirl the rice into the water.
- Place the cover on the rice cooker. Click the switch from the WARM setting to the COOK setting.
- Cook the rice until it clicks from COOK to WARM, typically 45 minutes.
- When ready to serve, use a slotted spoon to transfer rice to a serving bowl. Leave excess water if any in the cooker. Use the paddle or the fork to fluff the rice before serving.
10 - 15 minutes before serving
- Melt a generous pat of butter in a ceramic skillet.
- Once the butter is lightly brown and smells toasty, place the salmon fillets pink side down in the butter. Safely and gently shake the pan so that the salmon sears without sticking to the pan.
- Cook the salmon, safely and gently shaking the pan, until the salmon turns from pink to opaque from the skillet side halfway up the fillet. If the skillet runs dry, add more butter to the skillet, gently lifting the fillets so that the butter can run under them.
- Safely use a fish turner or tongs to turn the salmon over so that the seared side is facing upwards.
- Safely and gently shake the pan so that the salmon sears without sticking to the pan. If the skillet runs dry, add more butter to the skillet, gently lifting the fillets so that the butter can run under them.
- Once the salmon smells rich and toasty and the flesh has turned opaque from the skillet side up the fillet, turn off the heat.
- Safely and gently use a fish turner or tongs to place each fillet on a plate. Lightly sprinkle each fillet with sea salt and several grindings of fresh black pepper.
- Melt a pat of butter in the hot pan. Safely tilt and swirl the pan to coat the pan with the butter.
- Add the trimmed enoki to the pan. Shake the pan to coat the enoki with the butter and any fond picked up from the bottom of the pan. The enoki will sear quickly, no longer than a minute.
- Once the enoki are seared, gently tumble them over each salmon fillet.
- Serve salmon garnished with seared enoki with brown rice, marinated cucumbers, and, if you wish, soy sauce.
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