Nice To Eat You

Miso soup, a Japanese staple, is a combination of (soybean) Miso paste, a stock known as Dashi, and optionally, Wakame, Tofu and spring onions.

Both the Miso and Dashi vary regionally across Japan, with the most common being White and Dashi made with Kombu (dried kelp) and Katsuobushi (shaved Bonito flakes). All of these ingredients are readily available at your local Asian grocery.

There are a number of different ways to make Miso:

1. Dashi Miso paste (Miso paste with Dashi stock magically imbued) (super easy)
2. Dashi powder and normal Miso paste (pretty easy)
3. Hand made Dashi with Kombu, packet Katsuobushi, packet Wakame and Miso paste. (a bit less easy)
4. Hand made Dashi with Kombu, hand shaved Katsuobushi, packet Wakame and Miso paste. (a lot less easy).
5. Hand made Dashi with freshly harvested Kombu and Wakame, fresh caught and dried Katsuobushi and hand-made miso. (impossible!!)

Anyone can (and should) make numbers 1 and 2:

Easy Miso

1. Mix the Miso paste and Dashi powder (if not using dashi miso) in boiling water.
2. Add wakame (and tofu and/or any veggies you want)
3. Bring close to boil then lower temperature
4. Serve in small bowls with chopped spring onions.

Hint: Use a ladel to mix the miso paste and boiling water rather than dumping it into into the pot. This ensures no lumps stick to the bottom.

Numbers 3 is a little harder, but not hard enough for us at nicetoeatyou.com, so we’re going to do Number 4 in detail.

Ingredients

• 2tbs White Miso paste
• 10cm sq Kombu
• 30g Katsuobushi shavings
• 30g Wakame

As far as I’m aware buying a whole dried katsuobushi in Australia is pretty much impossible (although I’m happy to be proven wrong). Luckily for us we found some in Kyoto on a trip to Japan in 2008. We only recently got ourselves a katsuobushi kezuriki which is required to thinly slice the katsoubushi. Whether your katsuobushi flakes come from a bag or the back of a dried fish makes no difference to the process (only the flavour!).

Dashi Stock

Slicing the Katsuobushi takes me back to wood work in High school. The Kezuriki is pretty much an inverted wood plane with a convenient tray for the flakes to fall into.

Kezuriki or not, depending on the desired taste, you need between one and two handfuls of katsoubushi flakes.

1. Chop some incisions into a 10cm square of Kombu and place it in a saucepan of cold water for half an hour.
2. Place the saucepan containing the Kombu on high heat.
3. Remove the Kombu when you see bubbles rising from around it.
4. With the water still on a medium heat, sprinkle the Katsuobushi flakes on the top of the water. Don’t stir.
5. When you see bubbles rising around the katsoubushi, turn of the heat and wait for the flakes to sink to the bottom.
6. Strain the dashi stock through a sieve lined with a paper towel.
7. Wrap the remaining katsuobushi and press the extra liquid out.
8. Place the Dashi stock back in the sauce pan.

Miso Soup

1. Place the dashi stock on a high heat
2. Add two table spoons of Miso paste.
3. Add tofu and/or any vegetables you fancy (our favourites are mushroom and zucchini).
4. Add wakame.
5. Bring to boil and remove from heat.
6. Serve in small bowls with spring onions.

Tags: japanese, miso, staple

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 at 9:35 am and is filed under Asian. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.