New Year's Eve - Washoku style

Jason and I have a New Years' Eve tradition that I often fear makes us sound boring, but it is such a wonderful way to take a deep breath after the hustle of the holidays and to ring in the new year: we stay home and cook together.  I don't know how this started, but we did it the first year we were dating and it has continued ever since.

This year, Jason had just bought me Washoku: Recipes from the Japanese Home Kitchen (Ten Speed Press) and we planned the entire meal from recipes from this book.  If you have any interest in replicating Japanese cooking at home, I suggest you check out a copy of this beautiful book. 

Each recipe that we made from it was a success and I feel that it has so much to teach me.  The book has a chapter on "The Washoku Pantry" that's greatly informative.  The author, Elizabeth Andoh, recognizes her audience and not only gives a thorough explanation of an ingredient, but she tells how to choose it at a store, what to look for, and gives the reader sources for finding it.  She also gives recognition to a traditional way of cooking, while also giving shortcuts if you don't have the time.  The fish that we made had a recipe for traditional marinating which involved 2-3 days of marination, and an "impatient marinade", which we used, requiring a few hours.

The principles of washoku cooking are designed to create harmony and balance in a meal - in taste, aesthetics, and methodology.  One of the ways that you can create balance is through the colors of your food - balancing white, black, yellow, red, and green.  Using this principle, we decided on the following menu:

Miso soup with mushrooms
Watermelon radish with two salts
Whole fish marinated in miso
Sweet potatoes simmered with kombu and soy sauce
White rice with black sesame seeds

Each recipe was slightly adapted to our own style of cooking.  For instance, Ms. Andoh's recipe for fish was for fillets, but we adapted it to be used for whole fish - a dorado from Ports Seafood at the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market.  The white rice I originally wanted to make had an ingredient called zakkoku mai which I couldn't find, so I substituted black sesame seeds.

The radishes with salt were a revelation.  We chose to make two salts from the book: kuro goma salt made by mixing salt with toasted black sesame seeds, and ao nori salt made by mixing salt with ao nori - a marine alga that is harvested from shallow ocean beds and dried.  Both were delicious in very different ways -- I was partial to the earthiness of the ao nori salt, and Jason preferred the roasty, toasty taste of the kuro goma.  I could see these salts becoming a regular part of our cooking, as I could imagine that they would be delicious on tofu, noodles, rice, and many other foods.

Going into 2006 in true Life Begins at 30 style, many of the ingedients we used for this meal were from local vendors.  I posted on Bay Area Bites this week about our trip to the farmers' market to purchase ingredients for this meal.  We used:

• Black sesame seeds from Full Belly Farm
• Watermelon radish from Heirloom Organics
• Mushrooms from Far West Fungi
• Sweet potatoes from Eatwell Farm
• Lemons from Jason's mom's house

Other blogs discussing Washoku: Recipes from the Japanese Home Kitchen:

Hanashi Station  |  Superchef Blog  |  Brooklyn Washoku  |  Cooking for Margy

Comments

[Jeanne]

Seriously impressive. I like the idea of a special meal with a special someone on NYE. My friends Sam & Chris did an 11-course amuse-bouche. I need to work on that set up for the new year!

[Tana]

What a beautiful meal.

Bob and I did the same: only I prepared our little repast—such as it was—of cheeses, a smoked salmon dip, and a take-out wild mushroom sandwich. We had a good bottle of wine, and a tiny split of champagne, and a film called "Shultze Gets the Blues," which we loved. (Short plot: retired German miner plays accordion for a hobby, stumbles onto Zydeco music on the radio one night, and his life is forever changed. Sweet as can be.) We just wanted to lay low and be quiet. I endorse this entirely. It's a blessing after too much stimulation over the holidays, and not boring at all.

Happy new year to you and Jason, Jen.

[cookiecrumb]

Beautiful repast, Jen. Was there a lot of prep work up-front?
Cranky and I have been doing the just-the-two-of-us New Year's Eve for (ohgod) more than 25 years -- except for the times when we've been "forced" to go out and mingle with the idiots.
In fact, when I was a little kiddie, I begged my parents to forgo their NYE party and stay home with me and my brother. We two kids decorated the living room with crepe paper and balloons... and it worked! They stayed home with us.
Nowadays we do more like Tana and Bob (and Jeanne's friends, but not so ambitious): lovely little nibbles and some champers.

[Greg]

That food looks so good!! A grand New Years Tradition.

[Jen's mom]

Mommy's proud. Maybe your childhood Scrabble/Parchese (and other random board games) quiet, family New Year's Eves prepared you for NYE foodie games...it's all about a reminder of what is important and a commitment to stay on course in the new year.

[rae]

what a beautiful picture, was that your repast? we (me and my mom) do the same thing on new years' day, it is a japanese tradition. the women-folk cook enough food to last, uh, can't remember, maybe three days, and for those first few days into the new year everybody goes visiting each other, eating the pre-prepared food, and nobody has to cook!

[Montreal New Years]

That is one extravagant and tasty meal you have created. I don't think could come close to making all that.