Monday, January 02, 2006

I (heart) nabe.

As per "year of the stupid dog", I want to cook more and better food this year. Right now, I'm making my second ever nabe from scratch. Nabe is short for Donabe, meaning clay-pot. It's basically just a bunch of stuff thrown into soup stock... though not quite soup. The focus is on the bits and pieces, not on the broth.

This time it's maitake mushrooms, black cloud mushrooms (kikurage), nameko (another, slimy variety of mushrooms), konnyaku (uh, a weird gel made from special potatoes), and little fried dough balls I made from lotus root and nagaimo (long potato?). It's got to simmer just a little bit longer before I can get into it, but it smells great.

This is a recipe from a magazine-like cookbook I bought last week called "anytime nabe". I'm looking forward to making another 10 or so of the recipes in the book. The rest are meaty.

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