All recipes are for 2 servings unless noted. Oil is canola oil and salt is kosher salt.

2012-11-22

Breakfast, November 21, 2012

It is the day before the buttery-sugary feast. Recent radio shows about how to prepare turkey and side dishes make me feel full already. One of the most recent programs emphasized the importance of butter. We do not use butter excessively even with Western food, but tomorrow’s food is an annual exception. I will have six dishes with butter: panna cotta of beets, gougère, crispy cauliflower salad, baked yams, salmon-potato spread, and pumpkin cheesecake. Some only use less than 1 tsp of butter, but all together they are buttery. To counter the highly likely overdose, we had a butter-less breakfast as usual.

  • Kaki gohan / steamed rice with oysters
  • Kakitamajiru / egg flower clear soup, with green onions
  • Horenso to hakusai no ohitashi / spinach and napa cabbage in light broth
  • Nagaimo no kinchaku, burokkorii-zoe / Chinese yam packets with prawns, gingko nuts and shiitake, with broccoli
  • Daikon no misoni / daikon radish simmered in miso-based broth

Oyster rice, nagaimo with prawns and spinach ohitashi were leftovers from the night before. The nori seaweed that tops the oyster rice is cut into skinny strips, and the green vegetable served with nagaimo packets is broccoli this morning. Hakusai is added to spinach ohitashi for more volume, additional color and texture. Slight changes can refresh the same items.

For a warm vegetable, daikon is cooked with miso-flavored broth. It is a warm and slightly salty dish that perks up your sleepy mind. For some reason, when I eat a relatively large amount of daikon, I feel composed -- which I need this morning before starting to prepare the next day’s meal.

Because I’m already using miso, osumashi clear soup is the choice. A quick, effortless soup with swirled-in egg, it has a mild taste that goes well with oysters.

No comments: