Misoyaki Butterfish

Hard fo believe I made this yeah!  First time.  I actually wanted to buy the already marinated butterfish, but it was $21 per pound at Marukai.  That's ridiculous! 

So I decided I would try and make it from scratch myself, and enlisted the help of CQ and Didi. After a few text messages I was good to go.


I paid $16 for this amount of frozen butterfish that was selling for $8.99 a pound.  That's more reasonable.


Combine 1/2 c. sugar, 1/4 c. sake and 1/4 c. mirin and simmer for around 2 to 3 minutes.


Remove from heat and add 1 tbsp. shoyu and 1 c. miso.  You're supposed to add the miso slowly so that you can get it creamy easily, but I forgot, and ended up spending a bit of time smashing all the lumps out.


Then you're supposed to marinate the fish for 2 to 3 days, but forget that . . . who plans that far in advance anyway?  I marinated for about 1/2 day.


I baked the butterfish at 450 degrees for about 20 minutes, then broiled for a few more minutes to get that koge look.  Came out good . . . shocked da hell outta me!

Nasu no Inaka-Ni (Country Style Eggplant)

I was reponsible for dinner tonight. I went online and found this side dish eggplant recipe that uses bonito flakes. I also made some miso soup with the flakes.  They both came out ono.   For the main dish I made miso butterfish. I'll post that recipe later.


I got this at Marukai.


It's actually for tea, but I put my bonito flakes in it.


I added the bag to 3 tbsp. oil, 3 1/2 tbsp. shoyu, 3 tbsp. mirin, and 1 c. water, poured over sliced up eggplant (about 6) and simmered for about 20 minutes.


I served it cold next to some tofu and topped with freshly shaved bonito flakes and shoyu.  Hooo hooo!!!

Katsuobushi Kezuriki

I got a Katsuobushi shaver!!  One real one!! Lance dropped it off yesterday.  What an awesome surprise yeah!!!  Thank you, thank you, thank you Lance . . . you're so thoughtful!

Doesn't it look cool!!


Here's the blade that's inside of the box.


At first all I got was this . . . not really flakes, but way better than my earlier attempts with the carpenter's plane.


But after awhile I did manage to scrape off some flakes.  Hooo hooo!!! I'm sooo happy!

HELP!!!!

I'm having Photoshop issues!!!  Somebody help!   I can't view my photos.  I can see the folders they're in but when I open the folder, the photos (and subfolders) aren't visible. I know they're still there because if I create a new folder and copy the old folder into it, then I can see the pictures in the new folder.  What's happening?

*Update:  I found a solution. In Windows Explorer I changed the name of the folder which forced a rebuild of the cache in Photoshop. Now I can view the thumbnails.

Don't ask me what that means. I don't have a clue. But it worked.

Zippy's Frozen Cookie Dough

Did you know that you can get frozen cookie dough with your Zippy's Chili fundraising tickets?  They have three varieties . . . chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin and peanut butter.  I got a couple tubs of the peanut butter.


You're supposed to let it defrost for 8 to 10 minutes and then place them on your cookie sheet about 1 1/2 inches apart. Then you bake for 18 to 20 minutes.   They were too hard to do the criss-cross fork thing at first, so after they had baked for around 10 minutes, that's when I did it.


They turned out a bit chewier than I expected, but tastes good. 

Katsuobushi

Coworker Joanne just came back from a trip to Japan. She surprised me with this gift!  Katsuoboshi! Thank you Joanne!!


She recalled from a previous blog post that I had gotten this shaver at the swap meet, but had no bonito stick to use it on.


I was so excited to finally be able to experience some freshly shaved dried bonito.  According to this portion of the directions, it looked like I needed to scrub off the powdery stuff on the outside.


So I scrubbed the stick with a coarse cloth. Looking good yeah!


Unfortunately, instead of flakes like this, all I could get was this powdery stuff.  I think the problem is that my shaver is not really a katsuobushi shaver, but a carpenter's plane. On top of that it's old . . . from around 1969, so it's probably too dull.


So, I busted out our grater/shaver and tried it instead.


This is what I got. It was like trying to shave a rock.


Sorry Joanne, I so wanted to bring you a bagful of fresh flakes, but it was not to be. But not to worry, I'm gonna go hunting for a real katsuobushi kezuriki, and you'll be the first to get a bag.

Free Jessica Drossin Texture

Jessica Drossin is giving away another texture on her Facebook page.  It's called Downpour.  I loooooove it.  You can get the free download here.  

Here's what Downpour looks like:


For all you fans of Kris, I used it on three of her photos below.

Ta Daaaa . . .

After 10 weeks of pottery class, this is what me and CQ ended up taking home.

Here is my first "graham cracker" plate.


This is the plate that I was worried would be stuck to the mold f-o-r-e-v-e-r.


Here's CQ's plate.


My incomplete dragon plate and CQ's duck/dragon are still somewhere lost in the classroom, but that's okay, I'm happy with what we got. 

Dinner at the Prince

Here are the photos from our company dinner last Friday night.