New Year's Food Entry #2 (or so.): crystalpyramid

crystalpyramid

New Year's Food Entry #2 (or so.)

Jan 02, 2013 19:58

Notes about quantities:

Two cups (a double recipe; one bag) of dry soybeans is the right amount of kuromame to actually last three days, with occasional guests
1 bag of anchovies is a ridiculously large amount of anchovies; good luck finding a smaller quantity of safe quality, though. Possibly we could freeze the rest? It's not like they could fall apart more when cooked.
1 smallish "large" daikon (all daikon are large) and 1 carrot is the right amount of pickle-thing for three days
A jar of chestnuts in syrup is probably adequate but not plentiful; however, it has no nutrient content whatsoever. How do you scare the protein out of a nut?? A braver soul than I was this year might try getting two bags of "fresh" chestnuts (haha) and doing something with sugar and water and mirin that won't totally kill their nutritional value. We did half jarred and half bagged and it sort of worked. You can get both at Sunrise Mart; I don't think I have a more local source.
Two woks of nimono is too much nimono. Do not do this, even though it is tempting. One entire malanga is too much taro. You probably only need about half that amount, maybe less. One bag of snow peas, maybe less; they do actually cook down, though. The snow peas are a good indicator of when it's done. More carrots than you think, especially since the vegetable cutters reduce their volume a lot. One package of shiitake. Probably not more than one gobo, unless someone decides they really like gobo. Soaking the gobo in mirin/water and then boiling it in saltwater for ten minutes really worked and made it taste much less horrible. One bag of poached lotus root slices is probably appropriate; I have no idea if they need more cooking than just dumping them into the stir-fry, because I have no idea if they actually become digestible at some point. Rinse the weird chemicals (admittedly, mostly ascorbic acid) off them. Probably this would be one fresh lotus root if they had those, but the fresh ones don't cook up as pretty without the weird chemicals. All the quantities I'm listing have the distinction of being half of what I used this year. Sigh.
A bag of pasta is a lot of pasta; we did a bag of red and a bag of white and this may have been right, especially with no potato salad, but it is a lot. Shapes are important if you want to pick them up with chopsticks. Under no conditions should you buy long, twisty, slippery shapes in a medium as slippery as rice noodles. Rice noodles are prettier but regular macaroni is easier to eat, and has fewer weird warnings on the package. Don't assume you don't need to buy mayonnaise.
There is no reason to make so much kombu dashi. Silly.
BUY A LOT OF MOCHI. IT IS VERY SILLY TO RUN OUT OF MOCHI. NO JAPANESE STORE IS GOING TO BE OPEN TO SELL YOU MOCHI IF YOU RUN OUT. (Possibly H-Mart would sell you mochi of the wrong shape, but I don't think that works.)
On the other hand, Vietnamese grocery stores will be open to sell you an orange for $0.25 at 8 AM on New Year's morning. Yay. In future, it might want to be a tangerine, and it might want to be purchased in advance. Vietnamese grocery stores do not have tangerines; you really should not substitute random other orange non-citrus fruits, tempting as it might be. (Hachika!)
Two dozen eggs is in fact the right amount of devilled eggs. Wow.
Probably two cans of inari wrappers. Except that canned tofu skin falls apart, so if you can get some that are fresher (at Sunrise Mart? did Maido have this?), do that.
As much sushi as you can make is a good amount of sushi. Realistically, we filled two large IKEA tupperwares with it, maybe 7 or 8 large rolls, and this was about right. Sundried tomato-mozzarella-basil and refried bean-cheese. I think we should do a Greek one next year. (Feta-Olive-Spinach? Cucumber? Or is feta-olive-cucumber Israeli?)

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