I've had a bit of a hiatus from blogging recently due to some good and bad news. Good news is that I am in my 2nd trimester of pregnancy! Bad news is that I've had an aversion to most food and especially to cooking for the last 4 months. This has made it a bit difficult to speak about great Japanese recipes from a hands-on perspective, so I decided to write about recipes that I already know are great! I also wanted to share with you a great movie based on one of the most famous Japanese sushi chefs in Japan called "Jiro Dreams of Sushi". The recipe will follow after my movie plug and is courtesy of a cookbook my mom and her friends developed called "Les Dames". It's a special request by one of my blog followers, so here you go! I aim to please.
"Jiro Dreams of Sushi" is a documentary based on 85-year-old sushi master Jiro Ono, his business in the basement of a Tokyo office building, and his relationship with his son and eventual heir, Yoshikazu. It's not a mainstream film so you'll have to seek it out at a smaller theater. I loved it because it really gives you an appreciation for the art of sushi making and teaches you about the culture of the Japanese. It also makes you realize that fish sold for sushi are being over-fished because of the mainstream popularity of sushi these days. I personally feel that we shouldn't be seeing sushi sold at grocery stores, fast-food convenience stores or gas stations. These fish need to be preserved and sushi should be a luxury that you pay more for to get a higher quality of fish. Here's the trailer: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1772925/ Go and seek it out, it is such a jem and will make you want to go eat sushi immediately afterwards!
Here's the recipe....
Beef Wrapped Asparagus
This dish is perfect as an appetizer, great for watching sports or serving at parties and is even pretty good cold for a picnic or in your kids lunches.
Ingredients:
1/2 1b thinly sliced beef like sirloin, filet or kobe (your butcher should be able to slice the meat paper thin for you in a frozen state, alternatively, you may be able to find thinly sliced "sukiyaki" beef at an Asian grocery store)
12 asparagus spears, trimmed. Simply take the end of the asparagus between your thumb and forefinger and bend until it breaks. The woody root ends of the asparagus are not edible.
olive oil
salt and pepper
teriyaki sauce - here's the shortlink for the recipe from a previous post - http://wp.me/p1L4Tl-N
Directions:
Sprinkle some olive and and salt and pepper on your asparagus spears just to coat. Roll one piece of beef around the lower part of the asparagus so that the pointy tip is still showing. Prepare the teriyaki sauce and set aside in a shallow dish big enough to dip the spears in later. Heat a skillet to medium high and add about 1 tbsp of olive oil to coat the pan. Quickly fry the asparagus so that the meat browns on all sides. Do not crowd the pan, leave room between each spear so that they do not touch. Cook in batches. Dip each cooked spear into the teriyaki sauce bath to let soak in. Cut each of the spears at a diagonal if serving as an appetizer to allow for smaller portions. Otherwise just set on a serving plate. You can heat up and drizzle more teriyaki sauce on before serving if you'd like. Serve immediately to enjoy warm. Just as yummy at room temp or cold.
