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Dec 08 / Jan 09

Instead of, as planned, moving on to California in January 09 we have decided to stay on in Tokyo for another few months! We will be in Europe though for parts of December and January, so my entries will be somewhat irregular during the festive season. From mid-January or so everything will be back to normal, and I will keep you posted on our further culinary and lifestyle discoveries in Japan...




FoodMeetsLifestyle.com
FoodMeetsLifestyle.com

Dashi

10 June 2008

Dashi

Dashi, the Japanese fish-based soup stock, is ubiquitous in Japanese cuisine. Not only is it the basis of most Japanese soups, but it is also often used as an ingredient for different sauces. Other than "western" kinds of soup stock, which have to be simmering for hours, dashi is - provided you find the right ingredients - really simple to prepare. So it is actually worth giving it a try rather than buying instant powder.

There are many different recipes for dashi, featuring different kind of seaweed and dried fish. Kombu seaweed and bonito flakes are probably among the most common ingredients, though. The concentration of the dashi is of course a function of the amount of bonito flakes as well as the cooking time, both of which can vary strongly from recipe to recipe, depending on taste and purpose. The following recipe for example results in a rather strong dashi, which is more apt for sauces than for soups.

How To Do It

for about 300ml dashi
a hand full of kombu seaweed
about 10 tablespoons of dried bonito flakes
500ml water

Soak the kombu seaweed in the cold water of about 10 minutes. Now start heating the water and remove the kombu seaweed right at the moment the water starts boiling, so it does not leave too much of its quite particular taste. Then add the bonito flakes to the water and boil for about 15 minutes. Drain through a sieve to remove the bonito flakes. There you have your dashi!

Where To Use It

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