Ozoni

Ozoni Soup


December 29, 2000

Web posted at: 4:44 p.m. EST (2144 GMT)

From Chef Nobuyuki Atsumi, Imari Restaurant, Hilton Waikoloa Village

Kohala Coast, Island of Hawai'I

Start with 8 cups clear soup (suimono).

Note: If you do not have suimono, you may make the soup using the following: Boil 8 1/2 cups water with one 10-inch square piece of konbu (seaweed). After water comes to a boil, remove the konbu and turn off heat. Sprinkle in 3 ounces bonito flakes (shrimp flakes). Wait until bonito flakes sink to the bottom of the pot; then strain. Add a little soy sauce, a pinch of salt and 1 tsp sake.

To make Ozoni Soup, bring your suimono to a simmer. As you serve, add the following to each of the bowls:

• 1 oz Daikon (pickled Japanese radish)

• 1 oz carrots, sliced or julienned

• 1 piece mochi

• 1 piece shiitake mushroom

• 1 pinch chopped green onions



http://archives.cnn.com/2000/FOOD/news/12/29/ozoni.soup/





Symbolism rules in Japanese New Year

• Post a comment

• Recommend

• Print this page

• E-mail this article

• Share

o Del.icio.us

o Facebook

o Digg

o Reddit

o Newsvine

o Buzz up!

•

PacificNetwork.tv

Special to The Advertiser

For many Japanese families, New Year's Day is an important holiday that is celebrated with much symbolism in decor and the food that is prepared. The celebration begins before even stepping foot inside the home.





Like spring cleaning, cleaning the home may occur over several weeks until the clock strikes midnight on Jan. 1. A clean and organized home is a positive way to enter the new year.

The kadomatsu is placed at the front door. This is an arrangement of three bamboo shoots and evergreens tied three times with straw rope.

It is displayed at the entrance of the house to welcome Toshigami to protect the house and to bring long life and strength to the family.

In Hawai'i, kadomatsu can be found at most Japanese food stores and in supermarkets.

Decorating the home often includes other Japanese traditions such as making ikebana-inspired floral arrangements. You can utilize items that can be found around the home, such as a sushi or bamboo mat, floral foam, greens and flowers from the yard, and even river rocks on your presentation table to create a beautiful Japanese theme.

Keep it simple, and try to arrange florals in odd numbers, which creates a pleasing asymmetry, and also has cultural significance.

Japanese New Year fare includes special selections of dishes that represent prosperity, good fortune and health.

The New Year's Day celebration menu must include the following:

• Osechi (bentos in lacquer boxes) with buckwheat soba noodles for long life and prosperity.

• Mochi soup, or ozoni, served with a miso or clear broth for good fortune.

• Kabocha and shrimp, often prepared tempura-style, representing longevity. The Japanese have a saying: "The curve of the shrimp resembles the hunched back of an elderly person."

• Sashimi and sushi made with the freshest of raw fish, representing subtlety and strength.







Yield: 6 servings



4 Skinless chicken breasts

2 Dried scallops; (optional)

-- (up to 4)



1 1/2 c Peeled carrots in 2" strips

1 1/2 c Peeled daikon in 2" strips



1 c Mizuna

1 pk Red kamaboko; (fish cake)

(I prefer brand name Yamasa)

1 pk Mochi; (pounded rice cake)

Salt; to taste



Make chicken stock by cooking chicken breasts in 8 cups boiling water and 2 teaspoons salt. Cook in boiling water for 10 minutes, (add dried scallops here if you like) then lower heat and cook for about 30 minutes. While making stock, wash and drain all vegetables. Cut mizuna into 2 strips (you won't need much of this-just to add green color). Slice the kamaboko fairly thin. Put a few mochi into toaster and toast until puffy.



Remove chicken from stock onto a plate. While chicken is cooling, strain the soup in either cheesecloth or some kind of cloth (I prefer using old restaurant linen because it strains better!) to strain to a clean pot. Add the carrots and daikon and cook until tender, about 10 to 15 minutes. Shred 1 breast of chicken and add to broth. Save the rest to make chicken salad or whatever for another time. Check flavor and add salt if needed.



Just before serving, put mizuna in soup just to parboil-must be crunch/crisp. Put toasted mochi in a bowl, pour the soup over mochi, then put several slices of kamaboko on top and serve.



This recipe yields 4 to 6 servings (8 cups).



Per serving: 173 Calories (kcal); 2g Total Fat; (10% calories from fat); 36g Protein; 0g Carbohydrate; 91mg Cholesterol; 102mg Sodium Food Exchanges: 0 Grain(Starch); 5 Lean Meat; 0 Vegetable; 0 Fruit; 0 Fat; 0 Other Carbohydrates



Source: "EAST MEETS WEST with Ming Tsai - (Show # MT-1C14) - from the TV FOOD NETWORK" S(Formatted for MC5): "11-02-1999 by Joe Comiskey - jcomiskey@krypto.net"



Recipe courtesy June Kuramoto







http://openmouthinsertfork.blogspot.com/2008/11/im-turning-japanese-ozoni.html







Ozoni is the traditional soup served on New Year's Day in Japan. With its sweet rice cakes (mochi), it is the first food to be savored after the traditional sake toast on New Year's morning. There are countless versions served throughout Japan, but it can't be called Ozoni unless it has the mochi rice cakes in it.



Ingredients: (Serves 4-6)

• 1/2 lb. Boned Chicken, cut into small pieces--parboil for about 2 minutes and drain

• 1 Bunch of Mizuna - wash well, cut bottom off, and slice into 3 inch pieces. (If Mizuna is not available, use 1 small or 1/2 of a large Nappa cabbage.)

• 1 Kamaboko (fish cake), sliced thin

• 5 pieces of Dried Shiitake Mushrooms - soak in water until soft, cut off the stems, and slice thin

• 5 cups of Prepared Dashi (Japanese soup stock; if you use Hondashi brand, use about 1 1/4 tsp. Hondashi with 5 cups of boiling water)

• 1/2 tsp. Salt (or to taste)

• 1/2 tsp. Usukuchi Shoyu (light-colored Japanese soy sauce). If unavailable, use regular Japanese soy sauce (Yamasa or Kikkoman brands)

• 6 pieces of Mochi (also called komochi) rice cakes, fresh or frozen. Broil until they are lightly browned and puffy.

http://home.earthlink.net/~marutama/recipes.htm









Ozoni, a traditional Japanese New Year's dish, is as simple and complex as a haiku.



One of the things I love about Japanese food is the presentation. After preparing this beautiful Ozoni soup at my Japanese cooking class last week, I wondered if I would ever go to the trouble of making it at home. If I did, I think I would be way too needy. I'd need to hear gushing about the delicacy of the broth, the beauty of the carrot flower, the symbolism of the hexagon shaped daikon, and that cute little knot hand tied in the pink fish cake. And, of course, the essential mochi (missing from the photo above) would have to be praised.



And if guests didn't voluntarily start gushing, I think I would gently point out these things to them. "Did you see that little knot in the fish cake? I tied that myself. And ya' know those carrots don't grow in flower shapes by themselves." So obnoxious.



This is a soup that should be admired and then savored slowly because the cook went to a lot of effort to make it so beautiful and to imbue it with symbolism.





Special cutters are used to make the flower shapes.





This is how the spinach looks before it is cut into 2" lengths for the soup.



Ozoni

1/2 lb. chicken (deboned leg or breast)

6" length daikon (white radish)

1/2 bunch spinach

1 medium carrot

1 cake kamaboko (fish cake)

4 cups dashi (see previous post for recipe)

3/4 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. soy sauce

mochi



- Slice the chicken on the diagonal into thin pieces and sprinkle with salt. Blanch in lightly salted water until whitish . Drain.



- Pare lengths of radish into hexagonal shape and then cut into slices about 1/4" thick. Parboil in lightly salted water until alost tender, about 10 minutes. Drain. (Hexagons make up the tortoiseshell pattern. The tortoise is the symbol of longevity.)



- Steam the spinach. (I will have to add more details later about how to get it into the shape shown in the photo above.)



- Peel the carrot and cut into 1/4" rounds. Cut into flower shapes. Parboil in lightly salted water until almost tender, about 10 minutes.



- Slice the fish cake into 1/4" half rounds.

- Bring the dashi just to a boil in a pot. Turn down heat and keep at simmer. Then stir in salt and soy sauce and season to taste.



- Arrange spinach, single carrot slice, single daikon slice, chicken, mochi and fish cake in soup bowl. Ladle hot broth into bowl. Garnish with sprig of mizuna.



I may not recreate this at home, but I promise: if someone serves this to me, I will be the most appreciative, gushing guest in the dining room.



(This recipes was submitted to Blazing Hot Wok's monthly regional recipe roundup. The Japanese event is being hosted by Wandering Chopsticks.)







DASHI STOCK

(Recipe from Hitomi)



1 ½ oz. kelp (konbu), 20-inch length

2 qts. water

3 T. loose bonito flakes (2oz.)



- Moisten a clean cloth and wring well. Carefully but thoroughly wipe the surface of the kelp. Kelp should never be washed since flavor is lost in the process. - Place the cold water and kelp in a soup pot and leave about 30 minutes. Slowly bring to a boil over medium-low to medium heat. Regulate the heat so the water takes approximately 10 minutes to reach a boil.



- When fine bubbles begin to appear at the edges of the pot, remove the kelp from pot. (Do not allow the water to boil while kelp is in the pot.)



- Add ⅓-½ cup cold water. Add the bonito flakes.



- When the stock returns to a boil, remove it from the heat. When the bonito flakes sink to the bottom , strain to clarify. Do not wring the flakes.





http://openmouthinsertfork.blogspot.com/2008/11/im-turning-japanese-onishime-vegetables.html









Some of the foods eaten include nimono (simmered vegetables), kazunoko (herring roe), kurikinton (mashed chestnuts and sweet potatoes), datemaki (sweetened omelet roll), kamaboko (fish cake) and konnyaku (gelatinous yam cake). But the one dish which is famous as New Year’s food is ozoni.

The morning of the first day of New Year’s, people will drink sake and eat ozoni, the traditional soup of New Year’s. This soup has many variations and no one can agree on any one ozoni recipe as the “official” ozoni recipe. However, no matter what’s added, subtracted or left out of an ozoni recipe, the one thing which makes ozoni, ozoni, is mochi.

Mochi is another celebrated New Year’s food and is even featured as a New Year’s decoration, the kagami mochi. Pieces of toasted mochi cake are added to ozoni as part of a hearty meal.

I decided to make ozoni this year and have listed what I used in my own rendition of this traditional soup. I’ve listed ingredient variations so you can personalize ozoni for your own New Year’s celebrations.

Rae’s Ozoni

• 6 cups dashi or veggie stock

• 1/4 cup soy sauce

• 8 shitake, fresh

• 2 carrots, peeled and sliced into rounds

• konnyaku

• kamaboko, sliced

• nappa cabbage, thinly sliced

• 8 shrimp balls

• 1 cup shrimp, cooked

• 4 mochi, sliced into thirds

• green onions, finely sliced

1. Boil the dashi, or stock, and soy sauce in a large pot. Remove stems from the shitake and add them to the dashi. Simmer on low for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, remove the shitake stems.

2. Add carrots and shitake caps to stock. Simmer on low for 10 minutes.

3. Slice konnyaku into strips, or for a decorative effect, slice a strip of konnyaku in the center and pull one end of the konnyaku through the slit. Add to stock and boil for an additional 10 minutes.

4. Toast mocho thirds in the oven on broil till they’re puffy and golden brown. Set aside.

5. In bottom of a bowl, add shrimp balls, shrimp, nappa cabbage, and 2 mochi thirds. Carefully ladle broth and simmered vegetables into the bowl. Top with green onions. Serve immediately.

Variant Ingredients

• cabbage

• crab

• chicken breast

• chicken stock

• maitake

• miso

• mitsuba

• mizuna

• spinach





Osechi Cooking お節料理

Saturday, December 16, 2006 by Tim



For the past three years, I have celebrated New Year’s Eve by cooking and eating and drinking with an intimate group of close friends. Thanks to conversations that sparkle like the champagne we drink and fulfill like the warm, hearty food we eat, the night that I used to spend alone watching Conan’s “Central Time Zone Countdown” or Iron Chef marathons has become one of my nights of the year.

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to spend New Year’s with my old high school buddies this year, on account that I’ll be in Hong Kong (and I certainly can’t complain about that). But if and when I have the opportunity to share another year-end meal with them again, I’ll have a few new tricks up my sleeve, thanks to a class I attended Sunday on king お節料理, Japanese food customarily eaten to ring in the new year (Gregorian, not lunar).

Our venerable instructor was a four foot-tall woman whose twenty-year-old vitality betrayed her sixty-year-old features. She radiated knowledge and skill so generously that it seemed we only needed to stand by and bask in the effortlessness of her motions to absorb the principles and techniques of osechi.



Well, maybe that’s a bit of an overstatement… and to be perfectly fair, our instructor did a good ninety percent of the work. But the recipes were nothing too complicated, and I do think our food turned out rather nicely.

First, we made a dish of carrots and daikon that had been cut into the shapes of auspicious symbols, such as cranes, turtles, bamboo, plum blossoms, bells, and hagoita 羽子板, a kind of ornamental paddle originally used in an archaic badminton-like game called hanetsuki 羽根突. In general, I’m not a big fan of daikon. I find their aroma somewhat acetic and funky. But these had been macerated in salt for an hour or two, rinsed in water, and then squeezed dry, removing its pungent odor and enhancing its sweet flavor. Apparently, the colors of the carrots and daikon - red and white - symbolize peace and cheerfulness. Red and white (kohaku 紅白) turned up again in a soup in the form of kamaboko 蒲鉾 - cakes of finely-ground fish - which are molded into a semicircular shape that represents the rising sun. The soup, called ozoni お雑煮, was made from a simple konbu stock and contained shiitake mushrooms, shrimp, mochi, chicken, daikon, carrot, mizuna 水菜, and yuzu peel. The sheer variety of colors, textures, flavors in that one bowl of soup made it exceptionally savorable and satisfying, meditative in its depth. It was a meal in itself, and the same can be said for chikuzen’ni 筑前煮, a stout-hearted stew of lotus root, gobo, chicken thighs, konnyaku, shiitake, bamboo shoots, carrots, and snow peas. I don’t know whether this kind of food was made for cold weather, or if cold weather was made for this kind of food.



We also sampled kazunoko, or herring roe, marinated in a katsuo dashi laced with a bit of dried red chili pepper. The characters kazu 数 and ko 子 literally mean “many” and “child,” respectively, and so the little yellow eggs are regarded as a sort of fertility charm, eaten in hopes that the coming year will be adequately, uh, reproductive. But I probably won’t be meeting any viking juniors anytime soon (darn!) on account that I didn’t really care for the kazunoko. Its flavor was perfectly agreeable, lighly sweet and salty, with an edge of heat from the chili and a flush of smoky umami from the katsuo dashi, but its texture was like eating tiny rubber balls fused together by some sort of 3M product. Each chunk of kazunoko would break apart with a rubbery crunch when chewed, but the individual eggs remained resolutely intact, which made me feel like each mouthful was never quite ready to swallow. I wound up washing down most of the kazunoko with gulps of tea.

But if the herring roe was the low point of our osechi class, then the high point had to be either kuromame 黒豆, sweet simmered black beans, or a salad of lobster meat and cucumbers.



Yes, that’s real gold foil on the beans. And yes, that’s a real lobster. And he had two friends. And the cooking class only cost one thousand yen. These two dishes alone made this by far the most cost-effective meal I’ve had since I moved here. Oh, and they weren’t just expensive; they were delicious. Especially the beans, which were plump, creamy, sugary, and rich, almost like a firm chocolate pudding. A homophone of mame (bean), written 忠実, means “diligent” or “robust,” so kuromame are eaten in hopes of a productive year. As for the lobster, well I don’t know what the significance of that is. But hey, you can’t go wrong with lobster, and in this case the firm, buttery meat was well matched with crisp chunks of cucumber and a creamy, mayonnaise-based dressing.

The moral of the story is: if an old woman offers you some dull black beans in exchange for ten dollars, accept them. They’re magical!

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://iamaviking.files.wordpress.com/2006/12/ozoni.jpg&imgrefurl=http://iamaviking.com/2006/12/16/osechi-cooking-%25E3%2581%258A%25E7%25AF%2580%25E6%2596%2599%25E7%2590%2586/&usg=__4gL57sglpDVz1iSN50RvOqLWrIA=&h=400&w=525&sz=253&hl=en&start=15&sig2=4EyJSVNpjZyTD8vHtcUTwg&tbnid=vtkMlyNMrkw-TM:&tbnh=101&tbnw=132&ei=u75bSaG9M5-0sQPkm7mHDQ&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dozoni%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DG





Osechi

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search





An example of Osechi-ryōri





Another example of Osechi in three-tiered box

Osechi-ryōri (御節料理 or お節料理) are traditional Japanese New Year foods. The tradition started in the Heian Period (794-1185). Osechi are easily recognizable by their special boxes called jūbako, which resemble bentō boxes. Like bentō boxes, jūbako are often kept stacked before and after use.

The dishes that make up osechi each have a special meaning celebrating the New Year. Some examples are:

• Daidai (橙), Japanese bitter orange. Daidai means "from generation to generation" when written in different kanji as 代々. Like kazunoko below, it symbolizes a wish for children in the New Year.

• Datemaki (伊達巻 or 伊達巻き), sweet rolled omelette mixed with fish paste or mashed shrimp. They symbolize a wish for many auspicious days. On auspicious days (晴れの日, hare-no-hi), Japanese people traditionally wore fine clothing as a part of enjoying themselves. One of the meanings associated with the second kanji includes "fashionability," derived from the illustrious dress of the samurai from Date Han.

• Kamaboko (蒲鉾), broiled fish paste. Traditionally, slices of red and white kamaboko are alternated in rows or arranged in a pattern. The color and shape are reminiscent of the rising sun, and have a celebratory, festive meaning.

• Kazunoko (数の子), herring roe. Kazu means "number" and ko means "child". It symbolizes a wish to be gifted with numerous children in the New Year.

• Konbu (昆布), a kind of seaweed. It is associated with the word yorokobu, meaning "joy".

• Kuro-mame (黒豆), black soybeans. Mame also means "health," symbolizing a wish for health in the New Year.

• Tai (鯛), red sea-bream. Tai is associated with the Japanese word medetai, symbolizing an auspicious event.

• Tazukuri (田作り), dried sardines cooked in soy sauce. The literal meaning of the kanji in tazukuri is "rice paddy maker", as the fish were used historically to fertilize rice fields. The symbolism is of an abundant harvest.

• Zōni (雑煮), a soup of mochi rice cakes in clear broth (in eastern Japan) or miso broth (in western Japan).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osechi