MmmMmmFood -- Kani Meshi

 

Today’s dish is a type of takikomi gohan, or rice dish, called kani meshi. Takikomi gohan dishes are made of rice with a soy sauce/dashi base and fish or tofu with seasonal veggies. The dish is named differently depending on what is in it – kani meshi has crab meat as its flavoring ingredient.

It’s MmmmMmmm Good. Just like Campbell’s soup. But with fishy flavors.

^_^

The Technical Details:

At the Asian market, I purchased a little jar of niboshi dashi, or dashi grains made from dried sardine stock. I tried very hard to have an open mind about it, because the Wiki article’s description of how this dashi is made was far from appetizing. So, I tried to visualize the dashi as being happy, dolphin-like sardines swimming around in broth and winking at me every time I look in the pot.

And then I gave up and just dealt with it: the heads and entrails of the sardines are ripped out to prevent a bitter flavor and the empty sardine husks are soaked in water.

Apart from that graphic description, dashi is same thing as granules for chicken or beef soup stock. Add water and go! So simple, and so fishy. But the taste is pretty amazing.  

The Recipe:

For my kani meshi, I used the following:

2 cups cooked rice

1 cup dashi stock

2 tbls soy sauce

2 tbls mirin

1 pkg snack-sized imitation crab, diced

Sprinkled salt

These ingredients have been adapted from kani meshi recipes I found online, so I’m sure there are many other variations. I was mainly drawn to the recipes with mirin because of the sweet taste it adds to soy sauce. I used imitation crab because, let’s face it, I’m cheap.

I also added in some chopped carrots, cucumber (kyuri), and Chinese chives (nira). I topped the dish with some toasted sesame seed and bits of toasted nori. More glamor shots of my finished product:

The Daily Adventure:

This is enough for both my lunch and my dinner, since I’m going to be at work for over 12 hours today. With my kani meshi, I have Pocky, a pluot plum, and green tea.

I know I said I wanted to use unprocessed food as much as possible, but…I love Pocky. So I’ll make an exception. This is Sweet Milk Pocky, and it tastes very rich and wonderful. I still think I like strawberry best. 

Overall, very tasty, but it's 12:30 in the morning, I'm very full, and there's quite a bit of this left. I think I'll have leftovers for breakfast. NomNom. ^_^

-- AlyBear