Remixed braised hijiki

I'm a big hijiki fan. Looking back over this blog's archives turned up numerous posts about hijiki, generally about the classic Japanese dish of braised hijiki (or some alteration to it). Recently I've been fond of braising hijiki with somen noodles, but I've had some baby red potatoes hanging around the kitchen lately. Then there was the lone shallot seeking a better fate than dwindling away into obscurity in SevenSoy Central's allium bin.

So I remixed braised hijiki a bit.

After hydrating the hijiki (which is sold dried in Asian markets), I let it dry on a paper towel. I heated some vegetable oil in a skillet, tossed in the sliced shallot and fried it over medium-high heat for about 30 seconds. I added the hijiki to the skillet and turned the heat down to medium. I fried the hijiki and shallot for a minute more, then added the thinly sliced potatoes and cooked for about three more minutes. Then I added the fluids: a cup of water, three tablespoons of shoyu, two tablespoons of honteri and a tablespoon of sugar. My standard recipe for braised hijiki uses three tablespoons of sugar, but I figured there was no harm in reducing the amount of sugar. Then I let everything simmer.

It took a little while, since the heat was at medium and I hadn't pre-cooked the potatoes in any way. By the time I gave in to impatience, the potatoes were still fairly crisp and there was a bit of sauce that had not reduced. No matter. The dish had a toasted flavor that was probably partly due to the initial sauteeing and partly due to the flavor of the shoyu. It wasn't as sweet as normal braised hijiki, of course, but the toasted  flavor more than made up for it. It was just sweet enough.

Little things can mean a lot

There's a lot to be said for a tried-and-true dish that requires no deviation from the method, but a lot of tweaks may go into that recipe beforehand. Take braised hijiki. My original version of this dish was the standard version of frying and braising hijiki (a type of seaweed) in a sweet shoyu broth with abura-age (recipe here). Then I hit on the idea of using somen noodles to sop up the broth rather than abura-age (recipe here).

The other night, I was in the mood for hijiki somen, but wanted to do something a little different. I cooked it in my nonstick wok, with honteri, and noted how the starch from the somen thickened the dish (along with the sugar from the honteri). Then I decided to add a few drops of sesame oil.

This was a winner. Braised hijiki is a sweet dish, but the sesame oil adds a smoky savory undertone. Just a few drops do not permeate the dish with sesame flavor (sesame oil can overwhelm a dish), but still add a certain not-so-sweet undertone that can add depth to a sweet dish like braised hijiki. Tweak, tweak.

Hijiki somen

I haven't been cooking as much as usual lately, but last night I wanted something more than pasta and sauce from a jar. After a bit of dithering, I decided to have some hijiki. What I ended up doing was my usual recipe for braised hijiki but I used somen noodles rather than abura-age. I just put the dry somen into the pan and let it braise along with the hijiki. The noodles did a good job of soaking up the sweet shoyu broth (somen noodles are normally cooked by letting them steep in broth, rather than boiling them separately). In the end, the noodles probably gave the dish more body than it normally has; not a bad thing on an evening when a spring sleet storm was clattering on the windows. Then again, a sleety evening probably calls for mizore nabe.

The next time I try this braised hijiki variant, I might zap it with a bit of pepper sherry to add just a bit of heat to the broth's sweetness. I suspect that might be a good combination.

Hijiki and mushrooms

Yesterday, I was in search of something light for lunch. Braised hijiki seemed like a good start, but I didn't have any abura-age on hand. What I did have was some sliced button mushrooms. I ended up using the normal recipe for braised hijiki, just substituting the mushrooms for the abura-age and sake for the mirin (I had some leftover sake, too).

This turned out to be such an easy and appropriate twist on the classic recipe that I'm almost embarrassed I didn't think of it before. Sliced button mushrooms, like abura-age, absorb liquids and concentrate flavors in sauces. Substituting sake for mirin made the sauce less sweet, which isn't always a bad thing. I poured everything over jasmine rice, which sopped up the sauce better than noodles would have done.