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Last month, I wrote about 8 Useful Japanese Ingredients. Here’s a simple recipe for leek and shiitake mushroom miso soup that I learnt from Kimiko Barber at her Japanese Kitchen cookery workshop held at Books for Cooks in Notting Hill, London. She’s written various cookery books on Japanese food and is currently travelling around Japan by train, researching ekiben (station bento boxes) - here’s the Financial Times article. The recipe is taken from the workshop recipe booklet that was handed out in class.
Kimiko explained that more formal Japanese meals will start and end with a soup. A clear soup is followed by various courses - tempura, sashimi and so on, then the end of the meal is marked with shokuji, the main course of miso soup, rice and Japanese pickles. Japanese people do not feel that they have eaten properly unless they have had a bowl of rice with their meal (this is how Chinese people feel about their meals as well. My mother always says she feels weak if she hasn’t eaten rice at least once a day). A meal means miso soup, rice and pickles, with every preceding course considered to be ’side dishes’. Many Japanese still start the day with a bowl of miso soup - also a great hangover cure, according to Kimiko!
Ingredients:
- 1 leek, trimmed and sliced diagonally (I think half a leek is enough, but it’s up to you)
- 4 shiitake mushrooms (fresh or dried - if dried, they should be soaked in warm water for about 30 mins until soft)
- 850ml / 1 1/2 pints dashi stock - here’s the recipe for fresh dashi stock
- 4 - 6 heaped tbsp medium-coloured miso paste (I use 3 - 4 of a lighter one, as I don’t like my miso soup too strong)
What to do next:
Remove shiitake mushroom stalks and slice caps. Add leek and mushrooms to saucepan, followedby dashi stock. Cook soup over medium heat until just before it reaches boiling point. Place miso paste in small heat-resistant bowl and add ladle of the soup. Stir continuously to dilute the paste, rather than adding the miso paste directly into the saucepan, as it will not dissolve properly). Add the diluted miso to the soup and stir. Return to just before boiling point, turn off heat and serve immediately.
If you like this, you might like some of the other recipes from the same cookery course:
For more tips and recipes about Japanese food, Kimiko’s book The Japanese Kitchen is definitely worth buying. 100 ingredients are presented, each with two authentic recipes, ranging from classic to modern. I own very few cookbooks (3 to be precise), but I would probably buy this, if only to read about the ingredients. I’ve never recommended a cookbook on World Foodie Guide, so this is a first!
Helen Yuet Ling Pang @ World Foodie Guide
I’ll check out the Japanese supermarket today for miso paste–just hope I can read the label for it. Not sure if I can find everything because I don’t know the Chinese for any of it.
I hope you’ll recognise it. It will come in different shades (the photo above is of a white miso. The darker, the stronger the flavour. They’re sold in small tubs or soft packets. I can’t help you with the Chinese for miso, I’m afraid!
Good luck!