I actually made this soup recipe a few weeks ago but was too lazy to post about it until now. This is a recipe from a One Piece fanzine “Feast volume II”, featuring more recipes inspired by the recent manga arcs after the popularity of the first fanzine. I had a lot of difficulty deciding what to make from this zine hence why it took so long, but in the end, made another soup recipe, tonjiru, because it’s simple, can be eaten as leftovers for the next day and doesn’t have ingredients that I don’t like (a common issue lol). Sorry for the unappetizing photo, I can never take yummy looking photos of soups and stews.
Ingredients Summary – only possible to find at a specific Japanese grocery store and even then, it was tricky
- pork belly (I used ground pork), firm tofu, deep-fried tofu, various mushrooms, konjac block
- spices: soy sauce, miso, mirin, sake, kelp/dashi, sesame oil
- onion, shiitake mushrooms, green onion, daikon, carrot, burdock (I used frozen)
Steps Summary – very many steps, especially if you make your own dashi stock, plan for at least an hour prep
Prep dried shiitake and kombu in hot water, then squeeze/drain tofu block, boil out konjac. Dice and slice root veggies, pull apart or cut mushrooms. Slice tofu sheet and green onions, then dice shiitake into broth and slice pork belly if using. Fry pork, root veggies and mushrooms. Add broth and water, cook the veggies, then add the seasoning, konjac, tofu strips and tear apart tofu block into the soup. Add miso, mix the soup and serve with rice.
Taste Summary – tastes mellow and salty umami, with a variety of unusual textures
- Taste – Due to the miso and mushrooms, this tasted umami salty/savory, with a bit of fresh bite from the vegetables and green onion. Like what I associate with Japanese traditional cooking, nothing spicy, just refreshing and comforting homey, well, if your home was by the ocean anyway…
- Texture – A lot of new textures and foods going on here, including burdock which is a somewhat gingery herby root, and konjac block, which is like a very firm bouncy gel with no flavor. I am familiar with Vietnamese fried tofu, but couldn’t find a small package of a sheet except at the Japanese grocery, so it was a bit different than what I was used to.
Convenience Summary
Fairly easy steps but time consuming to make with a lot of prep work and knife work, plus half of the ingredients can only be found at a very well-stocked Asian store, or preferably a Japanese store, since the soup is based on a Japanese manga. I had to drive 2 suburbs over to get everything, choosing to get frozen burdock instead of a whole fresh one because I’m not making anything else with a giant root.
Would I make this again? Uhh… no, I wouldn’t, I’m lazy lol. Now I have to find a use for frozen burdock root slices and konjac block. I do admit this soup had an interesting flavor and was full of nutrients, I didn’t hate it, I just prefer spicy soups to fishy soups. With that, I just have 3 more books to make recipes from, then I will circle back to the magazines and previously reviewed books again. Hope you stick around for those!