Sukiyaki

Last night Wid's parents requested sukiyaki for dinner so we could use up the chunk of imported beef that we bought from Makro before Wid's bro takes it. I did the preparation (cutting the vegetables and making the cooking sauce) while Wid did the actual cooking. This batch we had large green onion, shiitake mushroom, another kind of mushroom whose name escapes me right now, bok choy, shirataki threads, and tofu. I parboiled the shirataki threads and soaked the shiitake mushroom. What made the sukiyaki turned out so well this time is Wid figured out how to cook the dish properly. He used medium heat during most of the cooking process. Once the meat and vegetables were added to the pan, he covered the food with some of the cooking sauce. After the cooking sauce boiled down a bit, he added the remaining sauce (and the tofu and the shirataki thread) and let the dish boil again. We might need to get a smaller pan because we didn't have enough sauce to cover the ingredients. It would be nice if we can find a real sukiyaki pan so we can cook this on the table instead of in the kitchen.

Besides the main dish, we also made nasu miso (trial number 3) and a new dish which consisted of shiitake mushroom and cabbage cooked in the mushroom soaking juice. I think the nasu miso turned out better this time because I didn't boil the eggplant until it was mushy. We were surprised how much Wid's dad liked the nasu miso because in the previous attempts, he didn't make any comments. This time he scarfed down most of the dish. The mushroom and cabbage dish was pretty good, not too salty and full of mushroom flavor, but I think the cabbage wasn't cooked long enough. At least it's pretty tasty and very healthy.