Nabe

The first home cooked meal in Japan = NABE.

Hot pot, stew, whatever you want to call it, nabe is a very satisfying meal. Easy to prepare, easy to clean up, and delicious. It comes in all styles and flavors, today is fish nabe.

However, while everything is being prepared for the pot, we need something to enjoy the first couple of beers with.

First up: Namako

Served freshly sliced with ponzu and yuzu zest, the almost crunchy texture and briny flavors compliment just about any beer.

Tsukemono... this one has heavy flavors of miso.  Basically pickled daikon. Again, very good with beer - better with shochu (we'll dedicate a post to that later I think).


Next up, the ingredients for the nabe:

The fish liver in the aluminum pan in the top right of the above picture is the prize.  Then again, any of the fish in this picture is a prize if you are coming from midwest USA...

After three meals on an airplane, we were very happy to have so many vegetables in the nabe. Ratio of veggies to fish was about 3 to 1.

Today's nabe was pretty simple - kombu stock (kelp). Let it get up to boiling, take it out, done.

The final picture before assembling all of the ingredients. I love that the houses here have gas outlets with rubber hoses attached. That is how we got the stove to the living room.

It doesn't look like much, but this bowl of fish and vegetables is worth dreaming about.

Bowl after bowl was served until only broth remained. I didn't take a picture, but we added rice and egg to what broth did remain and made a porridge out of it.

You cannot be shy when it comes to eating out of the nabe - if you hesitate, you'll find your self picking out the remains of whatever everyone else didn't already take and having to go buy a snack later alone.