I made ozoni tonight. It’s traditionally eaten in Japan on New Years day, but I’ve never made it before and wanted to practice before attempting to feed it to my family on New Years. I broiled the mochi, but forgot to keep a close eye on it and the mochi inflated out of control! Other than that, it was pretty good for a first try and it was even vegan! (recipe after the cut)
Ingredients:
- mitsuna – It’s a Japanese green, but spinish, napa cabbage, or any other type of leafy vegetable can be used.
- carrot
- daikon radish
- dried nameko mushroom
- kombu
- yellow miso paste
- unsweetened mochi
- fishcake (for the non vegan)
– I would have used dried shiitake mushrooms, but I didn’t have any.
For the base of the broth, I soaked a piece of combu in 3 cups of water in the morning to be used at night. If I had thought ahead better, I would have put the dried mushroom in there to soak too. I poured the soaking liquid and 6 or 7 more cups of water in a pot and brought it to a boil. You can throw out the kombu if you want, but I just cut it up into small pieces and threw them in the broth.
Cut the carrots and daikon radish into thin coins. My radish was so fat I had to halve it first before slicing thinly. Throw those into the cooking broth. I’m not really sure how to cook mitsuna, but I just cut the leafy parts off of the tough-looking stems and threw that into the broth.
Let the broth simmer on med-low until the carrots and radishes are tender.
In the meantime, lay out the mochi on a baking pan and put it in the oven to broil. Keep an eye on it because they’ll puff up and get stuck to each other if they sit there for too long, like mine did. Ideally, turn the mochi over when they start to puff up a little. I like my mochi crunchy so I let them stay in there for a while, but broil at your own discretion.
When the mochi is done, take them out of the oven and put them in a bowl. If you’re going to have fish cake, slice it up and put a few pieces with the mochi in the bowl.
When the broth is ready, ladle a bit out in a bowl and put in some miso. I used about 2 tablespoons. Stir and dissolve the miso paste and then dump the liquid back into the pot and stir to distribute. Spoon out the broth, vegetables and all on top of the mochi in the bowl. Garnish with some leftover mitsuna leaves and sprinkle on some togarashi if you wish.
It looks picture perfect!! :9
Mmm that looks good. I love food blogs!