Japanese Recipe: Kitsune-udon

This post is part recipe review, part culinary confession. The recipe this week is easy, tasty, healthy, and unique. A good combo for a meal, IMO. Sadly my culinary confession is sordid, greasy, and unhealthy *sigh* .

Kitsune is fox in Japanese and while there are no bits of fox meat floating in this udon, there is abura age, a food item that foxes are reportedly crazy over in Japanese folklore. In fact, spirits and mischievous beings can be subdued, amazingly, with these fried tofu puffs. The abura age is the same color of the Japanese fox and is the kitsune the title refers to.

Kitsune Udon

Ingredients:

• 6 cups of dashi stock
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 8 thin slices of narutomaki (fishcake is fine and you
• can use it for tempura if there’s leftovers)
• 8-10 pieces of seasoned abura age (You can season your own with the following recipe)
• 1 ½ cups lightly steamed spinach
• 3 green onion stalks sliced thinly
• beni shoga (red pickled ginger. I used gari and it tasted great)
• ½ pound dried udon (or any thick noodle)
• dried shitake, optional
• dried maitake, optional

To season 6 sheets of abura age:

Ingredients

• 6 sheets of abura age
• ¾ cup tamari or soy sauce
• 1 ½ cups dashi stock
• 3 tbls. mirin
• ¼ cup sugar
• ¼ cup sake


Directions for seasoning abura age:

1 Boil enough water to thoroughly rinse the abura age. This is necessary to remove the excess oil on the surface. It’ll taste bad if you skip this step.

2.Combine tamari, dashi, mirin, sugar, and sake in medium sauce pan. Bring to a boil. Set to simmer and gently add the age. Place a plate on top of the age to weight them down. Simmer for 10-15 minutes.

Kitsune Udon

Directions:

1.Bring 4 quarts water to boil in a large pot; add udon. When the water returns to a boil, add 1 cup cold water. When water boils again, add another cup cold water. When water boils a third time, cook 4 to 5 minutes or until tender yet firm to the bite. Drain udon. Rinse to remove starch;
drain well. If you’re not using uson noodles, follow the directions on the noodles package.
2.In a separate pot, bring dashi to a boil and add the dried mushrooms if you’re using them. If not skip to Step 3. Boil mushrooms for 7 minutes or until tender.
3.Divide the noodles among four deep bowls. Divide abura-age, spinach and fish loaf among the bowls. To each, add 1 cup hot broth. Garnish with onion and ginger root. Serve at once.

What I liked about Kitsune Udon

• Has a history behind it.
• Was easy and quick to prepare.
• It was healthy.
• Made a nice presentation.
• Very unique flavor combinations.

What I didn’t like about Fox Noodles:

• Some of the ingredients were pricey.
• Ingredients might be hard to obtain for people who don’t live near an Asian grocery.

OK, we cooked this fantastic recipe but our eyes were bigger, much bigger than our stomachs and we decided on a complimentary side dish; satsuma-age aka fish cake tempura.

To make this recipe you’ll need one recipe of tempura batter which you can find here and you’ll need to add to that about 2 tablespoons of ao nori ko (powdered nori seaweed). You’ll also need at least ¾ of a log of fish cake. You’ll need to slice up the fish cake into thin strips lengthwise. Follow the directions for the tempura and viola, artery clogging goodness.

If only we stopped frying there, I wouldn’t feel as dirty as I do. After looking over the fish cake, I decided it wouldn’t be enough. I had Chikashi fry up some imitation crabstix along with the fishcake. After that, well, things got outta hand. Soon, Chikashi was dipping nori strips in the batter and I was rooting through the freezer for more items to fry. I soon had wrangled up an impressive and diverse amount of marine life and was chopping up green onion to make it all into a sort of kakiage tempura.

I should of known it was bad and not meant to be when I was chopping up the sea food and hot oil flew across the counter and landed on my face. I always, and I mean always burn myself when I fry stuff, a sure sign that I’m not supposed to be eating greasy crap. That’s why I had Chikashi manning the oil; he knows what he’s doing and yet I still got burned.

After the smoke cleared we had a very large plate of fried goods along side the kitsune udon. It was damn good, and actually was great on top of the udon. What can I say? Eating fried food every six months isn’t going to kill ya but I sure as hell won’t eat it every week or month. But that’s my confession. I did what I warned people not to in my previous tempura post; fry everything you can think of.

Difficulty: Easy
Time: 45-60 minutes depending on if your using pre-seasoned age.
Ingredient Availability: Difficult