Crab and Spinach Ohitashi with Mixed Mushrooms (Thermomix Method)

A deliciously light and tasty Japanese dish, perfect as lunch, or an elegant starter, or as part of a selection of Japanese dishes.

Although it is a beautiful looking dish, it's actually incredibly simple to cook and plate up. You just add the ingredients for the broth to the bowl, with the mushrooms and spinach in the varoma and press go! If you would like to cook this without using a Thermomix, see here for my original recipe with a method on the hob. This serves two to four people (timings for both in method, and if you're counting calories, it's a mere 121 calories per person!).

            

Feel free to tweak this dish to suit you. I've converted this version to Thermomix with a dashi broth substitute I came up with for Japanese soups, as I am aware that most people won't be making their own dashi broth, and the majority of 'instant dashi' powders and concentrates you can buy contain MSG as an additive. MSG does actually occur naturally - the white residue you find on seaweed, i.e. Kombu (kelp, one of the two ingredients dashi is made from) is naturally occurring MSG but I don't think most people want to add it to their food, or include it in chemical form, although opinions are mixed. Also, I thought it might make a nice use of a light bone broth, for those who make them.

Hokkaido Salmon Hotpot (Ishikari Nabe)

If you're wary of trying Japanese food, this could be for you. A really homely, comforting hotpot, with mild and delicate flavours, from the island of Hokkaido. Feel free to substitute other vegetables in it, or add tofu for extra protein.

And if you cook this and like it, you'll have the miso paste, you'll have the dashi stock (or you can make my simple dashi stock substitute)... so there's no reason not to have a go at the other Japanese soups below - trust me, if you like this, you'll love them too!

Hokkaido Salmon Hotpot (Ishikari Nabe)

This is a lovely, hearty, comforting soup/hotpot originating from the island of Hokkaido. It has a mild and delicate flavour, so if you’re unaccustomed to Japanese food, it’s a great place to start. Feel free to substitute vegetables, or add extra vegetables (such as mushrooms, squash, broccoli etc.) and if you want to up the protein content, you could also add 150g cubed tofu  (add 57 calories per serving).

If you want to make it into a meal, add 2 servings of shirataki (magic/zero) noodles – rinsed, snipped up and added to the soup for 2 minutes (an extra 4 calories each), or on a non-fasting day serve with a bowl of rice or add cubed potatoes to the soup, or ladle over a bowl with your favourite cooked noodles in it.

Serves two (easily doubled), 241 calories per serving

Aubergine, Pork and Ginger Miso Soup

Another light soup. If you like miso soup, then here's a tasty variation. It doesn't require much introduction, as there's not much too it - it's just a light variant on miso soup.

                      Aubergine, Pork and Ginger Miso Soup

Serves 4, easily halved. 72 calories per serving. A tasty, light broth ideal for fast days, as a light starter, or an accompaniment to simple Japanese dishes or sushi. If you fancy a bit of a kick, just give it a shake of Shichimi Togarashi (Japanese 7 pepper spice mix) after you’ve served it, and if you want to bulk it out, add some rinsed, snipped up Shirataki (Zero/Miracle) noodles for the last two minutes.

Crab, Spinach and Japanese Mushroom Ohitashi

"What's an ohitashi?", I hear you cry (in my head, where else?)!

Well, gather round, and I will tell you. In just one sentence! It's a Japanese dish, consisting of a broth (e.g. dashi stock) containing seasonal ingredients, usually green-leafed vegetables. We don't really have a word or equivalent for it - it's that infamous soup/salad hybrid I spoke of in my welcome - but for most people this probably counts as a soup.

I'm quite proud of my version. I'm a creative soul, and spend far too much time making all kinds of pretties, and thinking of things to do with food to make it look even more appetising, and this is what I did to poor old ohitashi. Don't worry, the ingredients are authentic, but I don't think they're usually constructed within a food ring, with the broth and mushrooms poured around it... but... look how pretty it is, I love how you can see the little assortment of mushrooms, laying in the transluscent broth... but anyway, I digress. The recipe...

Crab, Spinach and Japanese Mushroom Ohitashi

Serves two, 111 calories per serving.

Ohitashi is a kind of seasonal broth incorporating salad-like ingredients, which we don’t have a Western equivalent to. It is served anywhere between warm in winter and chilled in the summer, when the ingredients are almost like having a spinach salad in a broth.  You could choose to serve it hot, which is also delicious, as lukewarm soup is not to everyone’s taste! I must admit, I serve the broth and spinach hot, with the crab meat at room temperature on top of the spinach, then when you stir it all together it is nice and hot all the way through.

Vegetarians could substitute diced tofu for the crabmeat, with an extra splash of soy sauce to season it.

For the Thermomix recipe and method, go here.

Dashi Stock, and Dashi Stock Substitutes (includes soup suggestions)

In the beginning...

So, when I first started my recipe group, for recipes from around the world, I was all excited, and me (being me) dived in head first, using the kinds of ingredients I'd already gathered from my culinary travels (and orders from amazon) - you know, the kinds of things you buy and stuff into your kitchen cupboards (I really should check on the weight bearing loads of mine now, it's getting a bit scary - only last week a triple-width shelf collapsed), on top of which it was a great excuse to nip down to my nearest (and rather excellent) oriental shop, given that I'd decided to start in Japan. Well - why not? Fresh, healthy tastes, a little bit different, vegan and vegetarian options, as well as wheat and dairy free food... nothing too complicated in terms of the dishes I was going to present, and their health and obesity rates as a nation are exemplary - what was not to love!

Except of course, not everyone is going to be convinced by the idea of purchasing bonito flakes (Katsuobushi - dried, fermented, skipjack tuna), of which I had an enormous bag still half full left, about to go out of date, as they're not exactly cheap, or kombu (kelp seaweed).

I revisited this a few months later (having already posted several recipes using dashi stock), during the winter months, when soup started getting popular again, and I posted a couple more. This time, I included the option of using dashi/bonito stock/powder, although this wasn't perfect, as often it contains MSG which some people are not keen to consume (and you'd need to check the ingredients if you were cooking gluten free). So in addition to this, I concocted a dashi stock substitute. Not a like-for-like substitute, but something which could be used instead, made from more readily available ingredients, and a sympathetic and more accessible base to use to make Japanese soups, such as my miso soup, and crab, spinach and mushroom ohitashi recipes (perennial favourites here, especially the miso soup with tofu and wakame).

Anyhow, the point of this post is dashi stock, and dashi stock substitutes, in all their forms, so here they are, for if/when you cook one of my Japanese recipes where it's needed (the soups are highly recommended for quick and tasty filling dishes - and even if I do say so myself, the original way I present my ohitashi [yep, the one in the photo, I'm a lil' bit proud of it!] is a fabulous starter for a dinner party idea - let your guests de-construct it in their bowls and enjoy at their leisure).

N.B. This blog seems to be getting a lot of regular traffic - I'm intrigued as to where from as it's been going on for a while, so if you've found this, or cooked this, I'd really love it if you made a comment below to help me solve the mystery and let me know how you found the dashi stock if you made it! Thank you :)

So here you go, dashi stock, every which way but loose (see below for fantastic recipes which use dashi stock):