Japanese Cuisine- Miso Soup

For this blog post, I made Miso Soup with Tofu and Mushroom. This soup wasn’t extremely challenging, but finding the ingredients was (mainly the Red and White). The recipe consists of Katsuo Dashi, White miso, Red miso, Mirin (rice wine that is similar to sake), silken tofu, and Shitake Mushroom. Katsuo Dashi is the standard stock for Japanese soups, made out of dried Bonito (atype of fish) and water (Dekura 144).

In order to make this soup, I first prepared the mushroom and tofu by cutting it up. Most of my tofu go smashed in the package so it was challenging to cut it. In addition, the mushroom was chopped a little smaller than I expected, since I thought it would expand more. After that, I squeezed two tablespoons of Red and White miso into a pot of water. When the miso dissolved, I threw in the mushroom, tofu, Mirin, and Katsuo Dashi. Finally, I “turned off the heat to allow each ingredient to simmer” (Dekura 45).

This is what the final product looks like; I’m impressed by how it tasted since I thought the Katsuo Dashi would taste funny considering how it was made out of dried up fish. What foods have you been surprised by after tasting the food?

Dekura, Hideo, and Danny Kildare. Contemporary Japanese Cuisine: Classic Recipes, Fresh Flavors. New York: Weatherhill, 2001. Print.