Japanese Spicy Pork and Seafood Nabe - A Hearty Japanese Hot Pot That Will Warm Your Soul!

Trying to decide what dish to cook for this month's London Cooking Club event "Comfort Eating Special", was hardly a difficult task - it just had to be a Japanese Nabe.

Few dishes evoke such wonderful foodie memories of my childhood as a Nabe. I remember spending many winter nights around a Nabe pan, fighting away the adults' chopsticks, fishing out my share of plump pieces of tofu, fish balls, and meats from the pan's sizzling broth.

A Nabe is Japanese hot pot containing a variety of vegetables, tofu, meat and seafood cooked in a base sauce or broth. This is normally made from "dashi" (a Japanese stock made from water, konbu or Japanese seaweed, and flakes of dried bonito fish). It is very simple to make fresh dashi using these ingredients (to learn how to make fresh dashi, click here), but I find that for a dish like Nabe, the powdered dashi stock works just as well. This is because the broth will be used as a base to cook all vegetables and meats, so clear, delicate dashi stock is not really required for this dish.

Ingredients can be adapted to personal taste. Thin slices of beef are more commonly used, but I love pork belly. Normally, a Japanese Nabe will have a simple and delicate dashi base, I like mine rather strong and slightly spicy. I use Korean "Gochujan" (made from red pepper, glutinous rice powder, chilli and fermented soya beans) for spiciness which also imparts a rich flavour to the broth. Chinese cabbage is widely used for Nabe, but I prefer a more aromatic green herb like perilla (Japanese shiso) or even rocket.

Recipe - Japanese Spicy Pork and Seafood Nabe - (Serves 6-8)

Ingredients

For Broth:

 - 2 litres boiling water

 - Dashi Stock Powder - 2-3 tablespoons (available from most Asian supermarkets)

 - 1 tablespoon Gochujan (see picture below)

 - 3 tablespoons Mirin (can be substituted with sugar)

 - 3 tablespoons light soya sauce

For Nabe:

*note: ingredients should be chopped roughly the same size/thickness so that they cook evenly*

- 400g of finely sliced pork belly or beef (available from most Asian supermarkets, can be frozen)

 - 300g of uncooked, peeled prawns

 - 300g of uncooked clams or other shellfish of choice

 - 300g of squid (cleaned), cut into 1cm rings

 - 200g fish balls or mix of tofu and fish (available from most Asian supermarkets)

 - 400g firm tofu cut into one inch cubes

 - A large piece of daikon (Japanese white radish) cut into 1.5 cm slices

 - 250g fine green beans (blanched for a minute or two in boiling water)

 - Enoki, shiitake or shimeji mushrooms

- 400g Harusami (translucent, potato starch, chewy noodles, see below), Soba or Udon Noodles partially cooked (rather al dente) as per packet instructions (available from Asian/Japanese supermarkets)

 - A bunch of perilla or shiso leaves or baby rocket (Vietnamese perilla is lighter in flavour than the more aromatic Japanese shiso, so more can be used - available from Asian/Japanese grocers)

- A few spring onions or chives, cleaned and chopped in half

 - Gomadare (sesame seed sauce) or Ponzu (citric/soy sauce) can be used to dip the ingredients from the nabe pot before these are eaten - (available from most Asian/Japanese supermarkets) - optional

 - Other optional ingredients: all of the above can be substituted or complemented by boiled eggs, gyoza dumplings, partially cooked slices of carrots, different types of seafood, chunky pieces of fish (monkfish, cod or salmon), konnyaku (Japanese jelly like foodstuff made from potatoes), other green vegetables or leaves.

Method:

1. Make the broth: boil 2 litres of water, turn the heat down and add the dashi stock powder, mirin (or 1 or 2 tbsp sugar), and soya sauce. Mix well until the dashi powder is completely dissolved. Taste for seasoning. If more seasoning is required, add more dashi or soya sauce. Add one tablespoon of gochujan, check for spiciness. Add more gochujan if required. You want to end up with a highly flavoursome sauce which is spicy but not overly so.

2. Add the sliced daikon (Japanese white radish) and simmer gently for about 25 mins until tender. The daikon will soak up the flavours of the dashi and make the broth sweet and rich (the broth can be prepared well in advance and reheated before the nabe is to be cooked).

3. Prepare all the ingredients to go into the nabe pot: blanch the green beans, partially cook the noodles, cut up the tofu, the cooked daikon slices, etc. Place all the ingredients on separate plates.

4. While the daikon is being cooked, prepare the nabe: using a nabe earthenware pot (a heavy cast-iron pan will also do well here), arrange all of the above ingredients in sections in the pan, there is no particular order for this. Once the pot is full with the different ingredients, cover it with cling film and place it in the fridge until it is time for it to be cooked.

5. Any ingredients that are not used to fill up the nabe pot can be placed on separate dishes on the dining table and used as refill for the nabe.

6. This is a sociable dish, where everyone contributes to the cooking, and will work better if cooked on a portable gas ring on the dining table. Place the portable gas ring on the dining table, turn it on and place the filled nabe pot over the fire. Gently pour the hot dashi broth over the ingredients and bring it to the boil. Gently simmer for about 10-12 minutes.

7. Try a piece or two of the ingredients to see whether they are cooked, meat and vegetables should be chopped roughly at the same size so that they cook evenly. Different foods will cook at different rates, so use common sense.

8. If using gomadare or ponzu sauces for dipping, place these in individual dipping bowls and distribute among your diners. A shallow rice bowl is ideal for this.

9. Another method of preparing the nabe is to boil the broth and then add the separate ingredients one by one as you like them.

10. The noodles can be added at the beginning of the cooking with the other ingredients or saved to the end when they can be added to the richly infused nabe broth. Cooked Japanese rice also works very well instead of noodles, and cracking an egg or two in to the mix will make it even more delicious!

11. Enjoy!

London's Best Cocktail Bars - 69 Colebrooke Row

I am torn between writing about 69 Colebrooke Row or keeping it to myself.  Tucked away in a small street off manic Upper Street in Islington, this is a small, intimate cocktail bar and one of my favourite recent finds.  It is owned by mixologist Tony Conigliaro and publican Camille Hobby-Limon of nearby Charles Lamb, a fantastic local pub.

Tony has a laboratory upstairs where he creates some of the base alcohols for the cocktails, some interesting natural flavourings and mixers that he serves in the bar.  We were given a short private tour of his lab, which was both intriguing and fascinating. 

On the evening I was there, we had a selection of their most renowned cocktails, almost all of which are priced @ £8.50.  I enjoyed the “Haiku” (a delicious concoction of Kigo Shochu with almond, rice milk and sandalwood), and also the “Spitfire” (Cognac, crème de peche, lemon juice, sugar and white wine). 

Apart from the many interesting cocktails on offer choices for other drinks is somewhat limited. There is one beer - the delicious Belgian Vedett @ £3.50 per bottle, and wine is limited to a single choice of red, rose and white all priced @ £21.50 per bottle.  All are of good quality.

We were served a fine selection of small bites to accompany the drinks.  These were delightful and matched well the cocktails we were drinking. They included roast pork with apple mustard jelly, beetroot with rocket and goats cheese, pickled cucumber with caper and mint, mortadella with pistachio and lemon, salame with black papper, lime and cocoa nib, date with walnut soft cheese, pecorino with anchoby, caper and chilli, foie gras and orange, and parmesan with balsamic vinegar and saffron (at £6.50 for the lot).

69 Colebrooke Row is a small, elegant and intimate bar, with very few tables, but if you can get one, it's a great place to spend an evening.  Service is knowledgeable and friendly with bar staff in stylish retro lab coats.  The bar is a cut above most cocktail bars in London - the passion of the owner and staff to serve the finest cocktails is inspiring.  It is striking how close it is to the dreadful bars and restaurants that are sadly ubiquitous in Islington.

69 Colebrooke Row gives hands-on masterclasses (2 hours @ £40) which will teach you how to create some of their cocktails, and give you a glimpse of the history and creation process of the drinks you will sample. The classes include all supplies, snacks and nibbles. Future cocktail masterclasses are on 12^th February for “Valentine” and on 26^th February for “Japanese”.

The bar is open 7 days a week, Sunday to Wednesday until midnight, Thursday until 1am, Friday and Saturday until 2am. Live Jazz is also performed every first and third Sundays of the month by the “Vipers Dream” at 7pm.

Cost: Most cocktails are priced at £8.50. Bottles of wine are £21.50, Vedett beer is £3.50, and the amuse bouche selection is priced at £6.50.

Likes: fantastic range of cocktails, knowledgeable, friendly staff, elegant and intimate surroundings in the heart of Islington. I would also love to attend one of their cocktail masterclasses.

Dislikes: At times, particularly weekends, it is hard to get a table.

Verdict: My cocktail bar of choice in London, 69 Colebrooke Row is a cut above similar establishments. Very highly recommended.

London Restaurant Review - Bistrot Bruno Loubet

In celebration of Chocolate Week and the launch of Green & Black's new cookbook "G&B's Ultimate Chocolate Recipes" (deserving of an entirely separate review which will follow), the good people of Green & Blacks invited a bunch of food bloggers to Bistrot Bruno Loubet and I was luckily among them. 

Housed at the Zetter Hotel on Clerkenwell Road, Bistrot Bruno Loubet opened in early 2010 to glowing reviews. Bruno's culinary experience is daunting - arriving in Britain in 1982 to work for Pierre Koffmann, he was awarded the 1985 Good Food Guide's Young Chef of the Year, joining Raymond Blanc soon after as Head Chef at the Manoir aux Quat'Saisons. He worked at various other establishments including the Four Seasons (earning a Michelin Star within a year), and opened his own restaurants Bistro Bruno in 1993 and L'Odeon in 1995. After eight years in Australia, Bruno Loubet returned to London in 2009.

His new Clerkenwell venture is a charming and unpretentious restaurant with large glass windows allowing plenty of natural light, retro wooden chairs and white table cloths which give a casual but elegant feel to the place.

The menu is predominantly French but with some interesting North African and Mediterranean touches. Starters are priced between £6.50 and £8.50 while mains  start from £16.50 up to £20.To begin, I had "Mauricette Snails and Meatballs, Royale de Champignons Sauvages" @ £8.50. This was a delicious dish with a rich tomato sauce with veal meatballs, lovely and plump escargot smothered in garlic butter, and a custard-like mousse of wild mushrooms.

Another starter I tasted was the "Guinea Fowl Boudin Blanc on Leek Fondue and Chervil Sauce" @ £7.50 - the game was delicate but flavoursome in this white sausage and combined well with the rich leek fondue.

For my main course, I opted for "Quail and Pistachio Dodine with Spinach and Egg Yolk Raviolo" @ £17. The quail was tender and boneless, and stuffed with sausage meat and pistachio nuts. It sat on a bed of the smoothest potato mash and meat jus. The oozing yolk from the raviolo was a delightful surprise in this magnificent dish.

Some of the other intriguing dishes (which I did not try but other food bloggers did) are pictured below. The "Stuffed Rabbit with Tomatoes, Mange-tout and Leeks"  @ £17 looked particularly good.

For dessert I had a "Selection of Cheeses, Walnut Bread and Grapes" @ £3.25. These were delicious and included a Gruyere, a blue variety, two heavenly soft and creamy French cheeses and a goats cheese presented as an ice cream ball.

Other lovely desserts much enjoyed by my fellow diners are pictured below.

The wine list was comprehensive and in my opinion reasonably priced. Of the two wines we tried, the "2009 Felines Jourdan, Picpoul de Pinet" from the Languedoc was priced at £22 while the "2008 Entraygues le Fel" cost @ £27. The latter was an easy drinking red wine with plenty of red fruit character (red cherries) from the South West of France (Fer Servadou, a rather unusual French grape is the dominant varietal in this wine).

We also had the pleasure of meeting Micah Carr-Hill, the Head of Taste, and Editor of the new Green & Black's Ultimate Chocolate Recipe Cookbook who dined with us, and the lovely Gail Haslam, G&B's Social Media Guru by day, food blogger extraordinaire by night (of One Million Goldstars fame) who kindly invited me and the others along.

Cost: The London Foodie was a guest of Green & Black's at Bistrot Bruno Loubet. I estimate that a 3-course meal would cost around £35 excluding drinks. This is excellent value for food of this quality.

Likes: the mauricette snails and selection of cheeses were outstanding, the service was discreetly efficient and very friendly. Excellent, well priced wine list.

Dislikes: I have read many reviews that criticise some aspects of the service at Bistrot Bruno Loubet (coffee being brought either too early or too late, water bottles that never materialise and so on) but in my opinion, the service was, on this occasion, faultless.

Verdict: Excellent Bistrot in Clerkenwell serving French regional ingredient/dishes with a modern interpretation. Creative and delicious cooking by Bruno Loubet at very reasonable prices matched by an unusual but well thought out wine list. Very highly recommended.

London Restaurant Reviews – The Fish Place

**THIS RESTAURANT HAS CLOSED DOWN**

Crossing the channel from Folkestone to Boulogne sur Mer a few years ago, I was struck by the contrast with our much-loved Blighty. Much as I love English seaside towns with their fish and chip shops and amusement arcades, Boulogne sur Mer was for me a painful reminder of how little we celebrate our local fish and seafood. It was thus with bitter-sweet excitement that, disembarking, I saw a large number of vibrant fish markets spread around the seafront, with a variety of fantastic produce on sale, and all just an hour away from English soil.

In light of this experience, I have long felt that restaurants like The Fish Place in London are  eateries that we should be celebrating and supporting in Britain. They popularise the idea of fish as a desirable food choice, which makes perfect sense in an island nation (think Japan!).

The Fish Place opened at the end of 2010 at the Bridges Wharf, a new riverside development located on the south bank of the River Thames in Battersea. On my visit, the black marble tables, matching black leather chairs, bare walls and long glass windows were brand new, making for dare I say a slightly soulless ambience.

The menu is reassuringly short, with most starters priced between £6 (Potato and Leek Soup) and £10.50 (Dorset Crab Raviolo), while mains vary from £14 (vegetarian option) to £27.50. Most fish dishes are priced around £25 including some interesting options such as "Classic Marseillaise Bouillabaisse" @ £26.50 and "Pot au feu of Seafood" @ £24 (a mussel risotto with sea bass, salmon, tiger prawn and chive Beurre blanc).

Dr G and I decided to go for the tasting menu @ £55 for 7 courses (in reality only 5, since I would not count the sorbet or coffee). We started with a delightful amuse bouche of fried scallop served in a mushroom and shallot foam. This was followed by a deliciously rich "Traditional Fish Veloute" with Pernod and parsley cream. The soup was hearty but lighter in style than a crab bisque, and with hints of aniseed from the French liqueur.

Our next course was the "Dorset Crab Raviolo" served with buttered savoy cabbage, shellfish and tarragon. The raviolo had been beautifully seasoned in a rich, creamy seafood sauce, but was not so overpowering as to prevent me from savouring the delicate flavours of the fresh crab. I had never tried tarragon and seafood before (chicken being the more common choice) but felt that the combination of flavours worked surprisingly well.

A salad of "Smoked Duck and Baby Leaves" was next. Served with poached quail eggs, roasted pine nuts and a honey and spice dressing, I felt this was a well made, completely unobjectionable salad, but it was the weakest course of our meal.

Before our main course, a delightful "Gin and Tonic Sorbet" was served as a palate cleanser. This had a lovely tangy and alcoholic burn to it which I really enjoyed.

Main courses were "Pan Seared Wild Sea Bass, Sautéed Potatoes, Pink Prawns and Sea Purslane Fish Sauce". This was a simple but delicious dish - the fish was ultra fresh and had been perfectly cooked. I loved the combination of buttery sauce, sautéed potatoes and spinach,  each flavour complementing the delicate fish.

For pudding, we had an "Assiette of Chef's Desserts" including dainty pieces of chocolate and lemon tart, raspberry ice cream and shortbread with crème patisserie and blackberry, which were all thankfully light and delicious.

I very much enjoyed the food at The Fish Place, but the most impressive aspect of this new restaurant was in my opinion their wine list. The wine menu was cleverly thought out with outstanding bottles being sold at reasonable prices. The 09 Vavasour Pinot Noir from Marlborough (awarded a Decanter Silver Medal ) is one of the wines I normally buy from my local wine shop on Upper Street "The Sampler" at about £11.50 a bottle. It was priced at a very reasonable £19 at The Fish Place.

On our visit, Dr G and I ordered a bottle of 2007 Pouilly Fumé Le Champ des Vignes Domaine Tabordet @ £31, which was nothing short of outstanding - it was a full bodied wine made from the Sauvignon Blanc grape (as are all Pouilly Fume wines from the Loire), it had strong stone fruit flavours (peaches and apricots), and good levels of acidity with a long, citrus finish. This bottle retails online for £16 which implies that The Fish Place's wine mark up is less than double. This is highly commendable, since 3-5 fold multiples are sadly the norm in London restaurants now.

Cost: The London Foodie was a guest of The Fish Place. The tasting menu was priced at £55. Lunch menus are also available at £15 /£18.50 for two or three courses respectively which I believe to be good value (or £37.50/£45 at dinner time). I estimate that a 3-course meal from the à la carte menu would cost around £40 to £45 per person excluding drinks.

Likes: excellent wine list with an attractive mark-up, outstanding cooking and attentive, friendly service.

Dislikes: location is remote from major tubes and trains, and the decor felt somewhat sterile.

Verdict: Splendid fish and seafood dishes, outstandingly well chosen, well price wine list in a new River Thames location. Highly recommended.