Prosciutto and White Rose Nectarines with Green Almonds

Browsing through my neighborhood farmers' market this morning, I discovered that one of the fruit vendors was selling green almonds. The botanical kinship between almonds and stone fruit is apparent when you see green almonds - they look like immature peaches:












I immediately thought of the cover of Judy Rogers' "The Zuni Cafe Cookbook."











With white nectarines in season, I decided I needed to try her recipe for "Prosciutto and White Rose Nectarines with Green Almonds."

Paring through the flesh of the green almonds with a knife brings you down to a thin shell and the nutmeat:

The green almonds are similar to blanched, raw almonds - which is what Judy recommends using you can't get green almonds. The green almonds have a soft crunch and some vegetal notes - I was thinking of very fresh, uncooked green beans.


Here's what Judy says: "The rose scent, faint bitterness, and long flavor of a ripe white nectarine reveals flavors in prosciutto that you can miss when you taste the ham with sweeter fruit... During the few weeks a year we can get them, I do like to serve this dish with green almonds. Pried from their fuzzy pods and painstakingly peeled, tender unripe almonds have as delicate flavor as I know, one that reads best against something savory rather than sweet."

Isn't that beautiful?

The perfumed, meltingly soft, honeyed white nectarines play off very interestingly against the salt and fat of the prosciutto. And the green almonds take the dish another direction with their soft crunch, nuttiness, and vegetal notes. A very interesting tasting!

Fresh Hijiki

At the Granville Public Market in Vancouver, British Columbia, I spotted fresh hijiki. I was surprised by how green the fresh hijiki was. Compare this to the black dried hijiki pictured below for the "Assorted Vegetables with Sun-dried Radish" recipe .

I don't remember ever seeing fresh hijiki in the U.S. or in Japan. The vendor said the hijiki had been harvested in the Vancouver area. The hijiki was crunchy and briny inside, like seawater. Unfortunately, I didn't think U.S. customs would let me bring a fresh sea vegetable into the country, so I didn't get to try cooking with it.

Temari Zushi

This vegetable sushi dish uses pickled blossoms of myoga (a rhizome related to ginger, but I think has more of a peppery taste), shitake mushrooms braised in soy sauce, and fresh avocado slices.

Here are fresh myoga blossoms, imported from Japan:

I sliced the myoga lengthwise, blanched them in boiling water, and put them in a lemon juice-based pickling liquid:

After pickling overnight, the myoga turn a bright scarlet color:

The feedback I provided to Elizabeth was that I wasn't entirely satisfied with the balance of flavors in my execution of this dish.

The myoga was quite tart after being picked in the full-strength lemon juice. Next time, I'll reserve a third of the rice and season it with less rice vinegar in anticipation of the picked myoga.

I also thought the shitake mushroom would be better braised in less soy sauce to avoid overshadowing the flavors of the mushroom and sushi rice.

Creamy Bamboo Shoot Soup with Asparagus

Takenoko no Surinagashi

For me, bamboo shoots are mostly about the crunchy, fibrous texture. This recipe purees the bamboo shoots to shift the focus to their mild, woodsy flavor.

The soup is enriched with kombu stock, thickened with pureed tofu, garnished with blanched asparagus, and seasoned with light soy sauce, white miso, and sansho pepper.

After pureeing, the soup remains somewhat grainy - bamboo shoots have a lot of fiber! But, I enjoyed the focus on the flavor of fresh bamboo shoots. The umami-rich earthiness of this soup contrasted nicely with the fresh asparagus and the bite of the sansho pepper.

Assorted Vegetables with Sun-Dried Radish

Gomoku Kiri-Boshi Daikon

This recipe uses a few Japanese ingredients that you might not be familar with.

Kiriboshi- Daikon, sun-dried daikon radish strips:

Hijiki, a dried sea vegetable:







Shirataki, noodles formed from konnyaku yams:


Shirataki has a gelatinous or slithery texture to it. It's a naturally non-caloric food.



In this recipe, the dried ingredients are reconstituted and steamed with the shirataki, fresh carrots, and fresh green beans. The seasonings include aromatic sesame seed oil, sugar, soy-sauce and shimchimi togarashi (a Japanese spice mixture that includes dried chile, orange peel, white sesame seeds, black sesame seeds, sansho pepper, nori, and dried giner).

The result looks like a noodle dish, like Korean chap chae. The strands of dried daikon, hijiki, and shirataki provide interesting contrasting mouthfeel. The carrots and green beans provide color and crunch.

Kabocha Soup with Japanese Flavors

Kabocha no Surinagashi

Kabocha is a round, orange-fleshed squash with a green skin, similar in taste to butternut squash. Pureed squash makes a soup with a satisfyingly rich texture.

Elizabeth's version for Kansha takes squash soup a Japanese direction by using kombu stock, light-colored soy sauce, and white miso. The Japanese flavors counterbalance the sweetness of the kabocha in an interesting way.

Spicy Soy-Braised Bamboo Shoots and Fried Tofu

Takenoko to Atsu Age no Arima Ni

For this recipe, I went to my local Chinese market to buy fresh bamboo shoots. Here's a fresh bamboo shoot:

Like artichokes, bamboo shoots have an inedible fibrous exterior, which must be removed.

Raw bamboo shoots also contain toxic hydrocyanic acid (or prussic acid). Boiling the bamboo shoots eliminates the toxin. I don't know whether the heat denatures the hydrocyanic acid or whether the acid goes into solution and is removed when the bamboo shoots are drained. I do know that raw bamboo shoots are very bitter; I assume the bitterness is due to the hydrocyanic acid.

I simmered the bamboo shoots in water about 45 minutes and then peeled back the outer layers. Unfortunately, the interior still tasted bitter to me, so I simmered the bamboo shoots a second time.


After trimming the simmered bamboo shoots, here's what I got.

I used the tender vestigial leaves at the tip for Fresh Bamboo shoots and Rice - Takenoko Gohan.

I cut the conical portion into wedge-shaped combs for the braised bamboo shoots with tofu.

The spiciness in this recipe comes from sansho, sometimes called a type of pepper, but it's really the berry from the prickly ash plant. Sansho is lemony, but also has a tongue-numbing quality to it.

Elizabeth's recipe calls for whole sansho berries, which I wasn't able to find in my Japanese market - although I could find the powdered sansho. I substituted Szechuan peppercorns, which are related to sansho, but I believe they're a different botanical variety.

For several years, Szechuan peppercorns were illegal to import into the U.S. because of concerns they could harbor citrus canker. A few years ago, the U.S. decided to allow heat-treated Szechuan peppercorns into the country.

Packages of Szechuan peppercorns contain both the black seed and the husks. In Chinese cooking, the husks are considered the desirable part, and the seeds are often discarded. With sansho, the seed is considered the desirable part of the spice, and the husk is discarded. Szechuan peppercorns have a citrus overtone, but I don't think they taste as lemony as sansho.

For this recipe, I fried fresh extra firm tofu instead of using imported packaged fried tofu. I braised the bamboo shoots and tofu with soy, kombu dashi (kelp stock), and Szechuan peppercorns.

In the finished dish, I think the Szechuan peppercorns add a nice contrasting brightness to the umami-rich soy/dashi flavors. The crunch of the bamboo shoots is also a nice textural contrast to the satisfyingly chewy fried tofu.

I liked the recipe, but preparing the fresh bamboo shoots takes some time. I'd like to try this recipe with the boiled bamboo shoots packed in plastic bags with water. I'm sure the prepared bamboo shoots don't have the delicacy of the fresh bamboo shoots, but I'm not sure the difference would be very apparent after braising them with soy and sansho.