I want to be a good chef
Two important factors influencing my goals are my children and my mother. Firstly, I am currently the mother of two children. My life has changed dramatically as I became a mother after I married. I started to be interested in cooking, health, and the well-being of my children. I started to identify better organic ingredients and studied cooking equipment and ingredients. Also, I now enjoy constantly collecting and analyzing healthy and nutritious recipes. Secondly, my mother is the owner-chef of a Japanese restaurant, so I often worked to help her in her restaurant. Working in there included everything from serving, plating, purchasing ingredients, simple cooking, and cashier. These are the starting points of my cooking life.
Culinary is my life
Like the photo above, I am always cooking in real life. I enjoy not only Korean food, but also Japanese cuisine. Also, I am learning baking for the first time this fall semester, which is very interesting. Finally, I want to learn a variety of dishes and expand my cooking range.
Sensory Evaluation
1. My new food: Mille-feuille Nabe
Mille-feuille means a classic French pastry filled with three layers of thin puff pastry and two layers of cream, sprinkled with powdered sugar in French, but Mille-feuille in this recipe is the “thousand layers” of cabbage leaves and beef slices. Therefore, the name of this dish is a compound word of French meaning a thousand leaves and Japanese meaning hot pot. The recipe first appeared in a cookbook back in 1991; since then it became one of the most popular hot pot recipes enjoyed at home in Japan (Chen, Author, & Chen, 2020).
2. The reason for choosing this dish
There are two reasons I select this dish. A few years ago, when I first saw this dish in a South Korean culinary magazine, I was very shocked by its beauty and novelty. My curiosity about the flavor and the recipe for this dish is the first reason I made this dish today. The second is because
I want to feed my children with various kinds of vegetables. Specifically, children generally do not like mushrooms very much, but since this dish contains meat and many types of mushrooms, I wanted to actively recommend
this dish to my children.
3. Workstation
Set up workstations, sanitary tool, and equipment
4. Ingredients(Yield: 4 servings)
Coldwater- 1000ml
Onion- 65g
Green onion- 63g
Shiitake mushrooms - 3 save stems, 55g
Dried anchovies – 50g, Intestines removed
Dried kelp – cut into 4cm x 7cm
Soy sauce – 2 Teaspoon
Cabbage- 15 leaves
Sesame leaf- 20g
Blade shabu beef- 600g
Fresh bean sprouts- 173g
Shiitake mushroom- 1 save stems, 15g
Brown Shimeji mushroom- 50g
White beech mushroom- 50g
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Broth
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Veggie Stacks
5. Recipe
Ingredients preparation
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Broth
1. Cut the onion in half, then cut it lengthwise into 1.5cm
2. Cut green onions into 6cm long
3. Cut shiitake mushrooms into 1/4 size
Discard the 'black' guts and the head from each dried anchovy
Use clean bodies
4. Add onion, green onion, and shiitake mushrooms to 1000ml of cold water and
boil over high heat for about 30 minutes
5. When the broth boils, reduce to low heat, add the trimmed anchovy and kelp, and simmer for about 15 minutes. If you boil them too long, your stock will taste bitter
6. Strain through a fine strainer, 750ml of broth is set aside
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Veggie Stacks
1. Start with a cabbage leaf. Place three pieces of perilla leaves on top of the cabbage leaf. Then place two beef slices on top. Put another piece of cabbage leaf on top. Then place another layer of perilla leaves and beef slices. Finish the stack by topping it off with a third cabbage leaf.
2. Repeat this process and cut each stack
into thirds with a knife
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Assemble Pot
1. Place the bean sprouts flat in a pot and add Veggie Stacks on top of them, starting from the edge
2. The middle part is decorated with three mushrooms
3. Pour the broth 750ml and boil until the beef and vegetables are cooked
4. Then reduce the pot to medium heat and
let it continue to simmer
5. Make sure that the beef and
cabbage have fully cooked through
6. Take out one stack, dip in chili sauce and enjoy!
6. A sensory evaluation
This dish is stunning to look at and the flavors are even more amazing. The dish had an incredibly beautiful color. It smelled rich and aromatic of vegetables and meat throughout the cooking process. The flavour of the dish is warm and comfortable. The dish is light and soft, but the flavor is deep, and the aromas of meat and vegetables create a fantastic harmony. During cooking, I could hear the delicious boiling sound and the soft sound of moderately cooked vegetables and meat when chewed. Also, I did not add any salt to the broth, but very little soy sauce at the end. Therefore, its broth was not salty at all and was light, soft, and comfortable. Also, I did not use sugar at all, but the sweetness of the ingredients such as cabbage, onion itself made the broth not boring and umami. Also, this dish did not taste sour or bitter; specifically, I had to pay special attention because it may be bitter or fishy when making broth if I boil dried kelp or anchovies for a long time.
7. Final Plating
I was so curious about the taste of the finished dish. The tender cabbage has absorbed all the flavors of pork and broth. Also, everything goes well together. It creates the most beautiful and deep flavor when eaten with cabbage, meat, sesame leaves, mushrooms, and bean sprouts, rather than eating separately. Meat, Chinese cabbage, sesame leaves, and chili sauce are a nice one set. Even though this dish was boiled, each layer of Veggie Stacks was kept intact, so eating them together gives it a much deeper taste. In addition, the sauce can be prepared in various ways, such as soy sauce, honey mustard, and peanut sauce, depending on the individual taste. Of course, this dish contains a lot of vegetables and requires a few other ingredients, and is relatively easy to cook. This hot pot dish is like shabu-shabu, but there are obvious differences. While shabu-shabu is cooked by cooking the ingredients in order, it is much more convenient because this is boiled all the ingredients together. Also, since all ingredients are boiled together and simmered, the flavor of the broth is much deeper and thicker than the shabu-shabu. The broth itself was very rich and soft, and the combination of meat and vegetables gave it a fantastic savory. In other words, everything is cooked in a light broth, but there is no need to chop the vegetables, making the dish simpler but much prettier. Undoubtedly, this is a one-pot meal that will keep you warm and happy, especially throughout the cold and long winter.
8. Reflection
I was so happy to be able to cook this dish myself, which I have always been curious about, and I was so happy when the children enjoyed the finished dish. Even though the children don't like vegetables, the way they enjoy this dish with meat was the most touching. Mille-Feuille Nabe (also known as Thousand Leaves Hot Pot) is not only visually colorful and beautiful but also had a simple recipe. As mentioned above, while shabu-shabu is waiting for all the ingredients to be cooked one by one, it means everything is cooked at once, so it would be great as a family meal or party food for a special occasion.
References
Chen, A., Author, & Chen, N. (2020, July 30). Mille-Feuille Nabe ミルフィーユ鍋 • Just One Cookbook. Retrieved November 06, 2020, from https://www.justonecookbook.com/mille-feuille-nabe/
