This is a wonderful way for family dining. We first experienced it when we went to Japan and then subsequently at a large Asian marketplace just north of us.

When we decided to try this at home, I bought a separate burner I could put on the table (an electric one, as Belle didn’t want to use propane indoors). I found a few Shabu Shabu recipes in some Japanese cookbooks but they all had different suggestions, so I used a few of them as a template but then added my own ideas.

Usually we eat at the dining room table, but it’s much better if the burner is within reach of everyone, and as there were only three of us at this meal, I decided it would be better to eat at the smaller kitchen table.

Shabu Shabu means swish swish in Japanese, and it get its name from the sound of swishing the kombu around in the stock. It’s fun and very filling, as it’s a full three course meal, with meat (beef, shrimp) and for the vegetarians (tofu), vegetables and noodles. What could be more perfect then that?

The prep is easy and everyone does their own cooking, so that each item is prepared just the way everyone likes it. When it comes to the beef, this is particularly important, as I like my beef rare, Belle likes hers more rare then me and our older son likes his beef blue!

This would work as a dinner party as well as long as everyone has their own dipping sauces.

Feel free to add whatever vegetables are in season in your area, and whatever type of meat you prefer (you can also use pork or chicken) and the type of noodles you like.

I have had Shabu Shabu with venison, pork, chicken and beef and with all sorts of vegetables. If you can’t find gai lan (Chinese broccoli) you can use rappini or even spinach. For the gai lan, oyster sauce for dipping  is also very popular in Chinese cuisine. I like using baby bok choy because they are smaller and more tender, but regular bok choy would work just as well – just cut them a little smaller.

Belle’s note: I just love Shabu Shabu – it’s always guaranteed to be a meal where everyone lingers around the table, chatting and eating up every scrap of food. The sesame dipping sauce is lovely; I also like to have a small bowl of Japanese soy sauce with a splash of sesame oil.

Shabu Shabu

Stock:
2  4″ square sheets of kombu seaweed, wiped clean of excess salt and soaked in water for 30 minutes
7 cups of water

The Food:
1 lb flank steak, thinly sliced against the grain
1 lb tiger shrimps, peeled & deveined
1 box silken extra-firm tofu, cut into 3/4″ cubes
5 baby bok choy, cut lengthwise in quarters
8 gai lan cut lengthwise in half
3-4 cups bean sprouts
6 scallions sliced into 1″ pieces on the bias
6 cups frozen udon noodles
1 cup sesame dipping sauce (recipe follows)
3/4 cup ponzu sauce
3/4 cup soy sauce
splash of pure sesame oil, to taste

Special equipment: Portable burner that can be used on your table.

Sesame Dipping Sauce
6 tbsp sesame paste
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp rice vinegar (not aged)
1 tbsp superfine sugar
1 tsp granulated chicken stock dissolved in 1/4 cup hot water

Sauce

1. Whisk together all the ingredients in a bowl.
2. Reserve.

Shabu Shabu

1. Place the 7 cups of water into a large pot and put on the burner on your table. Drain the kombu and add to the water on the burner. Bring to a boil. Swish the kombu around in the water with chopsticks.
2. Once the water and kombu are boiling, everyone can begin eating. Using chopsticks, have each person dip some beef or shrimp in the stock. Cook as long as you like, then dip in one of the sauces and eat.
3. Continue this procedure with the rest of the beef, shrimp and tofu – you might want to place the tofu pieces into a big ladle first, so you don’t lose the pieces, which break up easily, in the stock.
4. When the first batches of the beef, shrimp or tofu are cooked and everyone’s busy eating, add some of the vegetables. Bring back to the boil and let cook a few minutes.
5. Eat the vegetables the same way with the dipping sauces. Continue cooking and eating the remainder of the beef, shrimp and tofu, adding more vegetables as the cooked vegetables get eaten.
6. Once most of the beef, shrimp, tofu and vegetables have been cooked, you can add individual servings of udon noodles to the stock, which should now have a more broth-like taste to it. Use a ladle to immerse a small serving of noodles, or else remove the noodles using chopsticks or a slotted spoon.
7. Place the serving of udon noodles into a small bowl and continue with the feast.

I just went to Amazon and see that The Barbeque Bible! is now a colour edition – my copy is in black and white. I’m thinking about ordering the colour edition myself because my copy is now very messy (I’ve used this book so often!)

This is a very easy dish to make. You can add these as a last minute thought when you are cooking something else on the barbeque, like Grilled Baby Bok Choy.
The picture isn’t very exciting but don’t let it fool you.

Belle says: This eggplant dish is the same dish we’ve ordered in many different Japanese restaurants. It’s delicious, and filling enough to be the main course of a vegetarian meal!

Grilled Eggplant with Miso Barbeque Sauce
Adapted from The Barbeque Bible! by Steven Raichlen

4-6 Asian eggplants (the long thin ones)
1/3 cup organic white miso
1 tbsp sake
1 tbsp mirin
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp mayonnaise
2-3 tbsp dark sesame oil for brushing

1. Pre-heat your BBQ for direct grilling’; clean and oil the grates.
2. Cut the eggplants in half lengthwise. Make criss-cross cuts into the eggplants about 1/8″ deep and very close together on the flesh side.
3. Mix the miso, sake, mirin, sugar and mayonaise together in a bowl until smooth.
4. Place eggplants flesh side down on the BBQ and grill 3-5 minutes (until brown).
5. Using tongs, turn the eggplants over and brush with the miso mixture.
6. Continue grilling 6-8 minutes or until brown and soft from the sides.

Belle loves to read other food blogs, and she’s always finding dishes that she wants me to try.  This salmon with white beans, leeks and shiitake mushrooms is very nice, and uses this white beans with leeks and shiitake mushrooms from The Kitchen Witch, which is based on a Jamie Oliver recipe. I prepared it a little differently but wanted to give The Kitchen Witch a big thanks for the idea.

The Kitchen Witch suggests using the beans as a bed for salmon and this sounded good to us; however, rather than BBQ salmon, I decided to make one of our favourite salmon recipes, which is based on a slow cooked salmon dish from Nobu Matsuhisa’s Nobu West.

Slow-cooked Salmon

I usually place the salmon on a bed of sautéed shredded snow peas but this time we used the white beans, leeks and shiitake.

2 salmon fillets, skinned and boned
1.5 tbsp sake
1.5 tbsp light soy sauce
1.5 tbsp dashi*
1  tbsp freshly grated ginger
2.5 tbsp butter
2  cloves garlic sliced

Garnish
pea sprouts

1. Combine all the ingredients in a re-sealable freezer bag along with the salmon.

2. Bring a large pot of water to 65 degrees F. You will need a thermometer for this as you must maintain that temperature for the entire 12 minutes the salmon will be cooking.

3. Place bag with the salmon in the hot water and maintain at 65 degrees F. Cook for 12 minutes.

4. Remove bag from water, then the salmon from bag carefully so it doesn’t fall apart. Place on the bed of white beans, leeks and shiitake mushrooms.

5. Garnish with pea sprouts.

* Dashi

You can make dashi from water, konbu and bonito flakes. I often do this but this time I used the granulated package type and just added boiling water.

1 litre (1 quart) water
10g (0.35 oz) konbu
30g (1.06 oz) bonito flakes

1. Heat the water and konbu in a saucepan over medium heat slowly.

2. As the water is about to boil, remove the konbu and add the bonito flakes. Remove from the heat.

3. Let the dashi steep. The dashi is done when the bonito flakes have sunk to the bottom. Strain.

For the package method just follow the directions on the package (make up as much as you need).

White Beans, Leeks and Shiitake Mushrooms (from The Kitchen Witch)

3 leeks cleaned and julienned
2 chopped shallots
4 cloves of garlic chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
1 cup dry white wine
2 cups shiitake mushrooms, stemmed and sliced
2 cups cooked white beans
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/2 tsp fresh thyme

1. Heat oil and butter in a large sauce pan over medium heat.

2. Add leeks, shallots and garlic. Sauté until tender, about 8 minutes.

3. Add wine. Bring to the boil and then simmer over low heat for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

4. Add mushrooms, white beans and thyme. Bring back to the boil, cover, then reduce to low heat and simmer 10 minutes.

5. Adjust taste with salt and pepper.

Like magic:

This is what he whipped up for lunch: Tataki-style beef with Mentsuyu dipping sauce. We didn’t have daikon on hand – it’s the traditional vegetable to use in a Japanese salad – so he used radishes instead and they were the perfect substitute.

Since this dish is very rare, we’ve found it’s best to use a good cut of beef; here we’ve used two tenderloin steaks.

Season the meat with salt, pepper and crushed garlic, then sear it on all sides in a very hot pan. Remove from the pan and wrap in foil to continue cooking on its own while you put together the dressing/dipping sauce and cut up your desired vegetables – here Ward used radishes, romaine lettuce and scallions.

Thinly slice the beef, arrange with your vegetables, and drizzle over with Mentsuyu sauce (recipe below). Serve the remaining sauce in small individually-sized dipping bowls. We didn’t use wasabi this time, but it’s great with wasabi, too, if you have some on hand.

This following recipe for Mentsuyu dipping sauce is adapted from Harumi’s Japanese Cooking:

MENTSUYU DRESSING/DIPPING SAUCE

Ingredients:

1 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup mirin
3 tbsp superfine or fruit sugar
1 cup water
2-1/2 tbsp dried bonito flakes or other fish flakes

Directions:

Mix all ingredients together in a microwave-safe bowl. Do not cover. Microwave at medium power for 3 minutes. Cool and strain. You can refrigerate it until you need it.

And now? I don’t know about Ward, but I’m a mayo convert, if it’s this delicious version of mayonnaise.

We didn’t use peeled shrimp with the tail still intact. Initially we had the shrimp, mayo and breadcrumbs set out in three different plates:

Poached Shrimp

Spicy Mayo

Garlic Breadcrumbs

But we discovered it was much easier to arrange the shrimp, mayo and breadcrumbs together on an appetizer plate:

We will definitely be serving this at our next get-together. To make things easier for everyone, we’re planning on skewering the poached shrimp onto bamboo skewers, placing the skewers on a plate and topping with the mayo and breadcrumbs. But it really doesn’t matter how you serve this dish – it is very tasty and should go over well as an appetizer.

And then we came home and Ward got right to work preparing a little mini-feast of Japanese appetizers; later that night, we watched The Watchmen and feasted on Asian Rare Beef Salad, Beef and Shrimp/Pork and Shrimp gyozas, Fried Prawn Balls and Cubes and Marinated Raw Tuna:

The Coffee Table is Set for the Mini-Feast

Fried Prawn Cakes

Rare Beef Salad

Cubed and Marinated Raw Tuna

Gyoza

It was definitely my idea of a perfect birthday feast!

The shabu shabu was a huge hit, especially with the kids. There’s something about being able to cook your own food at the table that’s loads of fun. We bought an electric burner (so inexpensive! $12.99 …) and placed the pot of boiling broth on it in the center of the table:

You can have virtually anything in your shabu shabu, so tonight we opted for flank steak, tuna and tofu. The broth contained spinach and green onions, and we had two kinds of noodles.

I’ll post the recipe later this week. We will definitely do this again, probably with more seafood!

Peppers and Crab Mixed Rice

I still haven’t quite gotten the knack of photographing food – this flashless picture looked better than the one with a flash, but even so, it definitely doesn’t do the dish justice.

We had this as a side, but it would make an excellent main entry on its own; the following recipe makes enough to serve as a main entry for four.

Peppers and Crab Mixed Rice

Adapted from Harumi’s Japanese Home Cooking, by Harumi Kurihara

Ingredients:

3 cups uncooked rice

4 tsp granulated chicken stock powder or 1 chicken bullion cube

2-1/2 cups water

1 small or medium red pepper

1 small or medium green pepper

12 white button mushrooms

1 cup cooked white crabmeat

2-1/2 tbsp butter

2 bay leaves

salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Dissolve chicken stock powder or bullion cube in a small amount of hot water. Add the water to mixture.

2. Cut the peppers open, discarding the seeds. Cut into 1/2-inch square pieces.

3. Slice mushrooms thinly. Loosen the crabmeat flakes, running your fingers through to ensure there are no bits of shell. Cut the butter into small pieces.

4. Cook rice as you normally would, using the chicken stock instead of water and adding the bay leaves.

5. When rice is cooked, stir in the butter and season with salt and pepper to taste, mixing roughly. Add peppers, mushrooms and crabmeat and mix again. Serve.