Last night, my wife was craving steak, so we picked up fine sirloin steak at the grocery store. Since I eat healthy Japanese food often, I would like to say that I'm in a great shape, but years of drinking beer has finally caught up to me, and recently I've been trying to watch my tummy. My wife has been suggesting that I cut down on the carbs, since I eat rice, noodles and bread all the time. I grew up eating those, so if I just have meat and vegetable, my stomach doesn't feel full. So we had 8-oz steak and fresh corn for dinner (and nicely chilled cold beer), but I still felt hungry all night. I know I ate plenty, but my stomach was not satisfied without any carb in there. I still managed to survive without eating any more for the night.
This morning, I was hungry, so I ended up eating a big pastrami sandwich. I thought that should hold me off for a while, but by 11am, I was hungry again. To make up for not having that carb last night, I decided to make some pasta... really quick. Mentaiko pasta is definitely easy and quick to make. Now days, you can easily get the instant kind where you just boil the pasta and add the instant mixture, but the thought of fish egg sitting on store shelves for months kind of scare me. Plus, this is cheap and tastes better!
IN JAPANESE: Mentaiko Pasta
CATEGORY: Noodle/Rice
COOKING METHOD: Boiled
DIFFICULTY: Easy
SERVES: 1 person
LENGTH OF TIME: 10 min
INGREDIENTS:
1 sack of mentaiko (also called Salted Pollock Roe. See TIP: Where to get mentaiko)
1 serving of long spaghetti (2 oz or so)
1 TBsp mayonnaise
1 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp sake
some butter
Pinch or two of shredded dried seaweed [nori] (optional)
HOW TO:
Boil enough pasta for yourself for however long the instruction on the package says (usually 6-10 min).
While that's boiling, put mentaiko in a mixing bowl, and using back of a spoon, take the eggs out of the sack (it's ok if some sack gets mixed in), and throw away the sack. Add soy sauce, sake and mayo and stir until creamy.
When the pasta finishes boiling, scoop it into the mixing bowl, and add some butter on top so it can melt easier. Then stir until pasta is covered in the sauce. And that's it! Sprinkle some dried nori on top if you like. If you have fresh lemon, I hear that's also good to splash on top, but I've never tried that before.
4 comments:
I'll be trying your mentaiko recipe this weekend. I'm very excited!
Thanks for the tips, especially on where to find mentaiko. Not being Japanese, I had no idea what it was and thought it was some secret magical ingredient that the restaurant chefs whipped up.
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Thanks for the comment! I hope you can find mentaiko at a store nearby! Mentaiko pasta is really one of the easiest (and tastiest) pasta out there.
omg i absolutely love mentaiko. gonna cook some now :)
hi, that's a great recipe you have! by the way, there's this wafu pasta whereby they use a cream sauce that is really savoury. do you, by any chance, know the recipe to that? the first time i ate it was at this restaurant called waraku and its absolutely delicious! i've been trying to recreate it but it seems that no one has the recipe..
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