Time in Japan

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Playing with food

There are lots of things in Japanese grocery stores that I never saw in the stores in the US. Some, I knew what they were and what to do with them. Others, not so much.

In the seafood section, there are what can only be described as pink blobs. At first, I had no idea what they were, and later I suspected they were fish roe. I wanted to try something new, so I looked for a recipe using them and found a tarako spaghetti recipe.

Here are the ingredients.

First is tarako is salted cod roe. I've had onigiri (rice balls) with tarako inside them before, and they are yummy!

Of course, I hadn't seen them raw before I came here. I don't know about you, but I think they look like a small pair of lungs! These are the roe in their casing, which is very thin. So, first I had to squeeze and scrape the roe out. Since this was Y580, or $6.25, I won't eat it too often.

Some butter to cook in....










Next, is cream. I never said that this was a healthy dish!






And spaghetti, which isn't very cheap here.







Lastly, some powdered nori (seaweed) to sprinkle on top.













Here is the final product! It was delicious!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you add parmesan cheese, you will have created tarako alfredo! Was it salty?

Anonymous said...

"I don't know about you, but I think they look like a small pair of lungs!"

If they are pink blobs, then sure. If they're really the color they showed up on my screen (light orange)... well, they sure wouldn't be HEALTHY lungs. :-)

Me said...

OK, to someone who has not actually seen a pair of lungs, that's what my first impression was. Similar blobs are available in other shades of pink -- different varieties of roe, I guess.

It's a little salty. I have actually seen the cans of grated Parmesan cheese here that we have back home. I see me adding shiitake next time.