Sukiyaki

We had sukiyaki tonight. It's a nice fall and winter meal. We use the bottled sauce as a shortcut. Still, there's a lot of work involved. There's a lot of chopping. These are some of the ingredients of sukiyaki. You've probably seen Japanese leeks in another posting here. You've seen carrots, but probably not as small and fat as these. You may have seen or eaten shitake mushrooms (the big brown ones in the picture). Here are close-ups of some of the other ingredients:

bunashimeji mushrooms,

enokitake mushrooms,

shungiku or edible chrysanthemum greens. (Please don't eat your garden variety.)

This is grilled tofu.

These are shirataki noodles. They are lightly boiled before they are put in the sauce with everything else.

This is only one-fourth of the whole cabbage. This is still a lot.

This is lard. You use this to grease the pot.

Thinly sliced beef is used in sukiyaki. That's the lard on top. The meat is lightly cooked before the sauce and vegetables, tofu and noodles go in.

This is part of what was made. It turned out to be way too much! We'll be eating it for lunch tomorrow, too. A good recipe for sukiyaki is in Quick & Easy Japanese Cuisine For Everyone by Yukiko Moriyama.

This is the side of the iron pot that we use. Sukiyaki is usually cooked at the table on a small burner. Vegetables and meat are added as everyone serves himself with the dish's chopsticks. Each person has a bowl in which to put his serving. Some people break a raw egg in their serving. Of course, each person has a bowl of rice.