Saturday Dinner: Hina Matsuri dinner

Tonight, I made a little bit elaborate dinner for Hina Matsuri, which is a festival for girls in Japan. Households with girls put out their hina dolls (photo on the right). My mom sent me a kit for making these dolls from Japan, and it took a whole day last Saturday to make them! Anyway, Mine is just a prince and princess, but people usually have several layers placed like stairs with servant dolls and other little items like their carriage and other treasures. Since we (my boyfriend and I) don't have a little girl in our household, it's just an excuse for me to make an elaborate dinner;)

Beef wrapped asparagus (for 2-3 people):
Thinly sliced beef (6 pieces) - You can usually find these really thinly sliced beef at a Korean store or Japanese store.
Asparagus (9)
Salt
Pepper
Vegetable oil (1/4 tsp)
Soy sauce (1 Tbsp)
Mayonnaise (1 Tbsp)

Start boiling a potful of water.
1. Peel ends of asparagus (about 2 inches) with a vegetable peeler. A lot of recipes tell you to chop these ends off because they're hard, but why waste them when you can just peel away the hard part and use them fine? But if you don't want to bother peeling them, Martha has a good idea for those unwanted ends in Martha Stewart Living magazine. Boil them in water and use that as stock when you make vegetable soup. Sounds like a pretty good idea to me.
2. Cut asparagus into halves and boil them in water for few minutes until they're tender. Cool them in icy water or running water. Pat them dry.
3. Spread out each piece of beef on a cutting board and salt and pepper both sides.
4. Put 2 end pieces and 1 top piece on a piece of beef and wrap it by rolling the asparagus on the beef. Wrap all asparagus.
5. Heat pan on medium high heat with vegetable oil and saute wrapped asparagus, placing the side with the end (of the meat) on the pan first so the meat won't fall off. Once one side gets brown, saute other sides and brown them.
6. Make some room on the pan and pour in soy sauce and mayonnaise. As the soy sauce and mayonnaise mixture thickens, mix everything together.
7. Lower the heat to medium and put a lid on the pan. Cook for about 3 minutes.
8. Cut each piece diagonally in the middle for nice presentation and serve!

If you can't find thinly sliced beef, you can try bacon. You might be thinking, "Soy sauce and mayo...?" It's a surprisingly good combination. Definitely worth trying.

Pork wrapped bamboo shoot with Japanese mint (for 2-3 people):
Thinly sliced pork (6 pieces) - You can also find this at a Korean or Japanese store.
Bamboo shoot (1/2 of a large whole - precooked)
Ooba (6 leaves) - Leftover from the other night.
Salt
Vegetable oil (1/2 tsp)

1. Cut bamboo shoot into 6 long pieces.
2. Spread out each pork piece on a cutting board and salt both sides.
3. Wrap each bamboo shoot piece with an ooba leaf and place it on the pork. Wrap the bamboo shoot by rolling it on the meat.
4. Heat a pan on medium high heat with vegetable oil and saute wrapped bamboo shoot pieces. Saute all sides until they are brown.
5. Turn the heat down to medium and put a lid on. Cook for about 3 minutes.

The ooba leaf is definitely the key of this recipe. It's so flavorful that the only other thing you need is salt.

Chirashizushi (for 2-3 people):
Chirashizushi is a type of sushi with different kinds of cooked sour vegetables. Sometimes it has sashimi pieces over the rice. I just used a chirashizushi mix (photo below) for this.
Chirashizushi mix (1 pack) - Mine came with 2 small packs in 1 package.
Short sticky rice (270ml)
Egg (1)
Vegetable oil (1/2 tsp)

1. Cook rice with less water than usual.
2. Break the egg and beat it really well.
3. Heat a pan with oil and use a paper towel to spread the oil out thinly and evenly.
4. Pour the egg onto the pan and spread it out as thinly as possible.
5. After the egg is cooked, place it on a cutting board and slice as thinly as possible into strips.
6. When rice cooks, get another person who can help you and a fan (or something you can use as a fan).
7. Put rice in a largest container you can find. In my case, it was my dutch oven. Pour the vegetable mixture onto the rice and mix well as the other person fans the rice. The idea is, you want to dry out the rice as you pour the vinegar mixture onto it so the rice doesn't get soggy.
8. Put egg strips over the rice and seaweed strips which come with the package.

You can also put sashimi (cut raw fish - has to be fresh) over the rice or mix in canned salmon. The key to making this sushi successfully is the drying part. Get someone to help you. I suppose you could use an electric fan, but this might blow out dust in the fan onto rice...

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