Friday Dinner: Grilled sole, simple Japanese dinner

What's better than a nice, healthy Japanese dinner after a long, busy week?

Grilled sole (for 2 people):
Sole fillet pieces with skin (2) - You can use other fish fillet
Lime (1/2)
Salt

1. On an oven-safe plate, place aluminum foil. Put fillet pieces with skin side up. Salt both sides well.
2. Broil (not bake) at 350 degrees. This makes the skin nice and crispy.
3. Squeeze and drizzle lime over the fish while it's hot.

I think this grilled sole by itself could be a main dish for any dinner, not just Japanese. A lot of people don't like the skin, but when it's nice and crispy, it's really good.

On the side, I made miso soup with tofu and seaweed, and cooked greens (ohitashi). For the cooked greens, it's best to make dashi rather than using dashi no moto, so I'll put a recipe for dashi but if you can't make it dashi no moto with water is just fine.

Dashi (6 cups):
Water (6 cups)
Konbu (4 inches) - This is dried seaweed from Japan. You can get this at a Japanese store or an Asian store.
Bonito flakes (a handful) - This is fish flakes, so you can not use it if you're vegetarian.

In a large pot, put water and konbu. Let it rest like that for 30 minutes to 2 hours. Put on high heat and take out the konbu right before the water boils. Add bonito flakes, as soon as the water boils, strain it. Dashi is actually probably the easiest stock to make in the world. It's just unfamiliar ingredients that kind of scare people, but if you can find the ingredients, it's really worth making.

Cooked greens - ohitashi (for 3 people):
Komatsuna (1 branch) - This is a Japanese green vegetable, but you can use spinach for this recipe. It's best to use Asian spinach since baby spinach you use for salad may be too fragile and soft for this recipe. Alternatively, you can use nappa cabbage.
Tofu pouch (1 large or 4 small)
Dashi (1-1/2 cup)
Mirin (1 Tbsp)
Soy sauce (1/2 tsp)
Salt (1 tsp)

1. Toast (broil) tofu pouches in the oven. I kind of toasted them too much. You just want to lightly brown them. This gets rid of excess oil in the pouches. You can also pour boiling water over them to get rid of excess oil. Cut pouches into strips. Cut komatsuna into 1 inch pieces. Separate the stem part and leaves.
2. Add all the other ingredients in a pot and put it on high heat.
3. Once it boils, add the tofu pouches, the stem part, and leaves. Cook for a minute or two until leaves are green. Turn off the heat and set aside for as long as you can. Serve it at room temperature or cold.

As it sits, the vegetable soaks up all the great flavor of dashi. Ohitashi actually means "soaked."

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