Red-and-White Mizuhiki Kamaboko, Crab Kamaboko, and Pine-Needle Kamaboko

Kamaboko

There are three kinds of kamaboko (fish cake). We make three kinds: red-and-white kamaboko, Pine Needle Kamaboko made with kuwai (arrowhead tuber), and crab kamaboko. The work of making kamaboko for osechi can't really start too far in advance. That's not a matter of how much seasoning to add to make it keep for a certain number of days — it's a matter of how many days what you've made will actually keep, so the work schedule is set by counting backward from that.

Kamaboko originally referred to what is now called chikuwa (tube-shaped fish cake). It was called kamaboko because it resembled a cattail flower spike (gama no ho), so chikuwa is actually older than the board-mounted kamaboko. There's also a real reason for mounting kamaboko on a wooden board: the dry wood absorbs moisture, which keeps spoilage to a minimum. That said, the wood can transfer its smell to the fish cake, so not just any wood will do.

●Red-and-White Mizuhiki Kamaboko

Work the raw fish paste to a certain degree, then add sugar water to adjust the firmness. Both sugar water and salt water go in: the sugar water is there for preservation. Normally you'd use kombu dashi at this point, but that spoils quickly, so for osechi we add sugar water instead to help it keep. Osechi is originally meant to be sweet food. We use about 300 g of sugar dissolved in roughly 4 cups of water for every 2 kg of raw fish paste — more sugar water than you'd put into kamaboko made for an ordinary kaiseki meal. The salt goes in last, in just a small amount. Without salt, kamaboko won't hold together properly. Raw fish paste always contains salt.

Since we make a large quantity for osechi, we actually use an oven sheet pan, but here I'll introduce the usual method. First, work the raw fish paste on a board and press it onto the mounting board. Working it on the board firms it up and also brings together any parts the mortar and pestle (suribachi) couldn't fully combine. Working it on the board also develops elasticity — every kamaboko maker does this. The key point to watch when pressing it onto the mounting board is not to trap any air bubbles inside. It's not that it tastes bad — it's that when air bubbles, meaning tiny air pockets, get trapped inside and the paste is cooked, water droplets collect in those pockets. Over time, spoilage starts from that point, so keeping air bubbles out as much as possible is the single most important thing here. Take it onto the mounting board, spread it out to the width you want, and shape it into the usual board-mounted kamaboko form. Then trim the corners, cut a groove down the middle lengthwise, take a thin layer off the surface on each half of the fish-cake body, and lay red-colored raw fish paste onto that area. This has to be done quickly — even working at room temperature, the heat from your hands will firm up the paste if you're slow, and it won't adhere properly on top (the bond will be poor). This is what creates the red-and-white effect, and the reason the corners were trimmed earlier is that if they stuck out when the red paste is laid on, they'd mix into the white part. Since this represents a red-and-white mizuhiki, a ceremonial cord, we set gold leaf and silver leaf into the groove down the middle where the red and white halves meet.

Normally, from here it would be steamed in a steamer, but since this is for osechi, we don't steam it. Steaming leaves too much moisture in it and spoils it quickly, so with keeping quality in mind, we cook all of it through by baking in the oven (120°C for 20 minutes).

●Crab Kamaboko

Combine ground fish paste with ground crab meat (the crab meat is 20 to 30 percent of the raw fish paste; we use about 16 kg of raw fish paste), add an egg-yolk-and-oil emulsion, then add flaked crab leg meat (steamed) and mix well. The proportions are 4 gō of water, 1 gō of the egg-yolk-and-oil emulsion, and 7 tablespoons of sake for every 6 kg of raw fish paste. Once combined, spread it flat on an oven sheet pan. Starting from the center makes it shift out of place, and air gets in from the edges, so to keep out as much air as possible, first firm up the perimeter and then flatten the whole thing. Line the oven sheet pan with aluminum foil and coat it with oil so it releases easily. The small amount of egg-yolk-and-oil emulsion is added so the heat penetrates faster, and because the added oil reduces spoilage. Crab itself is one of those foods that's inevitably prone to spoiling, so adding oil helps stop spoilage even a little, and on top of that, the oil brings out more of the crab's own umami.

●Pine Needle Kamaboko

Pine Needle Kamaboko is kamaboko made with kuwai (arrowhead tuber). Probably nowhere else makes a kamaboko like this. Grate the kuwai on a grater, strain it, and squeeze it to separate the liquid from the solids. At this point, we also use the large amount of trimmings that come out of making Pine Cone Kuwai — just picking out any debris and running them through a blender. If you leave the liquid as is, the starch settles out, so discard the clear liquid on top, gather up just the starch, and squeeze it through a cloth; mix it together with the grated kuwai from before and the ground fish paste (raw fish paste), then season it with egg (egg white) and sugar. It would taste better using the yolk, but since this needs to come out white to look like pine needles, we use egg white. Sugar is added along with the egg for preservation, and the reason for separating the grated kuwai from the settled starch in the squeezed liquid is that if you don't separate them, the aku (bitterness) gets mixed in. So we separate the starchy part from the fibrous part, and use the starchy part to bind everything. Ideally, kuwai alone would be the best binder — that's exactly how shōjin ryōri (Buddhist vegetarian cuisine) and shōjin kamaboko are bound, using only this — but that runs up too much cost, so we add ground fish paste as a binder to make it into kamaboko. The kuwai makes up roughly 20 to 30 percent.

We spread this onto the sheet pan the same way as the crab kamaboko, but there's one small difference: if we were making plain kuwai kamaboko, we could just bake it as is, but since this is Pine Needle Kamaboko, we need the top to be green, so this time we lay ground fish paste made with spinach aosase (a green chlorophyll extract) on top. Sugar is added to this ground fish paste too, with keeping quality in mind, and it also makes the color more vivid. It wouldn't matter if the ground fish paste spread on top also contained kuwai, but since it doesn't, the firmness is different, which makes it fairly difficult to spread evenly. After this, we bake it in the oven, let it cool at room temperature, and then put it in the refrigerator.