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Crystal Jelly, Kasumi Balls, Layered Whale Roll, and More

This is the appetizer course. Inside the crystal jelly are salted, fermented sweetfish innards, okra, and round carrot. For the kasumi balls, I use…

Okoze Maru-Jitate

For the okoze maru-jitate, the okoze is filleted into three pieces and lightly salted; rice-flour dumplings mixed with sieved green peas are wrapped…

Sweet shrimp roll wrapped in Chinese yam, flounder layered with kombu, salmon Tsugaru-maki, vinegar-cured mackerel

For the sweet shrimp yōrō-maki, the shrimp is peeled and rolled in wakame, then wrapped in mountain yam that has been peeled katsura-style into a…

Seared pufferfish, seared Hokkaido whelk, seared alfonsino

The sashimi course consists of fugu, Hokkaido whelk, and splendid alfonsino. All three are seared. The fugu is rolled with baby napa cabbage hearts…

Tender-Simmered Octopus

Last is the simmered dish. For the tender-simmered octopus, thoroughly remove the sliminess from the octopus, wash it, and tenderize it by pounding…

Kuruma prawn and sea urchin, iris-pattern sushi, myoga sushi

Starting with the appetizers. For the kuruma prawn and sea urchin set in a clear aspic, I prepare the kuruma prawn as usual, skewer it straight with…

Sweetfish rice, water eggplant pickles

Wild ayu fermented sushi, milt-and-roe uruka, and shibu uruka

Whiting deep-fried Daitokuji style, two-way arrowhead-root fish-paste dumpling, freshly ground yam bulbil deep-fry

The kisu Daitokuji-style deep-fry can be eaten just fine on the saltiness that the Daitokuji natto (a salty, fermented soybean condiment) itself…

Pacific saury heshiko

Right about this time of year, Pacific saury is at its very best, so I tried making it into a rice-bran fermented pickle. However, saury at this time…

Pufferfish milt checkerboard tofu, first-frost style

For the clear-soup course, I finely minced mountain yam and stirred it into a lightly kuzu-thickened soup broth, styling it after the first frost.

Icefish and wasabi flowers with a mild vinegar dressing

Conger eel steamed rice

Yuzu shell, glass ayu and taro sushi, miso-marinated wild boar, simmered juvenile sea bream, deep-fried butterbur sprout, usui pea terrine, sea bream roe

Yellowtail and daikon

The small-bowl course's yellowtail and daikon is made by wrapping yellowtail in grated daikon radish to form a manju. When shaping it into a manju…

Tilefish grilled with a dappled fawn pattern, Noda-style grilled beef and kinpira burdock, pufferfish leek roll

As for the grilled beef and kinpira burdock Noda-style grill, beef and burdock turn out to go together surprisingly well — I think it makes for an…

Ise lobster simmered with fermented black beans, sweetfish simmered with plum, small taro simmered golden-style, winter melon simmered in salt, red konjac finished with a pan-simmered touch, hyacinth bean

The fermented black beans used in the simmered Ise lobster with fermented black beans are a Chinese ingredient, similar to Daitokuji natto or…

Grilled Jidori chicken tenderloin with shuto, three-color tazuna sushi

Chicken grunt and bamboo shoot square-cut grilled, clam uni-grilled, and pen shell egg-yolk grilled

For the grilled course's isaki-and-bamboo-shoot sandwiched grilled, I use only the root end of the bamboo shoot, score it with the knife, and steep…

Okoze

The okoze in the clear-soup course gives off good dashi, and it's delicious. In the cold season, I serve it hot-pot style with a whole grilled…

Monkfish Spring Roll, Abalone Isobe-Age, Baby Octopus Senbei

The fried dish is monkfish spring roll. Monkfish (anko) is famous in Ibaraki. When people think of monkfish, they usually think of it eaten as hot…

Bamboo shoot tofu fritter with wakame-thickened sauce

This time, since it's a simmered dish course, I used bamboo shoot and wild mountain greens, both spring ingredients. At our restaurant we buy many of…

Small Taro and Rock-Textured Tofu

Fat greenling kuzu-tataki

The nimono-wan — a simmered-soup course — is fat greenling kuzu-tataki, lightly tenderized and dusted with kuzu starch. A nimono-wan is extremely…