MY BEST OZONI EVER!!!

My final four meals at the end of the year vary, but this year:

• Wagyu and onions breakfast.
• Apple at the Ala Wai Golf Course for lunch on New Year's Eve.
• 15 Craigside New Year's Eve Dinner.
• Ozoni for the first meal on January 1, 2019

A standard bento meal in Hawaii is chopped steak.  The quality varies quite a bit.  I yesterday morning had my absolute best combination ever, with half a pound of Japanese wagyu beef and onions, plus two eggs over easy, natto, rice and tsukemono. 

Well fortified, I drove to the Ala Wai Golf Course.  As most readers know, I walk 18 holes  twice a week, and agonize in the process, but do this so that I can eat and drink anything I want.  For lunch, as part of the sacrificial process, I had a whole apple.

15 Craigside has a special dinner every eve of the New Year.  I was invited to joined Sam, Ernie, Carol, Eppie, Ken and Bob:

Roasted striploin was the feature, with Chinese-style steamed fish, char siu chicken, shrimp scampi, spinach and mushroom rice pilaff, and a salad/fruit/tsukemono bar:

My meal:

When going through the line, I commented that the beef had no fat.  How thoughtful of them, but they found a nice chunk of fat from another cut and delivered it to me.  Amazingly enough, even certain animal fats are now sometimes recommended in your diet.  In particular, Japanese Wagyu Beef fat is especially good.  We had champagne, one of my Stanford cabs and sake.  The dessert was strawberry swirl cheesecake:

The camaraderie and general joy transcended the cuisine.  When I returned to my apartment, the sun was setting;

We are all really old at 15 Craigside, but a continuing tradition is our poker group beginning play at 8:30PM and through midnight to greet the new year, and all nine of us made it to 2019.  We certainly also had enough to eat and drink, particularly as we just had our New Year Eve supper.

I awoke to a water lily wishing me Happy New Year:

My special o-zoni, Japanese New Year soup, began before dinner last night when I fried some scallops in butter:

I then added kamaboko (fish cake), hokkigai (a red Japanese clam, Spicula sachalinensis--which normally is bright red, but not so more recently, indicating, probably, a lower quality) and abalone, including the liquid broth from each can:

Then came water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, hasu (lotus root), konnyaku (gelatin from a yam) and shiitake mushrooms.  Throw away the liquid from these cans.

I added some water and sake and low-boiled this pot for several hours.  The taste was mild, so I added some soy sauce.  For soups like this it's best to prepare it the day before so that the taste can develop.

Fresh vegetables particularly enhance the ozoni.  However, unlike just about 99% of cooks, I don't use mizuna (left), a piquant argula-like leafy vegetable only used this day.  Why, don't I like the taste?  Not sure.  Maybe I'll include it next year.

My veggie combination included green onions from my herb garden.  Some of these items, like the salmon eggs and soba, will be used for my second meal later in the day:

Note the whiteness of the right o-toro (fatty blue-fin tuna).  Hawaii residents are happy about the redness of yellow-fin tuna (ahi), but that means there is very little omega-3 fatty acids.  At Tamashiro's, ahi goes for $20-$40/pound during the New Year period.  At Marukai, o-toro sells for $60/pound, while the price is $80/pound at J-Shop.  In Japan, up to $300/pound.  However, in 2013 Japanese sushi chain owner Kiyoshi Kimura paid $1.76 million for a bluefin tuna that weighed in at 489 pounds, or $3600/pound.  To the left is Kimura with that fish.

My o-toro sashimi  over cucumbers and lettuce, with kazunoko (herring roe) and myoga (Japanese ginger).  I kept half the o-toro for my second meal.

About the ozoni itself, I fried some Japanese wagyu beef fat to crispness, then placed about a fourth of the earlier concoction into this smaller pot.  I carefully placed two mochi pieces into this stew, and fried an egg.

My lanai meal:

What am I drinking?  Here is a montage of what I will be tasting today:

Note that the Kirin is First Press / 100% Malt, which sounds ornate, but is just their standard beer.

Of all the things, the kazunoko was the star of this meal.  The ozoni broth was slightly lacking in salt, on purpose.  However, with just a tiny bit of these fish eggs, the combined taste was just perfect.  The crunchiness further made the experience stimulating.

This was the best ozoni I've ever had.  I wonder if there is contest for this soup?  My enhancements this year had to do with the wagyu fat, egg on top and dash of Johnny Walker Black Label into the bowl.  I wonder if one of my lanai herb garden plants will make the final cut for inclusion next year?

My second meal was a Japanese tailgate, with salmon eggs (ikura) over rice and under an egg over easy.  O-toro sashimi and more of my ozoni:

Then sunset from 15 Craigside:

Happy 2019!!!

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