Cod and Chinese Cabbage Nabe (Hotpot)

It’s cold out and it’s now time to bring out the nabe recipes.  Nabe is hotpot in English but since I first encountered it in Japan I can’t seem to refer to it by it’s English name.  There are such a variety of nabe recipes out there.  Last year I bought a cooking magazine exclusively devoted to nabe.  We don’t have a proper pot for nabe (see the magazine cover for a proper one).  You generally make hotpot in a clay pot called donabe (literally clay pot).  I am not allowed to buy a new one until after we move.  I have two individual sized ones but they always boil over on the stove.  I currently make nabe in a regular soup pot.  I also don’t make it on a portable burner that sits on the table.  It’s probably purely out of laziness because we have one somewhere, I think.

This is the nabe recipe magazine I bought last year.  It is from NHK (the national broadcasting corp) and is from a daily tv cooking show called きょうの料理 (kyou no ryouri – today’s food).  It’s a great book with variety and good pictures. Being a beginners book, it has lots of simple food – my favorite kind.

 

 

This recipe is an original recipe with the topping idea stole from a miso soup recipe from my miso soup cook book (yes, they do exist).

Cod and Chinese Cabbage Nabe

Masa & Kirsten Adachi

Serves two

1/4 Chinese cabbage

2 cod fillets

2 tablespoons grated daikon (giant white radish)

Soup

2 1/2 cups water

1 piece of dried kombu (kelp)

1 1/2 tablespoons cooking sake

1/2 tablespoon soy sauce

1/2 tablespoon mirin

1/2 teaspoon salt

Put all the soup ingredients in the pot and bring to a boil.  Simmer for 15 minutes.  Add the stalks of the Chinese cabbage and cook for five minutes.  Add the cod and leaves of the Chinese cabbage and cook until tender.  Serve topped with grated daikon.  Soy sauce is a good dipping sauce if you want a stronger flavor.