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The scene
Sachi is shopping for groceries.
The shopkeeper informs her that the really nice potatoes she's looking at just came in from Hokkaido. Sachi says she's making potato salad today.
It soon turns out she's not going back home to make potato salad. Instead she's spending the evening with someone from the hospital: Dr. Kazuya Shiina. He was in fact who brought Sachi all the way to her father's funeral on short notice. We've also seen him in a couple of scenes in the hospital.
Dr. Kazuya.
There's been hints about it earlier in the film but yes, it's now apparent that Sachi and the doctor have been seeing each other for a while.
In the previous scene Sachi heard that there will be changes at the hospital next autumn. The fifth floor of the building will be converted into a terminal care unit which Sachi's supervisor recommends she should consider applying to work in. Dr. Kazuya thinks taking care of terminal patients is very hard work because you know they will die soon. He himself is a paediatrician and wants to cure as many patients as possible. However, Sachi clearly can't stop thinking about the new opportunity to move up in her career.
Kazuya mentions the night aquarium event at the Enoshima aquarium that they've been planning to go to the next say, but he says it turned out he can't go. He has heard from his mother-in-law that his wife is once again in an unstable condition and he needs to go see her.
Not exactly an easy relationship, then.
The food
What's nice is that in this scene we already know that Sachi made potato salad! We can see the doctor grabbing some of it with his chopsticks in the above screenshot. What else is there? Here's a slightly better angle at what's on offer before Sachi brings the potato salad.
Sachi seems to have miso soup on her side of the table, and in the middle there we've got one plate with something green on it, and another with a different green dish and also something that looks a whole lot like some sort of meat. I'm going to guess the darker of the green dishes is kobachi again, absolutely no idea about the other, though.
Now, the meat. The brown color here suggests the meat has been cooked at least to some degree, but it looks like there is some red in there which makes me think it's been left rare in the middle. Since it's been left rare, beef would be an easy guess, so I'll go with that. Looking around for recipes using sliced beef that's been left rare on the inside, I discovered beef tataki. Tataki refers to a dish where meat or fish is seared on both sides for just a few minutes, sliced thin and then often marinated. The dish in the scene is likely not beef tataki as the dish would seem to be usually served in its marinade (the green bowls could be for dipping sauce, which beef tataki is served with), but I decided I wanted to give that dish a go here since it sounded good and I'd never tried it before - much less cooked it.
Recreating the food
Unfortunately, as I was preparing this meal I was multitasking and didn't take any other photos than this one: Here's my recreation of the meal Sachi and the doctor are having (served for two - not all the potato salad and beef was for me!):
Miso soup and kobachi I've talked about in previous posts so won't be talking about them in detail here. I used my usual recipe for miso soup I've mentioned and the kobachi recipe used just a few posts ago. Kobachi has recently become a favourite side dish of mine since it's really quick and easy to prepare and also very tasty for little effort, not to mention healthy!
Miso soup and kobachi I've talked about in previous posts so won't be talking about them in detail here. I used my usual recipe for miso soup I've mentioned and the kobachi recipe used just a few posts ago. Kobachi has recently become a favourite side dish of mine since it's really quick and easy to prepare and also very tasty for little effort, not to mention healthy!
Potato salad
Japanese-style potato salad is actually something I'd made multiple times before writing this post. It's an easy dish to prepare and while not incredibly different from potato salads you might've had before, it does have its own twist.The biggest difference between potato salads that might be more familiar to you and Japanese potato salads is, as far as I can tell, the mayo. Japanese mayo is different compared to other mayos in that it uses rice vinegar, only egg yolks and I believe a somewhat different preparation process, thus resulting in a mayo with a creamier and slightly sweeter flavour than Western varieties. It really does make a big difference! We can actually see which exact mayo Sachi used for her potato salad:
See that yellowish-white bottle with a red cap in the fridge door? That has to be Kewpie, a classic Japanese brand of mayo. I've bought Kewpie several times here in Helsinki and if it's not in a jar, it's always in that characteristic soft plastic bottle:
The bottle comes in a retro-styled plastic bag.
As an aside, Kat Thompson on Thrillist has written an article on why you need a bottle of Kewpie mayo right now. I'm not a massive mayo fan generally so the article seems pretty gung-ho to me, but it's a good read about the differences between Kewpie and other mayos as well as the brand's history.
Aside from the mayo, rice vinegar is typically used to season the cooked potatoes in Japanese potato salad, which also gives it a slightly different flavour compared to recipes from other countries.
Potato salad is one of those dishes that every cook prepares slightly differently so there are a ton of different recipes for it out there. Aside from the potato itself (which itself is sometimes mashed and sometimes not), cucumber and onions, you could add a variety of ingredients such as carrots, ham or eggs. The recipe I used is one found in the homecooking book which I don't intend to translate and include here, but it's a simple one that only uses potatoes, carrots, cucumber and onions. This recipe on Chowhound looks the closest to the one I used, but you could also try this or this for inspiration for which ingredients you'd like in your potato salad.
Another way Japanese potato salad differs from other varieties is that it uses salting as a way to draw out excess moisture out of the cucumbers and onions. You cut the vegetables as thin as possible and salt them, let them rest for a while and then just pour away the liquid that the salt has drawn out. This makes for a different texture compared to if you'd just use those vegetables as-is - one that's a bit easier to handle with chopsticks.
Beef tataki
So, I'd decided to go with beef tataki for the meat portion of the meal. I found a couple of recipes for the dish and went with the one over on Japan Centre. The main idea here is that you only sear your cut of beef for a short time on both sides that the inside is left rare, which is then marinated and enjoyed cold.I chose this particular recipe in part because I didn't need to buy any extra ingredients for the marinade. If you're cooking Japanese food often, you'll likely already have everything you'll need for it in your pantry. The marinade consists of mirin, sake and soy sauce which are brought to a simmer for a moment before adding the sliced green onion and sliced cloves of garlic.
I don't typically cook with beef and didn't really think things through as I was buying the meat, so instead of a fillet (which is what this dish should be made of!) I bought... a steak. I chose it because it was of a decent size (300 g), looked nicely marbled and was pretty expensive, but I didn't realise until later that the recipe called for specifically a fillet of beef. Oh well - it didn't really matter. The only negative of using a steak for this was probably the fact that the slices probably would've held together better if I'd been using an actual fillet.
After a bit of searing action, I let the steak rest for 10 or 15 minutes and then tried to slice it as nicely as possible. I then poured on the marinade, covered the plate with aluminum foil and stuck the thing in the fridge for 2-3 hours until my guest arrived.
You're supposed to have the beef with a citrusy soy sauce called ponzu. You could make it at home and it would be fairly simple too, but I of course forgot to buy kombu seaweed on my last visit to Tokyokan, so I just grabbed this bottle of the stuff at the supermarket.
Then it was time to eat!
Trying it out
I might've brought the wrong kind of meat but it didn't seem to matter - the beef tataki was fantastic ! The garlic and soy sauce had penetrated the rare beef and worked wonderfully with its texture and the meaty taste. The marinade is somewhat salty and has a strong taste, but the ponzu sauce lightened it with its citrus flavour, which I think was the final piece of the puzzle to make the dish really delicious. It's not a dish for those of us who aren't OK with eating raw meat, but if it is something you can do, definitely consider giving it a go!Japanese potato salad is, well, a potato salad, just Japanese. I'm not sure how to really describe it, but I urge you to find out yourself. It's a fun twist on a familiar dish, I promise you that! I think the fact that Japanese mayo is a bit sweeter and less vinegary makes it pair well with the strongly-flavoured beef tataki.
And kobachi and miso soup go well with just about any savory meals, really. A fun menu, and really not that difficult to make, especially since you can prepare the potato salad and the beef in advance pretty much whenever you want before dinnertime.
Recipes used
Beef tataki: Japan Centre
Miso soup: My recipe
Kale kobachi: The Spruce Eats
Potato salad recipes:
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