Wild Mushroom Ohitashi
You may have noticed that a lot of Japanese dishes contain mushrooms, including salads, soups, stir fries, steamed, and simmered dishes. There’s even a dashi stock, shiitake dashi, that’s made purely from a mushroom. That’s because mushrooms contain a lot of umami. In fact, some of the most umami of any vegetable in the plant kingdom, which spreads throughout a dish when the mushrooms are cooked. But it’s also because mushrooms are full of essential vitamins and minerals.
Wild Mushroom Ohitashi gives pride of place to mushrooms’ nutritional benefits and also their unique earthy, nutty, rich taste, which is enhanced by an umami-rich marinade. Because the marinade doesn’t include oil, it’s a super healthy, low calorie dish to be eaten as a snack or side dish during a meal. It’s like having a bowl of multi-vitamins with minerals on the table, but a whole lot tastier and also more useful. When you’re not nibbling away at them, you can add the mushrooms to sandwiches, salads, and soups, and to garnish seafood and meat dishes.
An ohitashi dish is typically a two-step preparation, in which the vegetables are first lightly-cooked to tenderize them and enable them to better soak up a marinade. The vegetables are then soaked in the marinade, which is a lightly-seasoned stock. This recipe combines the steps by steaming the mushrooms in the seasonings using a microwave oven, creating a mushroom stock in the process. This makes the recipe very quick and easy. You can use any type of mushroom and as many varieties as you like. Just combine interesting textures and earthier-tasting mushrooms, like shiitake and morel, with more subtle-tasting ones, like shimeji and white button.
Wild Mushroom Ohitashi
Kinoko no Ohitashi : きのこのお浸し
Serves 4
Main Foods ( 1/2 lb. of mixed mushrooms — 225 g)
Shiitake, 2
Shimeji (Beech), 1 bunch
Enoki (Velvet Shank), small handful
Maitake (Hen-of-the-Wood), small handful
Hiratake (Oyster), 4
Eryngii (King Trumpet), 1
Seasonings
Sake, 2 tablespoons
Mirin, 1 tablespoon
Usukuchi Soy Sauce, 2 tablespoons
Aromatics / Flavorings
White Sesame Seeds, 1 teaspoon
Directions
Cut the stems from the shiitake mushrooms and discard them or save for another use. Cut the caps in half or in quarters, if very large. Pull the shimeji and enoki apart into small bunches and single pieces. Also pull the maitake apart, leaving large pieces. Slice the hiratake and eryngii, cutting in half first, if long.
Mix the seasonings in a microwaveable dish with a lid. Add the mushrooms so that the different size pieces are evenly distributed to ensure they cook through evenly. Cover the dish and steam the mushrooms in the microwave for 4 minutes at 600W or 5 minutes at 500W. You may want to leave the lid a little bit ajar to let steam escape or cover the dish with plastic wrap, leaving a small opening.
Take off the cover or plastic wrap, toss the mushrooms around in the marinade, and then cover again tightly so that they continue to soak up the seasonings. Let the mushrooms cool down before putting in the refrigerator. They will keep for 3-4 days.
Serve / Use
Serve chilled or at room temperature, sprinkling the white sesame seeds on just before serving. I use those for color and flavor contrast. You can also use darker colored, earthier and richer tasting toasted sesame seeds, if you like.
While Wild Mushroom Ohitashi is meant to be a side dish, you’ll find yourself and your guests mixing them into other foods served at the table. As already mentioned, you can do this in the kitchen as well, adding the mushrooms to all kinds of dishes, either cold or at the last minute or so of cooking to heat them through. Consider also adding some of the sauce, as it’s essentially a mushroom dashi master sauce and a small amount will enrich a dish with its concentrated sweetness, saltiness, and umami richness.