Japanese Comfort Food

I just got back from a four-day bachelorette party in Vegas. Martinis aside, I consumed enough cheese, cow and deep-fried snacks to feed a schoolyard.

My stomach isn't built to go longer than 3 days without some sort of Asian-y eats. So in a last-ditch effort to keep me in check, it starts shooting fire balls through my intestine. Luckily on the fourth day, the girlfriends and I stumbled upon the best noodle joint on the Strip. It's on the ground floor of the Venetian and has a good selection of your favorite Chinese dishes. Never mind that it's twice what you'd pay in Monterey Park. I recommend their chicken congee ($9.50), a.k.a. oka-yu . For the first time the entire weekend, something sat well.

Once I got back to LA, I had a mad craving for a tonjiru, which is a hearty version of miso soup. It's one of those Japanese comfort foods that makes you feel everything is right in the world.

Here's how you make it:

Round up any or all of the following: carrots, gobo (burdock root), enoki mushrooms, daikon, konnyaku, tofu, and (most importantly) thinly sliced pork. The fattier the better.


Slice the vegetables into strips then stir-fry with the pork until lightly golden. Then in the same pot add two cups of water. Bring to a boil, then lower to a simmer. Add a pinch of dashi powder and spoon in about two tablespoons of red miso paste. Stir and simmer for at least 30 minutes.

Believe me, the longer it sits on the stove the better. When I was living in Japan, during wintertime I'd keep a pot of tonjiru on the stove for days, though mainly cause the kitchen was colder than the fridge. =P I'm tempted to do the same thing here, 'cept it might grow its own vegetable patch after a while. Yikes!