Wedding Anniversary

Our biggest question of the month of June is "what do we eat at our wedding anniversary?." Trying to save money due to the bad economy, we decided to stay home and cook for our special night.

We celebrated 4th year anniversary of our wedding on June 10. For this special occasion, Hiroko spent few days preparing the dinner for the night. We started with slices of seared beef tong, followed by two slices of homemade tofu accompanied by nice cold "Victory Prima" beer from Pennsylvania.


Now the dinner starts! Soup de jur was Spanish style Almond soup. Made with almond, cumin, saffron, it has mysterious flavors.

The dinner was followed by beef carapacio. She purchased beef from Japanese butcher on Great Jones Street. They have a machine to slice beef thinly for the sukiyaki beef, so they sliced the less marbled loin butt. She placed the beef on the plate and pour a hot consomme over the meat so that the meat will slowly cook from the liquid. She drizzled the sesame dressing for an additional flavor.

Our main course was two style of marinated tuna. Inspired by Maguro Zuke Don (marinated tuna on the rice) she read in Oishinbo comic book and red wine marinated tuna from a cookbook by Japanese wine sommelier Shinya Tazaki, she prepared the two type of tuna, one is marinated in soy sauce, and the other is marinated in wine and soy sauce mixture. For Japanese version, she made simple sushi rice, and for wine version, she mixed the rice with red wine reduction and red wine vinegar.

Lastly, our dessert was Green Tea Tofu Jelly. Using the soy milk Hiroko made for tofu and green tea powder she bought from Kajitsu, the Japanese vegetarian restaurant on 9th street, she mixed the soy milk, green tea powder, and sugar with kanten (agar agar) and gelatin. The green tea powder is such a good quality that the result of the jelly is very aromatic and intense.