Hiroko’s Kitchen | Blog

Nishiki tamago is a dish in which boiled egg is separately strained through a fine sieve, mixed with sugar and little salt, packed in a mold and lightly steamed. Bright yellow color of egg yolk in the dish symbolizes gold, and egg white, silver. My mother always asked me to help her to make the dish, because pressing through especially firmer egg white (20 of them at one time) through a fine sieve was quite a job. Pleasure and pain always come together. Here is the recipe;

8 x 8-inch mold
15 eggs, hard boiled
8 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt

Peel the eggs. Cut each egg into half and remove the yolk part and transfer it into a bowl. Set a fine sieve over a large bowl. Press the egg white through it into the bowl with a shamoji spatula. Clearn and dry the sieve and put it over another large bowl. Press the egg yolk through the sieve into the bowl with the shamoji spatula. Add 6 tablespoons of the sugar and 1/3 teaspoon of the salt to the egg yolk bowl and gently fold in with the spatula. Add the remaining sugar and the salt to the egg white bowl and gently fold in. Transfer the egg white to the mold and lightly pack. Level the surface of the egg white with a flat spatula. Cover evenly the egg white with the egg yolk. Gently level the surface with a flat spatula. Transfer the mold to a steamer which is producing high steam, and cook the egg for 5 minutes over medium heat. Cool the egg and cut it into bite sized pieces.

Akemashite Omedeto Gozaimasu (Happy New Year)!  As Christmas trees decorate American homes during holiday, Kagami-mochi decorate a room in Japanese house from the end of yeaer (December 28th).  It is an offering to the god who protected us during the old year (he departs and new god arrives in the New Year). 

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I found fairly large size shrimp ( 12 to 15 pieces per pound; not head-on; farmed in Vietnam, frozen, and defrosted) at my neighbourhood Whole Food store. It was pricy at (more…)