Anyone who has ever lived in Japan for even a short time knows that Japan is a country of 4 seasons. Every season is completely different – not just in terms of the weather, but also in terms of what food is eaten. For me, Spring is mountain vegetables like zenmai; Summer is white peaches; Autumn is matsutake; and Winter is mikan.
Now, it is officially Autumn. The Autumn Equinox is today, and my husband and I were feeling especially seasonal when we spotted some matsutake for sale at a small grocery store. I first ate matsutake when visiting Kyoto, and fell in complete love with a dish known as dobinmushi, a type of soup made with matsutake and served with mitsuba, ginkgo nuts, and sudachi. Heaven, indeed!
Well, unfortunately matsutake are very expensive! We got 4 for 2500 JPY, about $25.00. These came with 1 sudachi. Not enough citrus for me! That’s okay, we visited another grocery store and got the other ingredients. So, here we go. Our recipe was:
Matsutake mushrooms. We only used one mushroom for the soup. We used another to make matsutake rice, and stored the last two wrapped in paper for the next day.
Konbu. This is essential for the broth, especially if you want to make a good vegan broth.
Our broth wasn’t vegan, as we added Katsuobushi. I know, not even vegetarian! But we only used it for the broth, and I am okay with dashi – it is sort of a requirement in Japan.
Mitsuba. Chopped finely – a key ingredient to make the flavor of the dobinmushi.
Ginkgo nuts – we bought them in a clear plastic bag (this many were about 700 JPY) and repackaged in a Ziploc as they go bad quickly. We used 6 nuts for the soup.
Sudachi. One per person is how we do it – we both love citrus!
Dashi Recipe:
800 ml water
12 g konbu
10 g katsuobushi (if you are going vegan, try shitake mushrooms instead, maybe…)
-Wipe konbu with a wet cloth, but don’t wash
-Put konbu into cold water and heat
-Just as the water comes to a boil, remove konbu (if you leave longer, it will taste bitter)
-Over weak heat, add katsuobushi
-Boil lightly until katsuobushi begins to float
-Filter katsuobushi from dashi
-Cool
Dobinmushi Recipe:
3 cups dashi
1 matsutake mushroom, cut into small slices – DO NOT WASH! Wipe with wet cloth.
2 tablespoons cooking sake
3/4 tablespoon soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 ginkgo nuts
2 tablespoons mitsuba, chopped
2 sudachi
SERVES 2
-Boil dashi, soy sauce, salt, and cooking sake, then add ginkgo nuts.
-Pour into pre-heated dobin pot
-Add matsutake, cover, and heat about 7 minutes
-Remove from heat, add mitsuba, and serve with cups and halved sudachiClick
here for a great video of matsutake no dobinmushi preparation. (Not me!)
How the matsutake should look. Make sure you cut off the bottoms, too.
Our konbu strips, before cooking.
Katsuobushi, in the strainer, being weighed. That’s a lot!
Straining the dashi after cooking.
Cracking the ginkgo nuts – they are hard to crack!
After cracking/shelling, before cooking.
We boiled the ginkgo nuts for a while (about 2-3 min in water – until the brown/white membrane peels off and you are left with the green nuts) – we froze the ones we didn’t use.
We sadly don’t have dobin pots. Instead, we used our tea pot. I know, pathetic!! Also, we had no way to directly heat the pot, so we improvised by using a vegetable steamer in our biggest pot and steaming the tea pot and dobinmushi that way.
Our finished – and DELICIOUS dobinmushi!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
In a tea cup to sip, with a sudachi on the side. We got about 2 cups each, so I used a whole half of a sudachi in each serving. YUM!
Usually, you eat the stuff from the soup first. Our tea pot didn’t allow for that because the opening was too small. We put our delicious matsutake, mitsuba, and ginkgo nuts into the tea cups and ate this way. YUM!!!
For the rest of the meal, I wanted lots of veggies and a little protein. Genmai does have protein, of course, but I added 
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