I originally made this meal at the beginning of the week and was all ready to post up the recipe until I discovered that Gnome had unwittingly erased my photograph.
Double Miso Pan-Fried Chicken. Second Picture.
When I told him that I would have to re-create this dish today, to get a picture, he said rather half heartedly, “Oh dear. That is a shame.”
That is a Shame!
This recipe is so-called because the chicken is marinated in miso before being pan-fried and it is served with miso ketchup. If you follow our blog, you will know that we make buckets and buckets of home-made miso. Because I have so much of it, I am fortunate enough to have the opportunity to experiment with this wonderful live food in more creative and innovative ways. In fact, I use miso in all our cooking now instead of salt and soya sauce. The miso adds a distictive umami flavour which adds a whole new dimension to a meal. In this recipe, I used our shiro miso which is made mostly of white rice which has a sweet and mild taste. No flour is used in making our miso so it is also gluten-free.
Hello there every-one!! Hope you are having a good day. Today, I have two miso tastings from the time when we “were mad about the beans” and made buckets and buckets of home-made miso.
The Shiro Miso: has a higher proportion of white rice to bean (we used blackbeans instead of soya beans since we live in Belize). We have actually been eating through our supply for the last month or so and I was afraid that I would munch my way through it all without doing some proper feed-back.
Shiro Miso.Shiro Miso Ready to Eat.
Shiro Miso Tasting:
Gnome says: overall, it is a light fermentation product; will continue to build complexity with aging. Less salty, sweet and mild tasting.
Munchkin says: I have used the shiro miso in soups, marinating of meat and to flavour pot roasts. All flavour packets have been replaced with a dollop of shiro miso (in fact, we have ramen noodles with this miso). It is so mild tasting, you need a whole tablespoon in a bowl of miso soup.
Hatcho Miso with Beef Jerky: Miso made from bean (blackbean) koji alone. We also added beef jerky and black pepper to make it into “Meat Lover’s” Miso.
Meat Lover’s Hatcho Miso.Meat Lovers Miso.
Meat Lover’s Miso Tasting:
Gnome says: Obviously needs more time to develop but at this stage, still very, very tasty. Has strong mushroom overtones with meat undertones. Can do with more black pepper. Will certainly reach an exquisite taste and will peak in ten years or so. A true masterpiece that has to be waited for.
Munchkin says: Beefy!! Let’s start eating it!! Yum. So rich and creamy. This miso has such intensity of taste, you only need one teaspoon to make a bowl of miso soup.
There is nothing like home-made miso…you can’t buy it for love nor money!!
THIS IS A PAID ADVERT!!!
TOMORROW, ONLY ON MGNEWS PRIMETIME SUNDAY.
WE WILL BE ANNOUNCING THE CANDIDATES FOR THE MAYORAL ELECTIONS 2015, PARADISE PASTURES.
It has been two months since we made our Good Friday Shiro Miso; so, I reckoned it was time to try it out!
Shiro Miso.
Shiro miso contains a higher white rice to bean ratio, therefore it can ferment faster and be ready to eat in 2 months. Compare this to hatcho miso which is only made of fermented beans which takes at least 12 months to mature.
I also had a huge pumpkin (14lbs/7kg) in weight, just waiting to be eaten:
After eating this, we both agreed that the miso was ready to eat…it gave a unique umami savoury taste to the dish. What a treat and the miso and pumpkin are fresh from our farm!
On this day the Miso Mission has been accomplished. The rice koji was ready and properly colonised and both of us were in the right frame of mind, with only a mild attack of filibustering on Munchkin’s part (she had very specific plans as to what she expected to do this morning), to tackle the mountain of beans and gallons of purple-black bean juice (from boiling said beans) required for the making of our Belizean-Style Black Bean Shinshu Miso.
The black beans were defrosted, boiled to tenderness (which thankfully doesn’t take too long with black beans), drained and then mashed. The use of words makes things appear so easy but while doing, it certainly seemed that there was a veritable mountain of beans. I left the temperature probe out of the rice koji and room temperature was 36C, so the mashing built up a bit of a sweat.
Starting to mash the beans.The Never-Ending Beans!
In the mean time, Munchkin, while muttering to herself that she needed to do other stuff, mixed the bean juice with sea salt, cooled it and added some commercial miso to the mix (for extra lots of beneficial microorganisms). Thank you, Adriana Guzman for giving us some for this purpose.
Black Bean Juice, Sea Salt and Old Miso to Make the Liquid Portion.
The rice koji had to be added to the beans and mixed well. Using a spoon did not work and I had to resort to using my hands…you can see the excitement that was gripping me at the time!
Adding the Rice Koji to the Mashed Beans.My hands convulse with excitement as I mix everything together!
After adding the liquid portion and mixing again, it was time to fill the prepared 5 gallon pig-tail bucket. This accomplished, a nice layer of salt was added on the top for protection against undesirable microorganisms.
Bucket-Full-of-Miso Ready for Sealing.Sealed Bucket…only have to wait 12-18 months now!!
What happened next was a total, super bonus for me, though it earned me this look from the Munchkin…
…there was still a whole lot of rice koji left and in the back of my mind I couldn’t help but think of the 28-day Miso Countdown before we run out…the solution…shiro miso. This type of miso is made up mostly of rice koji, only half the salt and a little bit of beans (compared to shinshu). The beauty of it and the reason why it is of critical importance right now, is that it only takes four to eight weeks to mature. Bonsa…we have the answer to our miso shortage!
So, I figured we could make a test gallon of this sweet miso but after measuring out the required koji, realised that we used up all the beans in making the monster bucket; we still had bean juice left-over but no beans. Resolution: fortunately I had already grated the day’s quota of coconuts and Munchkin had already squeezed out the cream from them (for selling in town to people that don’t want to buy cans or powdered coconut cream) and we were left with the meal. We decided to experiment and replace the bean portion of the miso with de-creamed coconut meal. Once the cream is removed, what is left is actually quite high in protein and while not a legume, it might make a good replacement for beans (it also makes things Belizean and exotic!). We still used the left over bean juice though.
Mixing the coconut, rice koji and salt.
The bean juice gave everything a slight purple tinge (pretty cool, actually!)…
Bean Juice Added to the Miso.
Here it is packed into a gallon jar:
Coconut Shiro Miso.
You would think that this was enough…hee…hee…hee…but I got another look shot my way…
…there was still another lot of koji left to make another batch…so we did…
Five gallons of shinshu miso and two gallons of shiro miso…not bad for a day’s work!!
I originally made this meal at the beginning of the week and was all ready to post up the recipe until I discovered that Gnome had unwittingly erased my photograph.
