Japanese Egg Custard (Chawanmushi)
Unbaked egg custard.
Ingredients:
2 eggs (100g approx.)
315ml water
3 tbsp of bonito flakes
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp mirin
1 green onion chopped
Several dried mushrooms
Steps:
Preheat oven to 350F or 180C.
In a small pot, bring water to almost boiling temperature and add bonito flakes, soy sauce, and mirin. Stir the pot so that all ingredients are thoroughly mixed. Add more of the ingredients to taste. Mirin for sweet. Soy sauce for salty. Bonito flakes for umami.
Turn off heat when done.
Crack eggs into a bowl and stir them. Once the broth has become warm (not hot!) mix it into the bowl of eggs. Whisk thoroughly.
Strain the mixture into a pouring equipment like a measuring cup with a beaker. Use a cheese cloth to strain to achieve a smooth finish.
Get a baking pan that is quite deep and pour water in it. Ideally you want to pour an inch but if you use a 4oz aluminium ramekin like me, just pour water, leaving about 1 cm from the top.
Pour the egg custard into the ramekins and add dried mushrooms (of any mushroom type of your liking) and chopped green onions.
Put the baking pan into the oven and wait for 25 minutes.
Take the pan out when done and leave to cool down for 2 - 3 minutes.
Serve!
Story Time:
So what really is Mim’s Table? Mim’s Table is my place to share recipes and my love for cooking and plating great food. I strive to be able to show my friends, and this website visitors, that there are ways to cook and eat good food at home. Fine dining does not have to be confined to restaurants or meals that require 20 ingredients. Great dishes, for me, comes from plain ingredients cooked well. Of course there are times ingredients have to be cooked in an elaborate manner but there will always be a way to make it simpler without sacrificing too much of taste.
Chawanmushi (Japanese Egg Custard) is my favorite dish as a kid (and so is Dobinmushi!) I eat it on a weekly basis and when I become very sick. Because it doesn’t have a strong smell (in a sense you can make it better with a bit of yuzu and shiso leaf), the dish is really about texture. The smooth soft texture are comfort your soul