Still Feeling Peckish

What do you always have at hand in your freezer? I confess that my fridge/freezer suffers from severe overcrowding but we do clear out all the frozen stuff once in a while. But one thing I usually have handy are thin beef sliced – shabu beef that often ends up in steamboat or hotpot because the entire family loves beef.

I confess I’ve been thinking about beef stew for a while since binge-watching Midnight Diner on Netflix. This is an amazing series with vignettes of everyday people’s lives with food at the center. The reticent chef in the diner seems to be able to whip up any dish – almost at a whim…and discreetly gauges his patrons’ mood and character through the food they eat.

This beef stew is completely different from the hearty meat and potatoes stew that one sees in Western diners. I’m always amazed at how the Japanese have taken classic western cuisine and turned the dishes into something so distinctively Japanese and often better than the original version. Take hambagu vs hamburgers, Japanese cheesecake vs regular cheesecake. The key is usually to have a good dashi soup base to the savory dishes.

This was a pretty quick recipe. Thinly sliced beef takes practically no time to cook and I just simmered the stew long enough for the root vegetables to be cooked through. I used daikon radish instead of potatoes to keep the carbs low. The daikon and carrots gave the stew a sweet flavor – a typical Japanese sweet-salty flavor profile. The shirataki noodles were a legitimate part of this dish – yes, Japanese stews seem to feature shirataki noodles. We decided to put enough of the noodles in to serve it like a noodle dish.

So here’s the recipe – it was truly gratifying that the entire stew pot was empty at the end of our lunch! This recipe is a keeper.