In preparation to start cooking from Nobu’s Vegetarian Cookbook, I thought I’d go back to basics. One of the things I noticed in the new cookbook was the use of konbu/kombu dashi as a major source for the umami taste element. So, based on Nobu’s recipe for kombu dashi (p. 161), I put a quart of water on the stove and slowly got the water up to 140 degrees F. I put a piece of Icelandic Kombu that I got at Whole Foods, Newtonville into
Icelandic Kombu
the water (I wanted to save as much of my stash of Japanese Rishiri kombu) and let it simmer for about 50 minutes. As Nobu noted in the instructions, I had to periodically had to the adjust the
Making the konbu/kombu dashi
heat, but I found that the 2nd stove top heat setting seemed to be close enough to minimize the number times I had to make adjustments.
Cooking Unit Heat Setting
Using the lowest setting didn’t seem to get me anywhere near 140 degress consistently. So once the 50 minutes were up, I took the kelp dashi off the stove to cool to room temperature. I strained the dashi into a storage container for later use in the upcoming recipes I wanted to try from Nobu’s Vegetarian Cookbook.
tastingmenu 