Morimoto Goma Ae

So I’d been thinking of vegan offerings for a hassun or possibly even a sakizuke course. One of the things that came to mind was Iron Chef Morimoto’s Ingen no Goma Ae offering from his Mastering The Art Of Japanese Home Coooking (p. 226, 227). So instead of regular string beans, I thought “why not use haricots vert”? I also wanted to make this dish a lot easier to make. Iron Chef Morimoto notes the he grinds 3 T sesame seeds to powder (be careful not to turn it into paste). It occurred to me that in making the goma ae, there was going to be the addition of liquid elements of soy sauce and mirin which would effectively turn it into a paste. With that in mind, I turned to my packages of Japanese white sesame paste (I supposed tahini could work here as well, given Iron Chef Michiba’s adage: Ingredients do not recognize national boundaries). So my ingredient list would look like:

What do I need for the sesame dressing (white sesame paste on far left)

3 T toasted sesame seeds (ground to powder, here I would use 2 T shiro neri goma 1 T toasted white sesame seeds)
1 T soy sauce
1 T mirin
1 t granulated sugar (I didn’t feel this was necessary since there was mirin already in the recipe)

quick and easy – add the whole toasted sesame seeds

carefully recombine in the sesame seed oil/sesame seed paste in pouch before squeezing it out into spoonfuls

For the sauce I needed to combine all the items. I chose to have the sesame seeds go in first and then the paste.

oops, spilled a little of the measured soy sauce into the side dish (should not used the dish lip as a mount)

Then I could add the liquid ingredients.

soy sauce into the mixing bowl

This time I didn’t spill the mirin as I did the soy sauce

This is what the goma ae should probably look like

Once the goma ae was finished, I could turn my attention to the green beans. For this microbatch, I

An initial guess on how much haricots vert I would need

would need 1 c halved trimmed green string beans (here I would be using haricots vert; the original called

an initial batch to trim and split

how much did I actually used? ooooh – 6 out of the 9 oz

for 2 c in order to serve 4, so I would be essentially halving the recipe.

a cup of prepared haricots vert (6 oz)

Now I just needed to blanch the beans in pot of water with about 1 T (kosher salt – I would use sea salt

salt water for the blanch

here). Then shock the beans and pat dry.

coming to the boil

the cook on the haricots vert for about 3 minutes

shocked in ice water to stop the cooking

after patted dry

I now had to transfter the beans to a mixing bowl with mixture of the 2 1/2 T sesame seed/paste, soy, mirin to coat.

Adding in the 2 1/2 tablespoons of the goma ae

that last 1/2 T into the combination

ingen no goma ae ready for plating

Iron Chef Morimoto comments that the combination can be placed in an air tight container and stored stored up to a day in the refridgerator. But seeing how I was using it for dinner right away, I loaded it on the dinner plate as a side to the branzino shioyaki for dinner.

Iron Chef Morimoto’s Haricots Vert Goma Ae as a contrast to the simply broiled branzino for dinner

While I already understood how the branzino shioyaki would taste, on trying the haricots vert goma ae, it had that light sweet/salty (no doubt from the nutty sesame, sweet from the mirin and salt from the soy sauce) flavor that enhanced the vegetal flavors of that string bean. It also served as a nice flavor complement to the salt grilled branzino. According to my copy of “The Flavor Bible”, the goma ae should pair well with spinach and things like zucchini. This goma ae was a really nice seasoning that I could use to dress vegetables.