Unachazuke
Our friend Soma and Kazumi sent us a "shogatsu" package from Japan this year which included an amazing dish that we ended up eating on New Year's day: unachazuke.
Ochazuke is a Japanese dish of ultimate simplicity: rice with green tea poured over it. Most ochazuke also has some sort of fish or vegetable on top of the rice which also flavors the whole package. Unachazuke is ochazuke with unagi (eel) on top of it...
...most commercial ochazuke contains a packet of soup-stock-like granules that you sprinkle on top of the rice before you pour tea over it. It serves to give particular flavors to the ochazuke: shiso, wasabi, tarako, sake (salmon, pronounced "sha-kay" not "sa-kay").
Our unachazuke was definitely a high-end set of ingredients and flavors. The soup packet was wasabi flavored with bits of nori and other dried seaweed. The second packet (the topping) was semi-dried unagi cooked in a mirin and soy sauce mixture.
Now for the tea application...
The combination of all of this over a bowl of rice was heavenly. The semi-dried unagi was revived by the hot tea and ended up very juicy, the wasabi-flavored soup base was delicately flavored but added a nice foil to the sweet-ish unagi, the nori rehyrated itself and added an extra earthiness.
Houston, we've achieved unachazuke...
It was a bowl of sheer delight and the best rendition of ochazuke we've ever had. And thanks to our friends in Japan, we get to enjoy all sorts of food like this...