3 easy side dishes with Avocados 〜アボガド副菜三種〜 | easy Japanese home cooking recipe

Welcome to Taiji's Kitchen. Today I'm going to show you how to make three easy side dishes using avocados. So avocado is really new for us, probably only introduced in our culture in like the last 1,500 years. Avocado doesn't grow in Japan, so it's always imported from outside. But this is also very easily incorporated in Japanese cooking because it kind of has a similar flavor, similar texture to toro, which is a fatty tuna. And so a lot of the cooking using this fatty tuna can be kind of easily substituted with this avocado. And also for those who live outside of Japan, eat this quite often as a substitute for sashimi because I can't get hold of fresh fish that easily. So today I'm going to show you three variations of this. One is actually not really a recipe, it's really just kind of preparation. It's kind of like sliced up avocado eating with soy sauce and wasabi, just in a way you would eat sashimi. And second is kind of like a salad with scallion with a little bit of Korean flavor to it. And the third is another salad using avocado and canned tuna. Today's recipe I'm using only the ingredients they can find in pretty much most supermarkets in anywhere in the world. So I hope you give it a try. Then let's get started. Here are the ingredients for three easy side dishes using avocado. For the first recipe, I have soy sauce and wasabi paste. For the second recipe, I have scallion, salt, lemon, lettuce, and a clove of garlic. And for the last recipe, I have sesame oil, sesame seeds, canned tuna fish, clove of garlic, and nori sheets. If you don't have nori sheets, then you don't have to have it. So what I do with the nori sheets is that because they go stale very fast, I put in a small ziplock like this and store in the fridge. So I recommend you do that as well. Then let's start cooking. So to tell the ripeness of avocado is quite difficult. What you want to do is kind of like, kind of feel it. You don't want to push it too hard, but you kind of want to feel it slightly. And then you want to find avocado that is not too soft, but also not too hard. You just have to kind of try it every time. So avocado always have kind of like the sides where it's kind of like symmetric. Here's the line where it's symmetric. You can see that one side is kind of like bumped over. So you want to try to find line that's symmetric. And then you want to do is you want to kind of cut along this line like this. Oops. And then it'll just kind of break apart like this. The seed is going to stay on one side. So what you want to do is kind of cut in like this and then twist and then get a perfect half. And do it again. So here's a symmetric line. Cut in like this and then twist and then cut in twist. So for the first recipe, I'm just going to peel this off. Some people kind of like scrape it off with a spoon, but I just kind of personally like peeling it off like this. If it's not too ripe or if it's not too hard, then this peels off quite easily like this. Then what I do is kind of like cut in like this. So that's finished for that. Then here I'm going to put in some wasabi. Then this is finished for that. And for the other two recipes, I'm going to cut them just in the same way. And what I'm going to do is kind of cut in here. I'm going to cut in like this and then cut in. And they're just going to break it in like this in a bowl or whatever plate you have. If it's not ripe enough, then you can use a spoon like this. And very easy avocado dices. And also going to be doing the same thing again here. And they have very clean avocado skin. Then let's prepare the other ingredients. Then I'm going to cut up the scallion kind of diagonal, just because they kind of look nice that way. You can cut this in any way you want. Also going to cut the lettuce. And the lettuce I'm going to put in at the very end because I want to have the crunchiness left. I'm going to cut up the garlic, peel it off. I'm going to use a garlic smasher and then squeeze in here. And then here I'm going to put in a fourth teaspoon of salt. So try to put the salt over the scallion, because salt will kind of take away the tanginess of the scallion. And then give it a little light mix. And then here I'm going to squeeze in a quarter of lemon. This is about one teaspoon. And then make sure you take away the seed. I'm going to give it a little mix. And here I'm going to put in one tablespoon of sesame oil. One tablespoon may seem quite a lot, but it'll make it really tasty. And once it's got quite well mixed up, then I'm going to put in, lastly, the cut up lettuce. Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Then roast the sesame on it. You could put quite a lot. And this is finished for that. Then lastly, with the tuna fish. So this is about 50 grams of tuna can. So I'm going to put half of that. And I'm also going to use this oil from the tuna can. If you don't like the oil of this, you can use it without the oil. And just give it a little mix. And then here, two teaspoons of soy sauce. And if you like a little kick to it, then you can also put a clove of garlic to it. And also in here, I'm going to put in roasted sesame. And here I have three side dishes using avocado. Let's eat. Okay, let's eat. Then let's start with the avocado sashimi. So I'm going to put in here soy sauce. And I'm going to put a bit of wasabi. So simple yet delicious. So it actually does kind of taste like toro, the fatty tuna. So I eat this quite often with soy sauce and wasabi. You don't have to do anything and just kind of need to cut them up. And yet it's very delicious. So let's have this salad with scallion lettuce. Very delicious. So this combination of sesame oil, garlic and lemon juice mixed with avocado is a totally great combination. Then let's have the salad with the tuna. So I forgot to film this, but I sprinkled a little bit of nori sheets on the top. So this is also a great combination of tuna and avocado. So the canned tuna helps avocado taste more like fatty tuna. Soy sauce and wasabi just kind of really bring out the really the flavor of the avocado. It's really great. So you may be wondering why I always have rice with the rest of the food. And that's just because rice is the main part of Japanese cuisine. You can't have Japanese cuisine without rice. You always always have the rice. You can even say all the dishes, all the Japanese cuisine are just side dish for the rice. So that's how important rice is for us. And these dishes just kind of really go well with rice. But of course, if you prefer to eat them with bread or some other thing than rice, then of course you can. I make my videos to show you guys how we eat in Japan. But of course, you don't have to necessarily follow that. Food is something universal, and there's no restriction to that. You're allowed to eat, of course, however you want. Oh, that was delicious. Oh, and by the way, if you eat rice in Japan, if you eat rice anywhere, or if you eat anything, I want to ask you to eat it like this. All clean, everything eaten up, nothing left. Because in Japan, it's quite important that you don't leave anything behind. As you saw, these dishes with avocado is very, very easy and yet very delicious. For these, you don't really need any special ingredients. So hopefully you give them a try. And if you like what you saw, please hit the like button. And also, if you have any other requests or comments or questions, please feel free to write anything in the comments below. Otherwise, I look forward to see you in the next video. Bye.