Tonight we chose to eat light, after the weekend’s indulgences. We each had a couple bowls of a rich miso soup with a little less than half a bottle of Kikusui Junmai Ginjo sake. I made the soup by first steeping dried bonito flakes and Kombu in four cups of hot water (brought to a boil and taken off the heat) for between an hour and a half and two hours to make the dashi base. I strained the dashi and added three tablespoon of a wood-aged (for three years) brown barley miso, half a stalk of spring onion, thinly sliced, and a splash of Tamari-Ginger soy sauce. When the miso was distributed in the dashi, I put 20-24 small cubes of soft tofu in each of the warmed bowls and ladled the miso soup over the tofu.
At the table we broke up spicy nori and crumbled it into the soup. The soup was quite good - it wasn’t too salty, the miso was dark and rich, the spring onion was better than the usual scallion, and the nori was a nice touch. The combination of the soup and the sake made for a lovely meal. It was rich enough that we likely won’t have any dessert.