This one is one of our household favorites, and great for intimate dinners with close friends. When entertaining, the cooking is done in an electric skillet, at the table, where all the ingredients are presented in small bowls, and everyone participates in putting items in the skillet, as they run low, and taking them out, when cooked to their liking.
At home, in personal-sized caste-iron skillets, we do a quick saute of the beef, in fresh beef suet, then add in the Sukiyaki sauce and other ingredients in a pleasant visual arrangement and simmer for a brief period and serve.
Japanese Sukiyaki
The sauce consists of mushroom-infused soy sauce (I love this stuff), mirin (Japanese sweet cooking wine), a good quality sake, and kombu/shiitake dashi (a sort of tea, made with dried shiitake mushrooms, kombu (special dried sea weed), and katsuobushi (dried bonito tuna shavings)). For our tastes, the mirin makes it sweet enough, but some like a bit more sweetness, so I sometimes add yellow Vietnamese rock sugar.
The sauce is used as a continuous simmering base for the other ingredients.
The other ingredients can vary greatly, depending on season, and mood, but this is what we have settled on for consistency: very thin sliced rib steak, carrot (artistically carved to resemble flowers and such), medium-firm tofu (that has been dry-grilled to a light caramelized state on all sides), Japanese shirataki (clear noodles, made from yams or mung beans), fresh Japanese udon noodles, thin sliced raw red onions or shallots, scallion segments, dehydrated shiitake mushrooms that have been re-hydrated (when making the dashi for the sauce), fresh enoki mushrooms, fresh Taiwan Napa cabbage, and fresh chrysanthemum leaves.
This is all served with a bowl of Japanese short-grain rice, and a small bowl of raw egg that has been scrambled. As the item you wish to eat is drawn from the pot, it is dipped in the egg and eaten straight away. Obviously, dexterity with chopsticks is a plus.
We also use the personal-sized caste-iron skillets to make personal pan pizzas:
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Enjoy,
Rich P