Vary this recipe by using whatever green spring vegetables you like. Try it with white miso for a lighter, sweeter taste. Always cook miso gently, the enzymes it contains, beneficial to good digestion, are assisted by gentle heat but are denatured by boiling. It is said that adding a pungent flavours such as ginger, lemon or spring onion greens to miso soup just before serving, will activate the enzymes, making them beneficial. 

Serves 5-6

4 medium spring onions

1/2 bunch bok choy

1/2 tablespoon corn oil

2.5cm knob ginger, very finely sliced

15cm stick kombu, soaked in water to cover for 30 minutes

6 cups stock

100g silken tofu, cut into small cubes

4 tablespoons brown rice (gen mai) miso

Chop spring onions into rounds, keeping the white and green parts separate.

Cut the bok choy, keeping the white and green parts separate.

Heat a pan and add the oil.

Saute the white onions, then the ginger.

Add the white of bok choy.

Drain and finely slice the kombu, combine the soaking water with stock.

Add the kombu and stock.

Simmer, uncovered, for 20 minutes.

Turn heat to low and add the silken tofu.

Mix the miso to a paste using a little of the soup.

Add the miso and the greens from the onions and bok choy.

Cook for 5 minutes, do not boil.

Serve with more ginger if desired.

NB: Adding some udon noodles when you add the tofu is nice for a heavier soup.

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There is a queue outside the door from noon every day and it is very rarely with more than a couple of tables free. The quality of the food is very high, the sushi packs are great value and the dons are like no other in this city.

Tofu Don

Tuna Don

Shop 14-15 Port Phillip Arcade

228 Flinders Street, Melbourne

03 9639 6296

Monday-Friday 12:15pm-3:00pm(ish)

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Shoya has six split levels and offers Japanese style BBQ, traditional Horigotatsu seating, fine dining tables and a sushi bar. Shoya has even been recommended by Iron Chef Kandagawa, saying “Out of the Japanese restaurants all over the world I visited, Shoya is amazingly authentic and makes me feel like being at home. It’s no inferior to any of those competitive restaurants even if Shoya stands among the quality restaurants in central Tokyo”.

To start we had ‘Sashimi & Sushi Moriwase’. It included Sashimi of Petit Uni (Sea Urchin), Petit Awabi (Abalone), Maguro (Tuna), Toro (Marbled Tuna) Salmon, Salmon Toro (Belly of Salmon), Hamachi (King Fish), Scampi, Scallop and Lobster. And Sushi of Maguro (Tuna), Toro (Marbled Tuna), Scampi, Salmon, Salmon Toro (Belly of Salmon), white fish of the day, Hamachi (King Fish), Tako (Octopus), Uni (Sea Urchin), Ikura (Salmon Roe) and Tobiko (Flying Fish Roe). This was fantastic – a real treat. Each piece was had its own natural unique taste.

We also had ‘Agedashi Yasai Tofu’ which is one of my favourite tofu dishes. It is simply a piece of deep fried tofu sitting in a bowl of light soy sauce topped with raddish and spring onions. The ‘Scampi Harumaki’ is whole scampi rolled up with thin spring roll skin and deep-fried. ‘Nama Shii Hotate’, fired mashed scallops surrounding a quail egg topped with a whole shiitake mushroom, is Shoya’s signature. When my friend, skeptical of quail eggs, tried this he exclaimed that he was “never eating anything but quail eggs ever again”. The ‘Tofu Steak’ is simple but good, a hearty vegetarian dish with bean curd steaks topped with Japanese mushrooms and special gravy. I always get ‘Agenasu Dengaku’ when I come to Shoya, it is so rich and delicious. It’s fried and grilled eggplant with prawns and shiitake and enoki mushrooms topped with fresh sea urchin miso paste. The ‘Maguro Steak’ is a tuna fillet steak sprinkled with thinly sliced seaweed with speacial home made sauce. The ‘Yaki Daifuku’, a pan fried Japanese dumpling filled with red beans wrapped with thin and sweet flour skin is delightful.

Just look at the photos – everything looked and tasted amazing. I prefer to dine in the Horigotatsu traditional seating unless you are getting Japanese style BBQ because it is very quiet and private. And a warning, don’t use the price to predict the size of the dish, some dishes may be smaller than expected.

Sashimi Moriwase

Sushi Moriwase

Agedashi Yasai Tofu

Maguro Steak

Agenasu Dengaku

Agenasu Dengaku

Scampi Harumaki

Tofu Steak

25 Market Lane, Melbourne

9650 0950

Monday-Saturday 12:00pm-2:30pm

Sunday-Thursday 6:00pm-10:30pm

Friday-Saturday 6:00pm-11:00pm

http://www.shoyamelbourne.com/

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Mochi is a Japanese rice cake made of glutinous rice pounded into paste and molded into shape. 

Mochitsuki is the traditional mochi-pounding ceremony in Japan.

1. Polished glutinous rice is soaked overnight and cooked.
2. The cooked rice is pounded with wooden mallets (kine) in a traditional mortar (usu). Two people will alternate the work, one pounding and the other turning and wetting the mochi. They must keep a steady rhythm or they may accidentally injure one another with the heavy kine.
3. The sticky mass is then formed into various shapes (usually a sphere or cube).

I’ve only ever eaten sweet mochi usually filled with a red or white bean paste and they’re delicious. I once had it fried fried for dessert at Yamato (223 Exhibition Street Melbourne). I haven’t seen it on any menus as part of a savoury dish but I reckon I would love it – the texture is amazing. Guess I’ll just have to wait until I go to Japan.

[youtube=http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=XlMznS_bN5s&feature=related]

I’ve been here once for breakfast which was great. The food is simple but delicious, the service is good, the staff are friendly and the place is really cool. It has only been open a couple of months.

The coffee here is also really good quality and as stated in the menu ‘In the coming weeks this beauty of a machine (a 1950s/60s ‘burner into drum’ model made in Bologna) will again be fired up after its journey down from Italy. Stay tuned for specialty coffee beans roasted sympathetically to origin and served to you fresh’.

They use artisan baked sourdough breads from Dench Bakers in North Fitzroy and they sell their loaves aswell. 

I went for a quick lunch with my mum this afternoon and we ordered ‘Beans from Scratch’ and a ‘Miso Soup’. The beans were amazing, very simple and tasty. They were slow cooked cannellini beans in tomato with a really good rosemary, sage and basil infused olive oil – it comes with some toast lightly drizzled with the oil too. The miso was equally good, I have stopped ordering miso soup, which I love, when I go out. Even at nicer Japanese restaurants the miso is always too salty with too much bad miso or packet miso added, only has a few tiny pieces of tofu and a few little bits of dried seaweed. The miso here wasn’t too salty and had the perfect amount of miso added. It was a really healthy hearty winter soup as it had small slices of carrot, lots of silken and fried tofu and big bits of good seaweed – it also came with a rice ball on the side and you can add order it with a poached egg.

Beans from Scratch

Brioche French Toast

The Opening Bid

103-107 Errol Street, North Melbourne

03 9326 7749

Tuesday-Friday 7:00am-4:00pm 

Saturday-Sunday 8:00am-4:00pm

www.auctionroomscafe.com.au

Here is a really good recipe for miso soup from Nourish, food by Holly Davis

Spring Miso Soup 

Vary this recipe by using whatever green spring vegetables you like. Try it with white miso for a lighter, sweeter taste. Always cook miso gently, the enzymes it contains, beneficial to good digestion, are assisted by gentle heat but are denatured by boiling. It is said that adding a pungent flavours such as ginger, lemon or spring onion greens to miso soup just before serving, will activate the enzymes, making them beneficial. 

Serves 5-6

4 medium spring onions

1/2 bunch bok choy

1/2 tablespoon corn oil

2.5cm knob ginger, very finely sliced

15cm stick kombu, soaked in water to cover for 30 minutes

6 cups stock

100g silken tofu, cut into small cubes

4 tablespoons brown rice (gen mai) miso

Chop spring onions into rounds, keeping the white and green parts separate

Cut the bok choy, keeping the white and green parts separate

Heat a pan and add the oil

Saute the white onions, then the ginger

Add the white of bok choy

Drain and finely slice the kombu, combine the soaking water with stock

Add the kombu and stock

Simmer, uncovered, for 20 minutes

Turn heat to low and add the silken tofu

Mix the miso to a paste using a little of the soup

Add the miso and the greens from the onions and bok choy

Cook for 5 minutes, do not boil

Serve with more ginger if desired

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