New Year's Eve Diner - à la Japonais

Clockwise : Soba noodle maki, Roast beef with japanese sauce, Namasu salad, Hidjiki and Dried Tofu in sauce

Agedashi Tofu

This new year's eve, we spent just ourselves in Cannes, it's a first time in three years.  I usually woke up at very early in the morning on the new year's day to call mum on the webcam, where our family and relatives in Japan are getting together. It's really funny whispering to them over the camera as the rest of our family in France are still in bed!
This year, I only talked to mum and dad on their new years time, and we made excuses not seeing them over the webcam but tell everyone Bonne Annee!

As we are at home, I kind of missed some Japanese comfort food...(my hubby had his comfort food up in North) so I decided to cook something nice to celebrate the coming year.  Usually you'd eat this special meal on the new years day, but I mixed Japanese custom and the western custome together to eat them on the new years' eve. Some food has it's meaning in our culture - I think it's really sweet.

For example, 
Namasu salad - it's a grated white radish and carots (put some salt and leave them for 5-10mins and squeeze off any excess water) in sugarly rice vinegar (you can use Sushi vinegar). We consider "red" and "white" as happy colours, so this salad symbolise the happiness for the new year. 


Soba noodle - we traditionally eat it on the new year's eve.  As the noodle is long, it represents as "Live Long". You have a number of ways to eat soba noodle - hot / cold, with tempra etc.  I made a simple maki with sushi seaweed, after cook them according to the instruction and cool them with water. Cut in pieces. Eat with the same sauce (1 cup dashi stock, 2tbs soya sauce, 2tbs mirin)used in the Agedashi Tofu.


There are many other things to add on this box (usually it's three stockable boxes), but I served 1 box per person, like a bento box).
Roast beef with japanese sauce: make the roast as you prefer with garlic, salt and pepper.
For the sauce (meat for 800g) - prepare a zippable plastic bag, in it, put 1 large grated garlic and same portion of grated ginger, 1/2 cup red wine, 1 cup soya sauce, 1 onion sliced, 1/4 cup of lemon juice (or less, depending on your preference)
Soak the roasted beef in the bag for at least 3-4 hours or 1 day max in the fridge. Serve cold. If you prefer it hot, omit the lemon juice and cook the sauce with low heat (don't boil it), add corn flour to thiken.