Huzzah! J-Sekka, Hirafu, Japan

Well I know this may seem as though it has come a little late for those of you who have been eating and drinking with us for the last couple of months. But it's because of all of you, we're a little behind on the blog...... not that we're complaining ;)

So with out futher ado ta da the J-Sekka Deli is open.

With our focus squarely on the amazing produce fround right here in Hokkaido, it has been nothing but pleasure to explore the region and find what's out there on offer.
Heres a little walk through.


yes we are


looking back at the showcase and a couple of slackers


Tasty Karintou brown sugar crackers


Dehydrated vegetable chips


back into the deli


Totally wicked in house made blackberry and lemon jam


Awesome house made toasted chocolate & cranberry muesli


Rankoshi rice


Niseko coffee, roasted and groud right here in Niseko


Benefuki organic Japanese black tea


A nice little wine selection - we're working on increasing the Japanese varieties

And lets not forget the food in the cafe made from locally sourced Hokkaido fresh produce and utilizing a vast array from the shelves and showcase.


Our ever changing Hokkaido plate this one with;
Shin Sapporo blue cheese, house made quince paste and sesame crackers,
Smoked quails egg with house blend dukkah,
Barnanabas pork sausage with our eggplant, chilli and fig chutney and
Japanese smoked duck with pickled Niki cherries


Enjoy your meal with our multi-coloured choose your own adventure hashi

Here' a little sample of our autumn menu, we change with the seasons and produce availability so we can enjoy the best of all there is to offer.

Takenaka sardines on toast

Wild Hokkaido venison burger on a rye bun with house made beetroot relish

Otaru beer battered Hokkaido flounder and chips

Spaghetti with Hokkaido crab, chilli and roast mini toamto

Autumn salad of plums, wild hokkaido walnuts, Shin Sapporo blue cheese and eringi mushrooms

We've had so much fun learning to and running the deli, but don't forget in winter we will be opening up Sekka dining and Maki Bar with its's awesome open fire place.

If your in the area drop in and say hi .. hope to see you soon !

J-Sekka Delicatessen & Cafe
167-3 Aza yamada
Kutchan cho
Abuta gun
Hokkaido
0440081

Telephone 0136213088

The importance of a good staff meal ...

Staff meals are fundamental to a productive happy team.  I find it a challenge being able to make something tasty, exciting and nourishing for very little cost out of things your find lying around a commercial kitchen.  Sometimes we'd even get spoilt with a dessert, like here.  

On this particular occasion, H has whipped up an omu rice.  We enjoy the omu rice we've tasted at Pomme-no-ki but homemade is just something else.  

The rice was fried with peas, negi and some soy then half covered by a paper thin omlette.  Resting on top were some crisp sliced of chicken katsu (which we use for the kids menu :)) and a delicious terriyaki Otaru bacon and mushroom mix.



As long as we're eating this well every night, or close to, you can be guaranteed we'll be a productive happy team!

Montage, Montage

The hours approaching, just give it your best
You've got to reach your prime.
That’s when you need to put yourself to the test,
And show us a passage of time,
We're gonna need a montage (montage)
Oh it takes a montage (montage)

Show a lot of things happing at once,
Remind everyone of what’s going on (what’s going on?)
And with every shot you show a little improvement
To show it all would take to long
That’s called a montage (montage)
Oh we want montage (montage)

And anything that we want to go from just a beginner to a pro,
You need a montage (montage)
Even Rocky had a montage (montage)

(Montage…montage)

Anything that we want to go from just a beginner to a pro,
You need a montage (montage)
Oh it takes a montage (montage)

Always fade out in a montage,
If you fade out, it seem like more time
Has passed in a montage,
Montage

Thanks Team America, that's just what we're gonna do with some photos from our menus this season. Some from the regular menu and some from our Chinese New Year menu.

I'm not going say for each dish how it was delicious as they all were. Maybe you'll come next season to see where we went from here.

Montage, Montage

Wild Hokkaido Venison Burger

We all love a good burger, Kim and I included. There are a few good burgers around the village including Jo Jo's, Dennis the burger and of course the Brick. So, we had to do a little something different. When we had purchased 120kg of organic red beets from Stephano, one of the things we made was a beetroot and apple chutney. Mm, beetroot on a burger. So then we were thinking about the patty. Ah hah, Hokkaido wild venison. It took us a while, but with the help of H we found a little baker in Sapporo to bake us a nice rye bun. We made it wide and not tall. We like our burgers so you can actually wrap your mouth around them. Top it all off with a chunk of lettuce and a good squeeze of kewpie mayo.



Would you like fries with that? How about hand-cut Niseko danshakyu potato fries .... So, there's our burger, simple clean and delicious. It's gone down a treat, and we have just about finished all 120kg of beetroot over the winter. Nice!

Keep an eye out in the winter Australian edition of Delicious Magazine. We had a photographer taking some pic's at J-Sekka for an article, and the burger was one of the subjects.

A little taste of New Years at Sekka

New Years Eve is all about celebrating the... heck, for me it's about food and fireworks!  Especially when we've spent the last 6 New Year's in kitchens cooking dinner for other people. But we usually manage to catch some good crackers at the end.

This was what we were serving up at Sekka Dining this NYE.

New Years Eve 2009

Hokkaido ice oyster with shochu marscarpone, soy salmon roe and pickled cucumber

Beef carpaccio with smoked namenko mushrooms, mitzuna and monviso

Chicken and black pepper tea with enoki mushroom

Hokkaido diver scallops with roast Niseko sweet potato crepe

Slow roast Tokkachi beef with du-puy lentils

Okinawa Mandarin granita

Raspberry and Sambucca semi-freddo

Nothing like tooting you're own horn, especially at NYE!

Christmas pudding

We all love Christmas pudding and fruit mince pies at Christmas ....

We wanted to serve it this year at Sekka with a twist.  This is what we came up with.

It was a fruit mince semi-freddo with pistachio's and dried cranberries on top.  It was sitting in a pool of a brandy orange caramel.  It was a lot of Christmas with a touch of class.  Went down a treat!

Bloody good pavlova

Here's a pretty mean looking pavlova Kim whipped up one night for staff meal.  A pretty fine job done with a complete lack of fresh fruit.  There was whipped cream, Organic Niki cherries, some tinned peaches we found lying around and some frozen mango puree.

Bloody good!  But took us about 3 days to eat as it was bloody huge!

Staff Meal Pavlova

4 large egg whites, at room temperature

few drops of vanilla extract

1 tsp white vinegar

2 tsp cornstach

1 cup, + 2Tbsp sugar

pinch of salt

Cream

Tin of peaches found lying around

Frozen organic Niki cherries, thawed and pitted

Frozen mango puree, thawed

or any other fruits you have lying around

1. Pre-heat oven to 175C.  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.  

2. Put egg whites and salt into kitchen aid mixer on medium and beat for a few minutes, or until light and foamy.  Increase speed and beat for a few more minutes until you have firm peaks.

3. Gradually add the sugar while still beating.  Continue mixing for another 5 minutes or so until it's nice and shiny.

4. Sprinkle the vinegar, cornstach and vanilla over the whites and gently fold in.

5.  Place the mixture onto the parchment lined tray and smooth over with some sort of flat implement.  

6. Place in oven on middle rack and then close the door.  Immediately turn down to 150C and bake for 1 hour.  Then turn off the oven, resisting the temptation to open the door.

7. Ideally, you would then like to leave the pav. in the oven for 4 hours to dry out.  We didn't quite have that luxury of time, so our pav had about 10 minutes.

8.  In the meantime, beat some cream.  Sweeten a little with sugar and vanilla.

9. Slap on the cream, then artistically decorate with your chosen fruit.

Beets

Well they took about two weeks to figure out, but they're so damn cool. Stained glass like beets.
We'll be using them on our new beef capaccio.







Neato.