Pork Rolls with Mentaiko and Ohba

I was having a hard time figuring out what dishes I should cook for this upcoming week,

Chicken, pork, fish, shrimps, clams...,

All these ingredients were bumping around inside my tiny little brain.

Forget about it, I shouted.

I'll never come up with anything just sitting here thinking,

So I grabbed my car key, made a trip to Mitsuwa (local Japanese supermarket),

And I had it,

I quickly tossed some fresh ingredients to the little red basket dangling on my arm,

Let's head back to the kitchen and start cooking!

Ingredients (for 8 rolls)?

8 ohba leaves (also known as perilla)

2 small sacs of mentaiko (cod roes)

1 box of pork slices (about 16 slices)

Freshly ground black pepper

Sea salt

Extra virgin olive oil

How?

It's a fairly simple dish,

First let's get the ingredients ready.

Run the knife in the middle of the mentaiko and spoon out the little eggs,

Set aside,

You can also see my previous post for more details about mentaiko.

As for ohba,

Just gently wipe the leaves with a damp kitchen towel,

Washing them directly under the faucet might break those delicate leaves.

Here's the picture of ohba-

My memory is fading away,

But I think it's about $2.80 U.S. Dollars for 10 of them.

I know,

It's darn expensive for only 10 leaves.

Time for assembling work,

Lay down 1 or 2 pork slices,

The reason why we're using 2 slices here is because we wanna make sure that there's no openings in between,

I don't wanna see mentaiko been squeezed out of the pork rolls during the cooking process.

Now let's place one ohba on top of the pork slices,

Spread out some mentaiko on the leaf,

Carefully roll these three ingredients together, and seal the end of the pork slices with a toothpick.

It should look like this now-

Drizzle some olive oil in the skillet,

Place the pork rolls and sear them till slightly brown on all sides,

Don't forget to sprinkle some salt and pepper, only a tiny bit,

Mentaiko and ohba have their very own distinctive flavors,

We won't wanna murder those wonderful tastes by over-seasoning the pork rolls.

Usually we're done cooking this dish after searing the pork rolls,

But I always do an extra step to get rid of the excess oil.

I'll put a kitchen towel on a plate and transfer the pork rolls there,

Take out the toothpicks,

Into the microwave for another minute,

Yes you heard me, microwave.

It's probably one of the best invention in the 21st century (Am I right on the time here?),

We should all make a good use out of it.

Oven would do the trick too,

But hey, it's easier to use microwave here, and it'll still be as yummy as using an oven.

After taking out the plate,

You'll see all that extra oil is already been absorbed by the kitchen towel,

How wonderful!

Here's our final product-

Not bad huh?

Cindy's Rating: 7