Mille-Feuille Nabe

Ingredients

• Napa cabbage

  1 head or 100g

• Side Pork

  24 ounce or 2.4kg

• Ginger root

  Raw

  1 tbsp or 6g

• Dashi

  5 cup or 500g

• Sake

  Alcoholic beverage, made from rice

  2 tbsp or 30g

• Soy sauce

  Made from soy (tamari)

  1 tbsp or 18g

• Salt

  Table

  ½ tsp or 3g

• Onions

  Young green, tops only

  1 stalk or 12g

• Ponzu Sauce

  16 tablespoon or 1.6kg

• Shichimi Togarashi

  1 tablespoon or 100g

• Japanese noodles

  Somen, dry

  16 oz or 454g

Directions

1. Slice the ginger and thinly cut green onion. Keep the ginger on the side and put the green onion in a serving bowl.
2. Cut the napa cabbage into quarters lengthwise. Without cutting the edge, wash the leaves carefully and drain well. Don’t throw away the leaves that naturally came off while rinsing. We’ll use these leaves later on.
3. Place each slice of pork belly between the napa cabbage leaves. If you have extra pork belly, you can put additional slice in outer layers which have wide leaves. If the pork belly is too long for the napa cabbage, you can trim with a kitchen shear and place it in other parts of the napa cabbage.
4. Once the pork belly slices are nicely tucked in, cut the napa cabbage into 3-4 pieces, about 2 - 2 ¾ inches (5-7 cm).
5. Start packing the layers of napa cabbage/pork belly from the outer edges of donabe (or hot pot or regular pot) and work your way towards the center. The napa cabbage/pork belly layers should be packed tightly as they become loosen once it starts cooking.
6. If you don’t have enough layers, stuff the center with napa cabbage leaves that came off while rinsing and cutting the napa cabbage.
7. Combine the soup ingredients (5 cups dashi, 2 Tbsp. sake, 1 Tbsp. soy sauce, slices of 1 inch ginger, and ½ tsp. kosher salt). Don’t cut down on the salt as napa cabbage releases liquid when it's being cooked and will dilute the soup a little bit.
8. Pour the soup into the pot and start cooking on high heat. Once boiling, skim the foam and fat on the surface. Then reduce the heat to medium low and cook until napa cabbage is tender and pork belly is cooked through.
9. Serve hot with ponzu, green onion/scallion, and shichimi togarashi (Japanese seven spice).
10. At the end of hot pot when all or most of the ingredients are consumed, what’s left in the pot is the umami-packed soup. Don’t throw away! Add noodles to the remaining soup and cook till done.