Y is for yuzu

Yuzu. The name alone is beautiful, and persuaded me to add it to my pantheon of MoFo experiments.

Yuzu is a citrus fruit grows in Japan, and it has a taste somewhere between lemon, lime and grapefruit.

And, so I've been told, it doesn't travel very well, and that's why it's incredibly freaking expensive. I got a tiny size bottle (so small that, if it were filled with rum, it wouldn't see me through a slow evening) that costs in £9.95. Yeah, that expensive - I guess the fact that I've got a bottle in the cupboard is a testament to drunk shopping or something.

What to do with it? Clearly a recipe with a Japanese flavour, prompting me to dig out some sushi rice, some white miso, tofu, and veggies that would feel at home in the Land of the Rising Sun.

I marinated the tofu in a mixture of white miso, mirin and yuzu juice - a deliciously strong and fragrantly citrus taste - for a good while.

I chopped the veggies (shiitakes, carrot, peas, spring onions, spinach with the water squeezed out), dry fried some pumpkin seeds, then added soy and yuzu juice while the rice was in its final stages of cooking.

I then baked the marinated tofu, cooked the veggies, then assembled the whole lot. It looks a bit weird, but there you go.

Alas, despite my heavy-handed application of yuzu, little of its wonderful taste made it through the cooking process. Every now and again, there'd be a faint whisper of its wonderfulness in the tofu, but tucking into the rice, you'd never know that there was £3 of yuzu juice in there.

So, my lesson from yuzu world is that this juice doesn't travel well, and doesn't cook well either. Next time I'm getting my yuzu on, I'm going to try some salad dressings, dips, or cocktails.

Mainly the cocktails...