mille-feuille nabe

Namiko Hirasawa Chen’s mille-feuille nabe is a Japanese hot pot of alternating napa cabbage and pork-belly slices. She connects its layered name with the French phrase “a thousand leaves.”

The selected dashi method simmers two supplied stock packets in water, then removes them. Sake, soy sauce and kosher salt season that same completed batch of stock.

Cabbage is quartered and washed while its cores keep the leaves attached. Pork is slipped between the leaves before the cores are removed and the layered wedges cut into shorter stacks.

Those stacks are tightly arranged on their sides in concentric circles, with thicker leaves outside and tender leaves toward the centre. Loose leaves from the same cabbage fill the centre, and thin ginger slices go between layers.

The broth is poured over the layers before covered cooking and skimming. The author describes tender cabbage and pork fat flavouring the savoury stock, served hot with ponzu, scallion and optional seven-spice dipping condiments.