It's an odd thing, to have an entire meal inspired by a slightly bland boiled bean, but that's Japanese cuisine for you. I got a bag full of edamame from the CSA, and while I love a nice, basic, cooked and salted bowl of edamame pods, the fact remains that it's an appetizer or side dish, not a main event.

But I had to go to Shanghai Market anyway - it's a small pan-Asian grocery in Knollwood that comes in very, very handy for specialty ingredients - because I was out of soy sauce. So I thought I'd peruse it for ideas for things to go with the edamame.

For example, shiro miso. I have been wanting to start buying and using miso paste for years. But until recently, either Shanghai didn't carry it, or I couldn't find it. And yeah, I know, United Noodles, but I find their hours and location challenging as all fuck from where I live now.

Well last week, I was walking around, and lo and behold, there were big fucking tubs of miso paste in the cooler - exactly what I'd been looking for. There were also really inexpensive bags of inoki mushrooms, which I'd never worked with before. So I grabbed those, and some tofu, and my soy sauce, soba noodles, and the miso, and started thinking about soup.

Now, miso soup is traditionally made with broth made from seaweed and dried bonito flakes. I had neither, and apart from prepackaged soup bases, I don't think Shanghai did either. So instead, I went with homemade chicken broth. Using some other ratios I found online, I decided on two tablespoons of shiro miso for every three cups of liquid - with four cups of chicken broth and two cups of water, the four tablespoons of miso paste made for a nice, rich, savory broth that smelled of miso.

To that broth I added some grated ginger and the tofu, and just let it simmer for a while. Then, about 15 minutes before serving, I added about a cup (about half the package) of the mushrooms, the last of my napa cabbage (shredded), about a half cup of finely sliced scallion, and the soba noodles that I'd par-cooked in advance. The result was pretty damn happy-making.

And here's the edamame. This was super-simple, but I think it could be improved upon a bit.

I started with a pot of boiling, salted water - in this case, a large pot that I'd first used to par-cook the soba noodles.

I just boiled the edamame for five minutes, drained it, then tossed them in about a teaspoon of kosher salt. Unfortunately, a lot of the salt seemed to want to cling more to the sides of the bowl than they did to the pods, and the final result didn't have enough of that salty kick that makes edamame so addictive.

But I'm ready. I've got another bag of the furry little bastards. I don't know why, but the CSA edamame pods are even more like hairy felt than the ones from restaurants or the store. But anyway, I bought some nice fine sea salt from Byerly's - the Maldon flake salt looked good, but was too damn expensive. Eight bucks for a small box of salt? No. But I think even the cheaper sea salt will work better on the next batch.

Yakitori! Seasoned, glazed meat cooked on skewers over a charcoal grill. Fakitori! What I managed to make despite not having a charcoal grill.

I decided on the yakitori because the last time I bought chicken, I bought six packets of boneless, skinless thighs. I prefer thigh meat for tacos and curries because they hold up better than breast meat, which dries out. But it meant that the ratio of chicken thighs to other meats in my freezer was really high.

Yakitori uses chicken thighs. Yakitori is Japanese. My path was set. I bought bamboo skewers at Target, because I have yet to find a decent set of flat metal skewers - everything is either two round or too large. Got both the skewers and the chicken soaking - the skewers in water, and the chicken in a marinade I improvised based on triangulating three other recipes.

I ended up with an 8:4:2 ratio of soy sauce to white wine to raw sugar, which I implemented using tablespoons and completed with about a tablespoon each of grated ginger and crushed garlic. I cut the thighs into strips about a half-inch wide and the length of the short side, and marinated them for about an hour.after nuking the marinade for a minute and shaking it to dissolve the sugar.

To cook, I heated up and oiled the cast-iron griddle, threaded 4-5 chicken pieces on each skewer, and grilled them for six to seven minutes, turning them every 90 seconds and basting them with some of the marinade before each turn. This led to some nice charring and a bit of glazing.

Then, once the last baste and turn was done, I turned off the heat and let them rest/finish cooking in the residual heat from the griddle, just to make sure they were cooked through. If you try this method at home, I strongly recommend you get some water on the hot iron right after cooking, because cleanup was by no means a snap. unless by "snap" you mean "nightmare of scrubbing burnt-on char". Worth it, though. About the only change I'd make is finding some way of making the marinade thicker and clingier.