While working at a Japanese restaurant, I once commented to the chef that Japanese are very creative inventors. He thought that Japanese don't invent anything, but are good at copying other people's inventions and improving on them. While I think Italians might take issue with Japanese pasta being an "improvement", "wafu" (meaning "Japanese style" -- not to be confused with "waifu") pasta is definitely a case where Japanese have taken something and made it their own. There is a whole world of wafu pasta out there, but mentaiko pasta might be the most common and basic. It's also simple and delicious!

I've talked about mentaiko in a traditional chazuke and now let's see it in action in "yoshoku" (Western influenced Japanese food).

Ingredients

• 2 servings pasta -- Most commonly done with spaghetti, which is what I have, but you can use any pasta you like.
• 1 pod mentaiko
• 2 tbsp butter
• 2 tsp olive oil
• 2 shiso leaves, chiffoned (chiffonaded? whatever, cut into thin strips)
• nori, cut into thin strips
• pepper
• salt

Method

• Cut the mentaiko pod in half and remove the eggs from the membrane. If you're using frozen mentaiko like me, it's easiest to do this while it's still partially frozen. The membrane is good too! Eat it!

• Mix the mentaiko with olive oil and a few cracks of pepper in a small dish. The mentaiko should defrost very quickly while doing this.

• Split the mentaiko mixture between 2 serving dishes along with 1 tbsp of butter in each.

• Cook the pasta in salted water.

• When done, split the pasta between the 2 serving dishes and mix each one until the butter is completely melted and the mentaiko is evenly spread.
• Top with shiso and nori

Itadakimasu!