A lunch of seven sides, with triple kinpira

Ooops, I forgot to make a main dish for that Japanese lunch. That really doesn’t matter actually. What I love in Asian cuisines is the abundance of small side dishes.
That doesn’t take hours to prepare. I didn’t even need the whole 25 minutes the rice needed to be done in the rice-cooker.
I found 2 ways to make it quicker :
Tip 1 : make some for several meals, store left-overs (fridge, freezer) and rotate
Tip 2 : use the most efficient tool. I used those cheap graters for the daikon, the carrot, the ginger and the lotus root. I used scissor for slicing dry chilis. The set is hanging over my sink, I use, brush and rinse and hang again. Another day, knife may be faster, for small quantities it is not as you need to clean it and the board so many times.
Tip 3 : make variations of one dish. The same frying pan served for carrots, lotus roots, then fish bait.

Today, 3 variations of kinpira. It’s way to prepare vegetables. They are sliced, julienned or at least cut in small bits. Then stir-fry them a few minutes, pass on low heat, add a little water, a little soy sauce, simmer a little.
Average preparation time : 5 minutes.
Variations :

With kintoki ninjin, Kintoki carrot, the red Japanese carrot.

It’s ninjin no kinpira. No fuss. The carrots are sweet and tasty.

With renkon (lotus root).

It’s renkon no kinpira. Sir-fried with sliced dry hot chili.

With seaweeds, it’s hijiki no kinpira. A little sugar was needed in the water. I had made it the other day.
I only added a few drops of fragrant sesame oil, a few sesame seeds.

A white miso soup, with a dry shiitake mushroom and the unused bits of daikon and of spinach (stalks).

Koshihikari genmai, brown rice. I like it a little al dente.

Shirasu (white bait, salted) reheated with ginger, on spinach salad.

A serving of natto (fermented soy beans), with grated daikon radish and a few points of wasabi.

That was a delicious meal.

Cal :471.0 F16.6g C66.1g P25.3g