Warm mushroom soba soup

The weather is getting a little chilly. The time of warm soup is back. The official season of sake kasu is open, even if I didn’t wait.

Asian cuisines are very careful about seasons of dishes. You’ll say that’s everywhere that wise people try to eat season produce. True, but they have kept a concern that was important in European Medieval cuisines and has since been neglected, which is the effect of food, whether they are cooling or warming. So these are two food said to be “warming” :

Sake kasu (sake lees). The soup made with it, kasujiru, is present all along the cold season in Kansai.

Buckwheat, here in soba noodles. It’s also seen in sobagaki.

I soaked a good handful of mixed dry mushrooms, then added onion, frozen and thawed tofu, garlic, soy sauce. Simmered.

For the sides, I’ve steamed kabocha and reheated hana mame (flower beans) with soy sauce and a little sugar.

I’ve added the soba and sake kasu in the soup, more soy sauce to make it saltier.

And to spice it up a tonic mix : diced ginger, garlic, negi leeks, and chili pepper. Just mixed in, reheated and served.

Kimchi in the kabocha.

A flower on the beans. Lunch is ready.

Japanesed mudardara

Another version of adapted murdardara (the Middle-East rice lentil dish). I served it inside a Japanese meal that contained :

aka endomame (click here)

A kasujiru soup with kombu dashi (seaweed stock) as a base, onion, daikon and kabocha as items.

sake kasu and miso as flavoring.

I made it in the rice cooker like for this easy mudardara. The veggies today were kujo negi leeks, new ginger, onion, myoga, with cumin as main spice.

A sliced of grilled salted salmon :

Raw myoga, blanched komatsuna greens, blanched okra, fried tofu :