Home-made jade

This is edamame tofu fully made of edamame beans, which are fresh green soy beans.

The other ingredient is kudzu. It is the starch from a plant. It is sold in the form of a powder, in Japanese groceries and also in some Western health stores (and you will probably find it expensive). It is very close to arrow-root and can surely be substituted.

Recipe of edamame tofu

You can un-mold it or serve it in cups as you like. Un-molding works better with the version with agar or gelatine , but the version simple is more creamy.
Make your choice.

Version simple
edamame (weighted cooked and shelled) 120 g
kombu dashi 300 g (300 ml, 1.75 cup)
kudzu 20 g

Version +1
kudzu 15 g
gelatine 5 g

Version +2
kudzu 15 g
instant agar-agar powder 5 g

A -Rub the pods of edamame with coarse salt and rinse them. Boil them in their pods in slightly salty water. That takes 4~5 minutes till they get soft.

B-Blend together the shelled beans, the dashi and the kudzu powder. If you want a perfectly silky result sieve the liquid. Pour it in the sauce pan.
C-Heat on medium-low, while constantly stirring with a wooden spoon. After a few minutes, it thickens. Add in the gelatine if you use it. Stir well.
D- Pour in containers or molds. Let cool. Then put in the fridge a few hours.

Version +
-If you use gelatine, rehydrate it with a little dashi in a cup, add it to the beans after 1 minute.
-If you use agar-agar, add it to a little dashi in the sauce pan, bring to a boil, add the bean mix to it.

It can be served as a savory dish. Or as a sweet, as you will surely find the taste very sweet.

The jade aspect is beautiful. The texture is not like white tofu either.

Ideas to serve it : click here.

Edamame tofu, 3 ways to enjoy the pastel green flan

Tofu made of edamame, you can buy it or make it (click here).
Classic, with grated wasabi and nama shoyu soy sauce.

Unmold it, pour a crown of sauce around, a chestnut of wasabi on top.

Seasonal, with kinome on top and a sweet tsuyu (reheat kombu dashi stock with a little mirin and soy sauce, bring to boil, let cool).

Sweet for the small flower.

Drizzle honey on it. Top with dry fruits (goji berries).
You can have it as a dessert. Actually, that would be a dish like another in an Asian meal. There was no notion of finishing with a dessert, even if it is sometimes done now, due to Western in influence.

Making kombu dashi, Japanese vegan stock

Kombu seaweed, dry. As you can find it in all Asian markets. On the beach, they are very long, several metres. They cut bands of 50 cm to dry them. Then they are sold like that at markets or pre-cut for convenient packaging. It’s easy to cut with scissors.

It is used in combination with dry fish to make dashi, the Japanese all purpose stock (click on text) :

Quick dashi from scratch… or from fish flakes

But you can also make a pure kombu dashi. The taste is of course different from the fish versions. So it is used for different dishes.
That’s a convenient substitute to classic dashi stock for vegan or any diet that excludes fish.

Kombu dashi (recipes)

-Take a piece of kombu seaweed (a square of 25 cm for 1/2 liter or 2 cups). Either you pass it 2 seconds under tap water, or wipe it with a wet kitchen paper, in order to clean away the white dust (salt) around it. To release more flavor quicker, you can make cuts in it all around.

First round :
-Put it in a sauce pan with the water. Slowly bring to boil. Cut the heat. Wait 2 hours. Take your stock.

Second round :-Add more water. Keep in the fridge overnight. You get a second batch of stock.

Third round :
-Cut the softened kombu and use it as an ingredient or a topping (like you’d use mushrooms, many recipes possible).

Other recipe, by cold processs :
Same as before, but no cooking is necessary. Let the kombu soak in water overnight, in the fridge. You can eat it raw too.

It’s not time consuming to prepare it. Just think in advance.
I don’t think you can store it a long time. If it is boiled, it’s OK 2-3 days in the fridge. If it is raw, rehydrated of course. I’d use it in the day, even refrigerated.

Soupe du jour : the pop-corn quicksand

A twisted soup… for a funny plant based meal. That’s a delicious fresh green creamy soup, with a hint of nuttiness from the pop-corn.

Green simplicity. Full of proteins and flavor.
Only edamame (green fresh soy beans), mizuna leaves and kombu dashi (seaweed stock). Plus corn, for the topping.

Tristep trigridient soup :

1-Rub the pods of edamame with coarse salt and rinse them. Boil them in their pods in slightly salty water. That takes 4~5 minutes till they get soft. Or use frozen pre-boiled ones.

2-Add 2/3 of the dashi stock to the shelled beans and juice in the blender. Simmer a few minutes in a sauce pan (or the micro-wave).

3-Juice the mizuna with 1/3 of dashi. Mix to the soup. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve.

Pop 2 tbs of corn. I like corn flavored pop-corn. It has to be made and eaten in a delay of few minutes. After the nice taste wears off nearly as soon as they cool down. I know you can cover them with caramel, fudge or other sauces, but you simply get a piece of plastic texturing your sauce and the taste of corn is lost.

Voila…
…now, look at that :

Seen it ? Too fast ? Replay, slow mode :

The camera was not on the paparazzi mode… that takes 2 minutes. But the hot soup “eats” the hot pop corn and you can see it disappearing like a person trapped in quicksand. Actually, they deflate.
I suppose that works with any kind of soup.