Romanesco ganmodoki

がんもどきGanmodoki are one of the numerous tofu based specialties that you can find in Japan. You wonder how many there are ? Oh, hundreds :

The Tofu Hyakuchin (豆腐百珍 Tōfu Hyakuchin?) is a Japanese recipe book written by Ka Hitsujun (何必醇) and published in 1782 during the Edo period. It lists 100 recipes for preparing tofu. Due to its immense popularity at the time, a second volume was published the following year.

source

And they had no romanesco then, so recipes like this were added later.
We can buy different types of ganmodoki in tofu shops, at markets and supermarkets and use them in many dishes. Making yours is easy.
Romanesco is beautiful. I’m never tired of watching it.

For the detailed recipe, see on the blog of the Gourmet that lives in Shizuoka. I simply changed the garnishing vegetables.

The stalks and leaves of the romanesco. I eat them too in soups or whatever. Here, I’ve cut thin sticks and steamed them. I’ve also steamed a few kabocha pumpkin sticks.

ヒジキHijiki seaweed. We can buy them fresh or dry. That doesn’t make a big difference. Add water to the dry ones, wait 10 minutes.

I pan-fried them.

Served with steamed romanesco, raw myoga, and shikwasa lime juice as a seasoning.

A nice plant based lunch.

Lunch around veggie kurokke

Let’s complete the menu. As it’s still hot (arounf 30 degrees celcius), I’ve served the kurokke warm and the rest chilled.

You could see the making of green and orange kurokke in the previous post.

I had the skins of the broad beans and of the kabocha. I’ve put them in the blender with some komatsuna greens and a tbs of miso. That gave me a chilled green miso soup :

Myoga.

I’ve diced red bell pepper. Salted, let 15 minutes. Then poured on cubes of silky tofu. Decorate with cut myoga.

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 :

Willow leaf fish

Komochi shishamo. Shishamo smelts with their kids. The body is full of roes.

柳葉魚shishamo means literally “willow leaf fish”. That’s when they hang them for drying after salting that the image takes its sense. An Ainu legend says a man was complaining near the river that his daughter was suffering from hunger, and the water’s Gods heard him. They grabbed the branch of a willow, so a few leaves fell into the water and transformed themselves in fish.

I simply grilled them.

Konnyaku sashimi, with sweet chili sauce and sesame. Goya around.

Myoga. Other sides are mesclun salad and grated daikon radish.

White waterfall (konnyaku noodles, shirataki)

糸こんにゃく (itokonnyaku) or しらたき(shirataki). They are noddles made of konnyaku. Shirataki means white waterfall as that’s what they look like. And who doesn’t want to eat a fresh mountain torrent in this season ?

Myoga, a veggie related to ginger. Delicious raw.

The noodles are sold in bundles that can unfold or not if you want to cook them in a hot pot. I simply rinsed them in cold water.

That’s a food without calories and it’s popular in the West some diet extremists. I don’t eat konnyaku in order to stuff my face without getting the calories. The food is appreciated in Japan for its texture and the lack of flavor that allows you to match to any flavorful food. A perk is konnyaku fiber favors smooth digestion.
These noddles, served chilled are very refreshing.

The tsuyu (dip sauce : dashi broth + soy sauce + mirin) with grated daikon radish. All the flavor comes from it so the tsuyu has to be coarse. I added green yuzu slices and the myoga.