Too hot to cook ? Too hot to eat ? Cooling full course

We’re in the heat of the hot days. I don’t even feel like eating, but that wouldn’t be a good idea. Let’s make something to enjoy till the last bit !
So here is the menu :

3 brown antipasti
tofu Caprese
kurozato kanten with grapes

Lots of hot weather recommended ingredients :
Kanten (agar) and konnyaku are jellies that help digestion.
Everything plant based, lots of raw.
Different colors and vitamins.
Sour vinegar, strong wasabi.

I know that looks… special. You have raw shiitake mushrooms, sliced, marinated in a little lemon juice.

Konnyaku sticks, with negi leeks. That has no calories or nearly. That’s for the fresh texture of the konnyaku and the pungency of the leek.

Today’s natto with black sesame and wasabi.

Now about the main dish…
capr’inspiration

Too lazy to prepare a sauce, I bring the olive oil, balsamico, salt and pepper on the table.

This time, it’s made with silky tofu and negi as the herb. Silkilicious…

The hardest ! The agar agar has to be cooked 2 minutes ! What a hell. But that’s all.

Just add the flavoring : kurozato, Okinawan black cane sugar. It has a taste of ginger bread, so just that is enough.
The hardened block cut in cubes, served chilled with grapes and toothpicks :

Marinated raw eringi mushrooms

This recipe was inspired by Nori Croquante’s Pleurotes crus à la crème d’avelines, poivre noir et aneth. Merci !

Eringi. They are cultivated “pleurotes“. They don’t look like wood pleurotes I knew in France. Well that’s not the same variety, but even, the shape of mushrooms changes dramatically when they cultivate them.

I sliced them. A Murphy’s law says : “Any recipe will require at least one ingredient you don’t have in your kitchen.”. So I totally changed the marinade.

In my marinade :
white seeds sesame
goji berries (they brought the red color)
powdered ginger
water.
I combined the ingredients, mixed, let them soak 15 minutes, mixed again. That’s what you can do when you have not soaked from the day before. I added salt, black pepper.

Pat them with sauce on all sides. Put a few hours in the fridge. Only 2 hours…

And I found the color had become a little vivid. I have added a little vinegar and a little black sugar.

A bed of young onions. I salted them a lot and I have rinsed after 15 minutes so they don’t “attack” the mouth and you can enjoy crunchy raw onion without becoming a vampire repellent.

That makes a very refreshing, sophisticated and delicious side dish.