A soup made of all the leftovers :
-purple sweet potato
-cod fish
-jelly fish (preserved in salt, soaked)
-chick peas
-capers
-onion
-red wine
Simmer, then add Kintoki red carrot and turmeric.
And it’s… delicious indeed.
Steamed kabocha with sesame oil and sesame seeds.
Steamed okra and sudachi lime.
A yummy Winter lunch.
Tororo on my bowl of natto…
A nagaimo, a long yamaimo or Japanese yam. Naga means long. We often buy only a cut, but the root is 60 cm long or more.
Grated. Tororo tuto.
Like an apple or an avocado, grated yamaimo tends to oxidate and darken in color. Or not, and that’s not previsible. But that was the case with this one so I’ve added juice of sudachi lime to keep it relatively creamy in color. That’s also a nice flavor addition.
Black natto (fermented soy beans). It’s often paired with grated wasabi.
Natto with rice is a regular breakfast item in Japan. So just that with tororo and green tea. A nice simple brunch.
I have a little collection of mini-pumpkin. So I made a kabocha sarada, a pumpkin salad. That’s a healthier alternative to potato salad.
It’s the ideal way to get a refill of vitamins in the darker season.
First, this is my basket :
4 minis. There don’t all have names. Well all pumpkins are called kabocha in Japanese.
A baby butternut.
The smallest is called a botchan kabocha. Botchan, it’s the last youngest son of a family, the spoiled brat.
If you want ideas to use pumpkins, browse :
my pinterest selection
and
Dissection of a Summer kabocha, no waste
and
Cinderella gourmande, recipes of golden carriage
and
kabocha keyword
So take any sweet pumpkin, steam it and take the flesh. Add the white part of negi leeks, a small onion thinly sliced, a little fresh ginger thinly minced. Season with salt and pepper. Mix well.
Add the juice and grated zest of 2 sudachi limes.
Renkon, lotus root. I buy them already peeled, sliced, cleaned and blanched, but you can do it yourself
Small cucumbers, cut in sticks. Add the cucumber and lotus into the kabocha mix. You may need to add water. Cover and let a few hours in the fridge.
The next day, flavors have mixed harmoniously.
I eat it over 2 or 3 days as a side dish, or as an item to fill a lunch box.
It’s fresh, tart and silky.
Here is a light plant-based sauce, resembling mayonnaise.
Silky tofu, that you buy or make yourself.
It’s the base.
Sudachi citrus as a flavor.
Recipe :
A :
1/2 cup silky tofu
B :
1/4 ts hot mustard
1/8 ts turmeric for color (optional)
juice of a sudachi lime (or 1/3 lime, or other citrus)
salt, pepper to taste
Poach the tofu in hot water 2 minutes or cook in microwave, let water out. When it’s cooled, add in a blender with other ingredients listed as B.
Keep refrigerated up to a week. If the texture has changed, you just need to stir it with a spoon a little before using.
Rem : you can replace up to 2/3 of the tofu by more olive oil to get a fatter mayo closer to the classic version. That depends on your goal, it will still be vegan. I do it mostly to get a lighter sauce so I have oil just enough for flavoring.
It’s a very simple Japanese dish. This fresh sauce, tororo, is made from this root vegetable : Nagaimo.
Grating the nagaimo in the traditional way in a suribashi (mortar). You peel a length of that long potato and you rub it against the line of the pottery. You get this slimy texture, and that’s how we like it as it’s very refreshing. I guess some people don’t appreciate, and this vegetable is not for them.
Sudachi lime juice. A little sea salt.
Okra.
Juwari soba (100% buckwheat noodles), boiled, refreshed in iced water.
GOURMANDE in OSAKA 