Leaves and buds, plant powered early Spring meal

The big lunch. A veggie orgy.
You have seen already 3 dishes, here is the final installment.

I cooked this with all the veggies leftovers I had. Spring cabbage and maitake mushrooms that you see here. Also onion, kintoki red carrot and I’ve added potatoes. At the end, more greens of shungiku.

The veggies are cooked without oil, steamed in the pan. Just salt. They bring enough complementary flavors.

The dish : jardinière de légumes (vegetable garden lady). That looks dry, but it’s very mushy, soft and juicy.

Garlic and yuzu sautéed tsubomina. That you are detailed here.

The main dish maybe is the tofu on wasabi leaves, from this post.

The last slice of this delicious black sesame azuki bean terrine that I had frozen, a while ago (here). I had 2 huge bean terrines that fed me for a while. Now I need to bake the next ones.

Mellow. A black tahini bean terrine.

Terrine du jour. It has the nuttiness of pasted black sesame (nerigoma).

The main ingredient : azuki beans from Hokkaido.

About 5 cups of boiled azuki beans half mashed, 1 cup of black sesame pasted into tahini, more sesame seeds, 2 tbs of Chinese black miso, 1 ts of wuxi (Chinese 5 spice mix), one minced onion, a handful of raisins soaked in brandy, a few tbs of flour to dry the mix. Baked. Cooled.

Peanut, shiitake and black bean ‘pâté de campagne’

It is a chunky pâté with a woody flavor of nuts and fungi.

It looks like the meaty pâté de campagne.

classic pâtés

It’s not a faux. It’s a different one, with these ingredients :

Onion, garlic, black beans (kuromame), mashed black beans, soaked dry shiitake mushroom slices…

Crunchy and flavored…

After baking.

Painted with sweet chili sauce.

It has a spreadable texture. Well, it’s pâté. Perfect with buckwheat yuzu bread and a salad.

Warm kintoki red bean terrine, with creamy yellow sauce

Today a red veggieful terrine served warm with a creamy sunny sauce that sparkles on the tongue. For a contrast of texture, I ate it with crunchy boiled renkon (lotus root) and a fresh quick tsukemono (grated cabbage, turnip, onion, salt, combined 30 minutes before).
You’ve seen bean terrines before on this blog and you’ll see more because they are very convenient. I can prepare several different ones, bake them together and I have a little stock.

Today’s bean, already boiled of course :

Taisho kintoki mame

This terrine is made of : mashed beans with onion, garlic, miso, paprika and oats for the binding mass.
Inside : whole beans, dices of red and yellow bell pepper, minced onions.

Then, it’s baked and let cool 48 hours before cutting thick slices. They can be reheated in a steamer or the micro-wave.

The sauce is extremely easy to prepare and surpringly refined :
Mix : 1/2 coconut cream, 1/2 coconut milk, a little potato starch, a pinch of curry spice mix (powdered), a good amount of powdered turmeric, 1/4 cup of cut yellow paprika.
Heat 2 minutes in the micro-wave.
Add very strong fine mustard to taste.

Kuromame bean is the new black

黒豆
This is a compilation about ideas to cook kuromame (black soy beans). First, you need to boil them, go to the end of this post for instructions.

SIDE DISH

As a side dish for :
kare raisu (Japanese curry)
Korean wind lunch
Rum vanilla apple black beans, in fragrant tortilla

WITH RICE

Rice and beans.

Black rice
Same recipe as seki-han, red rice (red rice), but with kuromame…

Salade de riz Méditerranée

BEAN BALLS

A variation to burger or croquette.

Tama (green lemon big bean ball)

Swedish bean balls
Dark green curry with bean balls

OTHERS :

Marron berry chunky terrine (France)

Feijoada with pig trotter (Brazil)

Enfrijoladas frescas (Mexico)

kuromame shiso empanadas

also in :
Japanese garden creamy Winter soup
four bean gumbo
‘lumaca’ soup

SWEET :

Recooked in a syrup of sugar and grated fresh ginger.

Sweetened with syrup of kurozato (black sugar). They are floating with black sesame on top a bowl of sweet potato okayu

PREPARATION OF DRIED BEANS :

Cooking them is quite long, that can take 3 or 4 hours, after soaking them 24 hours. The time is hard to “predict” as it depends on the size of beans and their age (this year’s crop, or older…).

Process :
-Anyway, rinse them and soak them. You can add baking soda or not (I don’t but Japanese water is not harsh).
-Bring them to boil, you use the soaking water or change. In the first case, color will be more vivid. Boil them at least 10 minutes and take away the foam on surface (the toxic substance of beans).
-Continue on low heat, in a crock pot if you want. Beans are cooked when they are soft.
I cook a batch of 250g without any flavoring, and I freeze most in cups (silicone cupcake molds) for further use.

Tip (that I don’t use) : to keep the color, you can add some nails or other iron objects that are rusted.

Japan’s most common recipe is to cook them with sugar (same weight as the beans) added from the soaking water, or from the low heat simmering… or like I do later. The sweet black beans are one item of the New Year good luck dishes. For savory recipes, you can add a piece of kombu seaweed in the water.