zero calorie food | GOURMANDE in OSAKA

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.

Natto with mustard.

A small gaspacho.

Bought black gomadofu (black sesame tofu). You can make yours (recipe). This one is sweet. I served as dessert it with a yamamomo berry.

Vegan brunch. It’s roast konnyaku steak, with kinome and green peppers, and roast fresh takenoko ( bamboo shoot).

The konnyaku (konjac, konjak) is a sort of root vegetable that is not sold whole but processed in blocks of different shapes. It has nearly no calories and it has digestive properties. Taste is inexistant, unless you get flavored versions, but the texture is pleasant and it will absorb the taste of the sauce of condiments, like here.
After washing and drying the block of konnyaku, I cut the top and stir-fried it in olive oil plus a little soy sauce and lots of freshly milled 4 color peppercorn mix. I know olive oil is not classically Japanese, but it is really good this way.

The stir-fried (sweet) green peppers.

Topping the steak, leaves of kinome…

…from this little tree that I keep indoor as a green plant. It is a young tree of sansho, Japanese “Sichuan pepper” that gives sansho peppercorn. More here (click on text) :
Sansho, la saveur boisee de la cuisine japonaise. (The wood flavor in Japanese cuisine.)
Outside, it has predators here. Those baby butterflies are crazy about it, and one of those itsy bitsy worms can clear all the leaves of the whole tree in a few minutes. That happens automatically on my balcony and I live on the 5th floor (4th floor in logical French system), they crawl up on purpose.
The plant does its best to protect itself, it has thorns, so before eating I tear of the leaves from the stalks. Actually, I eat them with the bamboo shoots :

A fresh small bamboo shoot. To see where they come from read the story of baby bamboo.
I cut out the leaves around and roasted it in the pan.

It does not look so great on the photos but this is definitely the delicacy of this season. It was so good that I could have eaten a dozen. But I had only one for today.

boiled takenoko bamboo shoots and kinome