Sour spring meals

Today I again tried out two recipes from Wieke´s cookbook – Daikon in lemon and Carrots sweet and sour, both with a very fresh tangy spring taste. It would have been a better idea not to combine two quite sour dishes on one plate, but well, now I know 🙂 They were pretty delish anyway, and together with some fresh wild rucola they sure must have given a boost to my detoxing liver…

They are (yes, again…) very simple and quick 🙂 For the Daikon in lemon just slice a 10 cm chunk of daikon into thin rounds, grate 1/2 tsp of organic fresh lemon peel, squeeze out one tablespoon of fresh lemon juice (or just half a tablespoon if you like less sour), mix all together in a small pot with a thick bottom and stir over a low flame for a few minutes. The daikon should not be too soft. Add 1/4 tsp of salt to get the daikon´s juices out and you can add a bit of water if necessary, to prevent burning.

For the Carrots sweet and sour slice one big carrot into matchsticks, combine in a small pot with 2 tablespoons (or 1 or 1 1/2 tbsp if you like less sour) of ume plum vinegar and stir for a few minutes over medium flame until the carrot softens up a bit, then stir in one tablespoon of rice malt. At the end you can mix in about one tablespoon of roasted sesame seeds.

I served these meals with rucola and a side of brown rice+wild rice mixture (with stirred in dried shiitake which I soaked, cooked first in a bit of water, and then, when the water was almost gone, added one tablespoon of shoyu and cooked again until all liquid evaporated). Garnished with black sesame/brown sesame gomasio. For protein I had cooked split peas reheated with salt, fresh celery leaves and sliced parsnip.

Zucchini barley soup

This recipe comes from Wieke Nelissen of the Amsterdam Kushi Institute, where I studied  in 2011-12. It´s perfect for the weather here which is getting pretty warm! You´ll need

2 medium zucchinis, chopped up

3 cups of water

1/3 cup barley

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tablespoon oil (I used mirin instead, to stay oil-free, and kept the amount)

garnish (I used spring onion and a few matchsticks of young carrot)

a sprinkle of dashi (my addition, optional)

1 tablespoon kuzu diluted in cold water (optional)

First pressure cook the barley with one cup of water and a pinch of salt for 40 minutes. Meanwhile sautee the zucchini shortly (on oil or mirin), adding half a teaspoon of salt and then covering the zucchini with two cups of water. Let simmer until zucchini softens and then blend with a mixer. Add cooked barley. I also thickened the soup with about a tablespoon of kuzu starch diluted in a little cold water, and I sprinkled in maybe 1/4 of a little packet of dashi powder.

Crustless spring tofu quiche

My first attempt at a tofu quiche and it came out pretty well! Even though I must admit that this oil-free spice-free “diet” version would have been even more awesome with some adjustments 😀 But well, I was happy I could enjoy it even with my current limitations.

It´s pretty easy…you need to first create two different parts of the quiche: the blended tofu part, and the sauteed veggie part.

For the tofu part I blended:

400 g firm tofu

a pinch of salt

a tablespoon of shoyu

1 tsp rice malt

a tablespoon of lemon juice

1/2 tsp organic baking powder

3 tablespoons of corn flour

water as needed (if you have a processor, you can omit this)

For the sauteed veggies, I sauteed:

1/2 cup of vegetable stock (I used my sweet vegetable drink :-D)

1 chopped up carrot

slices of 1 smaller onion

a few leaves of wild garlic, chopped fine

a little bunch of fresh nettles

1 spring onion, chopped fine

a few leaves of swiss chard, coarsely chopped

1 tablespoon ume plum vinegar

Mix the blended tofu mix with the sauteed veggies, pour the mixture into a form (I used a rectangular silicone baking dish), grease as needed, or use parchment paper, bake on 180°C in a preheated oven for 45 minutes until a golden crust appears……

 

Sides: rice/sweet rice mix; carrot leaves water-sauteed and seasoned with diluted white miso (condiment)

Soba with shoyu bouillon

I had some leftover cooked soba noodles, so the next day I tossed them into a lovely simple shoyu bouillon…

Just cook water with a couple of inches of kombu seaweed, for about 10 minutes, after which you take the kombu out, cut it into small pieces and return back (or save for another project…). The same thing you do with dried shiitake mushrooms (cook, take out, chop up, return). From the beginning I also added a small amount of dried daikon (it expands a lot in the liquid). Season with 2 tablespoons, or to your liking, of shoyu, and before serving, allow the soba to warm up in the liquid. Slurp up!

I served the bouillon with cooked rice/hato mugi mix, water-sauteed and lightly salted leek and swiss chard, and lentils with cooked hokkaido pumpkin cubes and shoyu.

Soba noodles with scrambled tofu

Soba noodles are very pricey, but once in a while, totally worth it! I used to eat only 100% buckwheat soba (glutenfree, but also the most expensive ones), but now my system tolerates (wholemeal) glutinous grains better, especially in an alkaline environment. So I had 40% buckwheat soba (the rest is whole wheat). They already contain salt, so you just cook them in a large amount of water for 6 minutes (or per package instructions) and you get the best result if you cool them down twice during the cooking with a bit of cold water, so they stop boiling and then bring back to rapid boil. They come out nicely firm and not soggy at all.

We had them with scrambled tofu. I started with sauteeing a larger onion with a bit of wild garlic (totally optional, but it´s nice), then adding a pinch of salt and little chunks of carrot, green beans and celery stalk. When the veggies softened up, I crumbled in a 200 g block of firm tofu, added a tablespoon of shoyu (natural soy sauce) and between 1/4- 1/2 tablespoon of organic sugarfree mustard. Let sautee for another 5 minutes at least, so the flavours combine.

I also had a little serving of chickpeas (seasoned only with salt) and of hiziki seaweed (cooked for at least half an hour with some of its soaking water, sliced onion and shoyu to taste).  Cook the hiziki until the water evaporates 🙂

Simple wok veggies on a quinoa bed

I´m posting this recipe more for showing the presentation of such a dish, because otherwise it´s pretty basic and you can really play around with all different kinds of veggies -pretty much any can be wok-ed, even though I tend to favour leafy greens and not so many hearty root veggies when it comes to wok cooking…but even root veggies make a nice contrast!

I mixed chopped up: celery root and celery stalk, carrots, chinese cabbage, white cabbage, curly green cabbage, green beans and daikon radish. As a sauce/dressing I used shoyu, mirin and lemon (in a 1:1: 0,5 ratio). Plus some sesame seeds. I served this as a big pyramid on top of a bed of soft quinoa 😀 Reeeeally quick meal!

Cauliflower with pumpkin-mochi sauce

This dish looks really beautiful, I think, because of the contrast of the bright orange sauce poured over the white cauliflower and grain 😀

I just boiled one smaller cauliflower head split into two halves (it needs about 10-15 minutes, submerged in salted water). For the sauce I cooked hokkaido pumpkin cut into chunks, and again, just enough water to submerge. You can cook this a bit longer than the cauliflower, together with grated brown rice mochi (for creamy texture), barley (or other) miso to taste, and a dash of lemon juice. Then blend until smooth and bring back to boil for a second.

I also blanched the cauliflower leaves, since they looked nice (and again – here´s your fiber!) and served the meal with rice and barley mix.

Shoyu bouillon and melted mochi nishime

I consider myself a bit of a soup freak. I used to really dislike soup as a kid and always wanted to skip it and go straight for the main course, but in the Czech culture soup is pretty important and is not to be skipped 😀 Well…in the last years I learnt to make soup that I actually enjoy. No – I love soup! And I could totally live off it…

Like this shoyu bouillon… Normally I stick to miso soup in a thousand variations, but I wanted to give this a try. And it was a good idea I will repeat again soon. So simple! For two people, just boil water and add: about 5 cm piece of kombu, about 2 cm piece of broken up wakame (I crush it between my fingers), fine strips of leek, daikon cut in cubes and one fresh chopped shiitake mushroom. Boil for about 5-10 minutes, then take out the kombu (you can use it for nishime or for cooking grains/beans), add one 1 cm thick slice of tofu cut into small cubes and 2 tablespoons of shoyu (for 2 bowls of soup). Garnish with fresh chopped parsley.

For the main course I made sweet millet into which I added (in the last 5 minutes) diluted brown rice miso to simmer and in the end mixed in fresh chopped parsley; and nishime of turnip, carrot, topinambour (Jerusalem artichoke), onion, parsnip, sweet potato and celery root. At the end I mixed in diluted shiro miso to simmer for a few minutes, together with a small cube (about 5 X 5 cm) brown rice mochi, grated on a grater with bigger holes. The mochi melts and it all becomes a lovely naturally sweet gooey mess, ehm, mixture! I learnt adding mochi to nishime from a friend of mine and it was a great learning moment…

13.3.

Rice and hato mugi are one of my favourite combinations! Of course pressure cooked for 45 minutes and sprinkled with some gomasio…

I made a nishime of daikon, turnip (even with some turnip greens), parsnip, topinambour (Jerusalem artichoke), carrot and butternut squash, seasoned with ume plum vinegar.

Arame seaweed was cooked for about half an hour together with finely chopped carrot tops (extremely fiber rich!), presoaked dried daikon and shoyu.

Mung beans flavoured also with a splash of shoyu.

Millet-carrot burgers and topinambour soup

In Slovenia I discovered they share my love for topinambours, also known as Jerusalem artichokes, a sort of tubers with a pleasant nutty taste. I like to use them in blended soups (they create quite a creamy starchy texture) – in the soup below I cooked them with a piece of wakame, carrots, sweet potato and butternut squash. I seasoned the soup with rice miso and garnished with parsley.

A couple of days ago I started my recommended dietary regime to clear up my persistent health issues…that means, among other things, going oil-free, for a couple of months. The evening before switching to this new diet I made….fried millet burgers! 😀 Yay! They were awesome…will miss those and similar stuff…

I had some leftover millet into which I stirred some brown rice flour, water and about a teaspoon of psyllium husk (a dietary fiber which helps binding). I seasoned the mix with salt, black pepper, italian herbs (made out of oregano, basel, rosemary, thyme and garlic), fresh parsley and fresh wild garlic (known also as ramsons, a thing you can find at the market here!). I grated a carrot to provide a veggie and then I just formed patties with my hand (the mix should be not too runny so you can create patties, but also not too stiff…just enough) and fried them in rice bran oil, one of my fave oils. Delish!