Adzuki-corn soup

This is a slightly modified version of the kidney bean and corn soup which you can find in Wieke´s cookbook. I decided to use some leftover cooked adzuki beans and it turned out delicious! You can use fresh corn on the cob, but it´s not in season yet here, so I just used corn from a jar, which (together with using cooked beans) made this soup incredibly quick.

For one portion add about half a bowl of beans to one bowl of soup, mix in corn kernels (to your liking), chopped carrot, diced onion, some salt or shoyu (my beans already had some shoyu) and bring to a boil. Simmer until the veggies are soft, then add 1/2 tbsp white (shiro) miso diluted in a bit of warm water. Simmer for a few minutes more. Serve with garnish such as chopped parsley or spring onion.

Adzuki/kombu/pumpkin dish

The adzuki/pumpkin/kombu dish is another healing and strengthening dish, the adzuki beans are especially helpful (as all beans) for kidneys, thus for overall strength and vitality, the hokkaido pumpkin for the middle organs (stomach, spleen, pancreas) and our sugar metabolism, the kombu adds much needed minerals and helps alkalize the blood. You simply cook the beans with a stamp-sized piece of kombu in a pressure cooker, I used the smaller variety from Hokkaido, so they didn´t need to soak, but otherwise soak your adzuki for a few hours or even overnight, together with the kombu. The Hokkaido adzuki need 30 minutes under pressure, the normal ones need 45 minutes, bean to water ratio is about 1:2.  After the beans are done, open the cooker, add pumpkin (twice the amount of beans) cut into bigger chunks and cook for additional 20 minutes (without pressure) until the pumpkin is soft. Season with tamari/shoyu sauce (towards the end). I garnished my beans with fresh parsley.

As a side I had brown rice with gomasio, blanched greens (green beans, broccoli, celery stalks and chinese cabbage) and a miso soup (made with wakame, celery root, onion, pumpkin, corn kernels, leftover cooked and chopped up kombu, dried daikon and spring onion for garnish).

Adzuki bean kanten dessert

This is such a macrobiotic classic, that I have to include it! Some call it “macrobiotic chocolate”, and while diehard chocolate lovers will probably just laugh at this, I think it´s actually not so far off….at least for us macros who have a bit adjusted taste buds 😀

It´s really really simple as long as you have a pressure cooker…

Into the cooker you place adzuki beans (I used half a cup of hokkaido adzuki beans which are smaller, more mineral rich and cook less long even without presoaking), agar agar (I used one and a half bars, but you can use less or more, depending on required thickness of the dessert), dried organic apricots (I used about 3/4 cup, slightly more than the amount of the beans, but again this depends on required sweetness) and some (optional) orange peel (I only had dried mandarine peel which works fine I think). Add about a double or even triple amount of water. Bring under pressure and cook for about 30 minutes, the beans have to be soft. Transfer to a blender, add a pinch of salt and blend until smooth. Let it cool down and thicken in a bowl or eat warm 😀

17.11. Kale-adzuki bean miso soup

As a grain I pressure cooked short grain brown rice with hato mugi, On top I sprinkled some dried bonito (fish) flakes which I purchased in chinatown. I heard you can use them as a sprinkle this way, but I´m not a fan – the bonito flakes have a reeeally strong fishy smell, which would not be bad in a bouillon (another way how to use these flakes), but as a sprinkle it was a bit too much 😀

My soup was made by boiling water with cooked hokkaido adzuki beans (the variety that comes from the vulcanic soils of the Hokkaido island in Japan), kale, turnip and finely cut ginger, with diluted rice miso added at the end. It was really yummy, but next time I´ll stick to ginger juice – I just don´t like biting into pieces of ginger, no matter how finely cut they are! 😀

 

 

10.10.

Yesterday I was cooking a whole lot – I gotta practice now that I´m doing the macro school!!

For lunch I had cooked sweet millet (more sticky and creamy than regular millet), with steamed veggies (red cabbage, onion, daikon, carrot, cauliflower, rapini/mizuna), and dry-roasted tempeh with sauce made of tamari, mirin (sweet rice wine) and lemon juice (add after the tempeh is roasted and let evaporate). I burnt my tempeh a little bit, so no picture! 😀

For my dinner I cooked a mix of buckwheat and quinoa (which is truly awesome, the light texture of the quinoa makes the heavy hearty buckwheat less heavy and hearty :-D). I also cooked adzuki beans with kombu (helps soften the beans) and some time before the end added a few chunks of hokkaido pumpkin, mmmmmmm…..

I also had a sidedish of arame (which I presoaked for a bit and used the soaking water) cooked with sliced onion, roasted sesame seeds and corn kernels, and seasoned with tamari. I cooked it long enough to make the water soak in or evaporate. Arame is my favourite seaweed, with a very gentle pleasant taste – good for seaweed beginners!