Arame with almonds and deep-fried dried tofu

This is quite a fancy way to serve arame, especially to people who are not thrilled by the vision of eating seaweed – and there are too many of them! 😀 Adding rich ingredients such as almonds and deep-fried tofu always helps…

First prepare your tofu – you could use regular firm tofu, OR dried tofu, which has both a very different flavour and texture, that I really enjoy –  if it´s prepared properly. First soak the dried tofu for about 15 minutes, then  squeeze out water with your hands, but don´t squeeze too hard, you want the tofu to stay moist, retaining a bit of liquid, otherwise they soak up too much oil. Deep fry the soaked tofu slices until light golden, let them rest for a while on napkinks to drain excess oil and cut up into cubes when cooled down.

Meanwhile you can take a handful of arame seaweed and soak it, also for about 15 minutes, then drain and rinse with fresh water. Sautee onion in a pot with a tiny bit of sesame oil and a pinch of salt, add soaked arame, chopped carrot, curly cabbage and daikon (I used the green variety). Add roasted almonds (I roasted them for maybe 15 minutes in the oven, on a tray with a silicone baking mat). Season with 2 TBSP shoyu soy sauce, 1 TBSP rice vinegar and about half a teaspoon of dried ginger powder. Add fried tofu cubes and enough water to nearly cover. Simmer on a low flame for half an hour, adding water as needed, but only very little at a time.

I served the arame dish with a rice/hato mugi mixture and some raw greens (edible weeds).

Morning apple-flavoured millet

This is not really a recipe, just a little breakfast idea 😉

I had some organic unfiltered apple-apricot juice on hand, but you could definitely use just plain apple juice. I usually make my morning millet porridge just with water in a 1:3 ratio, but now I switched the water for above mentioned juice, keeping the same ratio. It was incredibly sweet and delicious, more a dessert than a breakfast porridge! 😀 And so creamy….

I topped the grain with toasted chopped almonds!

 

Roasted beets, pumpkin and cauliflower and Hiziki with almonds

The title says it all:

I sliced up a  medium-sized and peeled red beet, took apart some cauliflower florets and made big chunks of hokkaido pumpkin. I sprinkled the veggies with olive oil and tamari (the best is to use a spray to get an even light sprinkle, totally worth the money!) and with some dried rosemary. I placed them in a baking dish with a bit of water on the bottom, covered the dish with tin foil and baked for about 45 minutes until tender. The last 10-15 minutes you can bake them uncovered so they get less soggy. In the end it looked like this:

 

Meanwhile I soaked hiziki (half an hour should do the trick), discarded the water (the flavour can be a bit overpowering), added (overnight soaked and peeled) almonds and cooked the meal for 30-45 minutes on a low flame with some water and tamari. Don´t go too light on the tamari – seaweed needs strong flavouring, otherwise it tastes just like a…well, seaweed 😀 Normally I add some vegetables to the seaweed but this time I left it plain, just hiziki-almonds-seasoning.

I served the dinner with rice and amaranth with some shiso leaf powder.

 

Cauliflower with creamy almond-dill sauce

Being macro I sometimes miss rich creamy white sauces…but there´s no reason to be sad, because you can quite easily make a sauce that comes pretty close, using almond flour and non-dairy milk 🙂

First shortly sautee minced garlic on a tiny bit of olive oil, then add finely diced onion, and when the onion softens, add finely cut leek. Each time accompany the vegetable with a few grains of sea salt to release more liquid and sweetness. Mix in approximately 6 heaping tbsp of almond flour and then gradually pour in one litre of non-dairy milk (I had rice milk). Stir well (preferably with a whisk) to avoid lumps. Mix in a teaspoon (or more) of diluted white miso and bring the liquid to a boil. Cook uncovered on a moderate flame, stirring every now and then, until a substantial part of the liquid evaporates and you get a preferred consistency of the sauce. Season with ume plum vinegar and/or salt as needed (the sauce can be on the sweet side because of the condensed milk, but I actually liked that), you can also add some cracked black pepper. Towards the end mix in chopped fresh dill – I used a lot to get an intense flavour reminding me of the traditional Czech creamy dill sauce 😀

I served the sauce over blanched cauliflower and with red rice and gomasio.

Baked fish with almond and dried tomato sauce

You can use any fish for this recipe, my local fish shop had plaice, so that was what I used.

For the sauce you will need to soak almonds overnight and the next day peel off the skins. Soak a few (one or two per person) dried tomatoes for at least half an hour in water. Place both in a blender with a pinch of salt and half a teaspoon of dried garlic powder. Add enough water to enable blending into a smooth paste (or chunky, if you like that better). Adjust salt.

Place plaice (pun!) in a greased baking dish, spread sauce on top and bake about 20 minutes on 200°C, the crust should get a bit browned. Serve with a grain or (for easier digestion) with steamed vegetables, preferably leafy greens.  I had curly cabbage, string beans and cauliflower leaves. Raw daikon with a drop of tamari soy sauce and some finely chopped spring onion will help to digest the fish and oils as well.