Hiziki seaweed with roasted walnuts and vegetables

Somehow I think not many people pair seaweed with nuts, but I must say that it´s one of my favourite ways to prepare seaweed dishes! It adds richness and crunchiness to this otherwise “clean” tasting vegetable, which can be a bit bland and/or fishy for some people 😀

I usually also sautee some vegetables on oil as a base – here I used my most common pair of onion and carrot and I also added in parsley stems (don´t  throw away those guys!). Then I tossed in the hiziki (first soaked for at least half an hour in water, then drained and rinsed), poured  in water to nearly cover the veggies and simmered it all for about 30-45 minutes under a lid on a low flame. Near the end I added a handful of roasted walnuts and seasoned the dish with some salt, shoyu soy sauce and apple cider vinegar.

I served the seaweed with rice pressure cooked with chestnuts (dried ones, so I first had to soak them overnight) and some plain black beans, cooked only with salt.

One-pot rice and black bean dish

One-pot meals are my big love – so soothing, warming, easy to prepare, and so little to clean up afterwards! Oh and a great way to use up any leftovers and odd pieces of vegetables sitting for a long time in the fridge, not to forget that!

Here I tossed into one pot: leftover pressure cooked rice with chestnuts (I was using dried chestnuts, so they were first soaked overnight and then cooked with the rice the usual way), leftover cooked black beans, chunks of carrot and parsley root and hokkaido pumpkin. I seasoned the dish with some nutmeg and ground cumin, and probably some extra salt found its way there too…

A more macrobiotic plate again…

I don´t  post so many of the neat grain-vegetable-legume macrobiotic plates anymore, but here´s one of them, all nice and balanced and colourful 🙂

-Pressure cooked rice with sweet rice and gomasio (currently we have sesame and flax seed about half and half, in a 1:16 ratio of salt to seeds)

-Oil-sauteed daikon, carrot, onion, leek, cauliflower and cabbage with one part of rice vinegar and two parts of shoyu soy sauce to season

-Oven roasted pumpkin sprinkled with salt and dried thyme

-Black beans from Hokkaido seasoned with a tablespoon of shoyu soy sauce, a teaspoon of rice malt, cooked with a few finely chopped sundried tomatoes and organic corn kernels from a can

6.1. Lunch, dinner and dessert :)

For lunch I could re-cycle the black bean dish from yesterday (see previous post), it was very nice mixed into water-sauteed vegetables (paksoi, leek, pointed cabbage and two types of green beans – flat and pointed ones), seasoned with a tablespoon of tamari. As a side I had sweet millet cooked together with chunks of hokkaido pumpkin (my favourite sidedish just after brown rice!) and fresh rucola (arugula) and olives to compliment the meal.

For dinner I decided to bake a fish in tin foil (since we have a wonderful big oven now :-D). I seasoned the slices of codfish (I buy only MSC certified fish) with a bit of salt and an organic herb mix which is sold specifically for seasoning fish. On top I sprinkled a generous amount of thin sliced onion and fennel, wrapped all inside the foil and baked for 30 minutes covered and then 15 more minutes uncovered so the fish and veggies could get a bit of a “tan”.  I served the fish with blanched greens (paksoi, pointed cabbage and mixed in raw rucola) and quinoa mixed with fresh parsley leaves (they add a nice colour contrast). It was really yummy!

I even made a decadent dessert…very quick and easy rice crispie dessert! In a saucepan over a low flame I liquified 2 parts of tahini with 1 part of maple syrup and 1 part of rice malt, stirred in a handful of cashew nuts and a cup of brown rice crispies (puffed rice). I spooned the sticky creation onto a wooden cutting board covered with baking paper and evened it out a bit, something like this…

It´s best to let this dessert cool in a fridge before attempting to cut neat squares with a sharp knife. But to be honest the dessert didn´t become as solid as I would have wished, making it hard to cut slices which don´t fall apart. There is lots of room for improvement but the taste was great! 😀

5.1.

I really love the looks of this simple healthy dish!

What is it? Just…

Cooked brown rice, steamed chinese cabbage, green beans and paksoi, baked hokkaido pumpkin slices and black beans with a sweet-sour glaze.

The pumpkin was in the oven for about half an hour on 200°C and before baking I sprayed it lightly with tamari (I love my tamari spray!) and seasoned with dried rosemary. Next time I would bake it less long because it was a bit too crispy – but pumpkin crackers ain´t bad either 😀

The black hokkaido beans were first dry-roasted until their peels cracked and the inside turned golden, then pressure cooked for 45 minutes with a double amount of water and a piece of kombu seaweed to soften them more. When they were done I thickened the remaining bean water with a tablespoon of kuzu starch diluted in a bit of cold water (be sure to stir constantly when mixing in the kuzu solution…), while keeping the beans on a low flame (the kuzu must be cooked). Then I seasoned them with some lemon juice, ume plum vinegar and rice malt. It turned out a bit too sour thanks to the vinegar/lemon combination, so if you like your beans more sweet than sour, leave out one of them. But if you don´t use ume plum vinegar (which is salty), add either salt or soy sauce, otherwise there will be no salt in your beans which would not taste balanced at all 😉

 

4.12.

As a grain I cooked millet with amaranth (2 parts millet and 1 part amaranth), about half an hour, with 1:3 grain:water ratio. Surprisingly nice combination.

For a seaweed dish I soaked hiziki (or hijiki) for maybe 15 minutes, until it got a bit softer and doubled its size, then I cooked it with a part of its soaking water (just enough to cover), dried daikon (I didn´t soak it this time, which turned out fine), sesame seeds,”shavings” of carrot and burdock root. At the end I added tamari to season and let it cook away (it shouldn´t be swimming in too much liquid, not nice to serve).

As the main veggie dish I cooked chopped kale in some water until it softened a bit, then added small chunks of cucumber, and let it simmer for a while still, seasoned with ume plum vinegar and finely cut dill. I love dill and it goes really well with cucumber, and actually even with the kale.

I also had leftover black hokkaido beans which I just heated up with a bit of diluted dark rice miso – I always like beans with miso in them.

Very strengthening menu!

2.12. Black hokkaido bean-pumpkin-kale stew

Yeah, lately I´m all about stews! It must be the cold, wet, windy weather we are getting lately. I´m eating more and more beans and a TON of pumpkin. Seems I cannot get enough pumpkin, ever. Well, it´s abundant at this time of the year!

As a sidedish I picked amaranth, which I cooked 1:3 (grain:water) for 30 minutes, on a very low flame, using a flame deflector. It was sooooo creamy! Sprinkled with homemade gomasio, of course…I got pretty good at making my own gomasio 😀

For the stew I cooked a small bunch of chopped kale with small chunks of carrot, butternut squash and hokkaido pumpkin (you can pick just one if you want, I had both at home) in enough water to cover, until the pumpkin is soft. Towards the end I added black hokkaido beans (you can also get ordinary black beans, the ones from Hokkaido island are grown on vulcanic soil and are more mineral rich), slices of leek and tamari to season.

Note: the black beans I first dry-roasted in a pressure cooker until the skins cracked and the white inside got a bit golden, then added a double amount of water, a piece of kombu, brought to pressure and cooked 45 minutes.

 

31.10.

The nice yellow soup in the picture is pumpkin soup – cooked up hokkaido pumpkin, blended in a blender with added shiro miso (white, shortly fermented miso) and some ginger juice to taste – I personally think pumpkin soup just needs ginger in it! 😀

For grain I had brown calasparra rice mixed with red thai cargo rice and quinoa – all pressure cooked togethe for 45 minutes, served with a sprinkle of gomasio. I got a bit addicted to mixing different grains together, makes cooking much more interesting. But I must admit that I am not so fond of pressure cooking the quinoa with the rest – normally I cook quinoa without pressure for just about 15 minutes, a longer cooking time makes it too slimy and tasteless 😦

I sauteed pointed cabbage with green beans together with some mirin and ume plum vinegar – pointed cabbage rules!! So tender, compared to round cabbage.

And the beans are black hokkaido beans – first rubbed in a wet kitchen towel (instead of washing, so that their skin doesn´t “fly off” during roasting), then dry roasted for a few minutes until their skin cracks and becomes a bit golden, then pressure cooked with a double amount of water, for 45 minutes. When they´re done I added some kuzu to their leftover cooking water to make a sort of thick sauce (and a nice glaze on the beans), tamari (instead of salt) and rice malt – lovely combination!