Soba noodles with curried pumpkin sauce and tempeh crumble

Aaaaah, my favourite soba noodles! I have them so seldom, because they are so expensive! 😀 While I believe that nothing compares to authentic Japanese soba ( buckwheat and wheat or pure 100% buckwheat noodles), here in the Czech Republic I choose to substitute them with the cheaper local buckwheat pasta. I´m actually happy we have such a great buckwheat-product brand, not every country is so lucky! But here I used my long-saved stack of real soba, bought during our stay in Slovenia..

I made a sauce of long cooked cubed hokkaido pumpkin and onions – nearly cover the cubes with water and boil on low flame until soft. I seasoned the sauce with black Indian vulcanic salt and a generous amount of curry powder. I blended the sauce in a blender for a perfectly creamy texture.

On a pan I sauteed on oil a bunch of green beans, cut into tiny pieces, along with crumbled up tempeh and a splash of shoyu soy sauce.

Layer the bean/tempeh mixture and the pumpkin curry sauce over the noodles 🙂

Purple basil-sunflower pesto

I like to play with different types of pesto, some time ago I had the purple variety of basil which made for a slightly different taste (if you´re a pesto snob you will notice, I guess :-D), but mostly colour. I admit, the colour is not the most appealing colour you could imagine and green basil makes for a prettier pesto, in my opinion 😀

Anyway…first I roasted one cup of sunflower seeds, then I blended them with a bunch of purple basil and enough water and olive oil to make the blender work (you could use oil only, or water only, or a bit of both, depending on your personal preference). I seasoned the pesto with black pepper, black vulcanic salt (from India), ume plum vinegar, lemon juice and garlic.

For a veggie side I sauteed some onion on olive oil with a pinch of salt, until translucent. Then I added bite-sized green beans and as the last item a large bunch of roughly chopped swiss chard (mangold). I cooked the veggies until the green beans were soft and the chard wilted. I served the pesto and vegetables on top of corn pasta.

Hiziki with tofu, carrots and green beans

As a sidedish for my lunch I picked another recipe from Wieke´s cookbook (I am trying out several recipes from this cookbook lately, as I really need new meal ideas), this time a hiziki seaweed recipe (actually the recipe called for arame, but I didn´t have that one). I soaked a small handful of hiziki for about half an hour (but less will do), then I changed the water (you can use the soaking water, but then the fishy seaweed taste is stronger, which my boyfriend dislikes :-D) and placed the seaweed in a little pot, with water just to cover. I added half a tablespoon of shoyu and half a tablespoon of mirin and simmered for about half an hour until the liquid evaporated. Meanwhile I shortly blanched chopped up green beans and carrot matchsticks, keeping them crispy. In another small pot I crumbled up about 100 g of firm tofu and simmered it under a lid with 1 tablespoon of ume plum vinegar (you can add water if it sticks too much). At the end I mixed all together. It looked something like this….

 

Yummy!!

I ate the hiziki with nishime vegetables flavoured with barley miso, a carrot top condiment (made by long simmering of chopped carrot tops with shiro miso and water) and with teff. Don´t you think the tiny teff grains looks supercute??

Czech sauerkraut soup with tempeh and one more dish…

Yep, I am back on track with my macro cooking after the ten day rice fast!! 🙂 Feels sooooo good to be back in the kitchen preparing all the yummy food, and not just grains with grains, but also soups, beans, veggie meals and ummm, yeah, some dessert…once in a while 🙂

The traditional Czech sauerkraut soup is something I really love and sometimes I attempt to make a macro version. This time I decided to also record it for you 😀 The original version calls for potatoes and sausage, but obviously I omit those without any negative side effects…

You will need:

1 medium to large onion

1 medium to large carrot

1 small or half of a bigger parsnip

about 300 g naturally fermented sauerkraut

caraway, salt, paprika powder, a few leaves or one twig of sage

mirin, ume plum vinegar, tamari

dark miso

about 1 tbsp brown rice flour

tempeh cut into small cubes

oil (optional)

First sautee onion chopped into halfmoons on a bit of water (I am limiting my oil intake, but feel free to use a little amount of oil of your choice)and to soften add a bigger pinch of salt . Stir while adding rice flour and more water if needed, to create a very light bechamel type of soup base. Then add a generous sprinkle of caraway and paprika powder (the soup should be light red in the end) and a twig with a few leaves of sage (dried or fresh), at the end of the cooking you can take the sage out if you used the tough twig or if you don´t want the leaves floating in your soup. Add diced carrot and parsnip and drained sauerkraut (if you like it less strong, flush it a few times with water to get rid of the salt and acid). Cover veggies with water and let boil gently for at least half an hour. Add more water depending on desired soup thickness. Season to your liking with tamari, mirin, ume plum vinegar and diluted dark miso (I used a full tablespoon). Top with cubes of tempeh either dry-roasted on a pan or deep-fried in oil, and afterwards sprinkled with tamari (best is to buy a oil/vinegar spray).

The next day for lunch I had rice cooked in a pressure cooker together with amaranth (1:1 ratio), sprinkled with gomasio. I made a kinpira out of diagonally cut carrot, burdock root and parsnip, seasoned with tamari. And to add some lightness and yin I shortly sauteed chopped green beans and leek and made a sauce out of 1 teaspoon of white shiro miso, 1 teaspoon of lemon juice and 1 teaspoon of mirin 🙂

5.12. Fava bean hummus anybody?

I reeeeally love hummus. Yet, I DID not plan to make it that day. It kind of…happened. I soaked fava beans overnight, then spent a looong time peeling their irritating skins off (they are too hard to digest), pressure cooked them for 45 minutes, and…they turned into something resembling porridge. They just totally fell apart. Too long cooking time, I assume. Anyway, that was their way to tell me to make hummus. So I heated them up in another pot (there was more than enough water still), added salt, cumin powder, lemon juice, chopped garlic (optional) and a good spoonful or two of tahini. Just a few stirs, some minutes to let it thicken, and voila, fava beans hummus is born! Really good stuff! Not the same as chickpea hummus, but not worse.

As a grain I had sweet millet cooked with hokkaido pumpkin (just 20 minutes and it´s ready). And I blanched some chinese cabbage, green beans and kale with it.