Vegetables with arame and lemony kuzu sauce from Sweetveg

Today I am just going to link to a post from one great macro blog with recipes you should definitely try! This time the Sweetveg blog inspired me to try a modified version of the “Vegetables with arame and lemony kuzu sauce“.

I followed it quite closely, except I didn´t have celery stalks, so I just omitted those, and instead of the rutabaga (which you cannot find here) I used parsley root. I also used dried/soaked lotus root slices and dried/soaked/sliced shiitake mushrooms (both are suggested at the end of the original post to be used in this recipe). I´m not sure which cabbage was used in the original recipe, but I had the “curly” savoy variety which works great in stews. I  didn´t have daikon so I used black radish, which is just another member of the radish family and has a more sharp and earthy taste than the daikon.  The sauce I followed exactly. As a sidedish I made a rice/amaranth mixture with roasted sunflower and pumpkin seeds.

Some simple daily meals…

Honestly, most of my meals are not fancy. Most of them are not from cookbooks. Most of them are not beautiful enough to be photographed. Most of them are rather quick and simple and they get rotated regularly, because I am not a full-time blogger nor a full-time macro cook 😀 Usually it´s something like this…

Pressure cooked rice and hato mugi – green beans sauteed with white (shiro) miso diluted in water – carrot roots and tops sauteed on water with a splash of ume plum vinegar – arame cooked in water to cover + shoyu to taste and some raw spring onion mixed in at the end

Pressure cooked rice with rye – leftover cauliflower/millet mash (check my blog for the recipe) – cubes of smoked tofu baked in the oven – umepaste stew ( cover bottom of a heavy pot with a thin layer of ume paste, then continue with a layer of thin onion slices, thin cabbage slices, grated carrot, chopped kohlrabi, finely chopped dill and about two inches of water, simmer under a lid on low until tender, mix in the end ) – nori condiment made from shortly simmering torn up nori sheets, shoyu, mirin and lemon juice

Sweet millet cooked together with cubes of hokkaido pumpkin – fresh rucola – hiziki cooked with water to cover + shoyu to taste + sesame seeds + thinly sliced onion + presoaked dried lotus – nishime of daikon ( with thinly sliced kombu, sliced dried and presoaked shiitake, 1/2 tsp shiro miso diluted in water and 1/4 tsp of lemon zest)

Pressure cooked long-grain rice with hato mugi and lotus seeds – lettuce, red radish, radish sprouts and lightly steamed green cabbage – roasted hokkaido pumpkin and onion sprinkled with cinnamon – leftover hiziki dish (see above)

6.12.

In the last two days I ate a lot of oats and I think I hopelessly fell in love with their creamy goodness. I cooked them for 90 minutes in a pressure cooker (after soaking them overnight), which is a long process, but worth it.

I had some fresh sage, so I made a soup full of herbs – first I sauteed diced onion and garlic on some olive oil, then added chopped sage and dried rosemary and let it release the flavours. Afterwards I added chunks of carrot and daikon, and when they cooked soft I mixed in diluted shiro miso (young rice miso). Not bad, but I went way overboard with the herbs – so take it easy with them, especially the fresh sage is very potent…

I made two vegetable dishes. One of them was matchsticks of fresh lotus root sauteed on sliced onion and then simmered for about 15 minutes with water and tamari (lotus root can take quite a bit of tamari, because it has very little flavour on its own). Lotus is really great for the lungs and discharging mucus from them.

The second veggie dish was finely sliced fennel sauteed on water with equally finely sliced red cabbage, seasoned with chopped fresh dill and a splash of mirin (rice wine). Mmmmm, dill and fennel go together so well! The red cabbage turns the fennel completely purple, so if you want to get a nice colour effect, mix them together at the very end 😀