Bulghur pilaf with glazed yuba

Yup, it was that time again! Time for yuba!! You can see how I make it in this recipe.

I served it with bulghur, which is a cracked wheat, very easy and fast to cook, so great for those days when you don´t have much time. It was my first time eating bulghur and it´s rather tasty with a pleasant crunch.

Just sautee onion (on water or oil, if you wish) with a pinch of salt, then add desired veggies (I used carrot, celery stalk, green beans and leek, all finely chopped) and sautee a bit more while stirring, just for 2-3 minutes. Add bulghur and toast for another 2-3 minutes adding water if necessary. Then add a double amount of water (for 1 cup bulghur use 2 cups water) and more salt, for flavour. Simmer under a lid for 15-20 minutes. Turn the fire off and mix in fresh chopped parsley (a lot!) and chopped rucola.

 

Vegetable stew with seitan and kuzu

My first time trying seitan, yay!! I had gluten sensitivity for a couple of years, but thanks to the macrobiotic diet my gut has healed to a large extent, so I´m venturing a bit more into the realm of glutinous grains. Seitan is a type of faux meat (if you wish to see it that way, anyway :-D) made from pure wheat gluten, which is a protein obtained from wheat flour with all starch removed. And if you flavour it well (or purchase a well-flavoured ready to eat seitan) it´s really tasty! I had seitan that was already quite flavourful, but I still had to add some soy sauce.

First of all I placed a 4 cm piece of kombu in the bottom of a heavy pot, on top of the kombu I put chunks of seitan, then one onion cut into large pieces, one carrot cut into large chunks as well, a couple of pieces of yellow kohlrabi and  finely cut celery root, 2/3 cup of water, a generous sprinkle of dried italian herbs (basil, oregano…) and 2 tsp of shoyu soy sauce. I covered the pot with a lid and brought the content to boil, then I simmered the veggies on a lower flame until soft. At the end I added a teaspoon of kuzu root starch dissolved in a tiny bit of cold water and stirred it in quickly, avoiding lumps. I brought the stew to boil and simmered for  a few minutes more until it thickened considerably and added a nice glaze to the meal. I served the stew with rice/amaranth mixture and some spring onion.

Pasta with baked tempeh and creamy broccoli sauce

I am lately experimenting a bit with sauces, which are somehow not so commonly used in standard macrobiotic cooking, but I do miss them at times…whether it´s Italian-style pasta sauces or more hearty and thick “dumpling” sauces of the Czech type. This time I decided to make a creamy, but not too heavy vegetable sauce on top of our pasta.

As a protein I marinated and then baked some thinly sliced tempeh, placed in one layer in a baking dish. For the marinade I used (for a chunk of about 100 g tempeh) 1 tsp tamari, 2 tsp water, 1/2 tsp organic mustard and 1/2 tsp of fresh ginger juice which I mixed in a bowl and then poured on top of the slices in the baking dish. I baked the tempeh on about 180°C, for 15 minutes, then flipped over and baked another 10 minutes (but it really depends on how thick you slice your tempeh, mine was very thin, so it came out a bit too dry for my taste, but at least it was very crunchy).

For the sauce I water-sauteed a larger onion with some salt and chopped wild garlic, then added broccoli small florets/stems and water to cover. I simmered the veggies until tender and then mixed in 1 tablespoon of white rice flour diluted in a bit of cold water, watching out for lumps and stirring well. I let the sauce come to boil, added half a tablespoon of shiro miso and half a tablespoon of tamari, and let simmer for a few more minutes. Then I transferred the content into a blender (I split the sauce into two batches – otherwise your sauce will fly out of the blender, so be careful about the amount!) and blended until smooth. I returned the sauce into the pot and brought back to boil, simmering an additional one minute or so.

In the pictures you can see the sauce with tempeh on top of (my boyfriend´s) whole-wheat pasta and also on top of my buckwheat/whole-wheat soba noodles.

Oatflake-vegetable casserole

Casseroles are ruling this household lately, in spite of the warm weather! I just like them too much I guess…but hey, this one is pretty light, using oat flakes instead of grains, so they are a bit less on the yang side 😀

Just cook up a batch of oatmeal, with a pinch of salt. Then mix well with water-sauteed vegetables (I used carrot, onion, parsley root, celery stalk, green beans, cauliflower, leek and fresh chopped nettles) and season with your favourite seasonings (I used a tablespoon of tamari and some dried oregano and basil). Spread in a not too thick even layer in a baking form and bake until golden and crispy, for about half an hour.

Baked filled cabbage leaves

Sometimes all you need is to stumble across a very simple idea – you know, the one where you slap your forehead in a “why didn´t I come up with this myself?” sort of way. Like for example using cabbage leaves as a wrapper for grains and veggies 🙂

You can either just wrap the filling in the steamed leaves and eat as is, or bake the rolls in the oven for about half an hour until they turn a bit golden and crispy.

I mixed a rice/sweet rice mixture with water-sauteed veggies (carrot, leek, green beans, parsnip, celery stalk and fresh parsley leaf) and a tablespoon of tamari. The filling needs to be quite salty, otherwise the dish will be a bit bland.

Then take white cabbage leaves (as large and unbroken as possible, and previously steamed so that they become flexible), spoon the mixture on them and roll up, as well as you can manage 😀 My leaves were unfortunately too broken and small, so it was a bit messy, but it worked 😀

Czech macro meal: Dumplings with root vegetable sauce

It cannot get more Czech than dumplings, really. When I look into Czech macro cookbooks, whether printed or online, there are always several dumpling recipes. And dumplings go in most cases together with sauce, usually a thick creamy one. And sometimes even with some “meat-like” protein 😀 And/or sauerkraut 😀 Well, I had a bit of all of these in this kinda festive meal…

The dumplings were my very first ones so there is room for improvement, most definitely. I struggled a bit… :-p But next time all will be easier and there will probably follow an improved version! But I think they were quite good… I had a cup of leftover rice with sweet rice, which I pureed in a blender with water (just enough to make blending possible) until I got a creamy porridge-like consistency. Then I added a big pinch of salt followed by a couple of spoons of brown rice flour and spelt flour and some fine oat flakes…and kept adding…and adding…until I got a rather tough firm dough which would not anymore stick like crazy to my hands 😀 It took more flour than I thought…I can´t give any exact measurement, sorry, you have to see for yourselves. I formed two big “sausages” of dough and placed them into a pot with boiling water with a pinch of salt. It is important to keep the water at a rolling boil. It takes about 20 minutes for the dumplings to get cooked, depending on size and consistency. Watch that they don´t get stuck to the bottom (I had to lift mine carefully from the bottom with a spoon). They are cooked through once they float on the surface of the water. But check by cutting one of the rolls, the inside should not be too mushy or raw, but should have a spongey texture with some air holes, more like a bread roll. Cut the dumplings into 1 cm thick rounds with a sharp knife (you will need to hold them in place on the cutting board with a fork) or with a thread (traditional Czech method…) or (if you are a better equipped Czech person) with a dumpling cutter 😀

I think that next time I will: not use sweet rice (it gets too sticky in the dough), not blend the grains in the blender (the grains get too liquid and then you need a lot of flour to make a firm dough)… But you learn by experiment.

For the sauce I sauteed small chunks of onion, carrot, parsley root and celery root, on a small amount of water with a pinch of salt, covered by a lid. I blended the veggies into a puree in a blender and returned to the pot. I thickened the sauce with 1 tsp of arrowroot starch dissolved in a tiny amount of cold water (use a whisk to stir it in) and for flavour added 1 tsp of dark miso, 1/2 tsp natural mustard, a pinch of dried thyme and a dash of lemon juice.

As a “meat” I served cubes of smoked tofu “fried” on 1 tbsp of mirin (I don´t use oil at the moment, so mirin does the job quite well :-D). I also made quick sauerkraut by sauteeing shredded white cabbage with a bit of water, 1/2 tbsp of mirin and 1 tbsp of ume plum vinegar, under a lid, for about half an hour.

 

Long-baked sweet onions with Tahini-miso sauce from Macrochef

Lately I´m really into recipes, either from cookbooks or blogs…One blog I really love is Macrochef. I decided to finally give a try to this promising recipe…baked onions, mmmm, how could one go wrong?!

I peeled two large onions (keeping most of the bottoms and tops intact), cut them in half width-wise and placed them cut side up into a silicone baking form. Then I poured a mixture of 1/2 tsp sesame oil, 1 tablespoon of mirin and 1 tsp of shoyu over them and sprinkled lightly with sea salt. I filled the bottom of the form with 1 1/2 cups of hot water, covered the form tightly with tin foil and popped the onions into the oven for a whole hour and a half (!), on 220°C. When I took off the foil they looked a bit too steamed to me and since I wanted a bit of a roasted texture, I let them bake uncovered for maybe 15 minutes more.

When I uncovered the onions, there was a lot of leftover water/juice which I poured into a cup (it was almost a cup of liquid so I added a little more water to have one cup exactly), transferred the liquid into a saucepan, added 1 tbsp mirin, 1 tsp shoyu, a few drops of ume vinegar, 1 tsp grated ginger juice and 2 tbsp shiro miso, and whisked well until smooth. I brought the sauce to boil and then added 2 tsp of arrowroot starch diluted in 1/4 cup of cold water. I whisked the starch carefully into the sauce to not create lumps and then simmered for a couple of minutes until it thickened. When I took the pan off the flame, I stirred in 2 tbsp of tahini and 2 chopped up spring onions.

I served the sauce over the onions, with a side of rice and rye. I also had a blanched salad (separately blanched and then mixed green beans, spring onion, curly cabbage, green cabbage, parsley root, parsnip, celery stalk, red radish and kohlrabi). For the salad I made a light dressing of 1/2 tsp shiro miso, 1/2 tsp natural mustard and 1 tsp rice malt.

Overall it was a very tasty dish, I enjoyed the onion meal very much. I just should note that this recipe makes a LOT of sauce, so I ate it the next day on top of a couple of my meals 😀 But there´s nothing wrong with extra sauce, right…

 

 

 

Rice casserole with smoked tofu and veggies

I know that the cold part of the year is already behind us and spring is in full blossom, but anyway – I really enjoy making oven-baked dishes, especially for dinner. I think it has to do with my need of variety of food preparation, and baking is just one of many methods. Be sure to always use some light uplifting steamed or blanched veggies, or something raw with these dishes 😀

I had leftover rice+hato mugi mixture which I put in an  even layer on the bottom of my silicone baking pan. Then I made the next layer with long-sauteed caramelized red onions (just sautee on water+pinch of salt, at least 15 minutes), another layer of grated smoked tofu and a layer of grated raw young carrot. Then came the second part of the grain mixture and on the very top some sauteed onion mixed into the grated tofu. Bake in a preheated oven on about 200°C until the top gets crusty and golden.

I served the dish with olives, fresh rucola, red radishes and portulac, and some homemade carrot pickles.

Complete meal idea

I just thought that this looks really pretty and that it´s quite a nice balanced macro meal, so here you are 😀

Grain: rice+25% sweet rice, with gomasio

Vegetable dish 1: kinpira made from dried/soaked burdock, carrot, a splash of tamari and ginger juice and finely cut carrot tops

Vegetable dish 2: chopped red cabbage sauteed under a lid with a bit of water and a tablespoon of ume vinegar and a bit of dried thyme

Protein: chickpeas with chunks of hokkaido pumpkin and some salt to taste (not in picture)

Greens: raw rucola and corn-salad lettuce

Pickle: sliced takuan (daikon pickled in rice bran)

Boiled salad with pumpkinseed dressing

This time I tried a recipe out of my most favourite macro book – Jessica Porter´s Hip Chick´s Guide to Macrobiotics. This boiled salad uses a slightly different method than the other boiled salad I posted about – you don´t really blanche the veggies, you just dip them into boiling water and immediately turn off the gas, leaving them in the water until they get a bit more bright, about one or two minutes. They stay very crunchy and taste almost like raw (well, except for the leafy greens perhaps, which get wilted very fast). This is a positive feature of this salad, and at the same time it can be a disadvantage if you have more troubled digestion, as I do – I think I prefer a “real” boiled salad, where the veggies actually boil for a couple of minutes. But I´m sure this will be great once the weather is hot and once my digestion improves so that I can process more raw food 😀

I “boiled” red radishes, curly cabbage, pointed cabbage, spring onion, parsnips, parsley root, green and yellow kohlrabi, green beans, and also (very briefly) some rucola, dandelion greens and corn salad greens. I topped the salad with a dressing coming from the same book. It doesn´t look too pretty, but it tastes very nice! Just roast half a cup of pumpkin seeds (which you washed and drained beforehand) until they start popping and turning more brown, then either process them in a blender, or (as I did) grind them in a suribachi until they are mostly crushed (depends what consistency you are aiming for). Then add half a tablespoon of umepaste and a bit of water, to your liking, mine came out quite chunky.