Parsnip french fries and buckwheat with cabbage

Missing potato french fries? Well, just make them from parsnip as I did, you´ll be surprised how similar the taste and texture are 🙂 I deep-fried mine until crispy and then gently sprinkled them with sea salt (something I don´t normally do, salt is better absorbed in the body when cooked into meals).

I had the fries with buckwheat which I cooked with some tamari soy sauce and oregano, for about 15 minutes in a double amount of water, under a lid and on a low flame. About five minutes before the end of the cooking time, I placed some cut up curly cabbage leaves on top of the grain so it can steam through.

I also had some raw green daikon to better digest the fried food.

Anise flavoured vegetable stew with hiziki

Yep, you got it right – I DID mix seaweed and anise! Together with a load of sweet vegetables and miso! 😀 Sounds maybe a bit odd but it´s a lovely comforting stew which is pretty warming in spite of the cooling seaweed featured. Anise definitely adds extra warmth to the long cooked winter vegetables…

I cut up carrot, parsley root, parsnip, turnip, hokkaido pumpkin, red beet, curly cabbage and onion into medium-sized pieces, placed them into a thick-bottom pot and covered the vegetables with water. They don´t have to be fully submerged, you can just add some water accordingly during the cooking time. I mixed in a handful of presoaked and rinsed hiziki seaweed (it needs to soak for about an hour). I also added a generous sprinkle of anise seeds and a pinch of salt.

Cover the pot with a lid, bring to boil and afterwards just simmer on a low flame, keeping the lid on and watching that the vegetables don´t get too dry. At the end you can add a tablespoon of brown rice miso diluted in some warm water and let it gently simmer with a lid off. The stew should not end up being too watery, you can also always thicken it with corn starch, arrowroot or kuzu…

I served it with a rice/barley mixture with gomasio.

A perfect cold weather meal featuring Parsnip-millet mash

First of all, sorry for the not appetizing picture, taking pics in the evening light of my dark kitchen sucks :-p

Nonetheless, this dish should not totally escape your attention, as I think it´s really great for those cold days when you just want something soothing, yet not bland!

The thing that looks like mashed potato is a variety of the popular “millet mash” which is usually made with cauliflower. Instead I cooked a cup of millet with a roughly equal amount of chopped parsnip, a pinch of salt and three cups of water, for about half an hour on a low flame and under a lid. Then I mashed it up with a potato masher (actually, I might have used the wooden pestle for making gomasio as I often do! :-D) and seasoned with some fresh cracked black pepper and nutmeg. I topped the mash with shiso leaf powder (shiso is the leaf used when pickling umeboshi plums) – but I think I must have sprinkled it on top after taking the picture 😀

I baked pumpkin with three different toppings: salt only, salt+thyme and salt+ginger juice+cinnamon. Yes, playing around 😀 The pumpkin bakes for about half an hour on 180°C but that really depends on your pumpkin (and oven)!

And I made a lovely stew of sliced cabbage, onion and carrot, simmered gently in a liquid made of diluted white (shiro) miso, apple juice and organic mustard 🙂

Macro Borshch

This is a twist on the traditional Russian soup called “borshch” which is usually heavy on cream and meat and potatoes, but here you have a lighter macro version which still comes quite close and is very satisfying on a cold autumn day 🙂

Sautee some diced onion and finely chopped garlic on a bit of oil with a pinch of salt, until soft. Add similar-sized cubes of carrot, parsnip, parsley root, celery root and red beet and sautee for a while longer until the veggies get shiny. Then add hot water according to how many bowls you will need in the end. Sprinkle in some dried marjoram, caraway seeds, smoked paprika powder and add also a bayleaf or two. Cook the soup until the red beet is soft enough – it´s the vegetable that will take longest. Adjust taste using tamari and/or salt for saltiness and lemon juice and/or vinegar of choice (I had apple cider vinegar) for a sour taste.

I had the soup with some vegetable pancakes but I can imagine it would taste great with a big slice of sourdough bread!

Mmmmmm, oven baked veggies!

Look at these beautiful oven baked vegetables! It´s sooooo easy to make these, literally no work except for cutting them into big chunks, placing them in an a ovenproof dish with about an inch of water in it (I use a silicone ovendish) and then waiting and waiting for them to roast 😀

I used hokkaido pumpkin, yellow kohlrabi, red onion (becomes caramel!), carrots, parsnips, parsley root, celery root, fennel and sweet potato. I cooked them covered with a tin foil for about half an hour and then another half an hour uncovered to get a brown crust, on 200°C.

Served with a mixture of rice and oats (and some leftover millet) with gomasio.

Two soups: Creamy parsnip soup and Bonito bouillon

I am a soup freak, everybody can attest to that. I didn´t use to be. Luckily my boyfriend is pretty much the same. He likes clear bouillon type of soups. I like more thick creamy soups with the veggies blended, and possibly added mochi for extra cream 😀 The solution is: I make both…

The creamy parsnip soup comes from Kristina Turner´s awesome “The self-healing cookbook” and it´s very simple as all her recipes in this book. For two people, just add one and a half cup (or two) of parsnips cut into chunks to the boiling water and simmer about 15 minutes until they soften, then blend until smooth with an immersion blender. Add half a cup of broccoli florets and cook a couple minutes more. Flavour with your favourite miso – we used dark rice miso. I also made a little addition of a small chunk of mochi, and instead of water I used stock leftover from making nabe vegetables (a vegetable stock with kombu and shiitake in it).

The second soup is a clear bouillon soup, a very minimalistic one to top. I just boiled water with some diced celery stalk and added a coffee filter filled with about a tablespoon of dried bonito (fish) flakes (can be purchased at asian shops) which I tied with a rubber band and it worked pretty well! I turned off the flame and let it release the flavour for maybe 5 or 10 minutes. Then I added a good amount of chopped wild garlic, brought the soup back to a simmer and added miso to taste and a good squeeze of lemon, to lighten up the soup significantly.

Sorry for the quality of the picture :-p

Rice-barley-vegetable stew in one pot

 

Don´t you love comforting meals which are at the same time quick and easy to prepare, very filling, you only need one pot to cook them and they enable you to use up your leftovers? I do! 😀 This one is great if you have leftover grain, and it doesn´t matter at all which sort of grain (or combination of grains) you have on hand. I had a rice and barley mix.

To make this stew extra thick and creamy I cooked up hokkaido pumpkin cut into chunks, with just enough water to cover. When it softened up I blended it with an immersion blender until smooth, adding some tougher parsley stems (I hate to throw them away, but they´re not nice to chew). Then I threw in the cooked grain (how much depends fully on how thick and filling you want this soup-stew to be…),smaller cubes of carrot, parsnip and fennel (yep, all of these are in the category of sweet vegetables). I seasoned the soup with more fresh parsley, half a teaspoon of ginger powder, a dash of lemon juice and two teaspoons of brown rice miso (for two persons).

Served with very briefly blanched radicchio leaves and a small serving of cooked peas with ume plum vinegar (not in the picture).

 

 

Parsnip tahini fries

I really love collecting and reading recipes – I don´t so often cook from recipes though. This is a bit of an exception. I was inspired by the parsnip fries recipe on Oh She Glows (which is a great vegan food blog, though it´s not macro food), but I made an adjustment and used tahini instead of a nut butter.

It´s so easy and nice!

Just cut one big parsnip into thick matchsticks, place into a bowl, add half a tablespoon of oil (I used sesame oil) and a heaping tablespoon of tahini paste, mix thoroughly, season with salt. Transfer to a baking tray with parchment paper (or a non-stick tray) and bake on 200°C for about 45 minutes until the fries get crispy.

Nishime variations

I absolutely love nishime, especially when I feel a bit low or not so healthy, then this dish is really soothing and healing…and so simple. But you can play with it quite a bit, depending on which veggies you use or also how you choose to season it.

The first nishime is really funny, because it´s completely purple thanks to the red onion and red cabbage 😀 I think it´s pretty! I used daikon, carrot, hokkaido pumpkin, red onion and red cabbage, all cut into large chunks (in nishime you use large chunks so that the veggies retain their sweetness). On the bottom of the pot you place a stamp-sized piece of kombu seaweed, place the veggies on top (making “islands” of separate vegetable groups, not mixing them together) and then add a tiny bit of water, about 0,5-1 cm high. Bring to boil, cover with a lid and simmer on very low flame, possibly using a heat deflector as well, for 10-20 minutes (I like them cooked longer for maximum sweetness and softness). At the end you can either sprinkle a pinch of salt to season (and let simmer still) or some shoyu/tamari (also let simmer), the latter will turn your nishime brown though (unless it´s already purple haha :-D). You could also season with ume plum vinegar or miso or other stuff. Check the nishime from time to time  as it can burn, but don´t disturb it too often or for too long… It´s better off left on its own 😀 If you still have water at the end, take off the lid and cook it away, or strain the liquid, it´s a delicious drink. Don´t eat the kombu though, unless you cooked the nishime long, because it´s too tough, it can be reused again…

For the nishime in the picture I had a sidedish of brown rice with corn kernels (from a jar) and brown borlotti beans (from a can) plus gomasio to sprinkle on top, blanched pointed cabbage, and one umeboshi plum as a pickle and to enhance the healing effect of the dish (I shall write about the magical umeboshis some day…).

The second nishime was similar – daikon, carrot, hokkaido pumpkin, but also celery stalks and parsnip. As a side I had sweet millet , leftover adzuki/kombu/pumpkin dish (I will post about that one) with fresh parsley, and I even had some tiny daikon tops (normally they cut them off in shops, sadly, but I had a daikon which had a little bit left, treasure!).

 

Creamy cauliflower-parsnip soup

I like soups that are creamy thanks to blending them in a blender 🙂 well, this is one of them. I cooked

2 small onions

1 medium cauliflower

1 medium parsnip

salt

in a pot with water just to cover them, cook until soft and transfer to blender. Blend until it becomes a smooth milk coloured puree. You might need to add some water later to thin the soup. Return to the pot. Add a few teaspoons of white miso (“shiro miso”) to taste and let simmer in the pot a bit. Garnish with sprinkles of dulse seaweed or anything else you like!