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.

Vegetable stew with smoked tofu and sauerkraut

Here goes another “complete macro plate”! A very warming filling meal great for any cold day…

I first sauteed some sliced onion on oil with a pinch of salt and then added roughly chopped veggies – carrot, burdock root and green savoy cabbage, and sauteed them all for a while together, in a heavy cast iron pot. Then I added cubes of smoked tofu and a substantial amount of sauerkraut. I filled the pot with enough water to almost cover the vegetables, sprinkled some dried thyme and tamari soy sauce on top, put the heavy lid on and let the stew gently simmer for perhaps half an hour. Towards the end I heated oil in a pan and after it warmed up I stirred in a couple tablespoons of corn flour to create a base for a simple thickener for the stew. Once the flour starts turning golden and emitting a roasted smell, you can carefully pour in some water until you get a thick creamy sauce. Stir well to prevent lumps from forming while cooking the sauce  for a couple minutes. When the stew is ready, mix the sauce into the veggies and tofu and cook all together for another five minutes or so. Done!

I also had some steamed chinese cabbage to balance the heavy grounding energy of the stew, served with a sauce of white (shiro) miso, tahini and lemon (you could eat the sauce raw, or let it come to boil in a little pan, that way the miso will be easier on your digestion). There was also pressure cooked brown rice with roasted sesame seeds.

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.

Carrot and red beet stewed in apple juice

Who would have thought – mixing root vegetables and apple juice in one meal?! Well, don´t say yuck until you try it 😀

It´s very very easy – slice 2 big or 4 medium carrots and one smaller red beet into thicker diagonal slices. Put them inside a pot with a pinch of salt and about 3/4 cup of unfiltered organic apple juice. The veggies should be covered by the liquid, add some more water if needed. Cover pot with a lid, bring to boil and then simmer the veggies on a low flame until soft. Thicken the remaining juice with a tablespoon of kuzu or arrowroot starch diluted in a tiny bit of water, and cook for five more minutes.

I served the veggies with brown rice/ sweet rice mixture and some deep-fried kombu pieces (just dip the seaweed into a pot with deep-frying oil for a couple seconds until the kombu puffs up and “opens” like a flower 😀 ).

A winter stew and pumpkin with a maple-miso sauce

The idea for the maple-miso pumpkin comes from my Dutch friend Sonya – you can check out her recipe and blog here.

So I cut a big slice of pumpkin and smeared it with a thin layer of shiro (white) miso mixed with a teeny bit of maple syrup and sprinkled it with dried rosemary. I baked it in the oven for about half an hour, in the last ten minutes adding a sprinkling of pumpkin seeds.

For the stew I took a pot and spread some ume plum paste on the bottom. Next I placed a post-stamp sized bit of kombu and one soaked and sliced shiitake mushroom. Then I layered thin rounds of red beet, carrot, turnip and onion. I added about 2 to 3 cm of water and simmered the stew for about half an hour on a low flame and a flame tamer.

The meal was served with a short and long grain rice and oat mixture sprinkled with dulse seaweed.

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 🙂

Root stew with white miso and cilantro

The main part of this meal was a root vegetable stew:  first I sauteed sliced onion with a pinch of salt on some pumpkin seed oil, then added medium-sized chunks of carrot, parsley root, red beet, celery root and daikon radish and stirred for a while to coat with oil, adding dried thyme as well. Then I covered the veggies with diluted white miso, there should be enough water so that the vegetables are at least partially submerged. I cooked them until soft on a low flame (the water shouldn´t evaporate totally, but also the stew should not be watery) and at the end garnished them with a generous amount of fresh chopped cilantro.

The other parts of the meal were: chickpeas with pumpkin (pumpkin chunks cooked until soft and then add cooked chickpeas and tamari to season), carrot tops fried until crispy on a bit of pumpkin seed oil with salt, and rice/amaranth mixture sprinkled with roasted dulse seaweed. I used dulse flakes, which are really convenient and roast very quickly – just be careful not to burn them, so keep the flame low 😀

Cabbage stew with dill and Winter simmer

As a grain I had  a pressure cooked rice/amaranth mixture (soaked 24 hours beforehand). The first vegetable dish is a stew with layers: the bottom layer is about 1 tsp of thinly spread ume paste, then halfmoons of onion, shredded young white cabbage, coarsely grated carrot and finely chopped fresh dill. To that just add about 2-3 cm of water (the veggies should not be covered), cover pot with a lid, bring to boil, and then simmer on a low flame about 20 minutes. Mix through.

The second dish is “Winter simmer” from Kristina Turner´s Self-healing Cookbook. First I boiled about half a cup of water, then added half of a smaller butternut squash cut into cubes, about 10 cm of dried wakame torn into pieces, halfmoons from half of an onion and half of a sliced celery stalk. Season with about a teaspoon of tamari. Simmer the stew for 20-30 minutes, until the squash is tender, and mix through.

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.

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).