Veggie sautee with apple and walnuts

Normally I don´t mix fruit or nuts into my vegetable dishes (it is not something for delicate digestion to mix these with grain or with each other), but once in a while this adds some fun and unexpected details to an otherwise standard veggie macro dish such as this simple sautee-

I just heated some oil on a pan and then sauteed onion for a while until soft and beginning to brown. Then I added leek, white cabbage, curly green cabbage, carrot, turnip, all cut up into rather small pieces. The fun addition: a small amount of cubed apple and chopped walnuts, cooked together with the rest. The sautee was seasoned with a splash of shoyu soy sauce and apple cider vinegar.

Served with a rice/amaranth mixture topped with a gomasio of black sesame and salt (love the colour contrast!).

Simple vegetable and shiitake stir-fry

This meal is so minimalistic that I wonder whether I should be posting it, but I guess we all need some very simple ideas and inspiration 😀

Heat some oil and sautee first half-moons of onion, then sliced (dried and presoaked, or fresh) shiitake mushrooms, let them soften, then add rounds of leek, sliced curly cabbage and half-moons of daikon.  Season with salt and pepper and serve with some brown rice.Voila!

 

 

10.1. Blanched greens salad

For today´s lunch I cooked millet with hokkaido pumpkin chunks (this time normal millet, though I prefer sweet millet for this dish) and stir-fried some veggies on a bit of rice bran oil  fennel, leek, carrot, daikon, parsnip and green beans), which I seasoned with tamari, mirin and lemon juice (ratios 2:2:1). You can never go wrong with this combination of seasonings, I use it very often 😀

But the reason I am actually posting this post is the “blanched salad” – a typically macrobiotic salad which is not raw, but you combine greens that you previously separately blanched in a pot with rapidly boiling water for a short time. Sliced chinese cabbage needs just about half a minute, chopped kale maybe 3 minutes (whole kale leaves would need 4-5 minutes though) and sliced white winter cabbage about 5 minutes. The only raw addition was rucola (arugula) leaves, which seriously are too fragile to be blanched and at least give a slight pungent taste. The greatest part was the dressing: I mixed 1 tbsp white (shiro) miso, 1 tbsp maple syrup, 1/2 tbsp ume plum vinegar, 1/2 tbsp lemon juice, 1 tsp mustard and water to thin. I now vow to make blanched salads more often!

 

23.9.

I love the “macrobiotic plate” with islands of different types of food. It is a bit like creating a symphony 😀 Some time ago I finally got my order of 5 kg (!!) of teff in the mail, so I cooked it for dinner. Teff is a super-nutritious grain from Ethiopia, actually the smallest grain in the world. It reminds polenta a bit when cooked. It has a very fine delicate texture and I really like the taste and aroma…and it´s done in 15-20 minutes! Together with the teff I steamed broccoli and daikon (steaming is a hit in our household lately) and served them with a quick sauce made by diluting rice brown miso with some warm water. I also did a stir-fry in a wok – leek, green beans, carrot, chinese cabbage and celery stalk, with added sesame seeds and a dash of tamari and water. Simple yet satisfying dinner 🙂