Sunomono - 3 ways to enjoy

Hello,

Sunomono (Marinated Vegetable-Cucumber is mainly used in this sweetened vinegar dish) makes a nice side dish not a main course, but it is a great dish which gives a pleasant, wonderful accent to a meal.

Also it's always been said that vinegar is good for you with a lot of great effects to your body.
And acidity=sourness is one of the basic taste that human tongue can detect.

For me, a little dish with a vinegar-ish taste is great side dish, I prefer along with a rice dish.

Rice, Miso soup, a couple of nice Okazu (side dishes) , and little Sunomono, this is what i would consider to be a perfect meal.

And the greatest thing is you can make everything very easily with any vegetable you like, vinegar, sugar, and little bit of salt.

I will introduce to you - 3 different ideas to flavor up your Sumomono.

This is Japanese eggplant, daikon radish, Persian cucumber, and shiso leaves.

Shiso leaves are very popular here now, they can give a great flavor and a clean taste to any dish. I would say this is the most used and favored herb among Japanese people.

I love to add Shiso leaves to Sumomono, but at the very end, right before you eat. If you want to use Shiso leaves for vinegared and hot (temperature) dish,
please add at the end in order to keep their nice green and purple color.

For this one, Kohlrabi, Zucchini, and carrots, sliced with peeler.
I used a unfamiliar ingredient for Japanese Sunomono - Kohlrabi and Zucchini.
But both have a great taste as Sunomono. It's sliced very thin with a peeler so you can eat it fresh and the vinegar is soaked up and marinated quickly.

To use these unfamiliar ingredients this dish worked out pretty good.

This one, cucumber, wakame seaweed, tomato, sakura-ebi (dried-shrimp), and shio-kombu (salted, shredded-kelp).

Shio-kombu contains enough salt and UMAMI (tastiness), so I prepared each ingredient and tossed together with little rice vinegar and then chilled in the fridge for an hour. Dried-shrimp has a great UMAMI flavor too, so it gets tastier when marinated in the fridge. There is no sugar or salt added.


AMAZU (sweetened vinegar)

Rice Vinegar                     1/3 cup
Cane Sugar                       5 tbsp.

Vegetables(sliced or cut)    about 2 cups
Salt                                1/2 tsp.

1) Mix vinegar and sugar well until sugar is dissolved.(you can heat the vinegar, but just a little, never boiled!)
2) Slice or cut vegetables and sprinkle salt and toss. Let it sit for 30 min.
3) Squeeze water from the vegetables and add the vinegar mixture to marinate.
4) Keep marinated it inside of the fridge at least 2-3 hours.
*You can keep it in an air-tight container for few days. 

Strawberry and Peach Crumbles

Hello,

I don't write about baking so often, but I love baking. However, I am not good at it as much as I love it, even though I do know my oven's habits pretty good by now. As often as I have baked and used not just this oven, but other ovens as well, I am still not as happy with my level of baking compared to what I think it should be.

I always try to create my own version with a healthier twist; using canola oil instead of butter, wheat flour or other milled-grains instead of breached all-purpose flour...It comes out great sometimes, but not all the time. Some ingredients are supposed to be prepared a certain way, but I try to omit or add those steps and this causes a huge mess sometimes.

Anyway, I made a strawberry and peach crumbles as my husband's request the other day. I made from scratch; panko, brown sugar, Cinnamon, graham cracker, and butter. All ingredients are left-over or always in the pantry as staples. This is a typical pattern of failure, making things like this...

But, it came out pretty well this time!

The sweetness was not too heavy, lighter crumbles, and juicy tender strawberries and yellow peaches were cooked just right.

BUT, I didn't save the memo on how much of each ingredient I used, and I can't remember the recipe of it! I sometimes do that!

Ratatouille - Part 3

Hello,
At the end of a big pot of ratatouille, I finished with omelet for lunch.

There is nothing need to be added, and just crusty bread made the meal perfect.

By the way, have you watched movie "Ratatouille"? I don't want to think the story in a realistic way, but it's a heart warming story, simply the love for food. I like the detail of the ratatouille coming up at the end of the movie; the mean food critic gets flash back of his mother's ratatouille once he puts Ratatouille's ratatouille in his mouth :)

Ratatouille - Part 2

Hello,
Ratatouille again.

When I make ratatouille, I always make curry using from the same big pot.

I just add some sweet curry powder (I got this from Penzeys Spices store), and if I feel like more it more meat, vegetables, or beans, I saute it all and mix together.

This time I added boiled lentil to increase the volume.

This ratatouille and beans curry appeared in my lunch at work many times this summer.

The only thing that I need to be careful not to do and that is not to eat too much rice.

I've always eaten too much rice with curry, but rice rules!

Ratatouille

Hello,

All summer long, (well, I didn't feel like we had a real summer this year though...) I bought Japanese eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes..., at the farmers market and I've been making pot-full of ratatouille almost every week.

In my version, I use KONBU (Kelp) under beneath of those vegetables. I think it doesn't bother vegetable's flavor, and UMAMI flavor is soaked up into the vegetables.

The next day, I toss with spaghetti and it makes a quick lunch.

Dinner for my husband, I mix with turkey meat sauce and volumed up.

This gets along with anything; rice, bread, pasta, etc. I love to make ratatouille, because I can make a lot at one time in a big pot, I can use any vegetables and cleanse fridge, it's so versatile, and I can make a few different dishes from it. (This helps a lot to make sure my husband gets his right amount of veggies!)

Vegetable Sushi w/ Kohlrabi and Zucchini

Hello,

Last month, my co-worker gave me a couple of kohlrabi. I have never used that vegetable before, but the texture was so familiar. I first made some pickles, sliced thin with a peeler and marinaded in rice vinegar based marinade.

That taste and texture remind me of a Japanese turnip and daikon radish, and I really liked it. It is such a fun thing to try a new food, both cooking and tasting it.

Next thing I did was...


I added a thinly sliced zucchini too, and made two types of vegetable sushi with those pickled vegetables.

A refreshing taste; both kohlrabi and zucchini sushi have nice crunchy texture, and this is also a great vegetarian dish.

My husband said the zucchini sushi looks like a caterpillar. What do you think about that!?

Kanten Jelly #5

Hello,

When I was working for re-sizing this picture with my lap-top, my husband was sitting right next to me and said,

"Wow! Is that TUNA? That's nice, babes!"
"No, No-!"

"That's strawberry kanten jelly cut in cubes!"

I used fresh strawberry puree 1/2 cup and water 1/2 cup (1:1), and 1 package kanten powder
(2 grams), that's it. It only took 30-40 min. to mold.

There were a lots of strawberry seeds you can taste and that's very comfortable crunch!