Vegetables for Lunch

Most weeks, the youngster and I visit my good friend Lon. She has the most amazing vegetable garden, and we are extremely lucky to be able to enjoy the tasty things she grows, and the fresh eggs from her chickens.

Yesterday there was plenty of green things ready for picking, plus lots of eggs. The kids got eggy toast for lunch, while we investigated things to do with a pile of green vegetables. There was rainbow silverbeet (swiss chard), sprouting broccoli, English spinach and green spring onions. There was also some fresh pineapple that the kids had been snacking on. The finished result was two delicious vegetarian main dishes that certainly got us well toward our 2 & 5 a day!

Japanese Braised Silverbeet with Egg and Sesame

This first dish combines the earthy flavour of silverbeet with the sweet and salty flavour of miso paste. I love the rainbow variety of silverbeet with its brilliant red and yellow stalks. Silverbeet is so easy to grow, you can even grow it in a tub in the tiniest garden and be rewarded with masses of fresh crisp leaves.

Japanese Braised Silverbeet with Egg and Sesame

Serves 2-3

1 bunch silverbeet (swiss chard)
2-3 green spring onions
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp miso paste
2 tsp mirin
2 tsp cooking sake
1 tsp light soy sauce
1 tbsp sesame seeds
2 tsp sesame oil
2 eggs, lightly beaten

Remove the stalks from the silver beet and chop into 1cm pieces. Tear the leaves into rough pieces. Slice the green sprin onions into 1cm lengths on a diagonal.

Heat a wok or frying pan over a medium-high heat and add the vegetable oil. When the oil starts to shimmer, add the silverbeet stalks, onions and miso paste. Stir constantly to break up the miso paste and prevent the vegetables from burning. Add a splash of water if necessary. Once the stalks have started to soften, add the silverbeet leaves. Once the leaves have wilted, add sake, mirin, sesame oil and sesame seeds. To finish, pour over the beaten egg and stir through. Remove from the heat when the eggs have just cooked.

Spicy Pineapple and Broccoli Noodles

This second dish bears a similarity to Singapore noodles. Feel free to use a hot curry powder, or add extra chilli.

Spicy Pineapple and Broccoli Noodles

Serves 2-3

100g bean thread noodles (cellophane or glass noodles)
2-3 green spring onions
2 cups chopped fresh pineapple
1 bunch sprouting broccoli (or 1 bunch broccolini), chopped into 5cm lengths
2 handfuls english or baby spinach
1 tbsp vegetable oil
2 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp mild curry powder
1 tbsp fresh chopped mint

Soak the noodles in boiling water until they are softened, and drain.

Heat a frying pan or wok over a medium high heat. Add the vegetable oil. When the oil starts to shimmer, add the onions, broccoli and pineapple and cook for 3-4 minutes until the broccoli stems have started to soften. Add the curry powder and stir through. Add the remaining ingredients and cook until the spinach has wilted. Serve immediately.

Cold Soba Noodles with Sides

Time for another Tuesday Night Vego Challenge!


I've been cooking a lot of Japanese food lately. I'm really learning to appreciate how the different sorts of flavours work together. It's also a great source of ideas for vegetarian meals. Unfortunately this one took longer than 30 minutes to cook, although dealing with a fussy toddler didn't help things. The eggs keep well in the fridge, so you can make a bunch of them on the weekend and eat them during the week. They are DELICIOUS!

In Japan, soba noodles are often eaten cold in summer. As in ice cold, and often garnished with ice cubes! They're served with a sweet/savoury dipping sauce. It's very refreshing, and I've made some for dinner. To go with the noodles are some tasty side dishes: Pan fried Tofu with Miso Peanut Sauce, Purple and Orange Carrot Fritters, Miso Marinated Boiled Egg, and an Edamame and Corn salad.


I'm using kombu stock again today because it's a vegetarian alternative to dashi (fish) stock, and adds lots of flavour.


Miso Peanut Sauce
I like to think of this as a Japanese version of satay sauce. I found the garlic taste was far too strong unless the sauce was cooked.


1 tbsp miso paste
2 tbsp natural peanut butter
2 tsp soy sauce
2 tsp mirin
2 tsp honey
1 clove garlic


½ tsp grated ginger
pinch of chilli powder to taste
water


Place all the ingredients in a small blender and mix until smooth. Add water until you achieve the consistency you prefer. Pour the sauce into a small saucepan and heat for 3-5 minutes until it starts to bubble. Cool and store in the fridge for up to a week. This is a great sauce dabbed on grilled meat oat or tofu - it's very intensely flavoured, so you only need a small amount.


Purple and Orange Carrot Fritters
Unless the carrots are looking a bit old, you can leave the skin on.


½ orange carrot, finely shredded
½ purple carrot, finely shredded
3 tbsp plain flour
1 tbsp tapioca (or corn) flour
kombu stock
1 egg
vegetable oil for frying


Mix the flour together in a bowl, then add the egg. Slowly incorporate the egg into the flour, then add stock or water until the mixture has the consistency of thick cream. Leave to rest for 10 minutes while you shred the carrots, then mix the vegetables with the batter. Shallow-fry heaped tablespoonfuls of the mixture, and drain well on paper towel. 

January Challenge: Day 20 and 21

Nearing the end of the pantry challenge, and I have to admit I'm looking forward to going back to blogging every other day.

It's been a busy week this week, but I managed to make some zucchini pickles using up a couple of very over grown zucchini - I filled 4 jars like this one. One jar didn't seal properly, so it's in the fridge, and I'll find out in a week or so how they've turned out.

Then I almost forgot that today is the Tuesday Night Vego Challenge!

The noodles I used tonight are imported soba noodles, so they probably don't count, but you can buy lovely organic soba (buckwheat) noodles from Hakubaku that are made here in Australia. Yakisoba means fried noodles.

Yakisoba (serves 2)

cooked soba noodles

finely sliced celery

sliced cabbage

shredded carrot

sliced onion

sliced spring onion

sliced green beans

sliced baby eggplant

teriyaki sauce (organic tamari, mirin, sugar, organic rice vinegar, potato starch)

sesame oil

pinch of chilli flakes

vegetable oil

Heat the vegetable oil in a wok. Add onions and cabbage and fry for 2-3 minutes, then add the rest of the vegetables and cook for another 4-5 minutes. Add noodles and, sesame oil and teriyaki sauce and cook until the noodles are heated though. Serve immediately with some seaweed and sesame seeds sprinkled on top.

Pumpkin Miso Soup

Something I learnt when visiting Japan is that miso soup can be anything you want. Here in Australia, most miso soup is the instant stuff. In Japan, most restaurants (and probably most families) make their own from dashi stock and miso paste, and add whatever else is in season. My favourites were a seafood version with teeny tiny clams (the size of your thumbnail!) and a vegan version with vegetables. So here's a winter pumpkin miso soup. To make it from scratch you can make your own stock with dried konbu (seaweed) and katsuobushi (bonito flakes), but the stock sachets taste pretty good and can be easier to find in the supermarket.


Pumpkin Miso Soup (serves 4)


1 litre water
1 sachet konbu stock
1 sachet dashi stock
1 tablespoon white miso paste (shiro miso)
150g jap pumpkin, cut into 1cm dice with the skin left on
Optional: diced tofu, sliced shallots or dried wakame


Mix the stock and water and bring up to a simmer (do not boil!). Place the miso paste into a ladle, and scoop up some of the stock. Use a small spoon or a chopstick to slowly melt and blend the paste into the stock. Add the pumpkin and gently simmer until the pumpkin is tender but not falling apart.

Okonomiyaki

Okonomiyaki means "as you like it". It's usually described as a Japanese pizza, but it's only like pizza in the sense that it comes in lots of different styles, and it's a great food to eat with beer. It's a pancake! There really isn't a single recipe for it, but there are a couple of things that make a good okonomiyaki. It's been a long time since we've had an okonomiyaki dinner, but seeing as there is an abundance of cabbage in the fridge, the time has come! 

DIY Okonomiyaki in Harajuku

1. Use dashi stock instead of water and use a mix of potato or taro four and plain flour. You can buy okonomi batter at asian supermarkets, but like most processed foods, I find it too salty. Make a nice thick batter.

In Kyoto: Udon Okonomiyaki (left)
and Leek and Fish Cake Okonomiyaki (centre)

2. Finely shred the fillings. This way they mix well and cook evenly in the batter. Nothing worse than a lump of raw cabbage in the middle of your okonomiyaki. You can put almost anything inside - cabbage, carrot, green spring onions, octopus, prawns, pork, mushrooms, fish cake, tofu... (hence the name!)

Okonomiyaki Bar in Osaka

3. Get good japanese brown sauce and mayonnaise. Don't even try using aussie style bbq sauce and mayo - both are way too sweet. I get the Bull-Dog brand brown sauce and Kewpie brand mayonnaise. 

Okonomiyaki on a stick? :P

4. Get some good toppings. The usual topping is a sprinkling of aonori (powdered seaweed) and katsuobushi (shaved dried bonito flakes - they dance in the heat!), but you can also use other toppings such as crispy panko breadcrumbs.


5. Decorate! Okonomiyaki should look pretty! One thing I was very happy to buy on my last trip to Japan was some special squeezy bottles with thin nozzles for drizzling sauce on top of okonomiyaki. 


Tonight's version was made with savoy cabbage, carrot, spring onions, cooked pork mince, some mini king brown mushrooms and shaved pork belly.