Well, it's been a few days, but I hope to be more regular with my updates again now. I'm going to start with today and work my way backwards over the past few days. My husband was sick for a little over a week, so on those days I didn't cook very much.
This afternoon I made some chai tea, and topped it off with a bit of black pepper. I bought these cups on purpose for chai tea and black tea. I've started to realize the kind of dish you use doesn't only impact how a food looks, but how it tastes. Over the summer, I was struck by how delicious the chai was at a particular cafe in Shinjuku. It was served in a terracotta cup glazed on the inside. Not only was it beautiful, but the terracotta seemed to affect the flavor as well.
So upon my return, I scoured the internet, and finally found these cups. I love them, and I do think they're perfect for chai or hot black tea.
After refreshing myself with an afternoon cup of chai, I decided it was time to start my latest experiment: making tofu. I had started the soy beans soaking yesterday, and today I ground them up, then boiled them in water to make soy milk. You have to strain the ground soy beans out of the milk with cheesecloth. I have my handy cloth kitchen bags, but I didn't have a strainer that was the proper size--so I had to improvise. You want to keep the ground-up soybeans (
okara) to make other delicious food, so I tried to be careful. The okara is in the bag, and that's soy milk in the clay pot.
Before I made tofu, I just had to try some soy milk! Hot, freshly made soy milk is one of the most delicious things ever! This was quite good, not quite so rich as I'd have liked, so maybe I used too much water.
And the okara, with as much soy milk squeezed out of it as I could manage.
So... I put too much
nigari in, and all the tofu I worked so hard to make never actually became tofu. Instead, I was stuck with a giant clay pot full of very bitter, terrible-tasting soy milk. *sigh*. I was so disappointed! But I still had to make dinner, so I threw the soy milk away (what a waste!) and made yudofu, boiled tofu, instead. I served it with a vareity of different garnishes in the glass bowls around it: garlic, kaware (daikon sprouts), scallions, katsuo-bushi, and pickled ginger. I also made a dish of simmered bamboo sprouts with wakame. That was really good! But I love bamboo, so I'm quite biased.
The store-bought, coagulated tofu, in stark contrast to my soymilk mess.
And the meal, with a look at the bamboo salad, because that did turn out quite well.
Yesterday, I surprised my husband by making us takana meshi, or fried rice with pickled mustard greens. We both love takana, the greens, and he's talked about how delicious they are with fried rice, so I figured I'd give it a go. I've been trying to eat brown rice, in my quest to be healthy, but I made an exception yesterday. I don't think this would have been delicious as brown rice. But it was quite easy, and my husband actually said to me, "Yaru ne," which is high praise from him, almost a "good job." It was delicious.
I also made spinach. I was tired of sesame dressing, so I made a spicy cashew dressing for it tonight.
The dinner! Ko had some leftover curry, and I had some leftover bean soup.
While Ko was sick, I made simple meals that didn't take a lot of time and noise, so he could sleep. And he mostly slept right through them, so I ended up eating by myself. Typically, I would have yudofu in ponzu sauce, with miso soup and some kind of vegetable side dish. Here I have tomatoes and mango for the side dishes. You can also see Bragg Liquid Aminos. My brother gave it to me for Christmas, telling me, "It tastes just like soy sauce!" Um. I put it on my brown rice. It smells awful, and doesn't taste like soy sauce, but it's not bad on the rice.
Lunch. A salad with lettuce, tomatoes, and renkon with a miso dressing. I also had some ochagara. Simple, and I think pretty healthy.
Dinner that night. The simmered dish, with salmon, carrots, bamboo, and lotus, was a complete failure, truly awful. I had attempted to cook healthy--without any oil, or mirin, or sake. And it was just atrocious. There has to be a happy balance. A little sesame seed oil, I decided, will not kill me. The salad--with lettuce, renkon, tomato, red onions, and sweet peas--was quite yummy, but the dressing was too strong, with way too much of it. Overall, only the rice and the miso was really good.
The salad does have potential--just way, way too much miso dressing. I made it myself, and the stuff was so, so strong!!
After Ko was feeling better, he went grocery shopping, and brought home: a duck. A whole duck. I stuffed it with my Grandma's turkey stuffing recipe, and it was a pretty big hit. The duck was horribly time-consuming to make, so we only got the simplest side dishes: tomato and lettuce, a little bit of avocado, rice, and stuffing.
Day 2 with the duck: the next day, I spent the day boiling down the leftovers to make a stir-fry and a soup. In the first pot is the broth from simmering the duck that I used as soup stock. In the middle is the meat I pulled off the duck pre-simmering. This meat I used for a stir-fry. In the second pot is the meat that came off the duck during the simmering, the meat I included in the soup. Finally, in the bowl at the side of the picture are the duck bones. I think I did a pretty good job of getting them clean!
The duck soup. I made a Chinese medicinal recipe for warming in the winter. A very simple soup, but very rich, and very satisfying. It does heat you up! It has little bits of duck boiled off the bones, and some leeks in it, as well as some spices, but that's it.
And the stir-fry. I used scallions and broccoli, with garlic, ginger and a little sesame oil. Broccoli is my new favorite winter vegetable. It was also quite good.
