asparagus with mustard dressing

The quite simple, but satisfying, salad from Shizuo Tsuji's Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art — "Asuparagasu Karashi-Ae." Blanched asparagus, mustard powder (and water), egg yolk and soy sauce.

This worked well with some turnip-garlic chive jeon, miso soup, brown rice, and nattō.

breakfast

I made one of the most satisfying (and surprisingly simple) breakfasts in a long time today.


I made a simple miso soup (dashi, tamari, miso, julienned carrots) and ate that with Japanese white rice, nattō, and a steamed egg (and tea, of course, being that smallest bowl).

So I was steaming the rice... which, this being the first time I've tried that, I must say is ridicuously good. I took Sho-Chiku-Bai sweet rice, soaked it for 20 minutes, placed it in a bowl in a steamer with an equal volume of water and steamed it for 20 minutes. It came out perfect. And then my nattō needed something. So I greased a small bowl with sesame oil and steamed the egg, beaten, for maybe 6-8 minutes. It was stirred three or four times during that period. And it was moist, creamy and the ultimate topping for rice mixed with nattō (or at least on par with a raw quail egg).

natto

I was at Tran's World Market yesterday getting bean curd and such and they had something that I haven't seen since I was in Normandy (and stupidly didn't try then): quail eggs.

I tried one this morning with natto, a traditional paring. It was very good. Naturally the natto overpowers the flavor, but it makes it a bit richer. And the shells are wonderful, speckled little things.

kimchi or pickle?

So I started with this:

And ended up with this:

Part pickle, part kimchi: I had some daikon left over from the last batch of kimchi, and a handful of Japanese cucumbers, so I thought to do a summery kimchi. Opps -- the cucumbers had gone off, and I was all prepared. I gathered a half dozen ripe lemon cukes from the garden. And there you have it. It's very tangy, I think from the sweetness of the cucumbers, and it has a nice bite. It does have pepper, a good handful of Thai peppers, but those won't turn it red. (I got some Korean pepper at Kim's Market in Hadley for a more traditional batch of kimchi with napa cabbage).


And then a few days ago I made spaghetti squash with parsley and kale from the garden and kale. That with some vegetarian bratwurst that weren't too bad. It was quite good, but even better the next next mixed with ricotta. Mnnnn.


Lastly, I've decided that natto and brown rice is even more satisfying than off-brand Cheerio's and raw milk for breakfast.

natto for breakfast...

...is actually very delicious.


I had some natto the other day and found it a little bland; I think it was because it hadn't come to room temperature, as others have also noted. It was nutty and a little pungent and very crunchy and the neba-neba (the strings that connect the crunchy soy beans once they've been stirred) was sticky and coated the rice nicely. Mmnn. Towards the end I added more rice and an umeboshi for some saltiness. It worked.

Natto was originally the byproduct of fermenting soybeans in hay, which contains Bacillus subtilis, or Bacillus natto. The stuff ferments and makes this sticky mess. They so sell B. suntilis, if I ever had the ambition to make my own...

day 8; summery dinner

I'm on day 9 of this last batch of pickles. They're going a little slower and are not as flavorful as I'd have expected at this point, but they're getting along. I thought that smaller would be quicker, but it's not.

I also started a batch of kimchi! LD thinks it smells really bad. And it's only been 48 hours. It tastes mild, and I think it's going to be really good. It's got bok choy, daikon, carrots, scallions and onions as well as garlic, ginger and thai chilis. LD says that these projects will be quarantined to the basement of the new apartment. I wanted the spare bedroom to be there for such purposes, heh.

I also bought some natto the other day. We'll see how that goes.

And tonight I made potato gnocchi with pesto tonight. It was really great: the pesto was relatively coarse, which was nice: bits of parmesan melted just right, chunks of pine nuts. All that with roasted purple cauliflower: just olive oil and salt was all it needed. It's nuttier than regular cauliflower. Crunchy, warm goodness.