Well, Day 3 of the Food Lover’s Cleanse was quite different from the two preceding days, for sure! I ate leftovers for breakfast (quinoa) and lunch (couscous and black-eyed pea curry), and attempted a complicated Japanese dish tonight. I mean, it probably wasn’t really that complicated, it’s just that it presented new ways to use the knife, new ingredients, and new cooking techniques. I definitely learned some things tonight, and that is very cool.
I made a lot of adjustments, too. First, the miso soup.
The recipe indicated both tofu and dashi flakes. Well, I don’t eat unfermented soy, and I couldn’t get my hands on dashi flakes, so my soup consisted of water, miso paste, and wakame. It was delicious! The miso is a dark, brown rice miso, the soybeans fermented 18 months. The wakame was purchased no knowing if it was exactly what I needed, but it ended up being perfect. I prefer dark miso to light miso – I love the deep, rich flavor of this brown rice miso. It’s very comforting.
The main event was koya-dofu and vegetables. Koya-dofu is a kind of dried tofu that needs to be rehydrated with liquid, but since I don’t eat tofu, I had to find another option. I had half a large container of mushrooms from the weekend, so I chose to use that. I couldn’t find burdock root, either, so I left that out. Also, I forgot that brown rice was on the menu, but I happened to have this adorable “baby basmati” (aka Kali Jeera) rice, so I used that instead.
Can I just say OMG adorable!! It was very tasty and didn’t give me a crash, either. I think it would be good in rice pudding (as it says on the label), sweetened with coconut sugar. NOM.
The recipe for the vegetables gave instructions for their placement, but I didn’t have time to fuss with it, so I arranged mine like so:
My favorite flavor element was probably the mushrooms cooked in kelp stock, tamari, and mirin. So yummy.
I loved working with the kombu, which flavored the kelp stock and also was used in the cooking vessel, sitting atop the vegetables. Also, the use of the otoshi-buta, which means “dropped” lid. According to Bon Appétit, “It’s a circular lid that sits directly on the braising food, rather than on the rim of the cooking vessel. It keeps food moist as it simmers, even in shallow liquid.” I used a Chemex coffee filter, which worked great! I loved using it, and loved how well the vegetables cooked under it. I’ll definitely employ this tool again. This was really my first foray into Japanese cooking – well, beyond making sushi – and I’d definitely like to learn more about this cuisine.
In addition to all this Japanese food, I had some leftover salmon from last night.
No snacks again today, and for dessert I substituted 1 oz of raw dark chocolate for the baked pears. I’ll make the pears tomorrow night.