Post Punk Kitchen Forum

well, hello there, have you by chance tried this?
http://justbento.com/handbook/johbisai/ ... rry-peanut

(this is like crack in my house, we can't make it too often because my daughter and i will both just eat it by the handful)

There's a Japanese canteen in South Kensington in London that does a lovely (and cheap - less than £5!) tofu teriyaki bento - crispy tofu smothered in teriyaki sauce, rice, seaweed, salad, daikon pickles. My only problem is that I am bad at eating with chopsticks and end up having to leave some after my hand gets tired!

that sounds amazing!! thanks for sharing! i think i may have a go at it this weekend.. mmm...

Alright. I'm going for it today. (guess that's what 3 days cooped up in the house from a hurricane will do to ya).

I've got several fillings lying around so I figure I'll try all three.

1. crumbled homemade sausage with a dot of gingered ketchup
2. pea dip (peas, mayo, cumin, thyme)
3. umeboshi paste

I know 2 & 3 are probably too wet, but since we're eating them right away I figure I'll try it anyway. I might do some chopped pickles too.

Yay! They totally worked and tasted delicious.


Fillings: umeboshi paste, peas/carrots & pea dip, crumbled sausage w/ ginger ketchup


Tah-dah!

Just seeing this thread for the first time, I saw mention of the wagamama miso soup pickles.. I have their cookbook (in Dutch, don't ask) and the pickles are not included in a recipe but they have this to say:

Preserved vegetables
In Japan almost every type of vegetable is preserved, from daikon to eggplant and greens. This is mostly done in salt to maintain a crunchy texture. Various brands can be very different, so try them all and choose the most delicious.

I have a lot of pickle recipes (although surely a good google search would find you some good ones), if anyone would like i could translate them and post them.

So cute! Nice job!

Yes, please do! I love Japanese pickles of all kinds and would be happy about some tried and tested recipes.

alright-- (my favorite shiso pickle recipe is missing, i need to go hunting)

first, an overnight pickle-
.5pound daikon, peeled and chopped (1.5c)
1 small piece kombu, rinsed and cut into pieces
2 dried red chilies
1t sea salt
Mix, put in bowl with a plate and weight on top; set aside for 24h at room temp. To serve, rinse off, squeeze, and discard chilies and kombu. Pickle can last for 3 days in fridge- remove weighted lid after 24h and don't rinse til just before serving.

Cucumber and pepper
3 japanese cukes
2t salt
1t black pepper, coarse grind
cut off the cucumber ends. cut the cucumbers open lengthwise, and scoop out the innards with a spoon and discard. put the remaining cucumber (cut into manageable pieces) in a ziplock bag and with a rolling pin, pound them til they are small pieces (bite sizish). add the other ingredients. squeeze out the air and put the bag in the fridge. Eat within 24h. (you can also do this with cucumber and shiso, or cucumber and orange or lemon zest)

Nappa cabbage salt pickles (shiotzuke)
1 nappa cabbage
1/2 c salt (the salt should be 3% of the weight of the cabbage)
15cm kombu
2-3 chilies
cut the cabbage into quarters, sixths or eighths lengthwise (depending on teh size). rub in the salt into the middle of the stalks. in a large bowl that you can put a lid and weight on the top, arrange it all in tightly (tucking in the chilies and kombu) and put the lid/weight on top. Takes about a week. Rinse and cut into bite size pieces when ready.

mustard pickles
300g small eggplant
salt
4T mild, white or yellow miso
2-3t hot japanese mustard (karashi)
[the recipe calls for intricate cutting and leaving the stems on the eggplant, which i think is ridiculous. instead, i cut off the stems and cube the eggplant in bite size pieces]
rub the eggplant with salt on all exposed cut surfaces [if you left it whole, cut gashes and rub the salt into the gashes]. let sit in a bowl for 6 hours. after that rinse twice.
mix the miso and mustard. add that to the eggplant and it's ready to serve. if there are any leftovers, cover with plastic wrap in contact wtih the food, and eat within a day.

shoyu pickles
assorted hard veggies (daikon, carrots, celery, lotus root, etc)
3.5T good shoyu
cut the veggies into the size you'd like. score the outside of the veggies so that they will hold more shoyu later. daikon, carrots and lotus root will need a quick parboil just to be less hard. Celery doesn't, and if the carrots are cut thinly enough they don't either. Celery should be cut into stalks and grilled over an open flame with a diffuser [note: i take all this stuff, cut it up, and throw it in a hot oven on a cooling rack to roast for a few minutes- much easier).
toss with the shoyu and let sit 4-5 hours.

Arigatou gozaimasu!

Also, do you have any great ideas for using those red shiso flakes　(yukari) other than mixing them with rice and make onigiri?

I have really gotten into making pickles lately, so thanks torque for posting those recipes. One can never have too many recipes.

I usually just kept them as something to dip a bland onigiri in [during the 5+ years it took me to get frigging shiso plants established in my yard!!!!]. However, they will make your popcorn a lot more interesting than it would be naked.

OMG popcorn is the best idea for the shiso flakes!

I am amazed you had a hard time growing them in your yard. I planted one from an herb farm three summers ago and it won't go away! They grew all over my yard this summer.

Nabe you guys. It's getting cold and has been raining nearly everyday it seems (yay Vancouver winter!). So I've been thinking about nabe (Japanese hotpot) recently, and I think I'll make some sometime this weekend.

I love nabe. It's so easy and delicious and comforting. What's your favorite kind? Any good recipes? I've only made a couple of varieties so far, usually using a miso or soymilk-miso broth and adding root vegetables/mushrooms/tofu/leek/greens to it, probably not very authentic but whatever, yummy.

I've done a modification of this recipe (kind of like what I described above), leaving out the chicken and using a mushroom broth instead of dashi:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmrnlIe3Eqw

or yuudofu (boiled tofu), with a yuzu (citrus fruit) and kombu broth. I left out the seafoody things and increased the other condiments:
http://www.sapporobeer.jp/recipe/0000000302/ (in Japanese but there are lots of pictures)
There's a vegan version of ponzu here:
http://www.yummly.com/recipe/external/J ... Recipezaar
(or let me know if there's a better one around)

I'm curious about kimchi nabe and would like to try a veganized version of that soon too. We'll see.

So anyway, please share your nabe recipes/ideas!

And sorry for linking to non-vegan recipes, not much exciting comes up when you google "vegan nabe" and I feel like nabe is just about throwing a bunch of stuff in a pot anyway and it's pretty easy to do tasty vegan versions if you have an idea of the basic process. But be warned that the first two links are not vegan.

@aubade-- using starts, they will come back forever and ever. Growing from seed, however, was one of the biggest gardening frustrations I've ever had.

I love nabe!! I wish I could get all the goodies that go well in nabe- konbu and dried tofu tied in knots, shirataki noodles, fu, etc. Can't get too much of that but just root veggies with good broth are nice too. Ground up sesame seed as a topping give it a really nice flavor-- if you haven't tried chanko nabe (sumo food) have a search around the interwebz and see how they do it- usually with big fat noodles- like the kind you can sometimes find fresh at Chinese markets.

Oh wow we put the shiso fumi furikake on popcorn Friday night and it is sooo good! Definitely my new favorite topping for popcorn.

Torque, do you always put ground sesame (like gomashio, or just sesame?) on all kinds of nabe? What does it go well with? I've heard of chankonabe, but it seemed so meat/fish-heavy and high calorie that I was afraid to try a vegan version. But now I shall reconsider! I think I can get those noodles pretty easily here.

Last weekend my roommate and I made some good nabe, we basically sauteed leeks, burdock (gobo), mushrooms, tofu, and Chinese veggie meat balls separately, then made the miso-soymilk broth with a bit of sake and put the sauteed things in it after, along with some nappa cabbage, bok choy and udon. I took pictures but am too lazy to upload them. I'm thinking of doing a soymilk one this weekend with lotus root (plus other things) and homemade ponzu, since we bought a huge jug of beany soymilk last weekend and need to use it. I plan on making nabe every weekend for most of the winter probably.

ooh, nabe! I love nabe!
My favourite is probably soya milk nabe. When me and my husband do nabe we tend to start with one kind and then add other things as we eat each batch. For example, we will do one with stuff cooked in kombu dashi (adding in ponzu etc. to our individual bowls), then add soya milk and eat that, then add toubanjan and udon to finish.
If you can find yuzu kosho where you live, I thoroughly recommend getting some and mixing a little into your bowl next time you do nabe!

I wanna come over!

Anytime you're in Vancouver <3

i am not a big fan of recipes for nabe- i just really do what tastes right. sweet miso broth, sweet clear broth, salty sake-based broth with kombu.... i honestly don't do the milk stuff because it just never really tasted right to me (vegan or not), but why not??

as for chanko, check this out....
http://www.banzuke.com/chanko-nabe/
he goes to a sumo stable and takes some photos of the process and ingredients. i never ate the meat in chanko nabe anyway, and you can see a good number of things that could go in there. there are also some recipes from some chanko restaurants underneath, they seemed extra-meaty so i didn't look too closely.
for me chanko was always different types of tofu and fu and mushrooms, and whatever veggies fit in the stew, with a miso broth. preferably with big fat fresh white noodles thrown in at serving time. the ground sesame, at least in Fukushima, is exclusively a chanko nabe thing (tho i did see some chinese soups with sesame paste, but that's a different story), but why not throw it into a nabe that looks like it could benefit? you only put it on right at eating time, maybe 1T or so per serving. extra points if you grind it up in a giant tsuribachi grinding bowl and put your nabe right in on top of it, oh slobber.

Onigiri don't need to have a filling in the center, especially when they are small (I too have those cute & tiny molds^^). And as others have pointed out, they don't have to be traditional, either. I find they taste great when an ingredient is simply mixed with the rice before putting it in the molds. I tried all kinds of ingredients and my favorites are sunflower seeds or crushed salted peanuts or curry powder. (Tahini was the worst...) Vegan furikake is also delicious of course. And simple nori and sesame seeds make for good onigiri.

For fillings in the center, you could also try "cream cheese", chopped mushroom, spinach, etc. I intend to try mushroom with chilli sauce since I love the taste of chilli in my onigiri (I don't know what the Japanese would think of using rice as a substitute for taco shells...).

Also, concerning Japanese cooking in general, I recommend the J-Simple website: http://j-simplerecipes.com/index.html. Like JustHungry, it's not vegan but many recipes are. I like that site as the recipes are simple and also traditional (you know, not some kind of weird occidental adaptations that call themselves Japanese because they have soy sauce in them). The content is well organized and new recipes are addded regularly.

ever been to Mos Burger? it's a brilliant idea!!

I was going to post the pic of the Kinpira Rice Burger but the page only shows a pop-up among many non-vegan suffering-flavored burgers, so i will link you to a page from JH instead.....
http://justbento.com/handbook/recipe-co ... n-together

The kinpira burger saved me a million times when I was travelling in Japan. Kinpira is now my favourite thing ever!