Tuesday: Kinpira redux

Carrot-burdock kinpira with pan-fried tofu and rice.

Kinpira has already appeared on the blog: we're officially on the market for another burdock recipe, though this one is pretty great. 

In other burdock-related news, we were walking through the park the other day and realized that a few plants looked strangely familiar.  In fact, they looked just like the burdock tops we cooked recently.  As it turns out, burdock is growing all over the park!  We found several first-year plants, with their smaller, edible leaves, as well as a few second-year plants, which send up a huge stem and grow flowers and burrs.  One of them is about our height. 

Tuesday: Another new veggie

Japanese-influenced soup of burdock greens, barley and mushroom.

We improvised this soup as a vehicle for another veggie that is new to us - burdock greens. Burdock root (Japanese "gobo") is a long, brown taproot with an earthy flavor. This is the first time we had seen the greens for sale. Apparently, during the plant's first year of its two-year life cycle, the young greens and stems are soft enough to be edible. The stems just need a little peeling to remove any fibrous skin. We paired the greens with two common Japanese ingredients - barley and mushroom - and flavored the soup with garlic and soy sauce.

Tuesday: Kinpira

Burdock-carrot kinpira* with green cabbage-egg stir fry, served on brown rice.

For those who may be uninitiated, burdock (sometimes labeled by its Japanese name, "gobo") is a long, thin brown root. It can be found at farmer's markets during the colder months, or in some pan-Asian grocery stores. It's an unusual vegetable, with a very earthy, almost herbal flavor. If you decide to try a burdock recipe, make sure to chop or shred it directly into a bowl of water, because it (enzymatically) browns very quickly in the air, which will adversely affect the flavor.

In this particular dish, the burdock and carrot are cut into shavings (a carrot peeler works best), then fried in a little oil. Soy sauce, sugar and red pepper are added and stir-fried until the liquid has almost completely evaporated. The final dish has a delicate, still slightly crunchy texture.

As for the other dish, we finally found another cabbage-and-___ recipe, this time with egg filling in the blank!


*According to our cookbook, "Kinpira" was a "strong and dashing mythical hero of old Japan." But you knew that already.