Wednesday: Udon and fishballs

 

Sardine "meatball" soup with pink Asian radish, mibuna and udon noodles.

We found this recipe for a noodle soup with mibuna, which is apparently a characteristic vegetable of Kyoto, Japan.  The meatballs are made of chopped sardine (we used tinned, but fresh would probably have produced a better texture), flour, miso paste and ginger.  The vegetables are simmered in a dashi broth, and then the "meatballs" are added and simmered until they are warmed through.  The soup broth is finally flavored with a bit more miso.

Dashi is one of the basic ingredients in Japanese cuisine - it is a stock made of simmered seaweed and bonito fish flakes.  We purchased an "instant" dried dashi powder to save a little labor, but one of these days we should probably invest in the real ingredients.  For what it's worth, we had been making miso soup for years with just miso paste added to the water, and it REALLY is better with the dashi.

Tuesday: Miso-Mispoona

Mispoona-miso soup with udon noodles and boiled edamame.

We had some lingering mispoona from last week and decided to wilt it into this simple miso-based udon noodle soup.

There was a time when we used to buy those miso soup "packets" which contain powdered miso along with dried seaweed and tofu. Then we realized it's ridiculously easy to just keep a container of miso paste in the fridge (it keeps indefinitely) and a bag of dried wakame seaweed in the pantry. Now it's an easy standby dinner to which many vegetables can be added for variety.

In Japan miso soup is often eaten for breakfast, but we're not that authentic.

Wednesday: Weeknight cookery

Udon noodle soup with miso and wakame.

Just a quick and easy dinner in the middle of a very hectic week...

Keeping it in the family

Tatsoi wilted with mustard sauce and miso soup.

This was our first time cooking with tatsoi, even though we've seen it many times before at the market. From a culinary perspective, tatsoi is considered to be a type of bok choy; taxonomically, that means it's another member of the Brassicaceae family.

This isn't the first time we've mentioned our Brassica friends (also known as cruciferous vegetables), and you might be wondering why we're so obsessed. It just happens that this prolific genus has produced some of our favorite vegetables:

kale, collard greens, chinese broccoli, cabbage, brussels sprouts, kohlrabi, broccoli, broccoli romanesco, cauliflower, mizuna, broccoli rabe, turnips, rutabaga, mustard greens, arugula, watercress, radishes (including daikon), wasabi

Mustard plants include species in both the Brassica and Sinapis genera, so the dish above is technically an all-Brassicaceae affair. Perhaps we should rename it "Brassica wilted with Brassica sauce." Perhaps not.