Tuesday: Gingery watercress-topped tofu

 

Gingery wild watercress-topped tofu.

This recipe comes from Elizabeth Schneider's Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini:  we simmered tofu slices in a mixture of dashi, soy sauce and sesame oil, and then set the tofu aside.  The cresses were tossed in a bowl with cornstarch and a little sugar, and then added to a skillet in which we had already fried ginger and scallion.  Finally we added the stock back in and allowed it to thicken, adding sesame seeds as a final touch.

Sunday dinner: Porgy and Bes(t mustard greens ever)

Pan-fried porgy topped with sesame, served with rice and baby mustard greens.

The fish here is flavored with sauteed ginger and garlic. We used to always broil fish, but now that we're buying better quality fish from the farmer's market, perhaps we're getting a bit braver...

These young mustard greens, purchased at the Columbia greenmarket, made a fantastic salad.

Thursday: "Hash-browns," Indian style

Indian potatoes with whole spices and sesame seed.

We'd actually both eaten dinner earlier this evening, but decided to make this little potato curry as a late-night snack. We needed to use up the remaining German Butterball potatoes. The Adirondack pinks were thrown in there for variety.

This recipe is a pretty basic curry, but the results are delicious: the potatoes are boiled whole and then cubed; then a series of spices are added to hot oil (asafoetida, fenugreek, black mustard seed, cumin), followed by a lot of white sesame seed and a little powdered turmeric. The potatoes are added and fried for about ten minutes total, adding a little amchur with salt and pepper halfway through.

Most of the curries we make don't involve sesame, but its flavor really added a richness to this dish and made it seem more substantial.

Wednesday: Squash salad

Warm butternut squash and chickpea salad with pita.

Before this year we actually didn't cook much with butternut squash, despite it being the most common winter squash in grocery stores. At most, we'd make a Thanksgiving squash puree as a side dish. We're still exploring the higher culinary potential of the humble butternut, and this recipe was another nice addition to our repertoire. The only tricky part is trying to make homemade tahini by grinding toasted sesame seeds with some water.

Tuesday: An old favorite

Brussels sprouts and tofu with ginger and sesame, served with rice.

Brussels sprouts are one of those vegetables that every red-blooded American child knows that she's supposed to hate. And for years, I obliged. But now I realize that adults are just fostering that expectation in order to keep all the brussels sprouts for themselves. Well played, adults.

This is our favorite thing to do with brussels sprouts, and probably one of our all-time favorite recipes. The sprouts are boiled first and then thrown into a skillet with ginger and oil and tossed briefly with a honey-sherry-salt mix. Freshly toasted sesame seeds are sprinkled over the sprouts after they're taken off the heat. To make this a little more substantial, we usually pan-fry tofu slices in the oil before proceeding with the ginger and sprouts.

The recipe above comes from Elizabeth Schneider's "Vegetables: From Amaranth to Zucchini" (see our goodreads widget at right). We highly recommend this book - it's both an excellent reference and a reliable cookbook.

Thursday: Mispoona Two Ways

Buckwheat noodles, mispoona, and radishes with tart tofu-mispoona dressing.

Mispoona is a cross between mizuna, a Japanese mustard green, and Tatsoi, another brassica family member. This was our first time cooking with it.

In this recipe, mispoona greens are blended with soft tofu, lemon juice, and lemon zest to make a sour, bright-green dressing. The remaining mispoona is chopped coarsely and used as a bed for the soba (Japanese buckwheat) noodles. Radishes and sesame seeds act as garnishes. Interestingly, although red radishes are relatively spicy on their own, they are completely tamed by the tofu-based dressing. (Dairy seems to have the same effect.)

Most importantly, this recipe provides an opportunity to show off our stacking pyrex bowl set. Here's the mise-en-scene:

Sunday Japanese Lunch

Eggplant salad with tart sesame dressing and cold soba noodles.

One of my favorite things about eggplant is its unique flavor and texture - it doesn't quite taste like anything else, and it often doesn't seem identifiably plant-like at all. In some dishes, the texture is reminiscent of meat or mushroom. This is one such dish where you might be hard-pressed to identify the main ingredient, despite the simplicity of the preparation. The eggplant is simply peeled, cut into matchsticks, and blanched for 3 minutes, then tossed with a ground white sesame-vinegar-tamari-sugar dressing.

As we've mentioned before, eggplants just love to hybridize, and it can sometimes be difficult to determine which varietal you've got. Here's the green and white beauty we picked up yesterday:



The pattern and color are reminiscent of the small, round Thai eggplants, sometimes called brinjals in Indian groceries - but, at over a pound, it's too large to be one of those. It's probably a hybrid or close relative.