Go and Gather Your Spring Dish!

If you happen to be at the Japanese countryside and you have a friendly Japanese (maybe elderly) neighbour or acquaintance - it is well worth to ask them to advise you which of the plants around you are edible. There are so many wild greens, or mountain vegetables (山菜 sansai)as they are called in Japanese, that used to be a staple for the rural poor, as well as a delicacy in the refined Japanese cuisine. Today many young city dwellers only know these green goodies as Tempura on their plates in fancy restaurants or as the ingredient of Sansai Soba soups and the like, but often they have no idea how and where those plants grow and how to prepare them.
This is a pity since it is so much fun, healthy and for free to go out and gather fresh greens in the mountains and forests of Japan! However what most people luckily still know is, when something is in season. And now it is the season for Tsukushi, Fukinotou and Taranome.
Last spring I found all of these on the premises of the little farm in Ibaraki prefecture where I worked at.
With eggs kindly donated by our chicken, brown rice and a few condiments they became some of the most delightful homemade meals of my life.

Here are the details:
Tsukushi (horse tail)
You can find lots and lots of Tsukushi sprouts on meadows and at riversides approximatly around the time of the first Sakura blossoms. They look like this [click!].
Only take the young ones which did not yet "open their heads" and cut them shortly above the ground, so that you have stem and head.
Rinse them thoroughly and remove the outer shells (hakama) that look like little crowns. You may cut the Tsukushi to about 15mm long pieces. Then soak the Tsukushi with a little soysauce, Mirin and a pinch of salt for about 30min.
In the meantime wash the rice and put it in the rice cooker with an equal amount of water. Then just add the Tsukushi together with the soysauce-Mirin-mixture and let it all cook until the rice is soft and all the water is gone. The Tsukushi should also be soft and nice now.
You can make Tsukushi Onigiri out of it or use this Tsukushi Gohan (rice dish) as a very fine complement on Tempura for example.


Fukinotou
Fukinotou is a rather unimpressive looking short pale yellow flower with lots of green leaves, often growing on meadows in the shade of trees or bushes. They look like this [click!]. It is best to harvest them before they are in full bloom, because they tend to be a little bitter, and the longer they bloom the more bitter they get.
The most popular way to eat Fukinotou is in form of Tempura. The batter and the frying process takes away a bit of the bitternes, resulting in just the right balance of the taste of the fresh and flowerly green and the rich yet fluffily batter.
I confess that I used a ready-made Tempura mixture (containing flour, starch, baking powder and salt in the right proportions) and I just had to add egg and cold water and stir it a few seconds with chopsticks - very easy!
After washing and draining the Fukinotou, I dipped them in the batter and then fried them quickly in hot oil. Drain the fried Fukinotou Tempura again to get rid of the excessive oil and then serve it still hot with the Tsukushi Gohan.


Taranome (buds of Aralia)
Taranome are the buds of a very thorny bush and look like this [click!]. It is also better to harvest them early, before the grow too big, hard and woody.
They are also really delicious as Tempura.


The other greens on the first big photo above are Yomogi (mugwort) leaves. This weed grows all over Honshu in a rather epidemic way and most Japanese homegardeners hate it! However it has a nice and fresh herbal taste and is very healthy, so please try the recipe I posted before or chop it and sprinkle it on a salad, tomato salad for example. Yummy!

For more recipes and additional infos in English I recommend reading the interesting blog article.

It's Vegetable

I already mentioned it in my last posting: this time I will recommend my favorite non-Japanese restaurant in Tokyo! I don't want to deprive this wonderful little place from you, it is a Taiwanese eatery in Kinshichô called "It's Vegetable". And the name is the motto of this place! Everything is made of vegetables and soy - no meat, no fish, no milk, no egg - let's call it vegan :)
I wanted to check out this place when I visited Tokyo on a saturday to spend a day free of work just with meeting friends, shopping, and eatingeatingeating... After having read about it here, I suggested going there for dinner and a friend of mine wanted to make a reservation for us there. Unfortunatly when she called, they told her that they will have a privat party that night and aren't open for public. I was so dissapointed! However since we had already arranged to meet at Kinshichô station, we thought "let's just go there and see what it looks like. Maybe we can throw a glance on the food and see if it is worth coming back another time". It is not far from the station and we found it easily because of the big sign:


And yeah, it looked so promising that my friend just went right inside and started talking with the guys who were having their party there and with the restaurant owner and told them that she is here with a bunch of hungry vegetarian (ehem, actually I was the only strict vegetarian around, but well..) friends from all over the world, who came aaaaaallll the way, nearly starving etc etc and asked them if it weren't possible that we joined their party! Hehehehe... They seemed to be amused and also happy to have some girls around they could practice their English with, closed ranks and let us to stay. We had to pay a little bit and had all kinds of food and drinks, nice conversations and a lot of fun! And the food was great! Actually so great that I nearly forgot to take pictures. You can see that it is already half-eaten on my photo. It was an array of vegetables, mushrooms and all kind of Tofu / soy dishes (maybe also Gluten, I wasn't so sure about that) that were imitateting meat or fish - but in an extraordinary delicious and convincing way! Usually I am not such a big fan of such things like mock chicken wings or Tofu Schnitzel or all that stuff. I don't miss meat because there are so many other awsome things to eat in this world, so that I don't even think of meat as something edible anymore (no wonder after being a vegetarian for more than half of my life). However at "It's Vegetable" it just tasted so perfect, that even my non-vegetarian friends were amazed and loved it.
There was a dish that didn't just have the consistency but also really tasted and looked like fried fish, another dish was with slices of vegan "chicken" and there was Cha han, fried rice that seemed to have a lot of egg inside, but uh uh, all vegan ingrediences!
Very tasty and pretty different to Japanese Tsukemono were the Taiwanese style pickles.. Mmmh, well actually there was nothing I didn't like of all the things they brought out of the kitchen into the small, packed restaurant that night! And I guess that is true for any other day, without Party, too. Ok, I love Taiwanese food anyway, so they didn't have hard times to convince me of their dishes, but please believe me: it was really good: crunchy veggies, delicious mushrooms, many different kinds of tastes from spicy to sour to savoury - just right!
For lunch time they offer an all you can eat buffet for just 850yen and during dinner time you can order a la carte or also go for the buffet that is 1200yen then. Very good deal, I think! Beside the fantastic food, there is also just a very nice and homey atmosphere in this family-run restaurant. You can feel that the people who run this place do it with love and are very committed to the goodnes of vegetarian food. It is one of those likeable places you just see and know it will be fine. So please try yourself :)

It's Vegetable
4-1-9 Kinshichô, Sumida-ku, Tokyo
Phone: 03-3625-1245

11:00~14:00 all you can eat buffet only
18:00~20:00 all you can eat buffet or a la carte

Nezu no ya

Sometimes it is strange: something so good is just around the corner, I know it is there, I walk by every day and say to myself "you really have to try it - you know it'll be great", but for some reason or the other I never make it there as long as it is so close.
I first have to move away, don't come by for several month, become angry with myself that I didn't walk in right away the first day I saw it and now have to go through quite some effort to check it out finally. Just to see that it is as fantastic as I thought it would be from the first moment I learned of it's existence on. Nezu no ya is such a treasure.
When I came to Tokyo a year ago I used to live just five minutes walk from the little organic foodstore that hosts a vegetarian restaurant in its backroom. Everytime
on my way to the metro station or during my countless strolls around the neighborhood I had a look on the sample food they displayed and knew that this is a place just the way I love it. For around 1000 yen you can have a meal consisting of a variety of daily changing, beautiful little dishes, prepared with love for the detail and with organic and strictly vegetarian or even vegan ingrediences.
All nice, tasty, healthy, Japanesy :) Paradise! And believe it or not: although munching myself through veggie eateries virtually all over Tokyo, I never managed to just make the step into the restaurant behind the store that I visited several times! The main reason was that Nezu no ya only offers lunch and if I don't have to get up early for work or something I am rather a late-breakfast-no-lunch-but-tea&sweets-and-early-dinner kind of girl. And during my stay in Nezu there was no need for me to have breakfast early and so I was never really hungry enough for a big lunch like that. This changed when I started working on the countryside but then of course Nezu no ya was too far away to just drop by for lunch...
However recently I made it there! I had to drive to Tokyo for a delivery, was early and stopped by at Ueno park for some Hanami (the classic...). Starving after seeing all the people having picnic under the cherry blossoms I hurried to Nezu no ya - thinking "now or never!" And luckily it became "now" not "never"..
It is such a pleasant place! A quiet and very relaxing atmosphere overwhelms you and lets fall off all the stress the moment you sit down. It can really make you forget the hectic outside world for a while. The interior is simple, earthy and comfortable. It wasn't very crowded the day I have been there but also not so empty that you feel lost and lonely - just right.
Yet the best thing of course was the food! That's what I came for and that's what makes me wanna go there over and over again! They offer for example a daily changing lunch set, vegetable curry, a Tofu set or a Natto set, for the more adventurous lovers of authentic Japanese cuisine ;)
I tried the lunch set of the day that consisted of a soup, rice, vegetables, salad, pickles and a kind of Tofu patty. The miso soup was a wonderful steaming goodness with seaweed, vegetables, mushrooms and some kind of broad, flat, soft ?noodle?
that reminded me of southern German "Flädle" (pancakes from the other day, cut into stripes and served in a broth). The rice was hearty Genmai topped with Gomashio. The Tsukemono (pickles) of cucumber, Daikon radish and carrots were crunchy and not too salty or sour, so that they still had plenty of the original flavor of the fresh vegetables they were made of. The same can be said about the pink
Renkon (lotos root) slices, also a cold dish, marinated in Mirin and Shiso (perilla leaves), I guess, and definitely as decorative as they were delicous! The little dish to be seen in the upper left corner of my photo was a savory mixture of carrots, Konnyaku, Aburaage (fried Tofu). And oh, the fluffy-soft Tofu patty was soooo yummie! Especially after sprinkling some juice from the extremely intensive and fragrant mandarine on it... mmmmh!
Now that was a feast! Even a much longer way is worth to be made for this kind of food! This is what I am constantly searching for, this is what I write this blog for!
Nezu no ya ranks alongside Mikoan (Kyoto) and Monk's Food (Kichijôji) in my personal top 3 of Japanese restaurants! (Next time
I will share my favourite non-Japanese vegetarian restaurant in Tokyo with you.. )

I had to change my motto from "now or never" to "now and forever"!

Nezu no ya
文京区根津１－１－１４

1-1-14 Nezu, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo (click for map!) (on the lively shinobazu dôri)

Nezu stn on Tokyo Metro Chiyoda line

Tel: 03-38230030
lunch served between 11:30 ~ 2:30 o'clock. No dinner!
closed on sunday and holidays

Okara

Have you ever wondered where all the soy pulp ends that is left over when producing soy milk, Tofu and the likes? No? Don't worry, most people don't, I guess. This surely is due to the fact that most of this highly nutritious stuff is used to feed up animals, especially pigs as far as I know. But actually there is no reason why humans shouldn't eat this healthy soy mash, too. And by the way: vegetarians have to hear so many "jokes" like "you eat away the food for the birds/cows etc.." - so why not doing it! I love Müsli, lettuce and yes, also Okara (that is how the soy pulp is called in Japan). Here and in Korea and China people always ate it and they are right: it "is low in fat, high in fiber, and also contains protein, calcium, iron, and riboflavin." (says Wikipedia). And it can be the basis for a tasty dish! It does not have a very rich flavour by itself, rather mild and a bit bland, but you this gives way for so many possibilities.
Here in Japan you often find Okara flavoured with Mirin, carrots, Konnyaku and some spring onions, as a snack that is thought to taste good with beer. You can find it freshly packed like this in the supermarket or you can get it in Izakayas also. I don't like beer, however that doesn't keep me from loving all those savoury snacks that are served with it.
Sometimes they also have Okara in its plain form in the Tofu corner of the refrigerator section in supermarkets. Although the ready-to-eat-versions are convenient, I think they are often too sweet and so it usually tastes much better if you can get the plain stuff and spice it up yourself. You can do that the traditional way with the condiments I mentioned above and eat it cold.
Or you can use it for example to bake vegan cakes (i've never tried to make that, but I heard it works out very fine, see a picture here). Or you can make very tasty vegetarian patties. I mixed an egg with the Okara, some shredded carrots, salt, pepper and garlic and a little flour, formed patties and fried them. Utterly delicous! Especially with my favourite hotsauce that was sent to me all the way from Barbados as a present recently :)



*thanks again!
I just love the flavour of Scotch Bonnett Peppers and mustard and of course it is spicy hot like hell and gives me an immediate hick-up, but that is part of the fun!

Kuroke to go

Ever had a purple croquette? No? Me neither, before I visited Kamakura a few weeks ago. One of the souvenir and food shops close to the Kôtokuin (the temple with the enormous outdoor Amida Buddha statue) was specialized in all kind of sweet potato treats. They had wonderful sweet potato cakes, ice cream and those funny looking and delicious tasting kuroke (that is the Japanese pronunciation of croquette). Just right: crispy outside, creamy inside with a sweet and savory taste... and they were vegetarian of course. You'll find it on the lefthand side if you walk down the street coming from the Kôtokuin.

This kuroke was one of the very few snacks (icecream is ok too) I found here so far that can be eaten while walking here in Japan without feeling like doing something wrong and rude. Food to go is pretty unusual here. You are supposed to sit down and enjoy the food (nothing wrong about that), instead of walking, dribbling and bothering others with the smell of your food and your disturbing appearance while gulping down stuff. I guess I lived in Berlin for too long where it is the most normal thing in the world to grab a Falafel or something on the way to care about what others are thinking about seeing me eating. It is quite annoying to search for a appropiate place to sit down and eat store-bought snacks here in Japan when I don't want to go in a restaurant and am not around my appartment. Well, at least I got to know many parks and parkbenches like this...

Vegetarian Okonomiyaki

Okonomiyaki is a typical festival food in Japan - at every Omatsuri you can be sure to find at least one or two okonomiyaki stalls (except for the Namaste India festival and the Vegetarian Culture Fair maybe..). Osaka is famous for this dish that consist mainly of shredded cabbage and a pancake-like batter, spiced up with beni shôga, pickled red ginger, all fried on a hot plate and topped with a special dark brown sauce and oftentimes mayonnaise. The version from Hiroshima contains fried soba and the ingrediences are not mixed up, but first the batter is fried to something like a pancake and than the other ingrediences are all piled up on it to one tower of okonomiyaki that shrinks during the frying but it still looks like an artistic feat to turn it over..
Unfortunatly the usual okonomiyaki is not vegetarian, but made with fish-based dashi (stock), often with those tiny kind of shrimps and topped with my friends the katsuobushi (fishflakes)..
Actually it would be no problem to leave those little beasts out, but as it often is in Japan you make people very uneasy if you ask to modify a traditional, original, century old recipe even the slightest little bit. It seems to be a sacrilege, impossible because the dish is just perfect as it is - I don't dare to doubt that, but I prefer an imperfect veggie dish to a perfect one with dead animals in it. Usually it still tastes great and for me personally it tastes better when there are no little sad eyes staring at me from my plate!
But it seems like there is no way to make it any different, although the name okonomiyaki implies "fry whatever you want"... Well, yet there is a way: just do it yourself! A few days ago I was invited for a fantastic, homemade, vegetarian okonomiyaki and monja dinner - and a feast it was! Monja (also called monjayaki) is the softer, more liquid and mushy sister of okonomiyaki - a dish originating from Tokyo, to be eaten directly from the hot plate it is fried on, for example in one of the countless monja places in shitamachi. There you also should be able to find veggie versions, but it is also easy to make it at home - you only need a hot plate. There are special ones for okonomiyaki (and monja), but I think it should also work on those hot plates on top of raclette ovens, maybe even in a good not-sticking pan. Although making it in a pan is not an ideal solution, cause the sociable, comfortable and fun aspect of sitting around the hot plate waiting for the next piece of food and watching the batter sizzle. You can easily spent two hours eating like that - nice!
Now to the recipes. I don't know exact measurements, but I think it is a dish that does not require exact measurements. Just try to fry one okonomiyaki and if it is too soggy add some more flour before you fry the next one or add more stock if you think it is too dry - easy as that.
Okonomiyaki:
Cut about half of a cabbage in thin slices.
Mix about 3 cups of flour with 1-2 eggs and some veggie stock (less than 1 cup should be enough), add a little salt.
Mix the cabbage and the batter and add as much beni shôga as you like (don't take too much, otherwise you won't taste anything else anymore).


Now you can add whatever you like, for example: thinly sliced shiitake, okra, green asparagus, onions or leek, pieces of mochi (sticky not-sweetened ricecakes), corn, even cheese is not unusual and tastes fantastic with it.. Our okonomiyaki-host also added Agedama (also called Tenkasu), that is something resembling the German "Backerbsen" (are they called soup pearls in English? Until that night I didn't know they exist outside of Germany).
Than fry a big spoon of it on the hot plate with very little oil and turn it over when it is still soft on top but golden brown on the underside and fry it on the other side for a short time.


Afterwards top it with a thick and sweet soy sauce (since okonomiyaki sauce is usually with oyster extract and worcestershire sauce, that resembles it a lot contains anchovies as far as I know), mayonnaise (if you like it - I hate mayonnaise so I don't use it), sprinkle with aonori (dried seaweed). Part it in four pieces with a wooden spatula and serve hot. While eating the next serving is put on the hot plate.


For making monja you make the same batter, just add much more water or veggie stock and grated yam and stir it a bit longer. Then put the cabbage and whatever you want to have with it (I recommend asparagus and cheese) on the hot plate and let it stir-fry for a moment, make a hole in the middle and add the batter. Then everyone spreads out bitsized pieces of it thinly with a wooden spatula, so that those pieces become brown, a bit gumlike and crispy on the edges - these portions are to be eaten directly from the hot plate with chopsticks. Here and here you can see pictures of monja.
Have a nice meal, share it with friends and enjoy a great foody-night, like I did - thanks again Nishi-san and Yuko-san :)

Mikoan in Kyoto

I love Kyoto. It is a totally touristy place, I know, but it is just sooo awesome. It is Japan like you know it from pictures - it just is picturesque! There are more temples and shrines then you ever wanted to see, there is Gion, with its oldfashioned wooden town houses, shops, (overpriced but nice to look at) restaurants and Maiko shooing by, some of them real ones on their way to customers, others faked (tourists that pay for getting dressed and styled like a Maiko what takes around 2-3 hours, just to go for a little walk and take some photos), but not less beautiful in my humble eyes. There are lush green mountains with bamboo groves and maple trees that change to the most intensive reds in autumn and cherry trees that are like fluffy pink clouds in spring surrounding the city.
And there is the food: the famous Kyoto ryori! Lots of natural flavours, extremely fresh and tasty vegetables, an abundance of wonderful pickles, lots o tofu in all forms and matcha wherever you look at. My culinary heaven for sure!
I have been there just a few days, but I could write a dozen articles about the food in Kyoto.. Let's start with a recommendation of a great vegetarian restaurant.
Mikoan is the name of this bar-like little restaurant that is hidden in a backyard of a narrow alley.
I saw a photo of the food served there on flickr and decided that I have to find it - and it was a very good decision!
Mikoan is strictly vegetarian (not vegan, but I guess you will find vegan dishes there too) and everything that is served there is supposed to be natural and healthy - except maybe for the array of shochu that is waiting for you at the bar...
On their menu you'll find a huge bowl of vegetable curry, of which I was told that it was very delicious. And they serve wonderful typical Japanese sets with all kinds of little dishes. That was my choice of the night! Arranged maybe not 100% strictly according to the Five Principles of buddhist vegetarian cuisine, but it was visible, tasteable, noticeable that the Five Colors: go shiki - red, yellow, green, black and white, Five tastes: go mi - salty, sour, sweet, bitter, and spicy and the Five ways of preparing: go hou - simmering, broiling, steaming, frying and raw/pickled (if i remember correctly) were kept in mind. But to tell you the truth: I don't care much about that - it was a very diverse, healthy and most of all delicious meal!
Not only were there five dishes (plus rice), but also several different ways of preparing: my set consisted of a miso soup with vegetables (= something boiled), deep fried crumpled yuba (tofu "skin")balls (= something fried), pickles, a kind of salad with seaweed and cold tofu (= something raw), simmered greens with aburage (fried tofu) and mushrooms and some other fried veggies. My friend Angie also ordered the set and got some different dishes, so that we could share and try even more things! She had other veggies and some wonderful vegetarian gyoza...mmmmh!
It was such a satisfying dinner in a very homey atmosphere, with books, cats and all kind of knickknack around. The ladies who are running the place were friendly and so was the only other guest, a yoga-loving middle-aged lady sitting beside us and chatting with us in Japanese-English lingo.
Great food, nice place, friendly people in a beautiful city - there is nothing else to ask for! Please go there, whenever you have the chance to do so.


Mikoan
〒600-8032 京都市下京区寺町通四条下ル中之町570

570 Nakano-cho
Teramachi-dori, Shijo-saguru, Kyoto [click for map and description of the not-so-easy-to-find-way with photos :)
　
TEL/FAX 075-361-2200

Mo-Fr: 5pm - 11pm
Sa: 12 - 11pm
So: 12 - 8pm