Chez Yusuke

Asparagus with a kick

I attempted this extremely simple recipe from the Fat-Free Vegan blog. Please note that her photography is excellent, as are, by all evidence, her culinary skills. I feel so lowly in comparison. On the other hand, I don’t particularly like cooking, anyway, and I’m probably better at searching International Bibliography of the Social Sciences. Hmph.

This dish caught my eye because I love wasabi, and the recipe is so easy that it barely counts as cooking. You just coat asparagus in a mixture of sesame oil, soy sauce, and wasabi then roast it in the oven.

Unfortunately, mine didn’t turn out so great. Not sure exactly what I did wrong. The tips of the asparagus were nice, but some sections were really stringy. I might’ve overcooked it, or perhaps it just was bad quality to begin with. I also could’ve added more wasabi, but that was much more easily remedied afterward than if I had the opposite problem.

This dish would be perfect for bento (a lunch box meal).

I really love the wasabi kick, so this satisfied my craving nicely. And here’s a wasabi factoid: from a reference in the wasabi wikipedia article, I learned that researchers have created a fire alarm for people with hearing impairments that uses wasabi! When smoke is detected, the device shoots wasabi from a can into the room. The powerful smell woke up the people in the study. Wicked. Story and video are here.

Since I was worried that the asparagus would be awful and that Yusuke would go hungry, I made sure we had some tofu on hand as a supplement. Yusuke snarfed down his asparagus, so either he was starving or it was fairly edible (I think the former). And then we ate the tofu anyway with the usual green onions, soy sauce, ginger, and bonito flakes. Cold, smooth tofu. Yum. I couldn’t manage a decent picture, but here’s a placeholder.

Tofu!