Posts Tagged carrots

Red quinoa delight

July 12, 2014 at 6:28 am · Filed under general veggie dish, tofu ·Tagged , , ,

Red quinoa delight

I made this one, and it doesn’t look half bad.

Procedures:

  1. Cook gorgeous, jewel-like red quinoa in rice cooker (same water proportion and setting as plain white rice)
  2. Dump approx 1 tbsp each of mixed garlic and ginger in frying pan
  3. Add sliced white onions
  4. Add ‘white’ bits of chopped bok choy
  5. Add chopped carrots
  6. Add ‘green’ bits of chopped bok choy
  7. When all is cooked, add cooked quinoa
  8. Add smashed silken tofu
  9. Add a couple drops of olive oil
  10. Mix all and season to taste with soy sauce and rice wine vinegar. Sriracha or other spicy sauce is also good!

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Deep-fried harusame + veg

June 9, 2013 at 9:05 am · Filed under pasta & noodles, stir fry ·Tagged , , ,

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Forgot to write up this dish from a while back. It didn’t quite come out as Yusuke expected, but I thought it was pretty cool.

There were two components: fried harusame and a veggie stir fry.

To begin with the routine side, Yusuke whipped up a typical stir fry with soy sauce and oyster sauce, featuring carrots, green onions, shrimp, and bean sprouts.

The main inspiration behind this dish, though, was an experiment with harusame.

I’ve mentioned harusame on this blog a few times before. Since it’s been several months, I’m copying in my usual description again:

So what are harusame noodles, one might ask?

The wikipedia article offers the translation “cellophane noodles,” which sounds pretty much unappetizing to me. But other descriptions are better: glass noodles, bean thread noodles, or vermicelli.

According to Wise Geek, they’re Japanese noodles made from potatoes, sweet potatoes, rice, or mung bean starch.

The noodles are extremely thin and become translucent when cooked. Since they’re less dense or “doughy” than other types of noodles, they’re delightful in soup!

Harusame (春雨) means spring rain, and you can google for more pics.

We most recently bought a big pack at a nearby Chinese grocery. When it’s dry, it’s sort of nested in a pack, but not curly like instant ramen.

We don’t have a deep fryer, so Yusuke attempted his experiment in a fairly deep frying pan, pouring in a few glugs of canola oil and adding a pile of dry noodles over medium heat. He thought that more oil would’ve had a better effect, but I guess our pan wasn’t deep enough.

The harusame is hard, so as soon as it hits the hot oil, it starts to expand. When the whole tangle of noodles turned white in colour, he removed the batch and added another.

Some sections ended up rather more oily than others although he was quick with paper towels to soak up the oil. The final product, overall, had a rice cracker-like crunchiness.

After several batches were done…the giant mess happened.

In order to serve the dish, Yusuke wanted to make the finished tangle of noodles smaller. So, he put some on a plate, took a big knife, and went *SMACK* on top of the noodles. The result was a spectacular crunch action that had projectile consequences. In other words, the fried noodles shattered and debris went across the kitchen. But it still ended up nicely on our plates somehow in the end, and Yusuke arranged the veggie stir fry over the top.

Incidentally, lots of other crunchy little noodles escaped during various points of the process, so the clean up crew (moi) had lots to do!

Overall, it wasn’t perfect, but still tasty and kinda fun.

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Parsnip kinpira

November 4, 2012 at 4:46 am · Filed under stir fry ·Tagged ,

Oh, glorious fruit of the earth. Parsnip, I sing your praises.

Yusuke, noting parsnips’ similarities to the earthiness of gobo (a Japanese root vegetable), employed it in a fabulous kinpira.

He started with fresh chili pepper from our farmer’s market basket, thinly sliced and sauteed in a tiny bit of canola oil.

He added sliced carrots and parsnips and let it all sizzle.

For seasoning, he added 3 tbsp each of soy sauce and mirin. He also drizzled in a tiny bit of sesame oil for aroma. The last addition was sesame seeds.

Earthy and spicy!

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Spicy harusame

September 19, 2012 at 6:16 am · Filed under pasta & noodles, stir fry ·Tagged , ,

Now this was a good one. I’m totally a fan of harusame, with its noodley lightness. Here, Yusuke incorporated it in a stir fry.

The veggies were cooked first, sautéed in with ginger, fresh garlic, and canola oil:

  • string beans (rather more yellow than green
  • carrots
  • green peppers

All from the CSA basket, naturally.

The pre-boiled harusame was added next, plus a “soup” of:

  • 1 cup of (weak) chicken broth
  • 1 tsp soy sauce
  • 1 tsp oyster sauce
  • 1 tsp tenmenjan (sweet bean paste)
  • 1 tsp tobanjan (spicy chili paste)

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Vegetable Fried Quinoa

September 8, 2012 at 5:48 am · Filed under stir fry, tofu ·Tagged , , , , , ,

This is a really old one. For the recipe, see http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2008/02/vegetable-fried-quinoa.html

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Beet stir fry

August 28, 2012 at 5:23 am · Filed under general soup, stir fry ·Tagged , , ,

I’ve been in beet heaven of late with our CSA baskets. Again, though, sometimes they are more of a radish texture and light orange in colour. Regardless, they are très délicieux. Here, Yusuke combined the beets and greens in a lovely stir fry with abura-age (deep fried tofu sheets. Pronunciation, sort of: ahboorah-ahgay).

He first sauteed the beets in sesame oil and cooked them a fair bit (about 80%). Then he added the age and the beet leaves and stems. The seasoning was: 1 tbsp of mirin, a bit of dashi, and 1 tbsp soy sauce.

The abura-age and beets made the dish subtly sweet.

On the side, we had soup with a Better than Bouillon brand veggie stock (thanks, Mom!): about 2 tsp in 1.5 or so litres of water and a pinch of black pepper. The veggies were:

  • Baby potatoes
  • Fresh sweet carrots
  • Glistening red/purple onions
  • Green leaves of onions

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Kale-carrots-cauliflower

August 22, 2012 at 6:08 am · Filed under stir fry ·Tagged , , ,

I don’t believe that I’ve written about cauliflower on this blog before, as Yusuke isn’t too keen on it. Luckily for me, however, it was included in one of our CSA baskets. He incorporated it in a stir fry with other farm-fresh gems as follows.

  1. Saute garlic scapes in canola oil until fragrant
  2. Add chopped:
    • kale
    • carrots
    • cauliflower
  3. Season with:
    • sea salt
    • pepper
    • a tiny bit of soy sauce
    • oyster sauce
    • cooking sake
    • dashi dissolved in a bit of water
    • a tiny bit of sugar

And that’s it. The fresh carrots were very sweet and the kale nicely carried the saltiness of the soy and oyster sauces. And fortunately, the garlic wasn’t overpowering.

This was quite the vitamin powerhouse, with four of World’s Healthiest Foods favourites. Cauliflower, for example, has excellent cruciferous properties, with vitamin K, vitamin C, antioxidants, fiber, etc. etc. etc. Fingers crossed for more this summer!

Courtesy of Flickr user clayirving. CC BY-ND 2.0

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Carrot greens furikake

August 14, 2012 at 7:57 am · Filed under Misc. ·Tagged

Furikake (pronounced foo-ree-kah-kay, sort of) is a dried seasoning to be sprinkled on rice. It often includes seaweed, fish flakes, sesame seeds, and more.

Yusuke made a variation on the theme here using the bountiful carrot greens from our CSA baskets. (Yes, for anyone who is keeping track, “carrot tops” are GREEN!, not orange. Hmph.) The greens are so lovely, but they’re not exactly easy to use. In the past, I’ve tried to include them in my erm, eccentric green smoothies, and while they taste good, they tend to get tangled around the blender blades. It’s a shame to throw them out, though. So…a furikake experiment was undertaken.

  1. Pull the leafy bits from the tough stems
  2. Sauté the greens with 1 tbsp each of: sesame oil, soy sauce, and mirin
  3. Add sesame seeds and katsuobushi (flaked tuna)
  4. Sauté until it’s all dry

Then, sprinkle a bit over rice and eat!

When Yusuke tried this again the next week, he upped the mirin content and lowered the soy sauce, which made the taste tangier like “real” furikake.

There a tons of good nutrients in carrot greens, and this is a great way to use them up!

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Wafuu potage

June 28, 2012 at 6:46 am · Filed under general soup ·Tagged , ,

Miso taste in a leek potage

わふう (wafuu) means Japanese-style. So here is a wafuu potage!

Yusuke began by sauteing chopped leeks, carrots, and 3 tbsp of uncooked rice in a bit a of vegetable oil. When the rice started to become transparent, he added water and dashi (stock). He let the pot simmer until the vegetables were soft. He then transferred everything to a blender and, well, blended it with 3 tbsp miso until it all made a lovely thick soup.

The dashi and miso, obviously, created the Japanese flavour, which was very tasty indeed.

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Five things

June 24, 2012 at 12:33 pm · Filed under general veggie dish ·Tagged , , , , ,

This is a beautiful take on ごもくまめ (gomoku-mame), or “5 things and [soy]beans.” Or something like that. Often, the dish includes kombu or hijiki, mushrooms, konnyaku, gobo (burdock root), and renkon (lotus root)—the latter two to contribute a literally earthy taste.

Well, here we had to go with what was in our fridge, and we have five things including soybeans, but I think it still counts:

  • shitake mushrooms
  • kombu (seaweed)
  • carrots
  • snap peas

Yusuke anticipated this meal by soaking the soybeans in water for 24 hours or so. When it was time to start cooking, he drained them and added new water, bringing it to a boil. The beans were cooked for about an hour at low to medium heat, and he periodically scooped out the thin, bitter residue that comes off the beans.

Meanwhile, he soaked dried shitake for about 30 minutes. and then added the mushrooms, along with their soaking water, to the beans—enough water to cover them.

Next he added pieces of kombu that had been chopped into square-shaped pieces.

Then he added 1 tsp of sugar and 2 tbsp of soy sauce. Everything simmered for a while to reduce the water. Midway through the simmering stage, he added chopped carrots, and then almost at the very end came chopped snap peas.

Yummy and very filling.

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