Oishii miso shiru (Delicious miso soup)

If you've never tried cooking with miso before, I advise to go to your local natural foods (or Asian foods store) and pick some up RIGHT now..... go on.... I'll wait.

Miso is one of the best things period. How it tastes, what you can do with it, and what it represents. 

I included a few pictures of when I was in Japan.  One picture was inside a miso shop, and the other was the line up to the store because everyone wanted to buy miso. You could buy handmade miso locally, and this particular shop sold a lot. This lovely couple had prepacked bags available (shouldn't really be sold in plastic, because it does absorb), but you could also buy it out of the barrel (shown in front.. the man is looking at it). It was amazing!

Soy beans are fermented in these barrels along with koji - which is a bacteria created from rice used for soya sauce, sake, and amasake (literally sweet sake, which is the goop at the end of the sake barrel). The older it is (ie. more than a year) the saltier, darker and dankier it will be. Sweet, light coloured miso is sometimes only fermented for a few months or less. 

Miso is 13 - 20% protein, has a profile similar to meat, contains plant sources of B12, (making it excellent for new vegetarians) is teeming with lactobacillus (same as yogurt), is alkalizing despite its building and high protein profile, neutralizes poisons in the body and effective at preventing radiation. This would be helpful for food poisoning as well! Awesome food? I think so.

It can be used for soups, sauces, seasonings, and you can find many recipes using miso in our blog. Here is a basic soup, often eaten for breakfast daily by the Japanese.

NEVER BOIL MISO - this kind of behaviour is punished in Japan (just kidding.. but not really)

Boil water and add veggies to soften them. Add seaweed, like wakame. Once veggies are soft, add tofu. At the very end, even when the soup is off of the burner, you can add miso. About 1 Tbsp per person or cup of water suits well. Stir and serve!

For plain miso, just add miso to boiled then slightly cooled water. That's it!! Easy!

Miso. It's what's for breakfast.. in Japan. 

By the way, although the lineup picture was taken in front of the miso shop, those kids weren't really in line to buy miso, I just thought it was a beautiful picture of the street and store front of where we bought it from.

Shabu shabu!

Wow.. we're really on a Japanese theme here aren't we? Well, we just had a Japanese couple living with us, and of course we love the food of Japan, it's silliness, cartoons, and all it's Zen-ness. 

So this is a traditional winter meal, not only eaten in Japan (although the name "shabu shabu" which is an onomatopoeia mimicking the sound of splashing your food in hot water) but eaten all over Asia in the hot pot style that indulged upon.

Using a portable burner on the table you eat at, bring a pot of water with seaweed to a boil, and then dunk cut vegetables and other foods into the boiling pot for a moment, and then retrieve them slightly cooked and delicious, and then dip into a sauce or shoyu before eating. This way, the meal is drawn out so incredibly long, that you can literally eat all night long.

Tofu can be used, meat, cabbage, leek, zucchini, carrot, mushrooms, daikon, etc.. anything that cooks in water! Serve with brown rice and edamame for some nice sides! And sake too of course!

OISHII!

(Pictured are Whole Foodies Sharla and Anna)

Okayu - soup for the sick Japanese soul

North Americans reach for instant, MSG laden, refined and boxed chicken noodle soup when feeling ill - Japanese however reach for okayu. This is such an incredible healing tonic, I recommend it for anyone feeling 'off', or having poor energy or immunity and need to heal. This will do it!

The base, and power of this fantastic "soup" is the really well cooked rice in ample water. You can try grinding the rice first if you wish, to have it cook a little quicker, but otherwise cook 1 part brown rice to 4 parts water or more. The more time, the more water, the more healing magic.

In this thickish rice soup, add seaweed (kombu or wakame), chopped leeks or green onion, black pepper, cayenne, and/or ginger. And then finally, when at a boil, pour in a beaten egg or two, stir, and then reduce to a simmer and let it cook for as long as you can allow. If it gets too thick, just add water. AHH!!!...... healing, and surprisingly delicious despite the appearance from the photo - it really is good and nurturing!

Nabe = Japanese pot

This is a winter food in Japan. Cooked in a pot (or known as 'nabe', the Japanese word for pot in Japanese) this dish is called "nabe" for obvious reasons.

Bring some water to a boil, and add seaweed like kombu or wakame, and then chop in lots of veggies - and some tofu, if you really want to embrace the spirit of Japan. We went all out and got all Japanese veggies, including hakusai (nappa cabbage), daikon (literally "giant root"), enoki (weird clustery mushrooms), and ninjin (carrot.. just showing off my Japanese).

Let's this infusion cook up until the veggies are soft, and then serve in soup bowls!

We added a dash of togarashi (7 pepper spice) on the top to give it some heat to the otherwise gently refreshing dish (despite it being served warm, the seaweed, water and veggie are nice and refreshing).

ITADAKIMASU!

Sprouted Spicy Asian Mung

I used leftover soup for this which was made of seaweed, shiitake mushrooms and Korean gochujang (spicy red paste). I simply cooked up some sprouted mung beans in the soup, which reduced a little bit making a bit of a stew! 

I added some dried ginger as well to bring the otherwise cooling dish some heat that would go to my centre (dried ginger warms your inside whereas fresh ginger warms the periphery, but the seaweed/mung combination is very cooling for the centre of the body and so a little dried ginger helps balance that if you're eating this in mid-winter!... too much information? I think it's cool!....)