Edamame Dumpling ずんだ

日本語のレシピは　ビーガン、ベジタリアン情報満載の　Hachidory から　ご覧下さい。 

Have you heard the word, “Edamame” ？

 Flower of edamame

It is the young green soybeans.

 

It seems it is getting popular in other countries too, though they are usually sold in the frozen form.

“Edamame” is my most favorite summer vegetable.

It is not only because its taste and texture fit my taste bud, but it always brings me the fond memory of my childhood.

Edamame grown in my garden a few years ago.

The following year, many edamame leaves grew vigrously, but the beans did not grow much.  I still do not know why .

 

Whenever I cook and eat edamame, the one scene flashes back to my mind.
It is the dining room, where there is edamame heaped up in a big bowl on the table, and my father picks up a pod, brings to his mouth in a very quick motion, instantly goes to the next pod and repeats the same action until the bowl turns out to be empty.

Beside him, I also try to be quick to eat them as I did not want him to finish all before I also eat them to my heart content ! 

I’m sure it would look funny to you if you could see this scene.
My mother was still busy cooking other dishes when we started eating edamame.   She used to prepare so many dishes for each meal.   The table was full of Japanese small plates and bowls as she served everything individually except edamame.

Edamame of that time was super delicious, maybe that’s why we used to love it so much and could eat so much.

I cannot encounter the same quality of edamame anymore, but still can meet with the closer satisfactory ones once a while, so I am still tempted to buy them whenever I see edamame thinking they could be close to the taste of old day’s ones.

Today’s recipe is “Zunda”, a traditional edamame dish from Yamagata prefecture, which produces the best quality of edamame in Japan, and where my mother was from.

If you search on the net, all the pictures or recipes of “Zunda” must be introduced as a dessert.  It is a bit sweet but, my mother used to prepare it as one of the dishes of the meal. 
Wherever she made this I helped her, taking the beans out of the pods and removing the membrane.  Mashing, pounding and seasoning were my mother’s part, but once a while she let me pound the edamame.   I was very excited when she asked me to do so.  The permission to do something that is usually not allowed always makes the kids so proud of.

I would be so thrilled if I could see those scenes related edamame and my parents with my eyes like it is possible for my children to do so now with the modern technology.  

Traditionally making “Zunda “ requires time as it involves time consuming jobs, like detaching the beans from stalks, washing, boiling, taking out from the each pods, removing the membrane from each beans, mashing and pounding with the mortar and the pestle made of clay, shaping into small balls and making gravy to pour.

However, you can reduce the cooking time tremendously if you use ready made frozen edamame and an electric grinder instead of the mortar and pestle.

“Zunda” is something you cannot order in the restaurants nor buy from the shops even in Japan.

So, try it and feel how it tastes like.

 

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Zoodle Salad ズッキーニサラダ

日本語のレシピは　ビーガン情報サイト "Hachidory" で　ご覧ください。

 

June to July is the rainy season in Japan.

“rainy season” is called “Tsuyu” in Japanese, and it literally means “plum rain” and is written “梅雨”. 

I like the way it is named and written in this way.

Because the Japanese plums are so charming and aromatic that it can erase the negative feeling towards the rainy season.

This year very little plums grew in our town though.

As I wrote about the plums already a few times in this blog, our town has lots of plum trees so we can see the green beautiful plums everywhere in this town during June.

They say the plum trees can bear the generous amount of fruit every other year. 

Therefore, this year was the year that they could not bear much fruits.

But it was too little.  

I could hardly see any fruit among the vigorous leaves. 

My neighboring organic farm from whom I buy the plums every year could not harvest any plums to sell to their neighbors this year.

Why do the ume trees bear lots of fruit only every other year ?

There is no reason.

That is the intention of the nature.

It is the law of the universe.

So we just have to take it. 

 

Every year I put aside one jar of umeboshi for preservation.

Yes, Umeboshi is already preserved food, but my intention is to preserve them for 100 years !  
Who knows that I can’t taste them in 100 years later !

Luckily I could make some jars of Umeboshi this year too as Takahahi san who is a natural farmer living in Numazu in Shizuoka sent me some of his precious ume that he plucked from his ume trees.
So I could have my annual pleasure to do ume work this year too !.

I'm going to add red shiso leaves into this pot in the end of July.

Well, I go to the introduction of this month’s recipe.

It is “Zucchini Salad with Ume Dressing Sauce ”

You may have heard the word, “Zoodles”.

It is the noodles made from zucchini.
It is named so simply because the zucchini is cut into thin strips like noodles.
So may be I should name this recipe “Zoodle Salad”

I’m sure you would love this salad if you like both the zucchini and umeboshi, salty preserved Japanese plum. 

If you have a spiralizer, you can make this very quickly, but even if you do not have one, the zucchini can be cut into noodles manually.

See how I slice it with the peeler and the knife. 

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タグ：ズッキーニ 梅干し 梅酢 日本料理 マクロビオティック ビーガン ズードル Hachidory ume Umeboshi zucchini zoodle macrobiotics Vegan Japanese vegan

Vegan summer vegetable stew ラタテューユ

日本語のレシピは　ビーガン情報サイト"Hachidory"を　ご覧ください。

 

It was an awfully hot summer this year in Japan.

It has not ended yet, but I hear the songs of insects at night, and they are telling me that the summer will be gone soon.

It's a kind of relief, but at the same time it brings me the melancholy state of mind. 

May be I should say it is the mixture of feeling of lonliness and nostalgia.

But this unsteady feeling creeps in only in the evening, the day time is still the summer, red, hot  and scorching summer !

The cicadas are singing at the top of their lungs.

So for now, I have to enjoy the soon leaving summer vegetables.

If it is an average summer, I do not go for much of the chilled dishes, but my appetite goes to them rather than warm food this year, so I cook the food on the stove early in the morning, keep them in the fridge and take them out to eat straight away during day time. 

(Can you imagine how hot it is when the tempreture often goes up beyond 40℃?)

My favorite chilled dishes are, firstly, Edamame/green soy beans,

Hiyayakko/ fresh uncooked tofu,

Mushinasu/ steamed eggplant,

and Tomato salad.

All are so simple to cook.

Another item is " Ratatouille". 

It is a french dish but is popular to cook at home using the summer vegetables in Japan.

I like it because it is a dish with variety kinds of summer vegetables, tasty and nice to eat chilled.   

It also goes well with rice, pasta and bread.

We can make a big amount of it and eat it in three days, enjoying different forms of dishes.

Eat it just like this.

Eat it with spaghetti

As a tooping for pizze (or toasted bread)

Do you feel like eating it now ?

Here you go...

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タグ：Vegan macrobiotics Ratatouille summer vegetables zucchini eggplant tomato onion GARLIC spaghetti vegan pizza ラタトゥーユ トマト 茄子 ズッキーニ 玉ねぎ 夏野菜 ビーガン マクロビオティック ピザ ビーガンピザ Hachidory

Vegan Minced Meat & Eggplant Recipe ビーガン茄子そぼろ丼

日本語のレシピは　ビーガン情報サイト　”Hachidory"　で　ご覧ください。

"Do not let the daughter in law eat the autumn eggplants ".

This is a Japanese proverb.

How do you interpret ?

There are two ways of interpretations.

One is, "The eggplansts are too cooling for the ladies especially when the summer is ending."

It is very considerate and thoughtful interpretation.

Parents in law are worried if their daughter in law  may not be able to bear the babies or get sick  if she eats the eggplants in autumn.

But another interpretation is quite mean.

"The eggplanst harvested in autumn is too tasty to let daughter in law eat."

I want to believe the first interpretation is the correct one.

It is already autumn here.

The air is getting clearer, and the sky looks more beautiful.

The wind is breezy and makes me feel so good when I feel it on my skin.

The songs of insects at night relaxes my soul.

But I know that it will soon bring sentimental feeling.

Till then, I want to enjoy this comfortable transitional season to my heart's content.

I already found the fallen persimon leaves on the ground the other day.

Rice crops are tuning brown and growing fatter.

Going back to the eggplants sotry...,

It is true that the eggplanst in autumn is tasty.

The flesh is more desnsed and the flavour is more condensed.

In Macrobiotics, it is considered very Yin vegetable,

but in autumn it becomes less Yin.

It is not as juicy as the ones of summer.

We can still enjoy autumn eggplant by different method of cooking.

I'll show you one of such ways today.

See how I prepare mock minced meat.

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タグ：ビーガン料理 マクロビオティック料理 豆腐 秋茄子 茄子 Japanese Recipe FALL autumn TOFU Vegan Minced Meat eggplant Vegan Japanese Cooking

Vegan Corn Rice とうもろこしご飯

日本語のレシピは、ビーガンベジタリアン情報サイトHachidoryをご覧ください。

The summer has come !!

What is your most favorite summer vegetable ?

Tomatoes ?

Cucumbers ?

or Eggplants ?

I love all the vegetables above.

But for me the summer cannot be the summer without

corns and green soy beans !!

(The picture on top is the flower of green soy beans in my garden last year,  

  the corn is from my friends field which is still bit too early to harvest,

  the green soy beans at the bottom are from my garden last summer.)

I think I would never get tired of them even if I had to eat them in each meal during summer.

The corn starts earlier than green soy beans, and it is the peak of its harvest now.

No other way is better than steaming and biting into the corn straight away.

What do you do with the husks and silk of the corns ?

What about the cob ?

Do you discard them ?

If you do, it's such a waste.

Those can produce sweet, tasty and nutritous soup.

You can make it just by throwing those into the pot together with water, and simmer for some time.

 

This soup stock enhances the taste of vegetable soup and miso soup.

(Use only last few sheets of inner husk and discard the outer layers.)

Today I am going to introduce you " Corn Rice" which is sooo delilcious.

I made this rice into many onigiri, rice balls and brought  to the meeting of Animal Rights Center which is held monthly.  

All my buddies love them and asked for the recipe.

Therefore I contributed the recipe to the vegan information site, Hachidory.

If you can read Japanese, go to that site and see my recipes as well as other pages full of information of veganism in Japan including shops,restaurants and hotels.

It is a very simple recipe.

So just try before the season of the fresh sweet corns ends. 

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タグ：Onigiri Japanese cooking とうもろこしごはん Vegan Corn rice macrobiotics とうもろこし Hachidory Animal Rights Center ビーガン マクロビオティック