Tag Archive for:  vegetarian

Private Class for Vegetarian Dishes with Autumn harvests

The main dish was chosen as Vegetarian Ramen for a guest lady from Israel who has been vegetarian for many years. Side dishes include cold fresh cabbage with Konbu, Gyoza dumplings with lotus root, Kaki (persimmon) & greens dressed with creamy Tofu sauce, etc.
My guest was very interested in Japanese Dashi soup stock with dried Shiitake mushrooms & Kombu kelp. Both are essential products for Umami in our cuisine.
Kombu is very rich in glutamate or glutamic acid, which is contained in most vegetables but by far the most in dried Kombu. Another ingredient known for richness in glutamate is dried tomato.
Dried shiitake is known for its richness in guanylic acid or GMP, like many kinds of mushrooms around the world including dried porcini. This may be explaining why many Japanese people are deeply in love with Italian food!?

My guest lady was a medicinal food professional with vast knowledge about Chinese herbal medicine & diet, so it was very inspiring to share some time with her in the kitchen cooking and talking about various vegetables and foods!
Many thanks for coming!
Akiko

Vegetarian & Chicken Ramen for a family reunion

It was a request from a daughter who is now working in Germany to cook vegetarian Ramen & Gyoza, with her loving parents visiting from Australia. My pleasure to host a family reunion in Tokyo!
For Mum and Dad, we cooked some simmered chicken for Ramen and included pork in the Gyoza filling.
For vegetarian Ramen, the topping was fried Tofu, cilantro, diced tomato, stir-fried eggplant & mushrooms, etc. Of course, soy sauce and Mirin flavored egg, too.

There were a lot of preparations to do but my guest family made it and our lunch tasted wonderful!
Before coming to my place, they were traveling the route of a Japanese poet, Matsuo Basho’s tour up north to Matsushima and it was very interesting to hear about their experiences, including a beautiful Haiku poem father created during his stay in Matsushima!
Many thanks for coming!
Akiko

Gyoza party with happy American foodie girls!

The requested main dish was Gyoza dumplings. I suggested to my guests if they don’t mind putting shrimp as well as pork in the fillings, which they also liked very much and it turned out as a great success!

One of my guests lived in Japan when she was a little girl. She said her memory from those days wasn’t very clear, but she certainly remembered the taste of our traditional Dashi soup stock.
Her friend also tried Katsuobushi (Smoked Bonito) grating and both found it full of flavors, almost like bacon from the ocean!
We made Miso soup from the Dashi soup stock of Bonito, adding some thinly sliced pork, potato, lotus roots, and onion. With a small piece of left-over lotus root, we fried lotus chips, too. This is my favorite appetizer and is nice if you are welcoming vegetarian guests or almost anybody.

Several days after the class, I heard from one of my guest girls that she was doing a Gyoza party with her friends back in the US! What happy news!!!
Many thanks for coming!
Akiko