Japanese Cooking | Japanese stewed vegetables

When I was growing up, my mother made her special sweet potato casserole for every holiday dinner. It was filled with apple and pineapple chunks, and topped with marshmallows, which melted and toasted in the oven. All the adults at the table would rave about the concoction, assuring its appearance at the next holiday meal, but when the dish made its way around the table to me, I would carefully remove one marshmallow with the barest amount of sweet potato clinging to it, and place it on my plate. "You really should taste the casserole," my mother would say. "Yes. yes" came the echo around the table." I AM tasting it," I'd reply.



A similar thing happened whenever my mother made baked sweet potatoes. "I can't understand why you don't like these," my father would say. I just didn't like the taste or the smell. It took me years to develop a taste for sweet potatoes, and because they're similar in so many ways, for winter squash. And although I now cook, eat and really enjoy these vegetables, mainly roasted or in savory soups, I still don't consider them favorites — I'm more of a broccoli and kale person. When I see winter squash at the farmers market, my huge enthusiasm for buying them, I now realize, has more to do with their amazing beauty, and the variety of their shapes and sizes, than for their culinary potential. And I'm also suckered in by their names. How can I resist a squash called "butternut," or "delicata" or "kabocha?" The kabocha pumpkin pictured here was purchased to use in a Japanese donburi, or one-bowl meal, that I wanted to make from my new cookbook.

I received a copy of "Japanese Cooking, Contemporary & Traditional" by Miyoko Nishimoto Schinner from the Book Publishing Company, and, as a big fan of Japanese cuisine, was eager to try some recipes. Most of the recipes I was first attracted to involved making konbu-shiitake dashi, and if you recall my last post, (black worms, anyone?), you'll know why my enthusiasm was momentarily dampened. But I decided to "get right back on the horse" so to speak, and a new bag of dried shiitake mushrooms entered the kitchen.

I finally settled on a recipe for stewed vegetables, and because the sidebar on the recipe page said that "it was more of a method for cooking vegetables" than a recipe, I decided to use the resulting vegetables as a major component of a dish, rather than a dish by itself.



As the seaweed and mushrooms for the dashi, or stock, soaked, I was obsessed with any black dots or foreign-looking matter that appeared in the bowl. I picked and scraped, and generally harassed those mushrooms until they were pristine. I was tense.
Kobocha pumpkin was just one of the vegetable choices given in my chosen recipe, and although I had planned to combine several veggies, I ended up with so much cut up squash, I just used that. The directions said the skin was edible and the kobocha didn't need to be peeled, so I left it unpeeled, just scrubbing and scraping away any weird stuff. The pumpkin was very hard (as in VERY HARD) to cut. Using a recently sharpened Japanese chef knife, I got a good workout. I was surprised that it only took about 15 minutes to cook.

The recipe was simple, requiring only the pumpkin, dashi, a small amount of sweetener, mirin, and, near the end of cooking, soy sauce. As I was adding the ingredients to the pot, I have to be honest and admit to not looking forward to eating the result. My "squash-avoidance attitude" was kicking in, and I was also remembering that I didn't love the very dry, flaky texture of kabocha. It didn't look that good to me, and the broth at first had a slightly weird and fishy taste from the konbu. And the shiitake.

When I tasted the finished product I was shocked — it was fabulously delicious. How did that happen? The simple ingredients had magically transformed. I used the cooked pumpkin and its broth as the basis for a one-pot dish, adding fried tofu (purchased in an Asian market) and serving it over soba (the thin Japanese noodles made from buckwheat). The dish was a huge success. The next day, I added frozen corn and ate it for lunch, and the day after that I added Swiss chard and ate it yet again. I'd eat it right now if there were any left!

"Japanese Cooking" published in 1999, is a very handy collection of vegan, traditional and contemporary Japanese recipes. It contains a group of seasonal menu ideas, a useful glossary for those not familiar with Japanese ingredients, and a collection of easy-to-prepare recipes under headings such as rice dishes, soups and stews, cooking with tofu, fried dishes, salads and cold vegetables, noodles, etc. Many of the dishes will require a trip to an Asian grocery or well-stocked natural foods store to purchase Japanese specialty food such as miso, konbu, enoki, konnyaku, cooking saki (mirin). If you have an interest in learning about everyday Japanese cuisine, this little book might be a good place to start.



Stewed Vegetables (reprinted with permission)

• 4 to 6 cups large bite-sized pieces peeled carrots, daikon, bamboo shoots, lotus root, or kabocha pumpkin
• fresh or reconstituted shiitake, sliced
• approximately 2 cups konbu broth (to barely cover vegetables)
• 1 to 2 tablespoons sweetener of choice
• 1 to 3 tablespoons mirin
• 2 to 4 tablespoons soy sauce

1. Place vegetable pieces and shiitake in a pot, and pour broth over to barely cover.
2. Add the sweetener and mirin, partially cover, and simmer until tender.
3. Add the soy sauce and simmer for 5 or 6 more minutes. Vegetables should be soft. (except for lotus root, if using)
4. Adjust seasonings if necessary.

notes: I added fried tofu purchased from an Asian grocery and cut into bite-sized pieces, with the soy sauce. The cooked vegetables and broth were ladled over soba, into individual bowls.

When I made my dashi, I used both dried shiitakes and konbu since I needed the mushrooms for the recipe, anyway. To make dashi: (reprinted with permission) Soak a 3 x 4-inch piece of konbu and 5 large or 10 small dried shiitake in 1 quart of water for at least 2 hours. Bring to a boil and simmer for 15 minutes. Remove the shiitake and konbu; they can be used for other dishes.

Miyoko Nishimoto Schinner is also the author of "The Now and Zen Epicure: Gourmet Cuisine for the Enlightened Palate."
disclaimer: The cookbook described in this post was sent to me free of charge by the publisher. No attempt was made by the publisher to influence my review, nor was I paid to write a review.