Tomato and Miso Paste

Hi this is KK, Sushi Artist / Healthy Muffin Maker / Mum 🙂

Thank you for visiting my blog.

When you try to cook “foreign” food, one of the difficulty you face is where and how to prepare the ingredients. I had a similar experience many times, especially when trying to cook Asian foods. Their recipes tend to use exotic spices and fresh produces that are too difficult to find or substitute!

The next difficulty you face is, how to use up some ingredients! You only need “2 teaspoon” or “1 tablespoon”  of spices and sauces to make a particular dish, but it is so essential you buy a packet/bottle/box of something, and it lies in the kitchen for,,,, how long?

Sensible part of you tells you not to buy so many new flavor, yet the cooking desire is sometimes too strong and irresistible, you can’t help yourself reaching for a new taste.

I understand those feelings sooooo well, today I am going to show you how to “use up” some seasonings. The topic for today is Miso.

I just made my own miso this weekend, the taste test will be held 6 months from now, and looking at the 1.8kg batch (second time this year, so I have nearly 4 kg miso for next season!) I felt so happy! At the same time, I was thinking, if you only new how to use miso in a miso soup, you would never be able to use it up.

Usually, miso is sold in a 400-500g packet, and to make miso soup, you would use 1/2 Tablespoon per person to season it. So, unless you drink miso every day, it would take quite a while to use it up.

I use miso in a lot of my recipes, something different from soy sauce, and it goes well with many vegetables. Today, I will recommend how to make tomato and miso paste that  can be used in different recipes and  is handy to have in the fridge (will last for a week to 10days kept in a sterilized jar)

Ingredients (to make 3-4 dishes)

-2 Tomatoes

-2 Tablespoon Miso

-2 Tablespoon Olive oil

-1 teaspoon Soy sauce

Step 1: Burn the skin of tomatoes until black, peel off skin and cut into 1cm cubes.

Step 2: Mix everything in a bowl and keep in sterilized jar.

To use this sauce, here are some simple recipes.

 

Cut broccoli into small bite size, stir fry on non stick pan for 3min, mix 2-3 Tablespoon of the sauce and cook for extra 1min over heat and serve! You can do the same with round beans or asparagus.

This sauce can be mixed 1:1 with vinegar and makes great dressing that will match anything from tofu to noodles to  steamed vegetables.

Very tasty and very healthy. I hope you enjoy it!!

30 min Dinner : Chicken Kara-age with Ponzu, Marinated Cucumber, Tomato Salad

Hi this is KK, Sushi Artisit/ Healthy Muffin Maker / Mum 🙂

Thank you for visiting my blog.

 

I dropped my i-phone under water, and this is making it hard to take photos and update my blog 😦 Sorry for the inconvenience.

 

No matter how sad or upset you are, one must still eat, and this is another super fast dinner menu that you can cook on a day to make you feel better. The cucumber and tomato can be made earlier in the day, in fact it is better to have the cucumber marinated for at least 30min, to make this dish first!

 

So, the order would be:

 

Step 1: Boil eggs, prepare marinated cucumber(5min)

Step 2: Slice tomato, marinate chicken (5min)

Step 3: Prepare Tomato Salad on plate (5min),

Step 4: Cook Chicken Kara-age with Ponzu, serve everything and eat!!!

 

The tomato salad is soooo simple, yet really tasty, one of my favorite summer dish that my mum used to make. It is good for children too! When I give it to my 17 months daughter, I chop the tomato into dice and instead of dressing, I just squeeze some lemon on it.

 

I hope this helps your busy day too. ENJOY 🙂

Beef stew

Hi this is KK, Sushi Artist/ Healthy Muffin Maker/ Mum 🙂
Thank you for visiting my blog.

Today’s recipe is a bit European, but I made it “Japanese style” by adding lots of vegetable and using soy sauce as a hidden flavor.
Also we serve them with rice and green salad to balance out carbohydrates and vitamin balance.

 

This takes a bit long to cook, but you can leave it on the stove and leave the kitchen, as long as you can check it time to time. I made it on a day that I had to go out, so started around 2:00 and cooked again around 5:00 to be served at 7:00 for my husband. Another dish to use up all your left over veggies!

 

Ingredients (for 2; 1 meat-lover and 1 semi-vegetarian 🙂 )

1 Steak meat (I used one with bone but it can be something like blade or rump, doesn’t have to be fillets!)

2 small Onion

1/2 Eggplant

3 Tomatoes

5-8 Mushrooms

1 Tablespoon Sake

1 Tablespoon Soy sauce

1 Tablespoon Olive Oil

1 Ba yleaf

1 cup Red wine

1/2 cup water

Options:  Ketchup, Chicken stock cube, Worcestershire sauce

 

Here’s how to make it:

Step 1: Cut meat into bite size, sprinkle with sake and soy sauce, give it a good massage and  let it rest for 10min. While waiting, cut the vegetable into bite size.

 

Step 2:Heat olive oil in pan, cook meat on both sides, add vegetables and put on lid. Cook until the onion looks semi transparent, about 10min, pour wine, water until all the ingredients are covered in liquid.   Put in bay leaf and cook on low heat.

 

Step 3: Keep on cooking until the liquid becomes about half amount, taste, and add optional seasonings if necessary. What you want to add may change depending on which vegetable combination you used. Serve it hot with bread or rice!

 

 

Hint: Other veggies you might want to add are cabbage, celery, capsicum, carrots etcetra. If you have leftover potatoes that you want to use up, instead of putting it in this stew, just boil it and serve it as mashed potato to go with it. Hope you like it 🙂