quickcook

Moffles

maki — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 15:59:00 +0100

As I’ve been slowly making my way through our stuff and deciding what to keep and pack, what to try to sell, and what to just throw away, I encountered the neglected electric waffle/panini maker in the depths of a kitchen cabinet. I can’t even remember the last time I used it. I do remember that we got it for free, via a buyer’s incentive scheme sort of like frequent flyer miles, run by one of our local supermarket chains (it’s Coop Supercard, for people living in Switzerland). I think I’ve used it about 5, 6 times tops, all but one of those times to make panini. I’m just not a waffle person I guess.

So, as I pondered whether I was going to get rid of the waffle maker at the garage sale coming up next week or just dump it, an idea popped into my head. Why not try to make moffles with it? Moffles　(pronounced moffuru) are a Japanese invention, which have been popular for a couple of years. They are basically mochi cakes cooked in a waffle-maker like contraption called, of course, a moffle maker.

Apparently the moffle was the brainchild of an employee of an electric appliance maker who was giving an instore demo of a regular waffle maker. She overheard a customer saying “If you could use that thing for cooking mochi, it might actually be useful” or words to that effect. Back at the office, she tried cooking mochi in the waffle iron and found it surprisingly easy. Thus, the moffle was born.

So, here is how I went about making moffles in a regular electric waffle maker. (A moffle maker has shallower, round dimples rather than the deep square ones in a waffle maker.) Incidentally, my waffle maker is from Tefal. It’s a clamshell type, has a simple dial-timer, detachable plates for making waffles or panini, and annoyingly switches on as soon as it’s plugged in.

Recipe: Moffle or moffuru （モッフル）

First, brush the surface of the waffle iron plates with a little melted butter or oil as they heat up. The mochi can stick a bit (especially on the square edges of the waffle plate) and this is to prevent that as well as to add a bit of flavor.

Place one square mochi cake on each plate.

Now lower the lid and press gently. The lid will not close, due to the thickness of the mochi, but as you keep pressing gently the mochi will soften and spread, becoming thinner, until you can close the lid completely. As soon as you can, set the timer to 2 minutes or so, more if you want it really crispy and a bit toasted on the outside.

And when the time’s up: Voilà, moffles!

Moffles are often filled with something savory or sweet. Here I’ve kept it simple and put some sliced cheese on one of the moffles.

I then put the other moffle on top, and closed the waffle maker lid again for about a minute or so. This produces a grilled cheese moffle sandwich. This is how it looks like when it’s done…

Here’s a plate of grilled cheese moffle, cut into quarters. The yellowness of the cheese can be seen through the translucent white moffle.

To make thinner, smaller and crispier moffles, you can slice a mochi cake horizontally in half (you can do this easily with a just-opened fresh mochi cake, using a sharp knife. In Japan, thinly sliced mochi called shabu-shabu mochi are often used). Once you can close the lid, which should be just about immediately, set the timer to 2 minutes.

You can eat the moffles singly with just a little soy sauce instead of filling them. I like them best like this I think. They should go well with anything that goes with regular grilled mochi cakes, like kinako (toasted ground soybean powder) mixed with sugar, or grated daikon radish and soy sauce.

You can also treat them as you would regular waffles, and put on syrup, melted butter, chocolate sauce, etc. as you prefer. However, they are not like flour-and-egg waffles - they are like thin mochi cakes, crispy-chewy on the outside, gooey on the inside, and bland. If you like mochi, you’ll love moffles. And of course they are gluten-free, since they’re made of pounded rice.

They are not low in calories, but they are very filling. One cheese filled moffle using 2 mochi cakes and 30g of cheese is about 400 calories, but half of one is plenty for a snack. They must be eaten freshly cooked and hot, since they turn hard when cool. They are not suitable for bentos.

The best thing is that they cook up so fast, and are very filling - great for snacks. I think I will keep the waffle maker after all.

Tori Nabe: Japanese Chicken and Vegetable Tabletop Hot Pot

maki — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 19:17:04 +0100

Nabe (鍋, pronounced NA-beh) is the Japanese word for a pot or pan. But it also means a one-pot dish where several ingredients are cooked together in a broth. While nabe can be cooked in the regular way on the stovetop, the most popular kind of nabe are cooked at the table on a portable burner. The quintessential image of a Japanese happy family is one that gathered around the dining table eating a nabe. (Nabe cooked at the table is also called yosenabe (寄せ鍋), which just means a nabe where the ingredients are gathered together (寄せる、yoseru). Because a nabe is piping hot, it’s a great winter meal, with very little preparation.

A lot of Japanese nabe recipes call for ingredients that are only widely available in Japan, but this is a recipe for a nabe that you can recreate wherever you are. It uses chicken and a lot of vegetables, so it’s very healthy and frugal - perfect recession cooking! The only special equipment you need is a tabletop cooker of come kind, that can sustain a boiling heat. See more about tabletop cookers in the Notes at bottom.

Recipe: Torinabe (鶏鍋), Japanese Chicken and Vegetable Tabletop Hot Pot

To serve 4 hungry adults

1 large piece of dried konbu seaweed, or about 1 Tbs. of dashi stock granules or 1-2 regular chicken stock cubes
400g / about 12 oz. boneless chicken, dark or white meat (I used dark meat) cut into cubes
1 block of firm tofu or yakidofu (firm tofu that has been lightly grilled on the outside, available at Japanese grocery stores), cut into chunks (allow for 2 chunks per person)
1 small or 1/2 large chinese/napa cabbage, cut up into chunks
a bunch of green leafy vegetables - I used spinach
1 pack of enoki or staw mushrooms, separated into small bunches
4 large raw shiitake mushrooms, stems cut off (you can use portobello mushrooms instead, sliced - one big one should do it)
The white of 1 leek, sliced
1 pack of fresh or frozen udon noodles, or 2-3 cups of cooked rice, or 1 pack of rinsed and blanched hirataki noodles, or any combination of the three

Condiments:

Soy sauce
Ponzu or yuzu or lemon

Equipment:

Tabletop cooker (see Notes below)
A stable, heavy bottomed pot, ideally one that’s attractive enough for the table (I used a medium size powder blue Le Creuset pot)
Long chopsticks or a long fork or tongs
Ladle
Smallish bowls for serving, one per person. Breakfast cereal sized bowls are good.

Put the piece of konbu seaweed in the pot and fill up halfway with water. (Ideally you want to soak the konbu for a while, so if you can plan ahead put the water and konbu in the pot in the morning or something.) Bring up to a boil. If you can’t get hold of konbu, dashi granules like Hondashi are ok. Or you could even use regular stock cubes or stock powder, though of course it won’t taste as nice. You could even use canned chicken or vegetable stock. Here I’ve used a generous piece of konbu.

Make your ingredients ready in the meantime. Here you see the cut up Chinese cabbage, spinach and enoki mushrooms. (The traditional nabe green vegetable is shungiku (edible chrysanthemum leaves), but that’s not that easy to get outside of Japan, or if you can get it it can be expensive - though look for them at you Asian grocery store. Any green will do though - here I’ve used plain old spinach, but pak choi /bok choy is good, as is Chinese broccoli, Swiss chard, and so on. Use what’s available to you. And the mushrooms can be switched around too - if you can’t get enoki or shiitake, use something else, though white button mushrooms are not that nice in this. Portobellos, chestnut mushrooms, shimeji, maitake - all are good. )

And here’s the chicken. I did leave the skin on but you can take it off if you prefer. 3 ounces / 100g may not seem like much but people will be full! Not pictured: tofu, shiitake, and the sliced leek. (The photographer forgot them.)

When the pot comes to a boil, lower the heat a bit and just start putting the ingredients in. You may want to start with the leeks, then the other vegetables - but really, there are no hard and fast rules. All you need to do is to simmer until done. The tofu and the shiitake benefit from being in the pot longer, so they can soak up the flavors from the broth, which will get more and more flavorsome as the meal progresses. Note: skimming off any scum that rises to the surface will make the broth taste better.

When things get cooked, take them out into the individual bowls with the chopsticks or tongs and the ladle. (In Japan they sell nice short wooden ladles for nabe. See if your local Japanese grocery store carries them.) Each person then adds the condiments to their taste. The traditional ones for tori nabe are ponzu and soy sauce. You can get ponzu at a Japanese grocery store or even at many regular grocery stores in the U.S. these days. If you can’t get it, fresh lemon juice will do. (If you’re in Japan, you can go one step better than ponzu and get a fresh sudachi (すだち, a greenskinned citrus fruit) and squeeze that on. Yuzu juice is nice too.)

Here’s a helping of the hot pot. Lots of vegetables, a little chicken, tofu, and some of that broth.

As the pot gets depleted, just keep adding things until you run out, or until everyone is almost full. Don’t throw out the leftover broth though - that’s the tastiest part of the meal! Usually you would cook some udon noodles in that flavor-packed broth, and serve that to end the meal. I didn’t have any udon noodles on hand, so I just put in some rice. Other things you could put into that last broth: dumplings, shirataki noodles (for the low-carb or dieting crowd), etc. - anything that can slurp up that flavor.

Nabe are great for parties, but they are really easy on the cook too since all you have to do is to cut things up and take out the burner and the pot.

Notes

Tabletop burners are not that expensive, and can be great fun. This type of gas burner is perfect. I use an electric burner since gas cooking is almost unheard of here. It’s similar to this one. The burner has to be able to sustain a boiling heat in the pot. (See if your crockpot can do this.)

Do be careful of little kids around a hot pot and burner on the table! Remember to use a heavy pot that can’t easily be tipped over.

The easiest Christmas thing to make right now: macerated dried fruits in liquor

maki — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 18:24:10 +0100

I am suddenly behind on everything - work, holiday tasks, shopping, etc. etc. I was planning to do a lot of Christmas food related thing - you know, make a stollen or six, maybe a Christmas pudding (should have been made a month ago), cookies, etc. I may still have time for the cookies, the rest I’m not sure.

There is one thing that I have done that took me maybe 10 minutes max, and part of that time was spend let’s say, sampling the wares.

To give it a fancy name, it would be Macerated Mixed Dried Fruits. What it is is a bunch of dried raisins, currants, apricots, and so on put in a non-reactive container (like a big glass jar), covered with liquor, and left in a dark place to do its thing. The fruit becomes softened and infused by the liquor, and the liquor takes on the flavors of the fruit.

It’s best if it’s been left for at least a week, but you can start using it the day after.

You can get fancy with the dried fruit selection, the liquors, or both. Just make sure the dried fruit you are using does not have added sugar. I stuck to the basics with the fruits (dark and golden raisins, currants) but splurged on the liquors: a mix of Williams pear schnapps, kirsch (cherry schnapps), and orange-scented Cointreau. You could use brandy, rum, Scotch, Bourbon, vodka…just as long as it’s something with a pretty high alcohol content.

What can you do with this? A lot.

Put it into small, pretty jars to give away as presents.
Stir a spoonful or two into vanilla ice cream.
Pour a spoonful or two mixed with syrup over pancakes for a boozy fruity breakfast.
Mix the drained fruit into a basic poundcake batter.
Mix the drained fruit into a muffin batter.
Add some of the liquor to Glühwein (mulled wine).
Flame the liquor over a storebought Christmas pudding (or indeed, flame it over anything. To flame, warm up the liquor first in a small pan, then set a match to it and pour over the object of your choice.)
Pour the liquor over rocks for a sweet, fruity nerve calming agent just before the dinner guests arrive.
…and whatever else strikes your fancy.

Wafuu Pasuta (wafuu pasta): Japanese style pasta

maki — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 16:25:48 +0100

The word wafuu may sound like someone trying to say yahoo and not quite succeeding, but it actually means “Japanese-style” in Japanese.

Italian style pasta has been popular in Japan since the post war period. In the beginning it was served with Italian, or at least Western European, style sauces, but some time in the ’70s or so people started to experiment with Japanese flavors. Essentially, things that are usually eaten with white rice were mixed into or put on top of spaghetti and other pastas. These are known as wafuu pasuta or wafuu supagetti (say these out loud and you’ll know what they are), and became popular on the menus of Japanese cafés (kissaten) and the like.

There is at least one restaurant in the U.S. that I know of that has a couple of wafuu pasuta dishes on their menu - Basta Pasta (warning: icky Flash-only site!), in New York. They don’t really go far enough in my opinion though. If you love Japanese flavors you’ll probably love wafuu pasuta too.

Most wafuu pasuta recipes are very quick and easy to make, so they are great for quick dinners. Incidentally, to achieve a more Japanese texture cook the pasta about a minute or so longer than you might otherwise, so it’s a bit past al dente. Japanese people generally prefer softer pasta.

Following are three of my favorite quick and easy wafuu pasuta dishes.

Tarako and ponzu capellini

Tarako is salted cod roe. It can be eaten uncooked in its soft state or cooked until it separates into tiny little balls. You may only have encountered cooked tarako in furikake or as onigiri fillings, but the real thing is much better of course. In its uncooked state it has a rich, rather unctuous texture - and the flavor of concentrated salty fish egg. The ponzu cuts through the richness a bit.

To make this dish, mix together 1 pair (two pieces) of tarako with the membrane removed with 1 to 2 tablespoons of softened butter. Mix this well with about 2 cups of hot capellini (angel hair pasta) until the pasta is thoroughly coated. Mix in about 2 teaspoons of ponzu vinegar, and finely chopped green onions. Serve topped with more chopped green onions.

Since this pasta is very rich, I prefer to serve it in small portions as an appetizer on its own.

For a spicy version, use mentaiko instead of the tarako. Both should be available, often frozen, at Japanese groceries.

Hijiki and dried shiitake mushroom spaghetti

This dramatic black and white pasta has no added fat. But it has lots of carbs of course. The hijiki and shiitake are both full of fiber and umami.

Rinse and then soak about 3 tablespoons of dried hijiki (here I have used mehijiki (hijiki shoots)) and two dried shiitake mushrooms in warm water until they are softened and swelled. Sliver the shiitake cap, removing the stem. Cook them in a cup of the soaking liquid, 2 tablespoons of soy sauce, 2 teaspoons of sugar and 1 tablespoon of mirin while you boil the spaghetti. Toss into the hot spaghetti and sprinkle with some 7-flavor pepper powder (nanami tohgarashi).

To make it even healthier, use whole wheat, soy or other alternative spaghetti.

Natto, shiso and green onion spaghettini

Natto lovers will love this pasta dish, and natto haters will, well, hate it. The combination of warm pasta and natto really brings out the distinctive odor and flavor of the fermented soybeans.

Mix a regular sized packet (50g) of natto well, until the sticky strings form. Add 1 tablespoon of soy sauce, the mustard pack if the natto came with one, a handful of chopped green onions and a big handful of shredded shiso leaves (use parsley or shredded nori if you can’t find shiso). Toss with hot spaghettini and top with more shiso. Optionally add a little sesame oil.

Sticky, smelly and fragrant goodness! However, I recommend you don’t use grated cheese on this, because natto and cheese combine in a very unsettling way.

Banana coconut cake

maki — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 14:45:50 +0200

Some recipes come about from long experimentation and several tries to try to perfect them (like those darned bunnies, or my ongoing attempts to make natto at home). Others just seem to happen. We had a bunch of bananas that were rapidly turning very brown and spotty on the kitchen table. I froze some (nothing like frozen bananas as treats), and turned some into a cake.

It’s nothing fancy at all - it’s basically a pound-cake like base (but with a bit less sugar), with added cut-up bananas. The coconut part was added on a whim also. The cake doesn’t rise much, probably because of the bananas, but it’s moist, not too sweet, and very comforting. It’s perfect with a cup of tea.

So far in my life I’ve not had the opportunity to go to Hawaii (unless you count a short layover en route from LA to Tokyo) but I sort of imagine that this cake would not be too out of place there.

Banana coconut cake

Note that there are equal amounts in weight of eggs, butter, and flour. So, first weigh your cracked eggs, and then use the equal amounts of butter and flour. In my case the two large eggs I had came out to just about 120 grams.

2 large eggs (about 120g / 4 oz total weight)
120g / 4 oz unsalted butter
120g / 4 oz cake or all-purpose flour
100g / a bit less than 3 oz raw cane sugar or light brown sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
3 medium ripe bananas, cut up into smallish pieces
1 Tbs. brandy or 1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 Tbs. milk or soy milk
4 Tbs. dessicated coconut
extra butter for the pan

Equipment: 8 inch / 20cm square cake or brownie pan, electric or handheld whisk, kitchen parchment paper

Preheat the oven to 180 °C / 355° F.

Butter the cake or brownie pan and line with parchment paper, OR butter and flour the pan.

If the butter is still hard from the refrigerator, put it in a bowl and nuke it for a minute to soften.

Mix together the flour and baking powder.

Cream together the butter and sugar with the whisk until blended and fluffy. Add the eggs and whisk some more. Add the flavoring (brandy or vanilla) and milk.

Fold in the flour and baking powder, and fold in the bananas. Don’t overmix.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Sprinkle the top with the dessicted coconut.

Bake for about 40 minutes or until a skewer or chopstick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Serve warm or at room temperature.

Notes

If the coconut looks too brown, put a piece of foil over the pan until the cake has finished baking through.

Quick and spicy Chinese cabbage tsukemono or pickle (Hakusai no sokusekizuke)

maki — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 15:44:50 +0100

This has to be one of the easiest and tastiest ways of preparing Chinese or napa cabbage (hakusai) that I know of. All you taste is the fresh essence of the cabbage, with the heat of the red pepper and the slight twist of the orange zest.

Did I say easy? Wash and chop up the leaves, mix together the flavoring ingredients, dump all in a plastic bag, shake then massage. That’s it. It’s ready to eat right away, though the flavors to meld a bit better if you can manage to keep it in the fridge for at least an hour before eating.

I’ve used ingredients that anyone should have, even if you aren’t stocked up on typical Japanese ingredients. Adjust the amount of red pepper flakes up or down to your taste.

Quick Chinese cabbage pickles (Hakusai no sokusekizuke)

About 2 lb / 1 kg (a small whole head or half of a large head) fresh Chinese (napa) cabbage (about 6 cups cut up)
1/2 tsp vegetable stock granules (or about 1/2 a Knorr-sized stock cube)
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. red pepper flakes
1 tsp. orange zest in thin strips
Optional: 1 tsp. lemon juice
Optional: 1 tsp. dark sesame oil

Equipment needed: a large plastic zip bag

Wash the cabbage leaves, and discard any discolored parts. Dry by spinning in a salad spinner or in several layers of paper towels. Chop up roughly.

Mix together all the dry ingredients and orange zest in a bowl. If you’re using a stock cube, crumble it up finely.

Put the cabbage in the plastic bag, and the dry ingredients + orange zest. Close the bag with plenty of air in it (so it’s like a balloon) and shake all around until the ingredients are evenly distributed. Open the bag, expel as much air as you can, and close again. Massage and toss the bag around, bruising the cabbage. Quite a lot of moisture will come out of the cabbage and melt the salt etc. Try not to burst the bag with over-enthusiastic kneading.

You can eat this right away, or leave in the refrigerator in the bag for about an hour (you can do it over night too).

To serve, drain off the excess moisture (which is delicious, but rather salty…though some people like to drink it off!). Drizzle with the optional lemon juice or sesame oil. Serve with any Japanese style meal. Makes a great bento box item.

Broccoli with wasabi sauce (wasabi-ae)

maki — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 12:48:47 +0100

All hail the mighty broccoli. While it’s always available in the produce section, it’s one of the few fresh vegetables that haven’t been shipped halfway around the world to reach people who live in many parts of the northern hemisphere during the colder months. In the spring we even get very locally grown broccoli and its relatives like romanesco.

Broccoli can be rather boring if it’s just served steamed, boiled or, god forbid , raw. (I’m sorry, I don’t really get raw broccoli. Raw cauliflower yes, but not raw broccoli.) A way to perk up broccoli without relying on those yummy yet caloric additions like mayonnaise, cheese sauce or garlic-and-olive-oil, is to make aemono or ohitashi with them. Ohitashi is basically vegetables that have been steamed or blanched/boiled served with a sauce that contains soy sauce, often but not always a little dashi stock, and sometimes a bit of sake or mirin and sugar. Aemono uses a similar sauce, with added ingredients like ground up sesame seeds. In this recipe, the sauce contains wasabi, so it’s aemono.

As long as you have all the ingredients on hand it’s very quick to make, and very tasty. The sinus-clearing qualities of the wasabi are softened by the other ingredients in the sauce, while still giving the broccoli a nice, bright flavor.

It makes a great side dish as part of a Japanese meal, or even a salad. It’s also a very nice bento item (you may want to contain the sauce in a paper cup or its own container).

Broccoli with wasabi sauce (burokkori no wasabi ae)

4 to 5 cups (one small head) cut up broccoli, the flower part broken into small pieces, the stem part peeled and sliced thin
Salt and water for cooking
2 1/2 tsp. wasabi powder, reconstituted to a paste with a few drops of water
4 Tbs. soy sauce
2 Tbs. sake
1 Tbs. sugar or sweetener of your choice

Bring the water and salt to a boil. Cook the broccoli until it’s crisp-tender and still a bright green in color. Drain, and refresh very briefly with cold running water. (Note: you can skip this step if you’re not in a hurry and have time to cool the broccoli.)

In the meantime, mix together all the remaining ingredients except the wasabi in a small pan, and stir over a low heat until the sugar is melted. Let cool, and add the wasabi, reserving 1/2 tsp or so. Mix well until the wasabi is dissolved.

Pour the sauce over the broccoli and mix well. Serve at room temperature or chilled, optionally with a little additional wasabi on the side for people to mix into the broccoli as they eat it (if they really like wasabi).

Notes

You can, in a pinch, use frozen broccoli.

While using fresh grated wasabi root is ideal, powdered wasabi is fine for this dish.

Use less wasabi if you find it too strong.

You can turn this into a one-dish meal by adding some protein of your choice, such as blanched and cut-up tofu, or poached and shredded chicken breast. The sauce is great with either.

Righteous tofu pudding in under 5 minutes

maki — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 14:32:28 +0100

One of the things I like to do with tofu that didn’t quite come together is to turn it into a pudding. Now I do not pretend to you that this tastes like a proper pudding or mousse made with cream and such, and if anyone tries to convince you that a tofu based dish like this is ‘just as good/rich as the real thing’ they are either lying or have no taste buds. It’s different, but still good. It’s a lightly sweet, cool and creamy dish that will quiet a sudden urge for Something Sweet. Since it’s quite healthy it will leave you feeling righteous, thus the name.

It’s also a dish that you can whip up in no time at all. I realize that many of the recipes here take a lot of time, effort or both, and I’m going to try to rectify that. Look for recipes with the quickcook or under 10 tags.

Righteous tofu pudding

1 cup of mashed up fresh tofu (a small block of either silken or firm tofu, or a mixture)
3 Tbs maple syrup, sugar, or sweetener of your choice (see notes)
Flavoring: a few drops of vanilla extract, almond extract, or 2 Tbs. cocoa powder (optional)

If the tofu seems a bit watery, squeeze it lightly in a non-terry cloth towel or several layers of paper towel.

Place the tofu, sweetener and flavoring in a blender and blend until totally smooth. If you don’t have a blender, push it through a fine meshed sieve or mash it up as fine as possible with a fork.

Serve cooled with optional extra syrup, honey etc. on top if you so desire. The one in the photo is flavored with maple syrup with additional maple syrup on top.

Notes

Try to use a superfine sugar - granulated may be a bit gritty. You can of course use an artificial sweetener.

Silken tofu will make a rather loose pudding, while firm tofu will make a more substantial pudding.

Maple syrup tofu pudding

maki — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 14:00:15 +0100

IMBB 24: Sweet and Sour Okara Meatballs with Bittersweet Vegetables In Under 30 Minutes

maki — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 19:11:49 +0100

I've promised an article on what to do with okara, the fiber-rich fluffy byproduct of making soy milk or tofu. This is not it. But I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone and show one way of using okara in everyday cooking, in a dish that can be made in under 30 minutes, making it suitable for Is My Blog Burning edition 24 hosted by Too Many Chefs.

These meatballs are very light and soft, thanks to the okara, tofu and chopped shiitake mushrooms. They are deep fried because the meatball mixture is so soft, and trying to stir-fry them makes them fall apart. The oil is very well drained off and they only have a light coating of cornstarch, so they aren't greasy at all. The very simple to make sweet and sour sauce finishes them off, but if you like the crispy texture of the freshly-fried meatballs you can have them just like that too and serve the sauce separately for dipping.

Accompanying the meatballs is a simple vegetable stir fry of the flowers of my new vegetable discovery, catalogna or puntarelle, and slim Asian style eggplants (aubergines). Puntarelle flowers have a mild bitterness and a crunchy texture that I find very addictive, which is balanced nicely by the soft, creamy texture of the eggplant.

This dish plus some plain white rice makes a quick and very tasty dinner. Chopping the vegetables and whizzing up the meatball mix in a food processor does help to speed up things, but you can do it by hand too. The key to making all of this within 30 minutes is to prepare all the vegetables first, heat the oil while mixing up the meatball mix, and to do the stir-fry while frying the meatballs. It gets a bit hectic but can be done. As for the rice...I have a rice cooker which really helps, otherwise you can cheat and use an instant type rice. (You can cook rice on the stove at the same time too, provided you have at least 4 burners on your cooktop. Just put the rice on at the start of your 30 minutes.)

The flavors in this dinner are a sort of Japanese-dominant Asian Fusion. I love this kind of food. This will serve 4 people.

Sweet and Sour Okara Meatballs

For the meatballs:

450g / 1 lb. ground pork, or ground chuck
1 cup fresh or de-frosted moist okara, or about 1/2 cup of dried okara (available from some Japanese food stores) plus enough water to moisten it
1/2 cup crumbled firm tofu
6 medium sized fresh shiitake mushrooms
3 green onions
1 piece fresh ginger
1 Tbs tahini (sesame paste) or peanut butter
2 Tbs soy sauce
1 Tbs miso
1/2 tsp salt
Several grinds of pepper
1 egg
Cornstarch
Peanut oil or safflower oil for frying

For the sweet and sour sauce:

5 Tbs rice vinegar
3 Tbs sugar
2 Tbs miso
2 Tbs soy sauce
1 Tbs chinese rice wine (Shaoxing) or sake or sherry
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
2 pickled plums (umeboshi; available from Japanese or Asian food stores), de-seeded and mashed up
1 1/2 Tbs. cornstarch dissolved in 1 cup of cold water

Start heating the oil for frying. (A dedicated deep fryer helps, but I just use a deepish pot.)

Chop the shiitake mushrooms and green onion finely, reserving a little bit of the green onion for using as garnish later. Peel and grate the ginger.

Mix all the meatball ingredients together in a bowl except for the cornstarch. The mixture will be quite soft due to the okara. Form into balls with wet hands, and coat with the cornstarch.

Drop the meatballs in batches into the hot oil, and fry until they are a deep golden brown on all sides. Drain well on paper towels.

In the meantime, make the sweet and sour sauce. Combine all the ingredients in a small pan over medium heat, and mix. If you can't get the umeboshi just omit them - it will still be good. Add more red pepper flakes if you want it to be real spicy. Cook the sauce until it's clear and a bit thickened.

Toss the hot meatballs together with the sauce, and garnish with the reserved chopped green onions.

Note: if you can't get a hold of okara, use 1 cup of fresh white breadcrumbs instead. The texture won't be the same, but it will still be good.

Puntarelle Flower and Eggplant Stir Fry

Flower buds from one puntarelle
4 slim Asian eggplants (a lot of regular supermarkets sell these now, or try Asian or Indian groceries)
3 cloves of garlic
Peanut oil for stir-frying
Salt and pepper

Cut out the flower buds from the puntarelle, reserving the leaves for a salad. Cut off the step part of the flower buds if they are woody. Slice the flower buds lengthwise in quarters.

Slice the eggplant lengthwise, so they are more or less the same thickness as the sliced puntarelle flower buds.

Chop the garlic.

Heat up a wok or sauté pan with a little peanut oil. Toss in the garlic, then the puntarelle. Stir around until the punetarelle turn a bit limp, then toss in the eggplant. Stir fry over the highest heat you can manage until the eggplant is limp. The puntarelle should be crisp-tender. Season with salt and pepper.

Note: If you can't find puntarelle, you can use green asparagus instead.