Plan B (but not at all a bad one...)
29 September 2009
Actually I had something else in mind for this week’s post. But unfortunately, my attempt to recreate my beloved "matcha frappuchino" – this used to be my favourite drink at Starbucks in Tokyo, and I really miss it... – did not go quite as planned (the outcome was rather desasterous, to be honest…). It really needs lots of improvement before it is presentable. So I was left not only without my Sunday afternoon snack, but also without a new recipe to post this week.
Luckily, our casual Sunday evening dinner turned out very tasty, so here we go! It was just a simple and very light meal, as we were still recovering from gigantic portions of yummy but very meaty, fatty and somewhat too salty food at Oktoberfest ("Wies’n", as we call it here) on Saturday. Hence we were in the mood for lots of vegetables, and maybe just a bit of pasta.
I took what I could find in the fridge and simmered the random mixture of veggies (a celeriac root, shiitake mushrooms, courgettes, tomatoes, spring onions,…) in sake and soy sauce (as I had originally planned to cook Japanese meatballs in shiitake sauce that evening – which however we really didn’t feel like eating right then – I still had this kind of seasoning on my mind).
As for the farfalle, those are of course replacable, for Japanese soba for example. That particular evening for some reason we just fancied Italian pasta over Japanese noodles - the somewhat unusual combination worked remarkably well!
Sake-Stewed, Ginger-Spiced Veggies with Farfalle
| serves 4 |
for the vegetables |
| 1 celeriac root |
| 2 ripe tomatoes |
| 350g shiitake mushrooms |
| 2 (smallish) courgettes |
| about 30g of a fresh ginger root |
| 3-4 spring onions |
| 300ml cooking sake |
| about 80ml soy sauce |
| 2 teaspoons dijon mustard |
| a hand full of pine seeds |
| 2 shiso leaves |
| a pinch of shichimi (to taste) |
to go with (to be varied) |
| 400g farfalle or other pasta |
Peel the celeriac root as well as the piece of ginger; chop the former into relatively small cubes, and slice the latter as thinly as possible. Place both in a saucepan with a mixture of cooking sake and soy sauce, cover with a lid and bring to a simmer. Peel the tomatoes (dip them into some boiling water first, then rip of the skin which will come off very easily), remove the hard bit, chop them into little cubes and add to the celeriac, and let simmer for another 10-15 minutes or so before proceeding to the next step.
Next, clean and slice the shiitake mushrooms and add them, too; then do the same with the courgettes, and finally the spring onions, finely sliced. Don’t forget to close the lid again after adding each ingredient!
Let simmer for about 10 more minutes, then fine-tune the sauce with a bit of dijon mustard, some finely chopped shiso leaves and a hand full of pine seeds. To serve, finish with a pinch of shichimi if you like it a bit spicy.