Teriyaki rice bowl is one of my favorite meals.
This time I used Kuruma-Fu, a Japanese gluten product.
White rice, salad leaves, Shiso Daikon radish salad, Teriyaki Kuruma-Fu, and Vegan mayo.
Yum!
You must have guessed that I was going to post this.
Well, if you make Chashu (previous post), you are almost obligated to make ramen!
I was going to make my own noodles too, but since flour is hard to come by right now, I decided to go with store-bought ones.
These noodles are not specifically for ramen, but I like them because of its right wideness and color (slightly yellow).
And you know what?
The ingredients are good too.
Other similar noodles I found at the same store contain yellow #5 and 6, but this one uses turmeric to add the yellow color.
So much better.
I was super happy with the result.
Doesn’t my vegan Chashu look great?
Chashu is Japanese braised pork, which is a popular topping option for ramen.
I used Kuruma-Fu, which is a Japanese gluten product and has been used for many many years.
They are sold dry like this.
You soak them in water for about 30 minutes.
You remove excess water from them, coat with corn starch, and fry with oil.
They have a wonderful meat-like texture.
Chashu glaze: 2 tablespoons water, 1 tablespoon soy sauce, 1~1.5 tablespoon sugar, 1/2~1 teaspoon vegetable bouillon paste, grated garlic from 2 cloves
Our fridge was getting empty, and I definitely needed to go grocery shopping today.
But I wanted to eat lunch before doing so.
I usually used pre-cooked pouches, but today I cooked those myself.
Stuff the pouches with Sushi rice.
The toppings were decided based on what was in my fridge.
Carrot sesame.
Cucumber and crunchy salted seaweed.
Shiso tomato.
Very happy with the result!
Sweet bean and butter sandwich.
This combination of sweet beans and butter may sound odd to many westerners, but it’s extremely popular in Japan.
A few weeks ago I showed you how to make sweet beans using canned beans.
This is so easy to make.
At that time I used black beans, but this time I decided to use dark red kidney beans.
I made this the same way as I did with the black beans.
You squeeze the extra liquid using a cloth; make sure the beans are quite dry at this stage.
Then add sugar and a little salt and cook until it achieves the texture you prefer.
This turned out great.
It’s pretty close to the traditional Japanese sweet red beans which are made of Azuki beans.
Homemade bread, homemade vegan butter, sweet beans, and salted sakura cherry flowers.
Pretty and tasty!
When I make curry for dinner, the next day’s lunch has to be curry udon.
That’s an unwritten rule at my house, but I religiously follow it.
I thought tempura would be a nice addition to it and decided to make some with asparagus.
I always make my tempura batter from scratch (all purpose flour, baking powder, cold water, salt), but of course I never measure the ingredients.
So it turns out different every time.
This time it turned out PERFECT!
Tempura is not the same as fritter, and it should be super light, just like this one you see in these pictures!
I’m so proud of this.
(I should have written down how I made this batter…)
When I switched to the plant-based diet, I didn’t think there would be a day I could eat Katsu curry.
Why I made this “chicken” Katsu?
Well, it is because I wanted to eat Katsu curry.
Thick Japanese curry and rice.
I like my curry and rice served with a little pickles.
Super happy with the result!!
I usually have a lot of energy on weekends (lol).
It takes me forever to get out of bed usually, but I’m wide awake at 5:00 a.m. when I don’t go to the office.
But today my energy was a bit low, and I was kind of lazy.
A good thing is that I never lose appetite even on a day like this.
I was in a mood for soba soup for lunch.
So, this is what I ended up with.
Soba noodles, Kombu-soy sauce based soup, Natto, and green chile.
Yes, the green chile is an outsider here, but I really enjoyed the fresh spiciness in the soup.
Ultimate comfort food for me.
Udon noodle soup with tempura.
This time I made two types of tempura.
One is shungiku tempura.
Shungiku may be sold as “Tongo” at some Asian grocery stores.
One is ginger veggies: onion, carrot, red ginger.
Tasty!
When we stayed at my parents’ house during our recent vacation in Japan, my parents were so supportive of our diet.
My mom and I did the grocery shopping together, cooked together, and may parents ate the same thing we did for dinner every night.
They are awesome.
My mom wanted to learn about vegan cooking/baking, and I learned something new from them too.
Apparently, my father likes sakekasu.
He likes it so much that he puts it in his miso soup every night.
They were not sure how we would react to Sakekasu, but we were instantly hooked!
It gives such interesting and rich flavor to the soup.
