Carbonara!
This famous pasta dish never gets old.
Of course, smoky bacon makes this dish 100 times better.
This time I added fresh lemon zest, and I really liked it.
The lemon zest brightened up the whole dish.
Oh, did I say it’s vegan?
Here is another dish I made utilizing the leftover food from my birthday dinner takeout.
The spicy pumpkin coconut Thai soup was turned into this ramen dish!
I added a few things (Kombu broth, sesame oil, etc.) to the soup to make it more appropriate for ramen.
The main purpose of doing so was to thin the soup and add another layer of flavor.
Tasty!!
I always liked seaweed, but it became extremely important in my diet when I switched to the plant-based diet.
Seaweed gives dishes the “ocean” flavor I crave sometimes, and I fully enjoy such dishes without so-called seafood, like shrimp and scallops.
In fact seaweed has become my “seafood”!
Hijiki seaweed is one of my favorites, although I cannot think of any type of seaweed I do not like.
After eating the same dishes from the Thanksgiving meal (leftover) for a few days, I was ready for something completely different.
I was in a mood for spaghetti, but something that would taste like ocean.
When I have a similar craving, I like to incorporate seaweed.
There are several different kinds of seaweed popular in Japan, and this time I decided to use Shio-Kombu (salted kombu), Aosa (dried seaweed flakes), and hand-torn Yaki-nori (roasted seaweed sheets).
I simply combined freshly cooked spaghetti with olive oil and the seaweed mix, and finished it off with homemade vegan white cheese and a drizzle of soy sauce.
So good!!
Simple udon dish.
Japanese curry soup, scallion, and fried tofu (a-ge).
Finished off with a vegan egg.
Tasty!
Who wouldn’t want this beautiful vegan egg in your noodle soup?!
Ramen is usually served in soup.
But the ramen noodles can be dressed with oil-based dressing, and it’s delicious.
This is perfect when you want noodles, but you want something lighter.
This was served with homemade vegan chicken, bean sprouts, garlic chives, scallion, and vegan egg.
The dressing was simply made with soy sauce, sugar, vinegar, and sesame oil.
I typically enjoy Natto over rice, but it goes well with Soba noodles as well.
This time I decided to add another sticky thing, grated nagaimo.
“Sticky” is not used as a good description for food in the U.S., but people love sticky food in Japan, including myself.
Yum!
Yakisoba, or fried noodles, has always been one of my favorite lunch dishes.
It’s easy to make, and I was probably making Yakisoba by myself at age 8.
I like to fry my noodles crispy for the ankake version.
Lots of veggies with thick sauce over crispy noodles.
So good!!
Cream pasta is another dish that I enjoy on a cold day in Minnesota.
I wanted it creamy, but I didn’t want it to be too heavy.
So this time I decided to use tofu as a thickening agent, instead of flour.
And it worked!
In addition to the past, mushrooms and lentils were added to this delicious creamy white miso sauce.
Completed with a sprinkle of Shichimi spices.
This makes a great dinner to have on a couch and enjoy a lazy evening.
I could just curl up with a blanket and watch a show with this cup in my hand.
Udon noodle soups is a great meal on a cold winter day.
Let me tell you, this year Minnesota mostly skipped autumn, and now we are definitely in winter even though it’s still October.
So this dish was absolutely needed.
Thick and chewy Udon noodles and garlic chives were served in thick ginger ground Koya (freeze-dried) tofu soup.
Oh, and it was topped off with a vegan yolk.
Well, it tasted as good as it looked.
One of my favorite bowls.
Made by a local potter.
He is not Japanese, but this particular bowl looks so organic and “wabi-sabi” to me.
