Thursday Night Solo: Snack and Prepare

If you have a night without your family (in my case my husband) then it’s a great opportunity to prepare some items that will be useful in tomorrow’s meal, and to snack on some leftovers that might only make up one portion. Enter some adzuki beans that were cooked yeaterday with sea vegetable and miso then blended with garlic. They made the perfect dip for some tasty corn chips. Another easy dish for the evening was an excellent miso soup with napa cabbage, mung bean sprouts, scallions and wakame instant sea vegetable that took about ten minutes to prepare.
Finally, while trying to catch up on some grading I ate a bowl full of left over squash from sushi night with some steamed broccoli that I made tonight in a large batch. I topped the cold veg with toasted nori and sesame seeds which was visually appealing and tasty. It’s good to have big batch of steamed broccoli in the fridge to add to packed lunches or cool salads. This evening was the perfect opportunity to prepare the broccoli as well as a few other staples for tomorrow and the weekend. I cooked up some small white beans, some brown/black/red rice mixture and a cranberry concoction that I hope will function as a sort of sour relish for tomorrow’s meal. All this while reading my students’ descriptions of chemical reactions and the structure of atoms!
The white beans were not pre-soaked, but who cares if you’re not in a hurry for dinner. I rinsed the beans, added a stalk or two of wakeme (not instant) sea vegetable, enough water to cover the beans by about an inch and once boiling, set the mixture on simmer for a little over an hour. It’s funny, I spent my entire childhood and my twenties without cooking a single sea vegetable. Once I moved to NYC, of course I had to try sushi and fell in love. Sea weed then seemed like a tasty something to experience with friends when out for a celebratory Japanese dinner. But now that I have been cooking with sea vegetables for, I am in love with how they tenderize beans and add subtle flavors to grains. But hey, if it’s not your bag, add salt. The broccoli was in need of cooking because it was in the fridge for two or three days. I steamed the veg in a large pot with a metal steam basket. As soon at the broccoli was just barely done, I submerged the florets and stems in ice cold water, drained and then dressed with plenty of vinegar. Then I placed the crisp, tart broccoli in the fridge to enjoy later. I’ve been reading this cookbook of dairy-free vegetarian recipes that is clearly a macrobiotic cook book but does not advertise itself as such. At any rate, there are a couple of recipes for fruit relishes. One of the key tastes we can sense is tartness. One mark of a well balanced meal, is to satisfy as many different tastes as possible. It is fall here in Maine and cranberries are in season. I decided to cook up some cranberries with rice syrup, and the juice and zest from a lemon. After the cranberries began to burst open, I added about a table spoon of kuzu dissolved in two tablespoons of cold water. What the heck is kuzu? It’s a root that can be used to thicken sauces. I suppose you could use anything to thicken: corn starch, flour….whatever. My vision, although not very well formed, is to serve some sour, tart relish with white beans, and chopped almonds on a chicory salad tomorrow. Of course, you never know how things will actually turn out.