Tuna and Egg Rice Bowls

I go on a business trip to the main office on thursday morning and I don't get back until friday night. This has put some upheaval to the meal planning, because we don't want too many leftovers and we don't want a lot of food hassle to cut into the small amount of family time this week gives me. I also wanted to take on some of the food burden at the beginning of the week, as the spouse will have to go it alone at the end of the week.

I opened the recipe box and found an untested recipe from the Japanese Women Don't Get Fat cookbook. (We won't quibble now over the book's unfortunate title.) It looked simple and best of all, quick. When I got home from work today, this is what I made, a one pot (plus rice cooker) meal with all the essentials.

Rice with Kale, Egg, and Tuna

(adapted from Japanese Women Don't Get Fat)

What you need:

2 c brown rice

1 c water

1 can tuna

1/2 t better than bouillon

at least 5 large leaves of kale, stemmed

1/2 T soy sauce

1/2 T sugar

3 eggs

1. Cook the rice in your rice cooker using the directions for sticky rice. (For us, it involves using extra water and leaving the rice to soak in there for a bit before turning the cooker on.

2. Boil the water and the better than bouillon. Stir until blended. Then, add the kale and cook another minute or so. Add the tuna, soy sauce, and sugar and simmer for 2 minutes.

3. Scoop rice into bowls (we served three equal portions and still had some rice left over) and cover the rice with the broth from the pan, making sure to leave the tuna and kale in pan as you do so.

4. Beat the eggs and add to the pan. Put back on the stove over med-high heat. Cover and cook for 3 minutes.

5. Top the rice with the egg, kale, and tuna in equal portions (again, we divided it by three).

The little bit of sugar really helps the veggie broth go a long way, making for a deceptively flavorful dish. My son proclaimed it his favorite, so moms, let your picky eaters give this one a try. Substitute a veggie they will eat in for the kale if greens are their childhood kryptonite. So simple but so good. Definitely one I'm going to add to our normal meal routine.

Miso Stir Fry with BBQ Tofu

What I wanted was a stir fry sauce made from miso, so that's what I got, with a nice sweet honey contrast.

I paired it with a BBQ tofu "steak" and, of course, rice, which we managed, despite its long grain nature, to turn into sticky rice.

To Make Sticky Rice:

It's basically just a process. Put the rice in the rice cooker as usual with the asked for amount of water. Then, instead of turning on the cooker, let the rice sit there, soaking in the water for 30 minutes. Then, add back whatever water was absorbed (there should be measurement lines on the sides of the cooker) and turn that puppy on. When it's done, the rice should be sticky. Pretty cool, right?

BBQ Tofu:

Cut the block of tofu in half widthwise and then slice those in half lengthwise. Put the resulting "steaks" on a baking sheet and slather on your favorite BBQ sauce. Broil, about 5 minutes per side, more if you want it more browned than it looks after the first 5. Voila, BBQ tofu.

Miso Stir Fry

What you need:

1 bag frozen Asian veggie mix

1 carrot, sliced (if veggie mix doesn't contain carrots)

1 T miso

1 t hot water

1 t soy sauce

1 T honey

2 cloves minced garlic

ginger

1/2 t cornstarch

a few shakes sunflower oil (optional)

1. in a bowl, mix the miso, hot water, soy sauce, honey, garlic, a few shakes of ginger, cornstarch, and the sunflower oil.

2. In a skillet, stir fry the carrots about 6 min. Add veggies. Stir fry to heated through. Add the miso sauce mix. Fry another min, mixing well.

Now, you can plate the stir fry with the tofu and add a nice bowl of the sticky rice. It's very flavorful and makes for a nice light meal. Fair warning, if you want to make miso soup with the leftovers, remember (as I didn't) that there's already a lot of miso in the veggies already and adding the entire required amount of paste for the soup will make a very very potent soup. So don't do that.

Because I succeeded with the sticky rice, I also had fun playing around with making rice balls, which are like Japan's delightful answer to the tuna melt. First, combine 1 T of mayo with a can of tuna and a splash of soy sauce. Then take a handful of sticky rice, put it in a bowl, plop a bit of the tuna on the rice, and then use a spoon to mold the rice into a ball around the tuna. To really make it look authentic, add a strip of nori wrapped around the outside of the ball. It's an odd but welcomed change for a little kid's lunchbox.

Veggie Stir Fry the Japanese way, plus a couple sweet treats to beat the heat

As I type this, I am sweltering in an unair-conditioned apartment in 90 degree weather. 90 degree weather on the last day of May in Cleveland, OH, where it would not be unthinkable to expect snow in May. To beat the heat, I am drinking the only beverage chilling in my frig at the moment, a bottle of Smirnoff's new Blueberry and Lemonade malt beverage, so before I move on to cooking vegetables the Japanese way, I thought I would impart a word of advice on the subject of this particular beverage.

It is, not surprisingly, lemony with a hint of blueberry and oddly tastes less like an alcoholic beverage even than the other Smirnoff malt beverages (Ice, Triple Black, and assorted fruit flavored Ices) despite it's higher percentage of alcohol content (and by higher, I mean one or two percentage points, depending). I would recommend it to those of you out there above the legal age to drink alcoholic beverages stronger than cough syrup, and I don't say that in jest. You're reading the ramblings of a gal who didn't touch a drop of anything faintly alcoholic in nature until she was nearly twenty-two.

Now, on to the Japanese.

Stir-fried Veggies
- ammended from a recipe in Japanese Women Don't Get Old or Fat -

8 oz firm tofu

6 dried shiitake mushrooms

2 T soy sauce

2 T sake

½ t salt

pepper

2 T canola oil

2 med carrots, cut into thin slices

1 bag Asian veggies - if your bag of Asian veggies includes carrots, you way omit the carrots mentioned above
2 c. of brown rice

1. Make rice via rice cooker. You could go old school, but a rice cooker is the best kitchen invention since the microwave oven. It's just so easy and fool-proof.
2. I read somewhere that if you place a block of tofu between two pieces of paper towel and set something heavy on top of it for an hour, the water will leech out leaving a more solid tofu. Tried it. Totally works. So do that. Then dice it.
3. While the tofu is de-watering, put the dried shiitake in a small bowl and add 2 c water. Let that soak for 20 min. Then, take a 1/2 c of the shiitake soaking water and place it in a small bowl with 1 T soy sauce-pepper.
4. Drain the mushrooms, cut off any stems, and dice the caps.
5. Heat oil in large skillet over high heat. Add carrots and stir fry about 3 minutes before adding the bag of frozen veggies and the sauce mix from the small bowl. Stir fry the lot until the veggies are hot. Then add the tofu, pepper, and remaining 1 T of soy sauce. Stir fry another minute or two.
6. Now, you're ready to serve. Make sure to include a bowl of the rice to go with it.

It's optional, but this dish pairs well with a nice cup of green tea (Decaf. It's dinner, people). Even without the tea, though, this was very light and let the veggies be their own flavoring. Better still, the entire meal's leftovers make a delightful miso soup, just place in water and add miso and a sheet of nori cut into strips.

And because that soup looks hot, for your viewing enjoyment, another desserty, delightfully chilly beverage to cool you down and get you some extra calcium, in honor of the weather: The strawberry banana kale smoothie.

1 banana

3 frozen strawberries

3 T yogurt

1 t oatmeal

a handful of kale (more or less depending on preference)

a dah of cinnamon

a splash of fruit juice (to make it easier for the blender to blend)

Blend all ingredients in a blender until blended, adding juice as needed to move the process along. If you're feeling frisky, go ahead and plop on a dab of whipped cream. I dare you.

Tofu and Carrots done Japanese Style

So I was perusing my library's cookbooks in search of Japanese, and I happened upon what I humorously consider the sequel to French Women Don't Get Fat. It is, you guessed it, Japanese Women Don't Get Old or Fat. It's by Naomi Moriyama and her hubby William Doyle and includes recipes more often than not pulled directly from Moriyama's mother's recipe book (not that she has a literal recipe book but you get the idea). As such, the recipes, thus far, are absolutely fantastic, producing better-than-restaurant quality Japanese right in my own kitchen. This is no small feat.

The problem: to get the recipes, you have to withstand (or ignore) a lengthy diatribe on why eating the Japanese way is the healthiest way to eat (including how it's best if you invest in new Japanese tableware). Now, I'm not saying Japanese isn't healthy. It's loaded with seaweed and miso paste and I just can't get enough. I just get a little sick of hearing how everybody has the secret for THE way to eat a healthy diet, and everybody thinks they're right. I also find it troubling to try to convince people to exclusively eat foods that have to be imported, rather than showing them ways to use the food that grows right in their own communities. Lastly (and then I will end this mini-rant and get on to the good stuff), I find it unfair that homecooked rural Japanese food is being paired against, rather than homecooked rural American food, fast food American food, as though all of us here in the states know only how to use a McDonald's drive thru and the number of our favorite pizza joint. It made for a bit of a straw man argument, even if the book did make some good points and reveal some kickbutt recipes.

CarrotyTofu with Sesame

-adapted from Japanese Women Don't Get Old or Fat-

what you need:

1 block extra firm tofu

2 T cider vinegar

2 t sugar

2 t white wine

2 t soy sauce

1 t salt

1 T canola oil

5 carrots, matchsticked

1/3 c toasted ground white sesame seeds

2 c. brown rice

1. Make rice via rice cooker or the more intensive stovetop method. While it's cooking, cut up the tofu, season (if desired) with allspice and pop it in the oven for about 20=30 minutes, flipping once during baking. Cut tofu into cubes.
2. Combine vinegar-salt in small bowl until sugar is dissolved. (Of course, the wine should be sake, this being a Japanese dish, but lacking that, I opened a bottle of white wine spritzer from, I believe, Africa. Consider my version African-infused Asian.)
3. Heat oil in large skillet over high heat. Add carrot and tofu and sauté until carrots are tender, 3 min, Reduce heat to med-low and add sauce mix. Cook 2 more min. Turn off heat and add sesame seeds. Toss it all together.
4. Serve with rice, and if you want to be Japanese about it, serve them in separate bowls.

My table setting ended up quite lovely if I do say so myself. And because I opened that spritzer, I enjoyed a glass of bubbly with my repast.