Korean Bean Sprouts!

Those of you from the South are familiar with restaurants with names like:

SHANGHAI TOKYO: Chinese and Japanese Food Sushi Buffet!

The concept of the "Slashie" is not just for Fabio anymore. Most Asian restaurants of ill-repute feature dishes that are not from the country (or countries) that the restaurant claims to represent. An excellent example of this is the following totally killer bean sprout dish, which I used to enjoy at my favorite Nashville Slashie Japanese/Korean/Chinese Restaurant.

PICKLED BEAN SPROUTS

OF UNKNOWN PROVENANCE

(PROBABLY KOREA BUT WE'RE NOT SURE)

Bag of bean sprouts (I like Mung Sprouts)

4 tsp. wheat-free Tamari

5 tbsp. brown rice vinegar

2-3 tbsp. sesame oil

Sugar to taste (I usually do between 1-2 tsp.)

1 pinch sea salt

Boil the bean sprouts 2-3 minutes. Combine remaining ingredients in a bowl, and toss in bean sprouts. If your sprouts are overwhelming the little amount of sauce in the bowl, double the sauce recipe. Cover and let chill overnight for optimum flavor.

Rock Out With Your Crock Out.

I followed the strict macrobiotic recipes for about five days, and cried into my dinner several times.

It was so difficult and I was feeling so disheartened that I decided to do a meal that combined good macrobiotic practice with an awareness of my feelings.

I decided that since the thought of modifying my food shopping was literally driving me to distraction, I would make a meal that had lots of wonderful associations for me, but incorporated elements that I had previously been neglecting.

Yudofu is a GREAT dish for entertaining! It's a crowd pleaser because it's interactive. I like to serve it at parties because the vegetable combinations are endless, the presentation is beautiful, and the cooking is entertaining. When I was living in Japan, we went to a Yudofu restaurant where we sat at one long wooden table in a beautiful and simple wooden house in the mountains. It was such a warm and amazing experience, kind of like the Japanese equivalent of breaking bread. I knew that eating yudofu would calm the anxieties that I had about making macrobiotics my own. I really believe that as much as a meal eaten in sickness causes aversion, a meal once eaten surrounded by loved ones will always be a healing meal.

RECIPE TIPS: This recipe is a fusion of one I made from scratch in Japan, as well as the macrobiotic dashi soup stock. For the true yudofu flavor, you really DO need bonito... I don't care what anybody says. But if you're looking to make an awesome vegan yudofu, just double the shiitakes.

YUDOFU: Japanese Crock Pot!

INGREDIENTS:

12 shiitake mushrooms, dried (this is important!)

2 3-4 inch strips of dried kombu

Silken/Soft Tofu cut into 1"x2" cubes

Scallions

Onions

Carrots

Enoki Mushrooms (these are a must!! they're so delicious!)

Mountain Vegetables (if available... check your local Chinese grocery store. They come bagged)

Sprouts

Vermicelli noodles

Napa Cabbage

Other veggies to taste!

Rehydrate the shiitake mushrooms. Save this water. Pour this water plus an additional 3-4 cups cold water into a deep crock pot, and begin simmering over a bunsen burner or a plug-in crock pot over a long table. This is important because cooking it over the stove like I did sucks. Let the shiitake mushrooms and kombu simmer for about 20-30 minutes. Add more water if needed, but try to keep this soup stock strong.

Remove kombu strips. Begin to add your ingredients. I like to start with the carrots and tofu because they take the longest to cook. Here's a picture of some of my ingredients:

While these ingredients cook, I quickly whip together my sauce.

It's mirin (which I didn't have so I used cheap Sauvignon, which was totally disgusting), tamari wheat-free soy sauce, and squeezed lemon juice. I also grated some ginger into mine, which made a big difference since I really skimped on the wine.

Here's a picture of my crock pot crocking.

Mmm... Delicious.

Here's a picture of the finished product! It looks lovely on the plate, and is about to be consumed by my right hand chef, May.

Refocusing

So after my kidney stone, I realized that my macrobiotic practice had become... *cough* unfocused, so to speak. I was basically living on rice cakes and nuts. And even Western doctors agree that nuts are a MAJOR cause of kidney stones. So take that with the fact that I drink no water, and you get a kidney stone.

I went to a local and highly venerated macrobiotic practitioner, who handed me so much literature that I literally went home and had a panic attack.

I will say, gentle readers, it's really frustrating to sit there and say, "My commute is 60-80 minutes each way. I'm 30 minutes from a good grocery store, and I work 2 jobs" and then receive instructions that say that you need to cook expensive food. I would literally have to wake up at 4 AM to get all this cooking done. It's a little insane. Four dishes for each meal? It's too much. That's why people hire macrobiotic chefs. It's just too much. And that's not even touching on the expense.

I find that the more time I spend surrounded by a positive environment (and close to a Whole Foods), the easier it is to live a macrobiotic lifestyle. I'm about to do a post on macrobiotics and music that really gets into this, but I'll preface it here. I think that when we're in a gentle and slow-paced physical environment, eating gentle foods is sensible. You don't see farmers eating a lot of truffle-infused pan-seared sea scallops soaked in butter from a cow from another continent. So I'm going to the Renaissance Faire.

My goals for this week are to address emotions and eating because I'm going to a panel on it next week. I'm also trying to do Grain/Green Vegetable/ Root Vegetable for each meal and to not read while eating. I have a cold (thanks, Cipro, Zofran, and Dilaudid. No, really.) so I'm trying to just keep things moving.