Dinner, June 16, 2011

Dishes cooked in broth have deeper flavor when cooled and heated up several hours later. I made a dish with daikon radish and deep-fried tofu in light broth yesterday. When I made it for the first time, we ate it without waiting for hours, and it was nothing but a bland soupy disaster. After anxiously waiting for day, I tried a small piece of daikon. It tasted very sophisticated. When I tasted subtle ginger flavor with the daikon, the clouds in my head disappeared, and I knew what to make. A simple meal for a good break.

• Rice with murasakimai purple sweet rice, topped with toasted sesame seeds
• Miso soup with potato, carrot, gobo burdock root, topped with sliced green onion
• Daikon to atsuage ni / daikon radish cooked with deep-fried tofu
• Ika no nitsuke / calamari in reduced soy sauce broth
• Gomaae with snap peas 

For rice, only a few dozens grains of purple sweet rice is added for paler purple color. Last night I added too much and the rice was not pretty.

Miso soup with root vegetables is the most common soup in this house. Root vegetables warm up your body and improve metabolism. Gobo burdock root is said to cleanse your blood. Gobo, carrot and potato are in today's soup. Sliced fresh green onion adds a pungent taste.

The calamari dish would take care of strong-flavor craving, although it won't be as strong as the traditional standard. My mom would make this quite strong with more soy sauce, which tastes very good, but the amount of sodium is a concern. 

Snap peas' succulent texture and crunchiness provides a change of pace for this meal. A small amount of ichimi added to the sesame dressing gives a hint of spiciness -- very, very subtle but straightforward stimulation on the tip of your tongue.  

I had seven vegetables for breakfast and lunch together. Tom had only five. But this dinner would make him eat three more different vegetables today. It's a good-deal dinner.