barszcz (borscht)

A member of my family said, "Oh, this is barszcz". She is from Central East Europe.

I almsot gave up the idea to cook barszcz when I heard that it requires an hour for the beetroot to be cooked separately. However, I found a website saying that indeed microwave requires only 4-8 minutes.

For barszcz, ingredients are as follows. But one can use indeed whatever vegetable for the soup.

- couple of beetroots (in our case, we used one rather large size beetroot)
- 2 onions
- several young carrots
- salt

Basically, cook a soup out of onions, carrots, salt and whatever else you want.

Beetroots should be microwaved for 4-8 minutes depending on the size of beetroots you've got and the capacity of the microwave. Do not peel before microwaving. Cool the beetroots a while so that you can handle and peel. Grate the beetroots and add it into the soup.

DO NOT boil after you add the beetroot to the soup. I boiled the red beetroot juice once and the color was transformed from red to brown, which is critical for this soup whose one of fundamental characteristic is the vivid red colour.

stir-fried carrot-leaf/beetroot leaf/うすあげ（とうふ）

It was rather very experimental, but I tried to stir fry carrot-leaf beetroot leaf and うすあげ（とうふ） all together. My wife did not like it, but I like the herb-like oder of carrot leaf.

Ingredients are
- a bunch of carrot leaf
- a bunch of beetroot leaf
- a pack of うすあげとうふ
- salt

Simply chop them, through all of them into a pan and stir fry.

How about the taste? I must say some people may like, some not...

sauerkraut (sour cabbage?)

Is this German word, sauerkraut, commonly used in English, too? Ich habe keine idee was sauerkraut auf English ist...


In last summer, I pickled some cabbage and made some souerkraut.


Ingredients are


- a whole cabbage
- 7-8 big spoonfuls of salt (or as much as you feel necessary)

Some people make it with some good herbs, but I make it only with salt.

Slice a cabbage. Sprinkle enough salt. Leave it about a week before you can start eating (place something heavy enough). Parts of cabbage gets rotten if not dipped in the pickle liquid. So, make sure to place something heavy enough.

simple and nutritious lunch box

Home baked whole wheat bread with butter and rasins, cheese and home garden-grown tomatoes will be a simple, but nutritious lunch box for my 2-year old daughter.

pickled らっきょ

I tried to search for English name for らっきょ on Wikipedia, but ended up with some strange Latin botanical name.

Recently some might have seen this onion- or garlic-like stuff sold at nearest supermarket. When I visited one, I was tempted to try out.


The original recipe I referred to can be found here.

Ingredients are

- 1kg らっきょ

- several chili

- 150 ml pre-boiled water

- 350 ml vinegar (I used ordinary rice vinegar)

- 250 ml honey (The original recipe says 250 g sugar)

Wash らっきょ thoroughly. Peels will be scratched off during this process. This takes some time.

Then cut off the root and top. This requires another bit of time. Then dip らっきょ in boiled water for 10 seconds.

While doing these, you can sterilize glass jars in boiled water.

When らっきょ and jars are ready, pack all of the ingredients into sterilized jars and let it stand for 10 days or 3 weeks depending on your preference. Shake the jar well couple of times a day for the first couple of days.

If you want to make it more properly, らっきょ can be pickled with salt for a night prior to be washed and pickled in vinegar.

Sour food is precious during deadly hot summers.

Micro Universe is a bit exaggerated?

In my family's tiny home garden, there are now couple of vegs growing/starting to grow.

Waste water and kitchen wastes are being circulated at home.

I notice that if better water-reuse system can be introduced to houses, plants can be happier. It seems that plants need more water. Especially, the grass will be happier with much more water supply.

My daughter learns a lot in the home garden, so that to some degree, the home garden serves as a biology class room for her. When we walk, she immediately notices aubergine, tomatos and other vegs that grow at home. On top of it, she has got more awareness on generally plant species and how plants grow.

そらまめ | broad bean

I was rather surprised to hear from a friend of mine (born in the States and lived in couple South-East Asian countries) that he did not know how to eat broad beans (or そらまめ in Japanese). This crop has been so familiar to me. And a Polish-born family of mine knew of it pretty well. This is why I did not expect one would not know... Well it is good to hear sometimes that my perception is not ubiquitous.

そらまめ goes pretty well with beer, which some people around me claim. How to cook?

Prepare some water boiled, peel beans, cook them with as much as salt you want for 3 min or even a bit shorter. It's as simple as this.

Give it a try.

Whole-grain bread

Since my family is (basically) vegetarian, I pay more attention to nutrition balance. Whole wheat bread is far more nutritious (rich in vitamins, etc.) than white-grain rice. Because this staple food has quite high nutrition value, simple meals which consist of only slices of bread and cheese should easily suffice even young children's important growth stages.

There are more reasons to bake at home:

- My daughter/I do not take sugar, so that bread we find at shops are not our options.

- It is very hard to find a quite heavy bread like ours or German.

Allright, there are lots discussions about nutrition. But a man do no live only on bread. Well, such difficult discussions should be discussed else-where. I might cover a relatively simple topic at some point...

A friend (born by Norwegian parents and bred in Japan) of mine. The recipe cannot be simpler for bread I think. But it requires me good coule of hours. So I usually bake breads on my days off.

Ingredients are

• 6 cups of whole-grain wheat flour
• 3 cups of water (2 cups if you make white-flour)
• 6 tea-spoonful of dry yeast
• a big spoonful of salt
• around 3-5 big-spoonful olive oil
• butter (to grease forms)

Obviously you need forms and a oven (I use electronic micro-oven).

1. Mix 3 cups of warm water (around 45 – 50 degree celsius), dry yeast for around 10-15 min. You will see foam covering the surface then. Mixing in small amount of honey would help yeast's activation process.
2. Add flour, salt, live oil and kneel.
3. Let it raise for around 1 hour (place the bowl on a warm something if not in summer).
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. Tear the dough into tennis-ball size, punch around three of them into a form.
5. Bake for 30 min at 200 degree celsius.
6. Cool for 1 hour at room temperature.

I recently bake once in every two weeks. I bake enough for two weeks. Some are packed in plastic bags and frozen till we need. Some stay outside for the next day's breakfast or lunch. Some goes to the fridge.

A morning in the home garden

In our tiny home garden, tomatoes have started to produce fruits.

First cucumber came rather without notice. It was hidden under a large leaf.

Goya is trying to provide us shade. Getting prepared for the deadly hot summer.

spaghetti peperoncino (Or let's call it this way)

It was in Philippines where I tried out this simple spaghetti and became a fan of. I cook this simple dish often ever since.

In Philippines, esp. in Manila, foods are, as a friend of mine expresses, greasy. A meal never completes without a bunch of meat, whatever sort. In most of East (including South) Asia, I struggle searching for vegetarian foods. Philippines was one of worst in the sense that people do not often cook, so that it is even hard to find a stand or a supermarket to locate a piece of broccoli or anything.

Spaghetti peperoncino is a very very simple dish with
- spaghetti
- 4-5 cloves of relatively large garlic (for a person)
- peperoncino (chili)
- salt
- add whatever herb if you like to

Cook spaghetti as you do usually. While spaghetti is getting cooked, peal garlic, mash, chop roughly an d throw it into heated pan (surely with oil). I used to cook dishes with only sliced garlic, but crashed one tastes pretty much different and gives stronger garlic flavour to dishes.

For authentic spaghetti peperoncino, it is supposed to add some red chili into the pan when the garlic is almost done. However, I often sprinkle tabasco partially because if I mix chili into the garlic, my daughter cannot eat, partially because using tabasco is more convenient (although it gives sourness of vinegar).

vegetarian にらやき or something similar

Your children do not like greens? This is my daughter's case. I feel that it is quite bad that my daughter does not like greens under the condition that her diet is vegetarian.

I try to make her eat greens which she refuses. One of few things out of which she eats green veg is this にらやき, which is originally Korean. You can find English wikipedia article here. In Korean original recipe, it has some seafood elements, but I make it far simpler and veg.

Ingredients are
- about 3 cups of flour (or whatever amount your family require for a meal)
- a bunch of にら
- salt
- water

Chop a bunch of にら as in the picture below:

Mix all of the ingredients and add as much water as the mixture becomes like pancake's.

Fry thin pancake-like にらやき sheet by sheet.

Please find whatever source you like. We usually use soy-course, but you can use whatever source you like as long as you do not adhere to authenticity of originals...

I recommend you try out, especially if your children do not like greens in other forms.

onion salad

It does not even have to be called a salad.

Slice a onion, leave for half hour till the sharpness disappears. Pour some vinegar (and olive oil if you like) and whatever herb you like on top of it.

Steamed bun and stir-fried vegs (Polish style)

We had a name's day of one of our family members. In fact, only one of us has purely Polish name. So we cerebrate only one name's day.

For this day, I cooked some Polish-style veg dishes, namely pampuchy (steamed bun) and stir-fried vegs.

The bun's ingredients are
- 3 cups of white-flour
- 4 tea-spoonful yeast
- a cup of warm water

These are pretty much the same as usual bread dough's ingredients.

Mix them together and leave ideally for 1 hour (if your family are patient enough) or at least 15 min. till the dough grows.

When the dough is ready, tear off pieces and steam for around 10-15 min.

Then, it's veg's turn to be cooked. To make it more Polish style, I cook vegs longer than I usually do. Ingredients are below, but you can replace pretty much with any vegs you like.

- two onions
- 2/3 cabbage
- 4-5 cloves of garlic (can be more)
- a pack of whatever maushroom
- salt
- pepper

Chop vegs, stir-fry and season with salt and pepper and any herbs you like.

Well, cooking is a way to cerebrate a bit special days.