One-bowl lunch

This is definitely the end of winter! But the spring greens and veggies are not yet ready, we'll have to wait a few weeks, so in between, mizuna, brocolli, spinach, na no hana are the best options!

I find that mizuna really goes well with plain Japanese rice, so I prepared it on a rice bowl with some steamed brocolli, and I made some pork-okara-curry bites.

For the mizuna just wash it in clear water, the brocolli I steamed them on top of thd rice for 2 min, the bites, I mixed pork meat with 2 large spoons of okara, one egg, a spoon of curry powder, salt, pepper and cooked then golden. Served all in one bowl, topped with some sesame seeds.

I believed that the pork can be removed and replaced by a little of panko for a veggan experience.

u no hana - うの花

I really love okara. It's basically the pulp of soya beans remaining after the fabrication of tofu and soya milk. It's full of proteins and it as a very mild taste. It is easily found in supermarket in Japan (together with tofu, nato and yuba) and also very easy to use in several recipes. The most famous okara recipe in Japan is probably u no hana (うの花). A mixture of okara and cooked vegetables.
Since I found nice okara, I wanted to make u no hana, but as always I twist the recipe. Usual u no hana is often very mild in taste and in color, and recently I like colorful plates for dinner (see my recent post). So instead of the classical ingredients I used carrots, purple sweet potato (again!), shiitake and na-no-hana (rapeseed).
I cut in small stick all the vegetables and cook them in the above order in a bit of oil and finally added soya sauce, a little of sugar, a little of sake (the original recipe has mirin in it, but recently I don't use mirin anymore, for it's too strong taste that covers the taste of the other ingredients).
Finally I added the okara and stirred (a little too well so that the purple color of the potato transferred to the white okara:( ).
A delicious colorful vegan dish, served with rice and ume-boshi.