Tag Archives: Sushi

Vegan Japanese Feast – Sushi, Tempura and Miso Soup

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Ever since our trip to Japan, I have been meaning to fire up a feast of my own, similar to the one we experienced in our cooking class. I can’t believe it took me five months to finally try those recipes on my own again. I took advantage of having a quiet day on Christmas Day where there were no other distractions to finally cook up my own storm.  You’ll notice that many of the same ingredients are used over and over again in the various items – makes it fairly easy to stock your pantry to have these items readily available.  Also, if you buy a wheat-free soy sauce, these recipes would be gluten free as well.

I started by making dashi (soup stock) out of kombu – during our class, it was described to us as being similar to kelp – luckily, kombu was readily available at my local Japanese market and I didn’t have to go hunting for an alternative.

To make the dashi (stock):

Ingredients

  • 10 sq cm of dry kombu
  • 1L water
  • 1 or 2 dried shittake mushrooms, if desired (provides an earthiness to the stock)
  1. Rinse the dry kombu.
  2. Let the kombu (and mushrooms if using) sit overnight in the refrigerator in the water or simmer it on low heat for 10 minutes – it is important to follow this specific step to prevent sliminess

The next item I attempted to make was tempura – I started out with making small pieces of broccoli tempura to use in some rolls. Most tempura batters call for a long list of ingredients, including eggs and various types of flours, but I kept mine simple and it was a success. I mixed equal parts rice flour and cold club soda – my first batch of tempura turned out to be much better than the second – I think it was because I made a smaller batch of batter the first time around, and the club soda was fizzier and colder the first time around as well.

Ingredients

  • 1 cup rice flour (I used brown rice flour and it worked just fine)
  • 1 cup cold club soda
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • pinch cayenne
  • veggies prepped and sliced to your liking (I used yams, zucchini, broccoli and green beans)
  1. Mix the rice flour and club soda until the batter is no longer lumpy – do not over mix.
  2. Add the salt and cayenne.
  3. Allow the batter to sit for about 10 minutes.
  4. In the meantime, heat up some oil (I used vegetable oil) in a wok or tempura pan.
  5. Add a spot of the batter into the oil to test to see if it is ready – if the batter quickly floats to the top, your oil is hot enough.
  6. Dip your veggies into the batter and place them into the oil – I used wooden chopsticks for this process – kept my hands clean to be able to manage other tasks at the same time.
  7. Your tempura is ready when the batter has turned a light golden brown.
  8. Serve immediately.

For the tempura sauce:

Ingredients

  • 1 cup dashi
  • 1/4 cup rice vinegar
  • 1/4 cup soy sauce
  • 1/2 tbsp sugar
  • grated daikon (optional)
  1. Mix the liquids together and begin to simmer on low heat.
  2. Add the sugar to the mix and stir until dissolved.
  3. Add the grated daikon before serving if desired.

I made the tempura sauce in advance and left it in the pot. I brought it up to a simmer just before serving.

Using the remaining dashi, I made a batch of miso soup. To make the soup, I brought the dashi to a boil (after removing the kombu) and added in 3 generous tablespoons of red miso.  Once it had all mixed together, I turned the heat off.  When I was ready to serve the soup, I brought it back up to a boil and added in chopped green onions and tofu to the mix. Easy-peasy!

The last item I made was a large variety of sushi rolls. I started out by making the sushi rice using the following recipe:

Ingredients

  • 2 cups sushi rice
  • 3 cups water
  • 2 tbsp rice vinegar
  • 2 tbsp agave nectar
  • 1 tsp salt
  1. Rinse the rice under cold water until the water runs clear.
  2. Combine rice and water in a pot and allow to sit for 30 minutes before cooking.
  3. Bring to a boil and stir once.
  4. Cover the pot with a tight fitting lid, reduce heat to a simmer and cook for 20 minutes.
  5. In the meantime, mix together the rice vinegar, agave nectar and salt – warm up the mixture slightly (I used the microwave) and ensure that it has all mixed together consistently.
  6. Remove from heat and let the rice stand in the covered pot for 10 minutes.
  7. Place hot rice in a large (preferably wide and shallow) glass bowl – make the sure the bowl is not metal.
  8. Toss the rice gently with the vinegar mixture with a plastic or wooden spoon.

I’m not going to go through a tutorial of how I rolled the sushi, but we had a large variety of items to fill the rolls with. We made a spicy “tuna” roll by crumbling the Hot and Spicy flavor of Tofu Life tofu and mixing in some Sriracha – it was one of my favorite combos.  We also had our broccoli tempura, avocado, plain tofu, sweet potato and daikon to mix in to various combinations.

We also tried making some rolls with Soy Wraps – these colourful wraps were easily to work with and gave a bit of variety to the rolls – they were especially helpful when we ran out of rice (the rolls weren’t as pretty, but tasted just fine).

Haru’s Cooking Class – A Vegetarian Cooking Class Experience in Japan

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One of the biggest highlights of our trip to Japan was spending our Sunday afternoon at Haru’s Cooking Class.  I was a bit skeptical when I found the class online, but the excitement of a vegetarian cooking class in Japan won over my skepticism.

When booking the class, because I was the first to sign up for the day, I set the stage for a vegan meal – there could have been up to 4 more people in the class, but we were the only group that day – bonus!

We set up a time to meet Taro (the chef extraordinaire) at a local bus stop – it was super easy to find because the Shimogamo shrine is close by.  When I saw Taro walking down the street to towards us (I recognized him from his website), I let out a sigh of relief – all my skepticism floated away.

We walked to his home which was about a five minute walk from the bus stop.  His wife, Yoshiko, greeted us at the door and we went over to the living room area (that was set in a traditional setting with a tatami mat) where we were served tea as we discussed our plan for the afternoon.  Taro and Yoshiko were both so welcoming – it felt as if we were visiting old friends.

The menu we decided on was sushi (made with pickled cucumbers), agedashi tofu, miso soup and spinach – all of this was to be made obanzai style, which means home cooked style.

The first thing we made was a vegetarian stock – most Japanese stocks are made with fish (called dashi), so it was nice to learn a good alternative.  This stock was made with kombu which is an edible kelp.  It was simmered at very low heat, although Taro recommended keeping some kombu in the refrigerator overnight with some water as a better option.  This low heat approach produced a very subtle flavour in the stock.

Then we started up on the spinach with a roasted sesame dressing – I’ll follow up with a recipe on a later post when I actually try to recreate this on my own.  The key thing with this recipe was the quick cooking time for the spinach and the placement of the spinach on the serving plate to avoid a social disaster when trying to eat it.

The simple ingredients that made up the Goma-ae (spinach with roasted sesame sauce)

My contribution to the Goma-ae

We made some sushi rolls with pickled cucumbers and shiso (also known as perilla, this herb tastes like it belongs in the mint or fennel family).  The rolls were simple to make, but the conversation during the process inspired many ideas for future sushi adventures.

Shiso

Learning how to roll sushi properly

The agedashi tofu we made was not deep fried, which was fantastic.  We carefully cut up pieces of soft tofu (in this case, it was Kyoto Tofu, a local brand) and lightly coated them with potato starch.  We added a small amount of oil to a tempura pan and fried each side – you had to be very gentle when handling it, and it tasted just as good as the deep-fried version.

Agedashi tofu being fried in a tempura pan

The final dish we made was the miso soup – the key was to add two types of miso, red and yellow.

Setting up the miso soup station - after adding all the ingredients to the bowl, we topped it off with the hot broth

One of the best parts of this whole experience was having such gracious hosts who were so welcoming. If you are ever in the Kyoto area, you should definitely put aside some time to visit Taro and his lovely family. I can’t wait to recreate all these dishes at home (along with all the other recipes Taro gave to us)!

Dinner is served

Early morning sushi at Tsukiji Market

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We headed to Tsukiji Market at 4:30 in the morning, so obviously did not eat any breakfast prior to heading out. After the auction tour was complete, we decided to stroll through the vegetable market as our travel buddies stepped into a sushi restaurant (their flight was leaving in a few hours, so they wanted to get in one last meal before heading out).

After checking out a local shrine and a couple of shops, we headed back to the sushi restaurant to pick up our friends. When we walked in, the owners quickly handed us a cup of green tea before we could tell them that we weren’t going to eat. Our friend (who conveniently could speak fluent Japanese) explained that we were vegetarian so didn’t want to eat, but the chef said he would make us a fully vegetarian meal – no dashi, no eggs, who could say no to that?

The super friendly chef who was determined to make us something great

 

The food was great and it was such a treat – too bad we couldn’t have a personal interpreter with us our entire trip!

Beautiful plate of sushi

 

I especially loved the cups they served the tea in – I asked the owner if he would sell them to us, but I think he thought we were joking because the cups had the name of the restaurant on them. I found a decent substitute at another shop a little later in our trip.

Lovely cups