Category: Small bites

Sea-Beans Cucumber Salad with Bamboo Shoot

The Farmer’s market is a great place to meet old friends and new ingredients (such as sea beans and bamboo shoots –not in a can!). With all the impulsive buying at the market, the challenge is to use up all the ingredients before the workweek begins.

The bamboo shoot is easily cleaned by removing the outer scaly layers and microwaved for a minute or so. The crunchy, briny sea beans are used in two ways: summer salad and a topping for multigrain (scroll to bottom at the multigrain link, for millet-bulgur maitake greens). Both are marvelous. Enjoy!

Special tools:

None

Ingredients

  • Base
    • 1 large cucumber, partially peeled, halved with seeds scooped and sliced into half-moons
    • 1/4 cup sea beans (presoaked in cold water for 2 hrs)
    • 1 bamboo shoot, hard skin removed and cooked (wrap in paper towel and microwave for 1-2 mins) and then sliced
  • Dressing: 1 tbsp each of rice wine vinegar + sesame oil and dash of Japanese yuzu koshu (citrus and chili)
  • Topping: toasted sesame seeds

Method

Prepare the dressing and mix with all the base ingredients. Add the topping and serve chilled.

Notes, hints, tips:
  1. You can use any other dressing of your choice.
  2. A great crunchy, summery salad!

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Stinging Nettles Fiddlehead Ferns Coconut Broth

What is common with stinging nettles and fiddlehead ferns ? They show up at the same time in the Farmers market. Never seen in supermarkets. Here are the two with a dab of light, fragrant broth. Enjoy!

Later in a trip to India I accidentally (while browsing a flight magazine in a domestic flight) learned that a variation of this stinging nettle, called kandali ka saag (कंडाली का साग), is a staple in pahadi cuisine of Uttarakhand. See the notes for pointers to some Indian treatment of the stinging nettles.

Special tools:

None

Ingredients

  • 6 oz Stinging nettles
  • 8 oz fiddlehead ferns, washed lightly
  • Aromatics: 1/4 onion diced + 3 crushed pods of garlic + 3 tbsps of diced lemongrass
  • 1/2 cup coconut milk
  • 2 tbsps cooking oil
  • Seasoning: salt
  • Garnish: 6-8 large Thai basil leaves

Method

Stinging nettles will sting– to avoid that I blanched that in about 3/4 cups water in the frying pan till all the water was cooked off. Rinse the pan. Heat a 1 tbsp cooking oil and saute the fiddlehead ferns for 4-5 minutes till tender. If your pan is big enough, push the ferns to the edges of the pan and heat 1 tbsp cooking oil in the center. Saute the aromatics till fragrant. Mix the ferns and nettles. Season with salt. Add the coconut milk. Let cook for few minutes. Turn off the heat and add the chiffonaded Thai basil.

Gently heat the sesame oil in a frying pan with the crushed garlic. Be careful not to burn the garlic.  Add the ferns, salt and toss till mixed. Be careful with the salt since your sauce would be salted as well. Add the Ponzu soy sauce and rapidly mix till the ferns are well dressed.  Turn off heat and serve warm.

Notes, hints, tips:
  1. The stinging nettles will sting, as the name suggests. So avoid touching them by bare hands- you could use a pair of tongs to handle before cooking. Boiling in water removes the sting. Another way is to toast on open flame (a bunch of leaves at a time, using tongs).
  2. The lemongrass-coconut broth is great for dunking bread or goes will served with grains.
  3. See https://purba.blog/2018/05/20/fiddlehead-ferns/ for an alternative treatment of the ferns.

My discovery of kandali ka saag (कंडाली का साग) in an Indigo flight. Later with a quick browse I find some interesting recipes. Traditional soupy subzi (by The Valley Cook) and a modern egg subzi (by Cook and Live with Confidence).

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Asian Vegetable Salad

Kudos to spiralizer for converting meh veggies into gimme-more. Aromas of lemongrass, Thai basil; umami of fish sauce; crunch of peanuts elevate the salad to an astonishingly delectable level– you wont stop eating. Enjoy!

SPECIAL TOOLS:

Spiralizer.

INGREDIENTS

  • Spiralized vegetables (1 zucchini + 2 small beets + 3 medium carrot)
  • Dressing: 2 tbsp minced lemongrass + 2 tbsp fish sauce + 2 tbsp lemon juice + 2 tbsp rice vinegar (or white vinegar)
    + 1 tsp minced ginger + 1 garlic pod minced
    + 1 tsp sugar
    + 1 chili thinly sliced + 12 Thai Basil leaves chiffonaded
  • Crunch topping: 3 tbsp pounded (roasted) peanuts
  • Green topping: sunflower shoots or microgreens

METHOD

Macerate the salad in the dressing for about 20 mins. Mix in the peanuts and basil.

Serve (cold or at room temperature) with the topping. 

NOTES, HINTS, TIPS:

  1. Adapted from multiple sources: https://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/Spicy-Lemongrass-Salad/ ; The Week’ Recipe of the week (April 5, 2024).
  2. Another great such salad is with green papaya, with the same treatment.
  3. Thinly sliced cabbage and other veggies of your choice can also be used.
  4. To add protein to the salad, you could use poached/roasted chicken, shredded.
  5. EVOO is pictured; I intended to use it but the salad was already so good that I skipped it.

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Koginut Mochi Waffle

Winter farmers market (TASH) ingredients in action! Koginut and mochi pancake mix. Koginut is a cross between a kabocha and butternut squash. It’s natural sweetness and butteriness is amazing and makes a fantastic mochi waffle. Enjoy!

SPECIAL TOOLS:

Food processor; Waffle maker.

INGREDIENTS

  • 1 koginut squash yielding 2 cups pulp
  • 2 cups mochi waffle/pancake flour
  • 2 tbsp EVOO
  • about 1 cup milk

METHOD

Halve and scoop out the seeds. Brush a little EVOO and bake the koginut at 350 F for about an hour. Do not peel and run in food processor, with a little milk, if required. Let cool.

Mix 2 cups of mochi pancake flour with the squash pulp and add enough milk to make thick batter. Mix in the EVOO.

Use 1/2 cup batter per waffle. Follow instructions on your waffle maker. Makes 7-8.

NOTES, HINTS, TIPS:

  1. I did not use the ube extract in the mochi ube pancake/waffle packet (https://sitsirya.square.site/) since I was using koginut squash.
  2. The koginut squash is sweet enough, that you may not even need maple syrup to go with your waffle.

Sweet potato ube mochi waffle: Steam a large sweet potato (approx 1 lb) in microwave until done (approx 5+3 mins). Peel and mash and proceed as for the squash waffle.

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Gingerbread Mooncake

No added-sugar. But better than gingerbread and even mooncake! These delectables stole the show this Christmas. Enjoy!

Special tools:

Mooncake mould, silicone brush to grease the mould; food processor; dehydrator or a proofer.

Ingredients

  • Flour base: 3/4 cup rolled oats + 1/4 cup buckwheat groats + 1/4 cup almond flour
  • Sweetening: 1 cup packed dates OR 1 cup dehydrated apricots OR 1 cup processed apricot-fig mix
  • Sweet aromatics: 1 tbsp cinnamon + 1 tsp ginger powder + 1/2 tsp nutmeg + 1/4 tsp clove powder + 1/2 tsp vanilla
  • dash of salt
  • little EVOO to grease the mould

Pulse and mix all the ingredients in a food processor till it comes together. Divide into 15-18. Generously grease the 50-gm-mould with EVOO and stamp out each cake (press to compact and then release).

Optional: Dehydrate at 115 F for 2 hours.

Notes, hints, tips:
  1. Adapted from Amanda Le’s https://rawamanda.com
  2. Processed apricot-fig mix. Dice the fruits and place in a pyrex cup. Add just enough water to moisten. Microwave for 3-4 minutes till the water is absorbed, softening the dried fruits.
    The processed dry fruits makes it a little more moist than no-process.

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Peruvian corn with Kizami Nori

While the usual puffed corn is an addictive accompaniment to entertaining activities like movie watching, the large Peruvian corn is quite something else! Different, substantial, delectable, and easy-peasy to make! Use your usual popcorn maker- say a microwave popcorn maker (red bowl in picture). The usual way is to toast the Peruvian corn is on a hot skillet, but I find the microwave pop corn maker quite convenient Since the large corn does not increase in volume, you can “pop” larger amounts, like 1 cup, in one go –with a little EVOO- both for flavor and popping. Then garnish with Japanese kizami nori (which is toasted and shredded edible seaweed). Quick and easy. Intriguingly delicious. Enjoy!

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