Polenta with tomato sauce and meatballs ポレンタとトマトソース

This was also inspired by a recipe in "Perfect Pairings" called "Baked Polenta Casserole".  The idea is to put polenta on the bottom of the casserole and add tomato sauce and pecorino cheese and bake it. In the" Perfect Pairings" book this dish was paired with Sangiovese. My wife makes polenta loaf every-now-and-then. She usually slices it into half inch thick slices, wraps it in plastic wrap and then aluminum foil and freezes it. So we usually have slices of her frozen polenta loaf in the freezer. I also made marinara sauce and meatballs several days ago. So we have all the ingredients to make this dish plus meatballs. We also added more vegetables (to make it healthier?) and used a combination of cheeses.  We had this with Cabernet from Napa (Do not remember which one) and the wine went very well.

The bottom is composed of one slice of the polenta loaf.

First, place three slices of polenta on the bottom of a small Pyrex baking dish, add sliced meat balls with marinara sauce. Add blanched broccoli and sugar snaps.

Top with slices of double Gloucester cheese and smoked Gouda.

This turned out to be a quite good dish. Since we already had all the ingredients ready to go, it was a synch to put it together. This went well with our red wine.

Cold "shippoku" udon noodle with simmered vegetables 冷製卓袱うどん

Since we had several hot and muggy days recently in the Washington DC area, I made this cold noodle dish from ingredients I had on hand. I had cold simmered vegetables and prepared udon noodles (which were leftover for making cold fresh tomato pasta dish). I call this cold "shippoku" udon 冷製卓袱うどん. This (warm version) is a popular dish in the Southern islands of Japan (Shikoku 四国 and Kyushu 九州). I do not know the exact definition of it but I take it as a noodle (either soba or udon) dish with lots of cooked veggies and other toppings. I made this all cold for a hot summer day.

Cold cooked vegetables included daikon, carrot, skinned Campari tomato and sugar snap. Since I had Chinese-style simmered pork or "Chashu" チャーシュー (this one is made from pork butt and has much more fat than meat made from pork loin), I cut it into batons and added it to the dish.

The original simmered vegetables included daikon, carrot, shiitake mushroom, Campari tomato (simmered in Japanese broth which was lightly seasoned with light colored soy sauce and mirin. After the veggies were soft/done, I let it cool and then refrigerated it). We ate the veggies by themselves for several days so by the time I made  this dish only a few pieces of daikon, carrot and tomato were remaining. The sugar snap was just blanched and cooled. For the broth, I added more concentrated noddle sauce from the bottle to the broth in which the veggies were cooked.

This was all leftover control but it was nice cold refreshing dish, perfect for our lunch over the weekend.

Indian-style pork "Vindaloo" curry with pickles インド風ポークカレー

I asked my wife to make this curry from leftover barbecued pork butt since it was getting to the end of it's life. This is my wife's version of pork "Vindaloo" which we posted few years ago. Instead of using uncooked pork, she used barbecued pork cut into cubes this time. Since I used dry rub (roasted cumin, smoked paprika, salt and pepper) for the barbecue, these spices were automatically added to the curry.

She added roasted mustard seeds, you can see the seeds in the curry which gave small pops and bursts of mustard  flavor. Instead of coconut milk, she used yogurt (since we do not particularly fond of the taste and flavor of coconut milk), it broke a bit but still tasted good. Despite the addition of yogurt and reduce cayenne pepper to 1/4 of the lower end of the amount suggested in the original recipe (about 1/4 tsp), this curry was hot enough for us. Despite using cooked pork, it was tender and quite enjoyable. This is another way for taking care of leftovers.

Since I had a fresh green and yellow zucchini (really yellow zucchini not yellow squash), I added panfried coins of zucchini seasoned with salt and pepper, grilled fig with balsamic vinegar. In addition, I added pickled cucumber and carrot I made.

I just used the sweet vinegar I used to make pickled myouga since we used up the pickled myouga from this container. I placed cucumber (American minicucu), carrot and skinned Campari tomato into the leftover sweet vinegar. I let it pickel for several days in the refrigerator.

We decide to have a store bought mini baguette (which was partially baked and frozen). I  finished baking in 350F toaster oven in convection mode for 15 minutes. This went well with the curry. Next time, we will make naan, though.

Homegrown arugula salad 自家製のルッコラサラダ

Leafy salad is not one of our favorite foods. Among the green leafy vegetables, however, we do like arugula. In Japan, this is best known as "Rukkora" ルッコラ (phonetic translation of "rucola" in Italian) or ロケット (roquette  or rocket in Europe). Arugula has a nice peppery fresh taste even without any dressing. Store-bought arugula, however, especially "baby" arugula, does not have much taste. So, this spring, when we were updating our herb garden, my wife bought a small seedling of arugula. It grew to the point where we had to harvest it or it would bolt and the season would be over before we even tasted it. So, we made this salad with our home grown arugula.

Besides the arugula, I added cucumber (American minicucu), skinned Campari tomato, avocado and toasted walnuts.

Since I also had blanched sugar snaps, I added them too.

For dressing, I made my usual honey mustard dressing without shallots or garlic (Dijon mustard, honey, rice vinegar, salt and pepper). I dressed all ingredients except the arugula itself. I didn't dress it so we could enjoy its own taste. This was very nice. This arugula had such an intense peppery taste even without the dressing.  Of course, as we were eating some of the dressing got onto the arugula which was also nice. This homegrown arugula was so much better than any arugula we would get from the grocery store.  It was well worth planting. Once we finish with this batch of  arugula, we may have to plant another batch to enjoy in the fall.

Perilla tea and perilla rice 大葉茶と大葉ご飯

Our green perilla (a.k.a "Aojiso" 青紫蘇 and "Ooba" 大葉) is proliferating vigorously in our herb garden. Since we have so many plants and this is similar to the family of mint, my wife asked me if we can make a tea from it like mint tea. I quickly checked the Internet and found a few recipes/descriptions. The recipes are slightly different for red versus green perilla. (The red one requires acid to make the pink color to develop). I chose a recipe that specified the torn green perilla leaves should be boiled in water for 15-20 minutes with an addition of salt.  I made this green perilla tea and was surprised to find that it tasted just like "Umeboshi" 梅干し or "salted" plums.   I was not sure if this was supposed to be a drinking tea or a "health tonic". My wife tasted it and because of the umeboshi taste suggested we should make rice using this perilla tea. So I obliged and made perilla rice.  Since we got a whole Spanish mackerel the day before and I made my usual miso simmer mackerel 鯖の味噌煮 and also mackerel dumplings in a broth 鯖のつみれ汁, I served this perilla rice as an ending "shime" dish one evening.

I further fortified the perilla flavor by adding a chiffonade of green perilla and store bought "Yukari" ゆかりsalt which is made of dried red perilla and salt.

This time, I used match sticks of daikon and carrot in the mackerel dumpling soup.

The miso simmered mackerel is our favorite dish.

Ingredients for perilla tea:
20 green perilla leaves, washed and torn (amount appears to be arbitrary)
1/2 tsp salt
8 cups water

Add hand torn perilla leaves and salt to the water when it starts boiling then turn down to simmer and cook for 15-20 minutes. I let it steep until cooled to room temperature and remove the perilla leaves.

Although I did not take pictures, the resulting "tea" has a slight brown color with a strong perilla smell. We just used the perilla tea instead of water in our rice cooker to make the perilla rice. When the rice was done, it definitely smelled like perilla although the taste did not come through. By adding a chiffonade of fresh perilla leaves and "Yukari", this was a quite pleasant seasoned rice. Of course, my wife added a pat of butter to her rice to make it "better"(or maybe "butter").