After yesterday's breakfast and a similarly fattening Afghani dinner (including deep fried vegetables dipped yogurt -- oh so delicious and yet so very hard on the stomach), I swore off oil completely today and opted for a macro vegetarian lunch.
Here's my first attempt at o-hitashi (compressed spinach roll). My recipe book notes that this side dish has been prepared with Japanese meals for centuries.
These are prepared by briefly boiling fresh spinach, squeezing out the liquid, adding a little soy sauce, again squeezing out the liquid, creating a roll shape, and then cutting the roll into bite-sized pieces. They are then topped with roasted sesame seeds and a little salt.
Next time I will try harder to get them into a more perfect cylindrical shape.
Another dish I made was Thai cucumber salad. Mine came out a little sour. Next time, I will try using less vinegar. The remaining tastes were wonderful though, particularly the fresh taste of the jalapeno peppers straight from the garden.
I ate these two dishes with a bowl of rice and miso soup. In a more formal setting, the Thai pickles wouldn't have worked here, but for me the combination of foods really helped to settle my stomach, without being bland or boring.
It's a strange thing, but when it comes to fats and oils, my stomach is prone to distemper. But when it comes to spicy tastes or alcohol, I seem to have a stomach of iron. Throw the most firey, most acidic of foods at me and my stomach won't even flinch. Strange, isn't it? It seems the person handing out the internals has given me just the right stomach for the type of cuisine I love. Lucky me.
"Pickle A"
3 c cucumbers; thinly sliced
1/3 c onion; chopped
1/2 c red wine vinegar
2 ts sugar
1/4 ts salt
4 red chili peppers; seeded
1 tb cilantro leaves
"Pickle B"
3 c cucumbers; sliced thinly
1/2 sm onion; sliced thinly
"Mixture A"
2 red chili peppers; seeded
2 ts garlic; chopped
2 ts cilantro root; chopped
2 ts peppercorns; whole or ground
"Mixture B"
1/2 c vinegar
2 tb soy sauce
1 1/2 ts sugar
1 tb cilantro leaves; chopped
1/2 c peanuts; crushed
Instructions
PICKLE A: Combine all ingredients. PICKLE B: Place cucumber and onion in a bowl and toss. Place A MIXTURE in a blender or food processor and blend to make a rough paste. Blend the B MIXTURE, then mix together A and B. Immediately pour over the cucumbers and sliced onion. Place in a serving dish and sprinkle with the cilantro leaves and crushed peanuts. Serve immediately. To make it hotter add more red pepper or a shake or two of cayenne.