This morning I’m making green beans in sesame dressing and Chinese style garlic green beans to contribute to Mom’s Japanese family style Dungeness crab dinner. That’s 4 pounds of green beans!
Green beans for Thanksgiving!
Tag: recipe
Coconut yogurt
I made some non-dairy yogurt using 3 cans of coconut milk and coconut cream, a container of plain coconut yogurt as my starter culture, and a Salton yogurt maker my mom gave me that we used when I was a kiddo (circa 1974?) The white glass cups didn’t survive but 8 ounce Ball jars work great. I shook up the cans of coconut milk and coconut cream and emptied them into a sauce pan, 3 cans worked out to be 5 cups, and heated to 190 degrees fahrenheit, then cooled to about 111 degrees (the temperature fort the missing thermometer tablespoon that came with the yogurtmaker) and then stirred in the starter culture/yogurt. Filled the jars in the yogurt maker and plugged it in, the dairy yogurt mom used to make had a 24 incubation period, I found images of the instruction manual for the yogurt maker here, and read a blog post on making coconut yogurt which specified a 48 hour incubation, but it actually worked out to be closer to 60 hours because at 48 hours it had a nice tang but was still a little liquidy. I put the lids on and put the yogurt in the refrigerator, and it firmed up nicely, next time I will try 48 hours and see if it firms up enough in the fridge. This morning I put it in a bowl and mixed in some grapefruit habenero marmalade a friend made and it was delicious. Will be making granola next.
Attempt #2: 1st attempt with heating the coconut milk/cream and using coconut yogurt as a starter culture, and my Salton yogurt machine worked great. After reading the Minimalist Baker blog post, I decided to try again, without heating the coconut milk, and using probiotic capsules as the starter. I used 3 cans of coconut milk (no coconut cream this time, they didn’t have any at my grocery) and as the MB recipe had 2 capsules of probiotic to a can of coconut milk, I used 6 capsules for 3 cans. Emptied the capsules and whisked in the powder into room temperature coconut milk, and poured it into my jars and set the yogurt maker to incubate. I’ll check it at 48 hours, I don’t expect it to be quite as thick as I got with the coconut milk/cream combo, but we’ll see. If it doesn’t thicken up, I can add some coconut yogurt as starter, mix and pour back into the jars.
post-incubation 
water at bottom 
pre-refrigeration, 48 hrs
After refrigerating, yogurt firmed up nicely. Not quite as tart with the probiotics vs. the yogurt starter, but also delicious. Success!
Japanese eggplant recipes
Was just talking about eggplant recipes with a friend and thought I’d post them here as well.
If sodium is a consideration they do sell lower sodium lite soy sauce and miso paste.
Easy eggplant and cucumber pickles my aunt taught me
(good as a side veggie with a rice dish)
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Slice eggplant into 4-5mm disks. Salt eggplant. Mix marinade in a baggie or container: 3 TBSP soy sauce, 3 TBSP vinegar (preferably rice wine vinegar), a little sugar. Marinate eggplant in refrigerator for 2-3 hours, shaking occasionally.
If desired, serve slices with a little hot chinese mustard.
Cucumber pickles: Long thin japanese cukes work best but I’ve used regular or english cucumbers as well
Mostly peel cucumber, cut into 3″ lengths, then lengthwise into quarters. Mix marinade as above, but add a couple of shakes of sesame oil.
Marinate in refrigerator 2-3 hours, shaking occasionally.
Continue reading Japanese eggplant recipes
Thrifty food and meal planning (vegetarian-heavy)
Still adding to this list, notes, etc…
Meal Plan Monday (Veggie meal plans from Half Pint Pixie)
$40 Frugal Vegan Weekly Meal Plan for 4(PDF link)
A Year of Slow Cooking (vegetarian)
Cook For Good
Yum! Green Beans in Sesame Dressing (Ingen no goma-ae)
My fave! My mom used to make this for us growing up, we grew a lot of green beans in our veggie garden. (I used konbu dashi packets, so my version is veggie.)
From Bento.com:
Green Beans in Sesame Dressing (Ingen no goma-ae)
Ingredients:
- 175g (6 oz.) frozen whole green beans*
- a pinch of salt
For the dressing:
- 1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds
- 1 tablespoon caster sugar **
- 2/3 tablespoon dashi stock ***
- 1/2 tablespoon miso paste
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce
Directions
1. Boil the beans in a pan of water for 5 minutes or until tender.
2. Finely grind the sesame seeds in a pestle and mortar or in a coffee grinder. Add the sugar, dashi, miso paste and soy sauce and mix together well.
3. Toss the green beans in the sesame dressing and serve as a side dish.
* I really prefer using fresh green beans, and I parboil (submerge in boiling water) for a few minutes, drain and then “shock” them with cold water and ice to stop the cooking. Recipe is yummier when the beans still have a bit of crispness.
** Caster sugar is superfine granulated sugar.
*** See the recipe for dashi (Japanese fish stock); you can also make instant dashi from freeze-dried granules, available in many Asian grocery stores. Dashi is used in so many Japanese recipes, it’s good always have the granules on hand or konbu dashi granules or packets if you prefer those.