What Gaijin Eat: Imo Mochi (Sticky Potato Gnocchi)
Half the joy of cooking (or just eating, in my case) is derived from experiencing what results when things go as unplanned.
Tonight's dinner started with Tomoe's attempt to make a vegan mayonnaise substitute. Not that we really need one, since neither of us has eaten, let alone craved, mayo for as long as I can remember. This was just a "curiosity" thing - a new adventure.
At any rate, she was trying to mush the potatoes into a creamy paste to be added to plum vinegar, ume-boshi (pickled dried-plum), sesame-paste, and a pinch of salt & peppa. But, when mashing the potatoes, she noticed that it was sticky and gooey like Mochi (perhaps because, in order to keep as much nutrients as possible, she steamed the taters instead of boiling them as is usually done).
Actually, imo mochi is a popular dish in the Japan's colder Northern island, Hokkaido, where rice (the usual base for mochi) was not really cultivated on a large scale until recent times. They would eat it grilled with butter or soy sauce. Apparently, anything "potato" is popular in Hokkaido, much like Sweden - where I learned the true joy of a potatoetarian diet.
Of course, man does not live on potato mochi alone, so Tomoe sautayed it with an assortment of "six baby leaf salad" from our local coops "farmers market surprise box". That is, from the assortment of veggies we receive each week based on what the local farmers have in excess.
This time, the six leaves included:
Detroit
Kyo Mizuna (the kyo is for Kyoto, as this leaf was often eaten in the Kansai area)
Red Oak (a type of lettuce with a red stem)
Romain Lettuce
Arugula
Tatsai (a Chinese leafy thing)
While I honestly can't say that I tasted a huge difference between these leaves and most other green leafy things, they earn points for being even more "vegan", or "animal friendly" than other leafs. That is, these veggies are grown at Wagoen, a local farm that uses leftover veggie scraps and cuttings as fertilizer instead of enslaved-cow manure. The scraps are gathered from the field, cutting, and refrigeration areas. The scraps are ground, separated into pulp, which is fermented over two weeks, and juice which is taken to a methane fermentation plant where it is made into a liquid fertilizer.
Macrobiotically speaking, potatoes are very "yin", but because they were steamed and sautayed, some "yangness" seems to have been extracted. Likewise, a fresh leafy salad would usually be too "yin" to eat with potatoes, which is why Tomoe sauteyed them as well (together with lots of sesame and garlic)
About "What Gaijin Eat"
Other things Gaijin Eat:
What Gaijin Eat: First Harvest Sweet Potato Pie
What Gaijin Eat: Grain is Good
What Gaijin Eat: Kuroirigenmaiko Coffee
What Gaijin Eat: Nameko Soba
