Eggplant and Red Pepper Salad

I thought my physical strength had not been changed since I was a teenager. I was wrong. After two decades have passed I am no longer a teenager and I cannot run like I used to. But I still considered I was physically in good shape. I recently realized I was totally wrong and I need to work out more.

A few months ago, I started playing soccer and joining tournaments with ladies over 30’s. At a glance, these ladies look like just women next door. But I was mistaken. They (some are over 50’s!!!) are extremely energetic and move like I used to when I was a teenager.

So I continue my vegetarian diet and hopefully I will get into good shape for the games. Here is one of the vegetarian dishes I like. Broil eggplants and red peppers and peel the skin off. Chop the eggplants and red peppers and mix them. Add copped parsley and green onion. Pour a lot of olive oil and lemon juice and mix with the mixture. Season it with salt and pepper. If you like, mix with ground garlic. This dish is very refreshing and can be a great side dish for Thanksgiving ;)

Insalata Caprese (Tomatoes, Mozzarella and Basil Salad)

Basil green, mozzarella white and ripped tomato red remind me of the flag of Italy and hot summer days in the Mediterranean. Insalata caprese is the ultimate summer dish and my most favorite salad. It is very simple to make but amazingly delicious.

Usually I use *garlic-infused olive oil, which makes this dish lovelier. Do not forget to serve this with lots of slices of toasted Italian bread!

* Please note that garlic-infused olive oil may carry botulin toxin, which is very deadly. There is a lot of information available about the products and how to make garlic-infused olive oil. Make sure garlic-infused olive oil you use is safe!

Cauliflower Salad

This salad was one of the side dishes I made for the Thanksgiving dinner. The main dish in the Thanksgiving dinner is, of course, a big turkey. So I made all of the side dishes to be simple vegetarian dishes.

This cauliflower salad is originally from Sardinia, Italy. It is really easy to prepare and very tasty. I believe cauliflowers are not so popular in Japan. This is because I only remember eating boiled cauliflowers with mayonnaise – no other way. Many of my Japanese friends agree with me. Therefore, when I first tried this salad, I was very excited. Mixing simply olive oil, lemon juice and other spicy vegetables enhances the milk-like flavor of cauliflower and makes it a flavorsome dish.

Cauliflowers are extremely rich in vitamins C and K. They are a winter vegetable so they are in season right now. Do not miss an opportunity to try this easy yet healthy and delicious salad.

Ingredients:
1 cauliflower
1 teaspoon of capers
2 shallots finely chopped
¼ cup of flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped or ½ Anaheim pepper, finely chopped
Lemon juice
Extra virgin olive oil

Directions:
1. Wash the cauliflower and remove the stalk and green leaves. Cut it into small pieces.
2. Steam the cauliflower until the pieces become soft.
3. Transfer the cauliflower into a large bowl. Add the capers, shallots, parsley, lemon juice and extra virgin olive oil. Mix them well.
4. Transfer the mixture into a serving plate.

Grilled Eggplants (Yaki Nasu)

Since I moved to Louisiana, I have tried several varieties of eggplants that I had never seen before. I found them in the local farmers’ market.

My great neighbor, Janet, told me about this farmers’ market. This market opens on Saturdays at the downtown in Baton Rouge and Tuesday and Thursday in two different locations. Many local farmers sell their newly picked vegetables, fruits, and flowers and freshly harvested eggs, fishes and meats. Also baked delicious bread, cakes and deserts are available there.

Among many of the eggplants I have tasted, I particularly like two kinds. One type is a very small size of eggplants. They have white and dark purple striped skins. Because of their tiny size, it is easy to grill and bake them. I also like their taste. They have a milder flavor and less harshness than the big American eggplants or Holland eggplants I usually buy from regular markets.

The other one is a big round-shaped eggplant. Their skins are dark purple and the taste is also mild with no bitterness.

Unfortunately, I am not able to remember their names. Therefore, if some of you know their names, please kindly let me know. I would appreciate your help very much.

Grilled eggplants (yaki nasu) were essential on my family’s dinner table during summer time when I was a kid in Japan. Bonito flakes may be difficult to obtain if no Asian grocery store or Whole Foods Market is around your neighborhood. Without bonito flakes, these grilled eggplants are still delicious. This dish is very simple but flavorsome and can be a great cold appetizer.

Ingredients (2 servings):
10 small eggplants or 2 big round-shaped eggplants
2-3 tablespoons of bonito flakes
¼ teaspoon of freshly ground ginger
1 tablespoon of soy sauce
1 teaspoon of lemon juice

Directions:
1. Wash the eggplants and dry them well.
2. Prepare the charcoal for the barbeque.
3. Grill the eggplants until they become soft and well done.
4. Remove the eggplants from the grill and transfer them to a glass bowl. Let them cool for 20 to 30 minutes and remove the skins.
5. Put the eggplants in the refrigerator for 30 minutes to 1 hour.
6. Place the eggplants in the serving plats. Place the bonito flakes and ginger on the top of the eggplants and pour the soy sauce and lemon juice.

Udon Salad

July 7th was tanabata, a star festival, in Japan. This seasonal festival originally came from China. It is a sad but lovely story behind this celebration.

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful lady, named Orihime, who was a daughter of the Empire of the Sky and an excellent cloth waver living on one side of the Milky Way. One day she met Hikoboshi, who was a hard-working cow keeper and lived on the other side of the Milky Way. They immediately fell in love with each other. Soon after their encounter, with the Empire’s permission, they happily wedded. However, soon after that they abandoned their working duties. Orihime stopped waving clothes and Hikoboshi let his cows free, which made the Empire extremely angered. Therefore, he separated them across the Milky Way. Yet, the Empire only permitted them to see each other once a year on July 7th. For that reason, you can see Orihime (Vega) and Hikoboshi (Altair) meet in the middle of the Milky Way once a year on the 7th of July. But, in general it is raining on that day, which makes the lovers’ rendezvous private. So you are not able to see the two stars approaching each other.

This was the story I have known throughout my childhood from my mother. I was a little astronomy geek when I was a kid. Therefore, I was enormously fascinated about these two bright stars, Vega and Altair, coming across each other. I remember that I stared at the sky for hours to try to locate this amazing phenomenon once a year. However, of course, it never saw it myself. Plus, unfortunately it was very difficult to see any stars in the light polluted Japanese urban sky. Soon enough, I realized that it was just one of the many mythologies, which disappointed me very much.

July 7th of this year, I prepared this udon salad dish to celebrate this star festival. I used udon to resemble the Milky Way and vegetables and wakame (seaweed) to make look like stars (too much twisted?!). This cold udon salad can be an excellent dish for one hot summer day.

Ingredients (2-3 servings):
3 bunch of udon
1 tomato
½ cucumber
2 tablespoons of wakame (seaweed)
5-7 leaves of Japanese green perilla or 2-3 tablespoons of finely chopped green onions
¼ teaspoons of wasabi or freshly ground ginger

Soup:
4 cups of water
3 square inches of dried kombu sheet (dried seaweed)
¼ cup of dried bonito flakes
½ cup of mirin
½ cup of soy sauce

Directions:
1. Put 3 cups of the water for soup in a large pot. Put the kombu sheet and leave it for about 1 hours. Bring to a boil. Before it is boiling, take out the kombu from the pot. Add the dried bonito flakes. Lower the heat and cook for a minutes. Turn off the heat. Take out the bonito flakes. Add the rest of the ingredients for the soup. Mix them well and leave the mixture in a refrigerator from 30 minutes to one hour.
2. Soak the wakame into cold water for about 30 minutes (or follow the instruction on the wakame package).
3. Boil water in a large pot. While it is boiling, add the udon. Cook them for about 10 minutes (or follow the instruction on the udon package). After it is done, place them in a bowl filled up with cold water and ice cubes. Drain them well.
4. Cut the tomato and cucumber into pieces. Chop the Japanese green perilla or green onions.
5. Put the udon in serving plates and decorate them with the tomato, cucumber, wakame and Japanese green perilla. Put the wasabi or ginger in the soup and mix well. Pour the soup on the udon and vegetables.
6. Before you eat, mix them well with this delicious soup!

Cucumber with Spicy Soy Sauce

When I was a child I ate anything except cucumbers. They were the only vegetable item I disliked. According to my imagination of that childhood time, this was because I thought they smelled like snails.

Snails were one of my favorite creatures. I kept them in a small container as pets when I was a kid. My pets were not only snails but also many kinds of insects, such as butterflies, cicadas, beetles, crickets and so on. Most of the insects died before fall naturally. However, snails stayed alive throughout the year. Therefore, snails were always present in my room.

I enjoyed my routine job taking care of them, like cleaning the containers, giving them fresh water and feeding them with fresh vegetables. Especially, I loved observing them eating cucumbers. Their small mouths stuck to cucumbers and crawled slowly on the surface of the cucumbers. After that there would be many small cute dents left on the cucumbers. Whenever I saw cucumbers, I thought of my snails eating them. Eventually, I disliked eating cucumbers.

I do not remember exactly when I released my snails from my small cages. But after I become a high school student, snails had been totally disappeared from my life. Not only snails, but the other insects had also been completely gone. Then, in a little while later, I started disliking insects. I felt disgusted seeing or touching them.

My snails are gone for two decades now. These days I exterminate snails without much thought when I find them in my garden. On the other hand, I enjoy eating escargot, which is a snail in French and also the name of a famous and delicious French dish based on snails. However, at any time I eat cucumbers, I still recall the friendship I had with these cute little creatures. Now I love cucumbers. They smell like summer and remind me of my innocent childhood.

Ingredients:
3 cucumbers
2 tbsp pine nuts
Optional:
2 tbsp dry goji berries

Spicy Soy Sauce:
4 tsp soy sauce
4 tsp lemon juice
1 teaspoon ground ginger
2 tsp minced green onion
1 red chili pepper
1 teaspoon sesame oil
½ clove of sliced garlic



Directions:
1. Place all of the ingredients of spicy soy sauce in a large bowl. Mix them well.
2. Optional: Place goji berries (they are red and can be found in any major market store that sells vegetables) in a small bowl and add water. Let them soak for about 20 minutes until they become soft. Remove them from the water.
3. Cut off the ends of the cucumbers. Partially peel off the skins of the cucumbers. Cut the cucumbers lengthwise into four pieces each. Then cut them around 2-inches long.
4. Using a roll pin or pestle, crush the pieces of the cucumbers and make crack them.
5. Put the cucumbers in the spicy soy sauce in the large bowl. Add the pine nuts and goji berries. Mix them well.
6. Refrigerate it from 30 minutes to a few hours. Serve as a clod appetizer or salad!

Çoban Salata

When Erika, one of my girlfriends, was dating with an Arabic boyfriend, she took me to a Turkish restaurant in Boston. I was very excited because it was the first time for me to taste Turkish food.
“Let’s start with Turkish salad and rice. They are really good, “ she said.
So we started with Çoban (pronounced “tso-ban”) Salata and pilaf. They were supposed to be appetizers. However, after we finished them, we decided to order the same dishes, again. I just fell in love with this simple yet delicious salad. The salad simply consists of tomatoes, cucumbers, onions and parsley. But there was some particular spice I could not figure out at that time.

Turkish food is famous for various kinds of spices. That was why I believed the salad had some special spices until just a few weeks ago when I took the first Turkish cooking class. Unexpectedly, the menu was Çoban Salata, pilaf and two other dishes. I was thrilled. Then I found out that the secret of the delicious flavor was a popular herb, mint.

Mint is very easy to cultivate. In my garden, mint grows like weeds and out of control. It had never crossed my mind that this herb gives such a precious flavor.

By the way, Erika is still a beautiful and joyful bachelorette living in Boston. Her current boyfriend is Italian. So she takes me to Italian restaurants in Italian District whenever I visit her. She introduced me to numerous kinds of good food. I admire her excellent choice of food and, of course, her patient and generous men.

Ingredients:
4 tomatoes
2 cucumbers
1 green pepper
1 cup chopped green onions
¼ cup finely chopped flat leaf parsley
¼ cup finely chopped mint
3 tbsp chopped dill
Extra virgin olive oil
2 lemons
Salt
Optional: Feta cheese

Directions:
1. Dice the tomatoes, cucumber and green pepper. Place them in a large salad bowl.
2. Add the chopped green onions, parsley, mint and dill. Pour the olive oil and sprinkle lemon juice. Stir them well.
3. Add salt and stir right before you serve. Serving with feta cheese is optional but it is good.

Greek Salad

It is has been said: “When tomatoes become red, doctors become blue”. You may not need to visit a doctor very often if you eat enough of this notorious vegetable. Indeed, there are so many health benefits when eating tomatoes. It is rich in potassium, which may prevent high blood pressure. Also it is a good source of vitamins C and A. The red pigment of tomatoes is because of lycopene, which may help avoid prostate cancer (for men) and cardiovascular disease (for everybody). Last summer I was travelling in Japan where I gave a lecture about Mediterranean culture and food. During that event I served Greek salad and some other dishes to the audience. They were surprised by this simple, but nevertheless very exciting, salad! They were thrilled about the wonderful flavor that the combination of tomatoes, cucumber, feta cheese and olives produces. Moreover, this amazing and super delicious dish is very easy to make. Eating and enjoying healthy and delicious food may be one of the keys of long and healthy life in Mediterranean communities (just watch the CNN series on this very issue these days by Andersen Cooper to see what I mean). Enjoy this simple, delicious and healthy Greek salad!

Ingredients:

2-3 tomatoes

2 cucumbers

1/2 red onion (or 2 shallot)

½ green pepper (I use Anaheim pepper)

Lemon juice

Oregano

Freshly ground black pepper

Black olives (Kalamata Greek olives are recommended!)

Slices of feta cheese Extra virgin olive oil

Directions:

1. Chop the tomatoes and cucumber. Cut the onion (or shallots) and green pepper into rings.

2. Place them in a salad bowl. Sprinkle the lemon juice, oregano and black pepper and toss.

3. Add the olives and feta cheese. Pour a lot of olive oil. That is it. Enjoy it!

I ran out of cucumbers the other day, but I was still able to make a wonderful Greek salad like below!

Horta (green vegetables)

Like buying loafs of bread or milk, green vegetables, such as dandelions, red dandelions, spinach and arugula, are necessary for my shopping list in order to make horta. This is an extremely simple Greek dish. Just steam green vegetables and sprinkle a lot of lemon juice, olive oil. In Greece, usually people have a big lunch and simple dinner. Horta with feta cheese or anchovies are often served in dinner.
Generally people in Greece prepare horta with dandelions. Yes, it is the weed you remove or kill without any mercy in your gardens! Yet, they are amazingly nutritious. Dandelions are good for cleaning the intestines. It helps against polyps or intestine cancers. I found this site, which describes more details about the health benefits of eating dandelions.
Some people Greece go to get wild dandelions in the mountains, which have bigger leaves and more flavor than cultivated dandelions. My husband’s friend, whose native country is also Greece, says there are eatable wild dandelions in Louisiana! You have to pick them December through January before they get flowers. We already miss this year’s season. Cannot wait to try them this winter!

Ingredients:
1 bunch of green vegetable such as dandelions, red dandelions spinach and arugula
Olive oil
Lemon juice

Directions:
1. Wash the green vegetables very well. Cut into half.
2. Steam the vegetables for 4 to 8 minutes.
3. Transfer to plates and sprinkle the lemon juice and plenty of olive oil.