On a macrobiotic support and how to love a winter squash

I have joined a yahoo group that I find very useful and I can’t wait to share it with the world, it’s full of good suggestions recipes and interesting stuff about macrobiotic, as that is a field where you can never know enough, please join:
http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/moderndaymacrobiotics
and you will receive their newsletter, it’s called modernday macrobiotic and it has been setup by Simon Brown (that wrote the gret book with the same title) it's great as nobody would insult you if you ask silly questions and there are some very intelligent and interesting people, a pleasure to read!

In one of the newsletters there was a recipe that I thought would warm me up in these chilli evening (we have managed not to turn he heating on yet!!):
Squash and sauerkrut:
Dice winter squash, 
Add a 0,5 cm of water to a heavy pot, add few drops of sesme oil. 
Add a small piece of rinsed kombu and a pinch of salt.
Cover, and bring to a boil on a high until the squash is soft, then just bifore turning off the flame add 2 tablespoon of sauerkraut (for two people) mix and serve, it is important that you don't "cook" the sauerkraut as you would kill all the ferments.
This is a simple dish but people love it because of the sweet and sour combination! I served it with rice and leeks with barley miso…

Pressed salads

I just moved to a new flat, and I have been too busy to look after my blog.
I haven’t really been cooking either, and in the past three weeks this is the first time I can relax on a Sunday, buy some ingredients and put the apron on! It’s nice that time when you start feeling home, in my life I moved to so many different places (certainly more than 20) that this feeling is rather familiar to me.

Today I prepared the pressed salads, which are a fermented dish and a classic of macrobiotic cooking, they are going to last me for a while and they’d help my tummy when I have a drink too much (I know I shouldn’t but these are tough times!).
I finely sliced some vegetables: cucumber, red spring onion, radish, celery and carrots. Everything was seasonal and British, a part from the red spring onion that were French and I bought them at Waitrose as I have never seen them before. I should have taken a picture, as they were so pretty!
I put the slices in a glass container and covered them with a liquid made from half shoyu, half water that has been brought to the boil for 30 second and then left to cool down to room temperature.
I put a little saucer on top and then some weight (a bag of pulses would do) so that the vegetables are all under the liquid.
Normally I leave them out and just put them in the fridge the day after. I find that they go nicely with boiled grains, silken tofu, and they are they ideal start of a meal. Sometimes I add some grated ginger to add a little zing ☺
I am preparing quite a few things to have in the fridge to take to work; it’s great that you can quickly add them to your brown rice to take to the office. So to all the people that ask me how can I always find time to cook my own lunch, Id like to ask them, how can you eat that Tesco sandwich or that sad salad every day?

Sourdough bread

When you follow Macrobiotic, you mainly eat whole grains. Whole grains are more nutritious than cracked, milled, or flaked ones.
People that eat wholegrain hardly ever have cravings as their energy is released slower, 60% of my diet is based on brown rice, millet, wheat, amaranth, quinoa, as this is the food I feel is natural for me to eat and I can have it every meal without failing.
I eat bread sporadically and this is one of the several reasons why I like to live in the UK, in Italy there is just bread everywhere, and if it’s not bread is focaccia or pizza and either you decide you want to live an ascetic life and don’t go out anymore or you just cope with it : )
Having said this even I sometimes feel like making bread, but I just find the smell of commercial yeast such a put off…
So I made my own sourdough.
I love the fact that in Italian sourdough is called Pasta Madre that means “mother dough”, and indeed this is going to be the mother of your bread for (hopefully) long long time. The commercial sourdough bread is outrageously expansive and you can find it in natural food shops or in very few local bakeries but making in your house is a complete different experience.
The idea is: flour+water+warm temperature= bacteria = natural yeast = bread that is easy to digest.
How many people auto diagnosed themselves wheat intolerant? But are they really or is the yeast in those horrible commercial English bread loafs? (they even come in a plastic bag… yuck)
I have got no intention of writing my recipe for the sourdough as the Internet oozes with suggestions and very good step-by-step recipe.
Personally I am fascinated about this as I am about any fermented food. I just find the whole bacteria culture an amazing natural phenomenon, so I am a big fan of Miso, sauerkraut, umeboshi and beer ^____^

So this is the recipe that I follow from egullet, and now I have been using my starter twice, and it works wonderfully, my only suggestion is “love your starter”.



Dan Lepard is my baking hero.

Have fun and bake! (The weather is going to be miserable this Bank Holiday so you may as well turn the oven on!)

Natto the “croce e delizia" of the Japanese food

Natto is fermented soybeans and is a traditional Japanese food, and a Macrobiotic’s favourite.

I call it sorrow and joy “croce e delizia” in Italian i.e. "cross and delight" ("cross" as in the sense of being crucified), this because Natto is one of the most complete food, but the smell is quite strong and can be found unpleasant. Japanese people have been eating natto for thousands of years, and they are well aware of its beneficial properties, in Europe Natto is not very popular and the smell is probably the main reason.
The funniest thing happened to me in Paris a couple of moths ago, we ordered a portion of natto in a Japanese restaurant, the waiter looked at us in disbelief hesitating to write the order down, we insisted and he went into the kitchen, a bit later his manager came out asking if I knew what natto was, I nodded, and the glorious food arrived, all the sushi chefs were giggling while I was tucking in!
I had a naughty weekend, it was my birthday and I wasn’t very good, I drunk quite a few pints and slept little, so I had the need for some good food, and I prepared a proper balanced meal.

Mix natto well to get the sticky texture (I warm it up a little), then add shoyu and serve it on very hot brown rice. You can add some gomasio to the rice (toasted sesame seeds and salt)
Veg: sautéed fresh garlic and oyster mushrooms
Steamed spinaches with pureed umeboshi and sesame oil.

A new obsession.. Tiajin Cabbage!

When we first moved to Shoreditch I was eating Vietnamese quite often, with Kingsland road just around the corner so we were eating there when we still had to unpack.
Now we cook almost always at home, but we buy quite a few ingredients in the Vietnamese shop that supplies the restaurant, the lady that owns it is so nice and helpful…
The thing that seems we can’t live without these days is this tjianjin preserved cabbage, which is a sort of dry sauerkraut pickled with garlic and salt. It is great to add to stir fries, fish or just to have on its own, the packaging is amazing and it’s very cheap (£1,80 for 600 grams!)

I will put up a recipe soon, I think that you can get it also in Chinatown, or on Mare street