Eggplant and Chicken with Miso and a Spinach Salad
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- Eggplant with chicken and miso
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- Spinach, tomato and walnut salad with sesame dressing
At the beginning of this week I cooked a very quick lunch. Eggplants with chicken and miso and a spinach, walnut and tomato salad with Japanese doressingu (sesame dressing). This is really a very easy dish and makes for a quick stir fry lunch. All you need to do is basically cut up the eggplants soak them up a bit in water to take the bitterness away and stir fry them with some chicken, some mirin, some sugar and add miso at the very end. I must admit I did not follow any Japanese traditional recipe for this but followed my own instincts and the result was quite nice really.
The salad was pretty basic as well all it had was spinach, tomatoes, walnuts and the salad dressing. Since I was cooking for two on that particular day it was enough food.What I love about Japanese stir fry dishes is the quickness with which they can be accomplished although what I miss about East Asia the most now I guess is the variety of greens. India is a vegetarian country but strangely there are very few greens available here. I must also say Indian salads are atrocious and are the weaker point in the cusine here. I hated eating sprouts in India mainly because they stank to high heavens, the moong daal one’s smell of death really. When I was in Japan i discovered that we do not let them sprout fully and that is why they are so uninteresting and boring. It is difficult to make sprouts here on your own because most seeds are treated with insecticide and are for sowing purposes only. Although I can try with moong sometimes because the daal is meant to be consumed but hedonist tried it once when she was living in India and I think she had quite mixed results.
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yummy!
Why are salads weak in India? Is it because most of our diet is vegetarian and therefore we tend to ignore salads? There is no ’salad culture’ in India either. In the west, and this is my theory, they say – atleast one salad a day – so that you don’t endup eating only meat. Salad culture is a baby of the meat culture.
@ Priyank : Thanks! I guess that may be it but I have noticed after Indian vegetarian meals are cooked not much fiber is left in them anyway as a result a lot of people here have piles. How do I know? Go through any highway and there are hoards of advertisements that promise relief from them. Although I suspect that is a western problem as well. By the way I mostly skip eating grain in the afternoon if I can help it.
Odzer, that salad looks scrumptious! I can’t say much about the ‘kukkar’ as I, once a voracious meat eater, turned vegetarian about 10 years back, and am happy that I made the transition.
@ Vinod : Thanks. You can skip the chicken if you like.I enjoy eating anything and everything I can eat without regard to its animal or plant origins.
That dish looks good, but i’m a strict vegetarian,
I reckon you have prepared atleast a thousand kinds of dishes already (ever since the time u became ur own chef!) and i must admit i ENVY your culinary skills
Half of the delicacies (or wait, let me make that three fourth) u put up here are so unusual; thanks for the wiki links you provide.. he he
Oh and btw, ur quick fix meal indeed looks delectable
@ Vivek : If you look closely there is no such thing as vegetarian or non vegetarian. Its all in the mind.
@ Pooja : I am not sure if I have done a thousand in my life yet let alone on the blog! I like giving the wiki links on both Indian and other foods because my blog seems to attract people from different backgrounds. It was indeed a very quick fix meal it took me around 10-12 minutes.
nice looking food!
regarding sprouting moong dal; the bean sprouts used in chinese/japanese cooking are not just sprouted more than the ones available in India. It’s quite a tedious thing to do at home actually, because you have to put weight on the sprouts and pack them closely together in a container, or they do not get long fat stems; instead they will just get leaves and roots….
@ Hedonist : Interesting take on the sprouts. I am not the most patient of men though so I am not sure if I am going to do it. Did you ever try daikon/mooli sprouts ever those taste rather interesting.
Quote unquote–”India is a vegetarian country but strangely there are very few greens available here.”
Hi,
Maybe, saag [leaves or leafy vegetables or ghaas-phoos]is the answer. Come to Orissa and find how many of them are used. Even Lord Jagannath is offered saag!
Nanda
http://ramblingnanda.blogspot.com
http://remixoforchid.blogspot.com
@ A.N. Nanda : Thank you for your post and welcome to my blog. What I meant was salad greens. Saag is somethig quite different and it is usually processed beyond recognition. In any case most green leafy vegetables are unavailable in summer time in this part of the country, I could even use some spring onions but even they are not available. I could use a trip to Orissa sometime but so far I have had no chance to see any Eastern Indian states except Bengal and Sikkim.