Udon with Vegetables and Tofu in Shitake Broth

Kenchin Udon

This soup features fresh udon (soft wheat noodles), fresh shimeji mushrooms, dried shitake mushrooms, daikon radish, carrots, snow peas, yu choy (a mild Chinese green), and two types of tofu:

Abura age is thin, fried tofu - also used to make inari sushi (tofu pouches stuffed with sushi rice).

And yuba is a tofu skin which forms on simmering soy milk and is dried into thin sheets:

Although I liked the variety of vegetables and tofu in this udon dish, I didn't think the shitake/kombu broth had much depth. It's difficult to create full-flavored vegetarian broths, and traditional buddhist cooking has the additional constraint of not using onions either.

I like the idea of augmenting the udon with a healthy selection of vegetables and tofu, but I would add some dried fish (katsuo-bushi or iriko) to enhance the stock, since I consider the broth to be the sublime pleasure of soup noodles. Or perhaps Elizabeth will be able to rework the shitake/kombu broth to be more flavorful.

Koya Tofu Braised with Shitake and Vegetables

Koya-Dofu To Hoshi Shitake No Taki Awase

This dish features koya tofu (pronounced dofu in this context) - a freeze-dried tofu attributed to the Buddhist monks at Mt. Koya near Osaka.

The koya tofu is available as shelf stable dry cubes:

When reconstituted in warm water, the koya tofu softens and becomes resiliently and absorbent. In fact, they resemble small latex sponges!

Another uncommon ingredient in this dish is gobo (burdock root). I'm wondering how gobo is cultivated to allow it to grow to a full yard in length?

In this dish, the koya tofu is braised with shitake mushrooms, lotus root, gobo, carrots, and snow peas. Gently seasoning the dish with soy sauce, sake and sugar allows the textures and flavors of the tofu and vegetables to remain distinct and clear.

Temari Zushi

This vegetable sushi dish uses pickled blossoms of myoga (a rhizome related to ginger, but I think has more of a peppery taste), shitake mushrooms braised in soy sauce, and fresh avocado slices.

Here are fresh myoga blossoms, imported from Japan:

I sliced the myoga lengthwise, blanched them in boiling water, and put them in a lemon juice-based pickling liquid:

After pickling overnight, the myoga turn a bright scarlet color:

The feedback I provided to Elizabeth was that I wasn't entirely satisfied with the balance of flavors in my execution of this dish.

The myoga was quite tart after being picked in the full-strength lemon juice. Next time, I'll reserve a third of the rice and season it with less rice vinegar in anticipation of the picked myoga.

I also thought the shitake mushroom would be better braised in less soy sauce to avoid overshadowing the flavors of the mushroom and sushi rice.

Creamy Bamboo Shoot Soup with Asparagus

Takenoko no Surinagashi

For me, bamboo shoots are mostly about the crunchy, fibrous texture. This recipe purees the bamboo shoots to shift the focus to their mild, woodsy flavor.

The soup is enriched with kombu stock, thickened with pureed tofu, garnished with blanched asparagus, and seasoned with light soy sauce, white miso, and sansho pepper.

After pureeing, the soup remains somewhat grainy - bamboo shoots have a lot of fiber! But, I enjoyed the focus on the flavor of fresh bamboo shoots. The umami-rich earthiness of this soup contrasted nicely with the fresh asparagus and the bite of the sansho pepper.

Assorted Vegetables with Sun-Dried Radish

Gomoku Kiri-Boshi Daikon

This recipe uses a few Japanese ingredients that you might not be familar with.

Kiriboshi- Daikon, sun-dried daikon radish strips:

Hijiki, a dried sea vegetable:







Shirataki, noodles formed from konnyaku yams:


Shirataki has a gelatinous or slithery texture to it. It's a naturally non-caloric food.



In this recipe, the dried ingredients are reconstituted and steamed with the shirataki, fresh carrots, and fresh green beans. The seasonings include aromatic sesame seed oil, sugar, soy-sauce and shimchimi togarashi (a Japanese spice mixture that includes dried chile, orange peel, white sesame seeds, black sesame seeds, sansho pepper, nori, and dried giner).

The result looks like a noodle dish, like Korean chap chae. The strands of dried daikon, hijiki, and shirataki provide interesting contrasting mouthfeel. The carrots and green beans provide color and crunch.

Kabocha Soup with Japanese Flavors

Kabocha no Surinagashi

Kabocha is a round, orange-fleshed squash with a green skin, similar in taste to butternut squash. Pureed squash makes a soup with a satisfyingly rich texture.

Elizabeth's version for Kansha takes squash soup a Japanese direction by using kombu stock, light-colored soy sauce, and white miso. The Japanese flavors counterbalance the sweetness of the kabocha in an interesting way.

Spicy Soy-Braised Bamboo Shoots and Fried Tofu

Takenoko to Atsu Age no Arima Ni

For this recipe, I went to my local Chinese market to buy fresh bamboo shoots. Here's a fresh bamboo shoot:

Like artichokes, bamboo shoots have an inedible fibrous exterior, which must be removed.

Raw bamboo shoots also contain toxic hydrocyanic acid (or prussic acid). Boiling the bamboo shoots eliminates the toxin. I don't know whether the heat denatures the hydrocyanic acid or whether the acid goes into solution and is removed when the bamboo shoots are drained. I do know that raw bamboo shoots are very bitter; I assume the bitterness is due to the hydrocyanic acid.

I simmered the bamboo shoots in water about 45 minutes and then peeled back the outer layers. Unfortunately, the interior still tasted bitter to me, so I simmered the bamboo shoots a second time.


After trimming the simmered bamboo shoots, here's what I got.

I used the tender vestigial leaves at the tip for Fresh Bamboo shoots and Rice - Takenoko Gohan.

I cut the conical portion into wedge-shaped combs for the braised bamboo shoots with tofu.

The spiciness in this recipe comes from sansho, sometimes called a type of pepper, but it's really the berry from the prickly ash plant. Sansho is lemony, but also has a tongue-numbing quality to it.

Elizabeth's recipe calls for whole sansho berries, which I wasn't able to find in my Japanese market - although I could find the powdered sansho. I substituted Szechuan peppercorns, which are related to sansho, but I believe they're a different botanical variety.

For several years, Szechuan peppercorns were illegal to import into the U.S. because of concerns they could harbor citrus canker. A few years ago, the U.S. decided to allow heat-treated Szechuan peppercorns into the country.

Packages of Szechuan peppercorns contain both the black seed and the husks. In Chinese cooking, the husks are considered the desirable part, and the seeds are often discarded. With sansho, the seed is considered the desirable part of the spice, and the husk is discarded. Szechuan peppercorns have a citrus overtone, but I don't think they taste as lemony as sansho.

For this recipe, I fried fresh extra firm tofu instead of using imported packaged fried tofu. I braised the bamboo shoots and tofu with soy, kombu dashi (kelp stock), and Szechuan peppercorns.

In the finished dish, I think the Szechuan peppercorns add a nice contrasting brightness to the umami-rich soy/dashi flavors. The crunch of the bamboo shoots is also a nice textural contrast to the satisfyingly chewy fried tofu.

I liked the recipe, but preparing the fresh bamboo shoots takes some time. I'd like to try this recipe with the boiled bamboo shoots packed in plastic bags with water. I'm sure the prepared bamboo shoots don't have the delicacy of the fresh bamboo shoots, but I'm not sure the difference would be very apparent after braising them with soy and sansho.

Black Rice with Edamame

Kodai Kuromai to Edamame

This recipe was an opportunity to browse the local Mitsuwa supermarket and find Japanese black rice. Here's what I found:

I believe Japanese black rice is different than the Thai black rice used used for the sticky black rice with mangoes and coconut cream sauce, but I don't have any Thai black rice in the pantry right now to make a direct comparison.

The preparation method for the Japanese black rice is certainly different than Thai black rice. A small amount of Japanese rice is added to white rice for flavor and color. I cooked the Japanese black/white rice in my neuro fuzzy logic rice cooker. With Thai sticky black rice, you soak the rice overnight and then steam it in a basket.

I love the dramatic contrast between the dark purple rice and the pale green edamame in the finished dish.

Mixed Vegetables Braised with Thick Fried Tofu

Chikuzen Ni

The first recipe I tried from Elizabeth's draft was Chikuzen Ni or Mixed Vegetables Braised with Thick Fried Tofu. A chicken version of chikuzen ni, titled "Soy-Stewed Chicken with Vegetables", is included in "Washoku".

The vegetarian version uses thick fried tofu instead of chicken. The dish also include gobo (burdock root), carrots, konnyaku, shitake mushrooms, and edamame. Gobo is a fibrous root vegetable with a woodsy, herbal fragrance when raw. The gobo I purchased was about 30 inches long and an inch in diameter and still carrying some dirt. Konnyaku is a chewy (actually, somewhat rubbery) processed food made from the konnyaku yam.

Although packaged fried tofu imported Japan is available at my local Japanese market, I've found the oil tastes stale or rancid by the time it gets to California. So, I decided to purchase fresh locally-made tofu and fry it myself.

This is a fairly easy dish to make, if you can procure the gobo and konnyaku. The is a satisfying umami-rich dish with a nice variety of textures, shapes, and colors.

While you're waiting for "Kansha" to be published, try the chicken version published in "Washoku".

Welcome to the Temple Cuisine Blog!

Welcome to Temple Cuisine, the blog I'm starting to document my recipe testing for Elizabeth Andoh's work-in-progress cookbook, "Kansha: Celebrating Japan's Vegetarian Traditions".

Elizabeth is the author of "Washoku: Recipes from the Japanese Home Kitchen", which I highly recommend for her well-tested recipes capturing homestyle Japanese cooking.

Here's Elizabeth's description of Kansha:

"Kansha means 'appreciation,' and is evident in many aspects of Japanese society and daily living. In a culinary context, the word acknowledges nature's bounty, as well as the efforts and ingenuity of the people who transform that abundance into marvelous food. In the kitchen and at table, as well as in the supermarket and garden, kansha encourages us to prepare nutritionally sound and aesthetically satisfying meals while we avoid waste, conserve energy, and sustain our natural resources.

"Kansha is one of several aspects of washoku, the indigenous food culture of Japan based upon notions of balance (color, flavor, and method of food preparation) that assure nutritional and aesthetic harmony at table. As with my previous book, Washoku: Recipes from the Japanese Home Kitchen, KANSHA will introduce readers to a culinary concept as well as the food associated with it.

"Although a keen appreciation of food does not require me, or my readers, to choose a plant-based diet, I have (in this book) decided to celebrate Japan's vegetarian traditions. In particular, I have taken inspiration and instruction from shojin ryori (Buddhist temple cuisine), primarily as practiced in private homes and served at temple restaurants.

"One of several important themes of the book is the variety and richness of a plant-based diet. Kansha is not about abstention -- doing without meat, fish, poultry, eggs or dairy. Rather, it is about abundance -- of grains, legumes, roots, shoots, leafy plants (aquatic and terrestrial), shrubs, herbs, berries, seeds, tree fruits and nuts. Further, kansha is about the clever and respectful transformation of natural resources into nourishing food."