-
Superfood Series: Seaweed 健康食品シリーズ：海藻
Seaweeds play a huge part of the traditional Japanese diet, way beyond the Western and other cultures’ common belief of being used in wrapping sushi (nori) rolls.
It’s main role in Japanese cuisine, by far the most common & very important, is use of ‘kombu’ (thick kelp from the northern seas of Japan), in making stock [...]
-
Superfood Series: Pumpkins 南瓜・かぼちゃ
I love pumpkins! They’re around all year, but autumn/winter is when I want them most. It’s timely because of Halloween! Roasted, soup, even salad, pasta, stir-fry… (baby food?) They’re super! Always cheap too! When our house was rented over summer, I’ve been told that our veg patch got overtaken by pumpkin! (probably from our compost, [...]
-
Superfood Series: Brassica family
Broccoli, Kale, Choysum, Gailan, Cabbage, Pakchoy, Brussel sprout, Silverbeet, Swiss Chards, Kohlrabi, Chinese cabbage, Cauliflower, Daikon, Swedes, Turnips, Canola, Mustard – they’re all part of the ’super’ brassica family of plants. Edible plants in the family Brassicaceae (Cruciferae) are also called Cruciferous vegetables. I won’t go into the botanical genetics side of things (all my books are [...]
-
Superfood Series: Bean shoots もやし・芽豆
Beanshoots (English) moyashi (Japaese) ah-choi (Cantonese) – I really like them, they’re so versitile, cheap, and great filler when you’re on a diet (16kcal/100g) Use it instead of noodles for a filling meal – but don’t eat toooo much – it can cool your tummy
I got really excited when I first [...]
-
Superfood Series: Ginger 生姜・薑
Ginger is fresh, cheap & plentiful, in semi-tropical HK, which is good to see as I got used to buying often dried up, hard gingers back in Perth… It’s absolutely necessary is Cantonese style cooking, particularly in seafood and stir-fries, and used fair bit in Japanese cooking also. Originally from the tropics, it’s used in [...]
-
Superfood Series: Shungiku (Chrysanthemums leaves) 春菊
Known as Crown daisy in English, edible chrysanthemum leaves & stems (or shungiku 春菊) are only eaten in East Asia. It has a distinctive fragrance (of course not dissimilar to daisy leaves), and full of vitamins, calcium and folate. It’s commonly used in Japan as greens for hot pot, particularly fugu or blowfish hot pot, [...]
-
Superfood Series: Bitter melon 健康食品シリーズ：苦瓜
Vegetable in the family of cucumber & grown in the tropics, as per its name, it is bitter, so it usually divides people to those who loves them or hates them. It is extremely good for you, contains 2.5 times the amount of vitamin C as lemon & good for fixing constipation - so much [...]
-
Superfood Series: Sweet Potatoes 薩摩芋
Japanese people like their’s reddish/purple skinned, yellow/cream inside, HK people seem to like it quite soft & there’s purple, orange (Kiwi Kumura’s) and brown varieties, but I think the health benefits very similar. I saw this doco once where they showed intestines of pigs fed exclusively sweet potatoes compared to those with other diets. Intestines [...]
-
Superfood Series: Enoki Mushrooms 健康食品シリーズ：えのき茸・金針菇
Enoki mushroom (Enokitake in Japanese, in 金針菇 Chinese) takes its name from Enoki tree (Chinese Hackberry tree) where it naturally grows, but now days, they’re almost all cultivated, even those ones which have brownish tinge (sometimes called tiger enokis etc). It’s bit like bean shoots and button mushrooms as wild types looks nothing like the common [...]
-
Superfood Series: Chickpeas 健康食品シリーズ：ひよこ豆
I couldn’t help myself, could I??? Some of you may know I actually studied chickpeas in my research M.Sc., so this is my pet topic! It seems so long ago I was at uni, slaving away in the Food Sci chem labs… I’m not interested in looking back at my thesis right now, but anyway, [...]