Sequel to the story of five kinds of wild vegetables received by “Hometown Tax Donation Program”.
I ate “urui” fried with egg, “udo” tempura with its sprouts, and “cod sprouts” tempura.
The rest of the wild vegetables must be cooked and eaten quickly. Since wild vegetables are very pungent foods, their flavor will deteriorate if they are left out too long.
On the far left is udo stir-fried with chicken, onions, and carrots with ketchup.
At first, I was worried that the flavor of udo would be lost when stir-fried with ketchup.
However, I was able to fully enjoy the strong aroma unique to wild udo, which was not lost to the taste of ketchup and soy sauce. It was very tasty.
The roast beef is in the middle of the picture.
In the bottom right of the photo, I prepared grated “horseradish” with a grater, so I ate the roast beef with the horseradish and sauce. Freshly grated horseradish has an aroma that hits the nose and a flavor that is a bit different from Japanese wasabi.
My son Takeh noticed that the roast beef was meat and wanted to lean out of his chair to eat it. However, I could not let him eat this low-temperature cooked dish as he is only two years old, so I had to ask him to be patient. He was so frustrated that tears streamed down his face.
I regretted that I should not have shown him the roast beef in front of his child. I hastily hid it in the back of the kitchen.
I looked it up and found out that roast beef is a meal that should not be served to children until they are at least three years old.
Since I had bought a rather expensive roast beef, I thought that we could have the rest tomorrow….
Then Ishi said, “I worked really hard today, so can I have some roast beef today?”
I said, “Sure,” and she went into the kitchen, crouched down, and ate all the roast beef.
A two-year-old crying, my wife hiding and eating most of the roast beef. And me, watching in stunned amazement. What is going on in this family?
The photo above right shows butterbur cooked in sugar and soy sauce. It is a standard Japanese butterbur dish. It has no bitterness at all and is very good as a reserve dish. Takeh will not eat it, so it is only for adults.
He reacts angrily to meat and fried food, saying, “I want to eat it!” On the other hand, when it comes to anything green, especially anything that looks like a vegetable, he won’t even “try it first to see if it tastes good. They reject it just by looking at it.
I don’t think my child will like butterbur, so I don’t mind if he doesn’t eat it right now. However, as a parent, it is difficult to decide when to let him eat this kind of habitual food and when to let him learn to appreciate its taste.
Finally, in the lower right corner of the photo is a kinpira (fried udo with the skin peeled off). It is seasoned with sugar, soy sauce, sake, and mirin and cooked while being stir-fried.
The skin is firm and chewy, but when I chewed it, I was enchanted by the grassy taste of this wild vegetable. It was a good experience for me because I rarely have the opportunity to eat the shell of udo.
I enjoyed cooking the wild vegetables this way and that.
It is almost the time of the year when Japanese pepper will be on sale in grocery stores. When that happens, I will make tsukudani, a dish made with Japanese pepper. This is another dish that can only be made at home.
(2023.05.24)
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