In a pickle with pickles..
November 12
Well, I did another cooking segment for Rogers TV "Contact Japan" this week. This time, I thought I'd do Japanese pickles in a quick manner using natural ingredients. Pickles and rice are to the Japanese like bread and cheese to the French. They have pickles with almost every meal especially if there is rice or with their tea. Two things I remember when growing up, is having to wash the rice every night for supper and the pickles that we would love to eat with the rice. Now, daikon or giant white radish or lobok is one of the most popular ingredients that the Japanese use to make pickles and other dishes as they believe that daikon has a lot of healthful and healing properties, in particular helping with digestion and to offset oily foods. That's why it served in particular with dishes like tempura and often grated into the dipping sauce or served with the tempura.
The only thing is that when pickled or boiled, daikon can be very smelly, and as my late Aunt helen used to say, "smells like someone did something in their pants", which I think I actually said on TV because I just couldn't talk about daikon pickles, or takuoan (takuwan) as they are called in Japanese, without saying this. Aunt Helen used to always tell me not to give this to a "hakujin" or foreigner as they would think it's too smelly and it's embarassing. Though, I kept on telling my Aunt Helen that Dave loves Japanese food and the pickles too, but she kept on either trying to move the pickles away from him, hide them, or give her bottled pickles to me discreetly as if was a secret stash or delivery. It's strange with Japanese food that is so delicate and beautiful on one hand and there are the smells that can be very strong and "smelly" or "funky" that only a trained or experienced nose and palate could handle, but I guess that's the way with most cultures and their food. Perhaps it's the delicious things that are so smelly... look at good aged cheese or old-fashioned sauerkraut.
So, I thought I'd demonstrate the giant white radish pickle or takuoan, which must be the most popular or one of the most popular pickles with the Japanese. I wanted to demo this in particular as often people buy it in the store, including me, in packages and usually it is full of ingredients that are not great such as lots of yellow food colouring, refined sugars, etc.and has been stored for a long time. I substituted most of these ingredients for healthful ingredients such as turmeric for the yellow food colouring, natural sugars such as sucanat for the refined sugars, sea salt for the table salt, etc. etc.
The demo went quite well I thought and I packed up my wares and headed out of the studio quickly as I usually do. However, as I went through the halls I noticed that there was the smell everywhere of smelly pickles with people wondering what had happened... a leaky sewer??... plumbing problems?? One jar of pickles and look at what we had created?! We could market this product to CSIS as a deterent for an enemy attack... just open a jar of pickles and that will have people wondering and being distracted. I can just imagine what people are thinking after I've left the studio after an apparent cooking demo... what was that girl cooking, her dirty socks? Aunt Helen was right, maybe it is just too stinky for people.
This week, I also had my first vegetarian/vegan whole foods class at the Urban Element, which was the first time ever for such a class at the school and it sold out early. I was very inspired by the people who came to the class, mostly non-vegetarians, who wanted to bring more plant-based foods and whole foods in to their diets, and were very interested in what I had to say. I think some of the biggest questions are usually around protein sources and calcium substitutes so I handed out documents on this, which I hope to get up on the web soon, spoke about this, and then had them make meals that focused on working with different proteins, from black beans and lentils to tofu, seitan and tempeh. I have one more class for the year at the Urban Element, which is on Asian Tapas, on December 3. This will mean that I have done about 7 classes since the spring at the Urban Element... wow!
Well, I did another cooking segment for Rogers TV "Contact Japan" this week. This time, I thought I'd do Japanese pickles in a quick manner using natural ingredients. Pickles and rice are to the Japanese like bread and cheese to the French. They have pickles with almost every meal especially if there is rice or with their tea. Two things I remember when growing up, is having to wash the rice every night for supper and the pickles that we would love to eat with the rice. Now, daikon or giant white radish or lobok is one of the most popular ingredients that the Japanese use to make pickles and other dishes as they believe that daikon has a lot of healthful and healing properties, in particular helping with digestion and to offset oily foods. That's why it served in particular with dishes like tempura and often grated into the dipping sauce or served with the tempura.
The only thing is that when pickled or boiled, daikon can be very smelly, and as my late Aunt helen used to say, "smells like someone did something in their pants", which I think I actually said on TV because I just couldn't talk about daikon pickles, or takuoan (takuwan) as they are called in Japanese, without saying this. Aunt Helen used to always tell me not to give this to a "hakujin" or foreigner as they would think it's too smelly and it's embarassing. Though, I kept on telling my Aunt Helen that Dave loves Japanese food and the pickles too, but she kept on either trying to move the pickles away from him, hide them, or give her bottled pickles to me discreetly as if was a secret stash or delivery. It's strange with Japanese food that is so delicate and beautiful on one hand and there are the smells that can be very strong and "smelly" or "funky" that only a trained or experienced nose and palate could handle, but I guess that's the way with most cultures and their food. Perhaps it's the delicious things that are so smelly... look at good aged cheese or old-fashioned sauerkraut.
So, I thought I'd demonstrate the giant white radish pickle or takuoan, which must be the most popular or one of the most popular pickles with the Japanese. I wanted to demo this in particular as often people buy it in the store, including me, in packages and usually it is full of ingredients that are not great such as lots of yellow food colouring, refined sugars, etc.and has been stored for a long time. I substituted most of these ingredients for healthful ingredients such as turmeric for the yellow food colouring, natural sugars such as sucanat for the refined sugars, sea salt for the table salt, etc. etc.
The demo went quite well I thought and I packed up my wares and headed out of the studio quickly as I usually do. However, as I went through the halls I noticed that there was the smell everywhere of smelly pickles with people wondering what had happened... a leaky sewer??... plumbing problems?? One jar of pickles and look at what we had created?! We could market this product to CSIS as a deterent for an enemy attack... just open a jar of pickles and that will have people wondering and being distracted. I can just imagine what people are thinking after I've left the studio after an apparent cooking demo... what was that girl cooking, her dirty socks? Aunt Helen was right, maybe it is just too stinky for people.
This week, I also had my first vegetarian/vegan whole foods class at the Urban Element, which was the first time ever for such a class at the school and it sold out early. I was very inspired by the people who came to the class, mostly non-vegetarians, who wanted to bring more plant-based foods and whole foods in to their diets, and were very interested in what I had to say. I think some of the biggest questions are usually around protein sources and calcium substitutes so I handed out documents on this, which I hope to get up on the web soon, spoke about this, and then had them make meals that focused on working with different proteins, from black beans and lentils to tofu, seitan and tempeh. I have one more class for the year at the Urban Element, which is on Asian Tapas, on December 3. This will mean that I have done about 7 classes since the spring at the Urban Element... wow!
posted by Caroline at 8:35 PM
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