Four easy Japanese Soul Food recipes

By ed

Japanese Soul Food

FOUR ‘OISHII’ VEGETARIAN-FRIENDLY RECIPES BY OLLIE TEMPLETON

We teamed up with The Wasabi Company to create a menu of Japanese-inspired favourites that will have you barbecuing like a yakitori hero in no time. Four super simple, super tasty dishes: two from the grill, one salad and the only recipe for sushi rice you’ll ever need…

You’ll need a grill (and a hot one at that), wooden skewers, a saucepan with a lid and a selection of Japanese storecupboard essentials. You may have some of these ingredients already, in which case you’re all set, but if you need to do some shopping The Wasabi Company have offered a generous 20% discount to friends of Carousel on any items in this basket, which includes all sorts of premium Japanese products like koshihikari rice, furikake and kombu ponzu. Just enter the code CAROUSEL20 and tick the relevant box at checkout.

[FEEDS 4]

Dry 200g Koshihikari Rice · 50ml Soy Sauce · 15g Sesame Seeds · 60ml Ponzu · 1x thumb Kombu / Wakame / Miso · 60g Sake Vinegar · 6g Salt · 30g Sugar

Fresh 4 Eggs · 2 punnets Shiitake Mushrooms · 1 bunch Spring onions · 2 Aubergines · 1 bunch Watercress

Equipment BBQ · Saucepan (with lid) · Wooden Skewers

Sushi Rice

Unwashed koshihiraki rice: 200g to 220g water. Mix in a pot with your hands, then cook over a medium heat with the lid on for 15 minutes (never remove the lid). After 15 minutes, turn off the heat and leave the lid on for another 5 minutes. After it’s rested, mix in 60g sake vinegar, 10g ponzu and 6g salt to season the rice.

Soy-Cured Egg Yolk

Steep your egg yolks in soy sauce for 3 hours. Do this in advance… Place the cured yolks on top of your rice – one per portion – and break them up with chopsticks when you’re ready to go. Sprinkle your furikake on top for extra flavour.

Watercress & Ponzu Salad

Clean the watercress, dress it in the ponzu (50ml) and sprinkle sesame seeds on top (told you these recipes were easy… it’s all in the ingredients).

Soy-Kombu Glazed Aubergine

Cut your aubergine into eight equal pieces and make diamond shaped slices on each side. Slide the scored aubergine onto wooden skewers (two to three pieces per skewer) and place over hot coals. Glaze the aubergine with your soy reduction as it grills. For the reduction, mix 50ml soy sauce with 100ml water and 30g sugar together in a saucepan. Add one thumb of kelp to the liquid (you can also use wakame or miso for this) and reduce by ⅔ on a high heat. Brush on the glaze every few minutes as you turn the skewers until the the aubergine is slightly charred on the outside. You want the aubergine to have some bite when you serve it.

Yakitori Shiitake Mushroom & Spring Onion

This is the easiest one of the lot. Just skewer the vegetables and place them on the grill, turning as you cook them until they have a nice colour on the outside. The flavour for this recipe comes from the smoke. You want to skewer the mushrooms through the middle, from the bottom of the stalk towards the cap, while the spring onions should be cut into 5cm pieces and stacked one on top of the other.