One of the biggest joy of cooking, at least for me is to make something different and delicious from leftovers.
This is not very common practice in the American kitchens, yet if you go to Japan, quite a few home-cooks do it regularly as a way to be 1. efficient with time, 2. be resourceful, and 3. get full credit for their ingenuity — especially if the family doesn’t recognize that it’s made of leftover dish from a few days ago.
Once I learned this best kept cooking secrets among excellent and efficient Japanese housewives, I fell in love with this! It’s really fun, and saves lots of time and money (we saved $9000 per year for two of us, just from not eating out as much, and using food more resourcefully.) By using the same secrets I’m sharing with you, I was able to get off of my reliance on prepared food and restaurants, and able to achieve lots of exciting varieties easily — many more than I thought was possible!
Plus, our weight, cholesterol (at one point mine was 261!) and tryglyceride all went down, and our energy level up to where they used to be when we were in college. : )
Last night I made a new rice dish, from the nimono — Sauteed Root Vegetables Japanese Style - and tuna leftovers. This is a method you can use with almost anything.
Kayaku Gohan wtih Tuna and Root Vegetables
Ingredients:
- Sauted root vegetables Japanese style - 1 cup (optional: chop in smaller pieces if too big)
- 1/2 can of tuna (in Olive Oil preferred), crumble with a folk
- 2 C rice
- Soy Sauce, 1 ~ 2 TBS
- Sake, 1 TBS
- Mirin (Optional) - 1/2 ~ 1 TBS
- Water (and kombu, if you have any) or Dashi - 2 1/4 C (12.5% more than the amount of rice)
- Rinse rice in cold water a few times, until the water runs clear. Add wateri or dashi to rice to the line of the rice cooker that indicates 2 cups, and soak for about 20 min. (Do this only if you are using the cup (180 cc) that comes with a typical rice cooker. If you are using regular American size cup, drain all water, and add 2 1/4 cup of water (12.5% more water). The cup comes with the Japanese rice cooker is only 180 cc, whereas US size cup is 240 cc — 1/3 bigger!)
- Add soy sauce, sake, mirin and kombu in rice, and turn the switch of the rice cooker.
- If you don’t have a rice cooker, bring the rice to boil, cover, and cook at low heat for 15 minutes or until the water is all absorbed.
- Mix the root vegetable leftover and tuna into cooked rice, adjust seasoning, cover and let it steam for another 10 min. Even if the vegetables were cold, this should warm them up.
Note: If you want to save some rice for other use, take some out before mixing the nimono leftover and tuna (the adjust the amount up to by half.)
By making this rice base, you can mix anything you want and create new variety of mixed rice any time you want — sauteed mushrooms, cooked chicken, veggies, even fish like salmon, or sea vegetables like wakame… Practically, the sky is the limit! And yes, you can freeze this as well — I like to wrap into a single serving, and freeze it, so that whenever I want it, all I have to do is heat it up. Of course, you can make them into a ball, and make a onigiri (rice ball.)
You can also make white rice and mix it with the re-heated and chopped nimono or any other cooked leftovers (or something freshly cooked). In that case, you need to taste and adjust seasoning. But for single person, this will be a lot more versatile, unless you freeze all the leftovers.
Let me know what mix you try.
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Mari! Are you going to the Festival this weekend? It’d be great to see you again!
No… I’m so bummed. We are celebrating my mother in law’s 75th birthday reunion this weekend. I was hoping for different dates for the festival, but what can you do? Enjoy it, take a lot of photos, and tell me how great the food was. Let’s get together sometime soon. (What happened with all of these community dinners?)