First steps in Japanese Vegan eating

It's been about a month since I've started eating primarily vegan foods. For a while I was eating yogurt for dessert and I'm not so careful about snacks, eating tortilla chips that may be fried in animal fat (though I don't think so). But for the most part, I've had complete control over my ingredients, choosing organic foods with no animal products whatsoever. The normal fare that I have eaten for about a year has lost most of its appeal: I sometimes glance at a fried pork cutlet in the supermarket and think about having it for dinner out of old habit, but it really can't compare with the flavorful foods I cook at home. I'm gaining weight, though!

I wanted to put a couple of recipes here; my personal ways of making dashi (soup stock, used in almost every recipe) and miso soup. Both are relatively easy but foundational in Japanese vegan cooking (and, really, all Japanese cooking).

I started making dashi a couple of years ago, but it never seemed to work too well--it was always too thin. I really don't remember my process being much different from the way I do it now, but perhaps the ingredients I get now are better, because the stock is thick and hearty.

The heart of dashi is kombu, or Japanese kelp. There are many varieties of kelp, but I'm not an expert. There are supposed to be many health benefits to kombu, particularly flushing chemicals, lowering blood pressure, and providing minerals like calcium. Apparently it also helps soften foods (like beans) it is cooked with, as well as reducing the amount of gas-causing sugars in beans.

The best thing is that dashi is pretty simple to make. Guides warn you not to let the water boil, as that is supposed to make the flavor bitter, but I haven't had any bad results from a few seconds of boiling. Still, boiling causes you to lose water, so it should be avoided, I suppose.

Kombu Dashi

2 cups water
1 3 inch x 6 inch strip of kombu

Put the ingredients in a pot and turn on medium heat. The kombu will expand just before the the water begins to boil, I'd let it cook for 30 sec to a minute after the kombu expands.
Turn the heat off and let the kombu for 10-15 minutes. Strain the water (now a dark yellow stock) into a container and save the kombu. Use the stock immediately, or just let it cool and put in the fridge.

If you dry the used konbu out again you can use it later, but this time allow the stock to sit out for longer before straining, about 20 minutes or so. I usually add old kombu to new kombu when I make dashi and cook as above, using slightly less of the new kombu. I have heard scoring the old kombu with a knife or scissors before cooking helps release more minerals and nutrients.

Next: Miso Soup.

Miso is a Japanese ingredient that is purported to provide proteins necessary for those not eating meat; it also adds a lot of flavor (and salt!). Miso soup is a staple of the Japanese diet along with rice. It uses seasonal ingredients in addition to your basic tofu and is best cooked using balanced yin foods and yang foods. I'm learning now what is yin and yang, but the following recipe is an attempt at balancing fall foods: tofu is yin, balanced with yang wakame (another seaweed); shiitake mushrooms are yin, and kabocha, Japanese pumpkin, is yang. Both mushrooms and pumpkin are fall foods, so I think the recipe is a fair example. And it tastes damn good: the sweetness of the pumpkin is modified by the neutral flavor of the tofu and the hearty flavor of the mushrooms. It may be a bit on the salty side, so be careful.

3 cups dashi (as above)
5 pieces shiitake (dried is fine, but avoid the presliced and dried shiitake; the flavor is substandard)
half a block of tofu (hard tofu is my personal preference, but momen (medium hardness) is good as well)
1/8 kabocha
a couple pinches of dried wakame, to taste.
1-2 tbsp miso (I recommend a mix of rice and soybean misos, but this can be seasonal as well)

1 Don't remove the rind of the kabocha--it is edible. Cut kabocha and tofu into 1/2 inch pieces. Cook kabocha and whole shiitake in dashi until fork can pierce kabocha meat--don't allow it it get too soft, and don't allow the dashi to boil.
2 When the kabocha is ready, add remaining ingredients, mixing miso well, and simmer for 4 or 5 minutes.
3 Add wakame to taste.

I recommend adding wakame to each individual bowl: if you refrigerate the soup with wakame added, the wakame will become soft and slimy. You can refrigerate leftover soup without wakame and reheat later, adding wakame then.