Bryanna Clark Grogan’s Vegan Feast Kitchen/ 23rd Century Table

From the time I was 4 to 11 years old, my family lived in a winery in the beautiful Livermore Valley of California, just south of San Francisco (where we moved when I was 11).  My father, Alejandro Jaime Urbina, was the official host at the Cresta Blanca Winery (now Wente Brothers Vineyards).

A view of the vineyards with the Cresta Blanca (white crest) in the background.

My father, Alejandro Urbina, in white, hosting a group of visitors

Several families lived at the winery, and a few of the single employees, as well. One of my dad's colleagues was a young Japanese-American bachelor who used to sometimes come over and cook for us.  Our favorite meal that he cooked for us was a very simple but delicious dish of fresh green beans and hamburger in a sweet-ish soy-based sauce.  I later discovered that this dish is a common homemade favorite-- a type of okazu.  What is okazu, you might ask?

To explain, here is a quote from a little essay on okazu: 
http://www.swarthmore.edu/Humanities/tkitao1/japan/okazu.html

"Most Japanese-English dictionaries translate okazu as side dish. This is not quite accurate...      
At a family dinner, a person normally eats three bowls of rice; seasoned food is eaten between bites of rice -- chopstick portions, to be precise. Okazu is an accompaniment in this sense; it plays a supporting role. But in substance, the dishes that constitute okazu correspond to what is called entrée in the western menu. Vegetables are usually designated as side dishes, and the staples like rice and potato are considered accompaniment to the main dish. By contrast, in Japan, each meal is called go-han, the word for cooked rice -- as opposed to raw rice, which is kome...
      So, a spouse may walk into the kitchen and ask: "What's for dinner?" A Japanese husband would ask his wife: "What is the okazu today?" Saying this, he is asking what's for dinner, not what's the side dish."

This particular okazu is very popular, and rightly so. It simple, quick and fresh (low in fat, too). In Japan, this is often made with ground pork, and in North America, with hamburger. It is so easy to veganize with a vegan hamburger crumble substitute, ground seitan, or even minced sauteed mushrooms, and makes a wonderful family meal.  As children, my sister Karin and I loved it. Here is my recipe, which I think is very like what I remember from my childhood.


Printable Recipe

BRYANNA'S GREEN BEAN OKAZU
Servings: 6

2 tsp oil
12  ounces commercial vegan ground meat sub (such as Yves "Ground Round") OR ground seitan (or even crumbled up veggie burgers)
NOTE: A possible GF and soy-free sub might be 2 packed cups sautéed minced mushrooms--measured after sautéing.
3 large cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp grated fresh ginger
1 1/2 lbs small green beans, cut in half
3/4 cup hot water
3 Tbsp brown sugar
3 Tbs soy sauce/tamari
steamed short grain brown rice or converted/parboiled rice
Optional for serving: Sriracha sauce

Heat the oil in a medium skillet or sauté pan.  When hot, add the "Ground Round" or ground seitan, along with the garlic and ginger. Reduce heat to medium-high and stir-fry until it browns a bit.  Remove from the pan.


Add the water and green beans to the pan. Bring to a boil, then turn down to medium, cover and cook until they are just tender-- about 7 or 8 minutes.



There should be just a bit of water left in the pan.  Add the brown sugar and soy sauce and cook, uncovered, on high heat until it reduces a bit. Stir in "Ground Round" mixture.


Serve hot over steamed short-grain brown rice or converted/parboiled rice.


NOTE: Some versions of this dish call for a bit of chili in some form or other.  I don't remember it that way, but you can serve some Sriracha sauce on the side for those who like a bit of heat, if you wish.

Nutrition Facts
Nutrition (per serving): 144 calories, 19 calories from fat, 2.2g total fat, 0mg cholesterol, 781.2mg sodium, 565.6mg potassium, 21g carbohydrates, 7.1g fiber, 9.4g sugar, 13.4g protein, 4.3 points.

Enjoy!

Our Host, Matsuki (pronounced "Matski") Masutani, surveying the feast.

Our friends (here on Denman Is.), Matsuki and Jane Masutani invited us to dinner last night. I had been discussing gobo (burdock root) with Matsuki a few days before, and told him I had heard of it, and maybe had eaten it, but didn't really know that much about it. He explained that this root vegetable is an integral part of Japanese cuisine and also has medicinal qualities. (In North America it is often regarded as an invasive weed! Here is a history of burdock root.)


Burdock plant

Here's a great description of an introduction to gobo from Tom at blisstree.com:
"Before I moved to Japan, I had never seen, tasted or even heard of burdock. Now I know why. It would have to be one of the strangest vegetables I have ever seen in a shop anywhere. To the untrained eye it looks like a dirty old stick, about a metre long and maybe as thick as your thumb at the thick end. It is covered with dirty brown “bark” and it really looks very unappetising. Talk about Cinderella!


Gobo (burdock roots)

When it makes it to you plate, it is hard to believe that you are eating the same thing that you would previously have used to play “fetch” with your dog. You see burdock isn’t a dirty old stick at all. It is actually a root or tuber and within it’s ugly duckling appearance is actually a beautiful vegetable.

The Japanese call Burdock Gobo and the Chinese use it as a medicinal herb, but Australians really don’t use it at all. So I was a loss as to how to cook this bizarre thing. Having, up until now, tried it cooked by others, I gave it a stab myself the other night. And I failed. There is a fine balance between cooking it enough to make it edible and plain old burning it. I lost the balance and the burnt burdock ended up in the compost. I haven’t given up yet and so will give it another go soon. It is definitely worth the trouble and so I will persist.

Burdock root is usually scraped, rather than peeled, and either shaved or julienned thinly. Its most popular recipe seems to be burdock kinpira, where it is sauteed with carrots, chilli, and the usual suspects of sake, mirin, soy and sugar."

Matsuki and Jane were hosting an old friend from Japan, Kazuko (pronounced Kah-zukoh, with the accent on the Kah), who is a wonderful musician, storyteller and actress-- and, apparently, a great cook, too! So, they invited us for a gobo tasting dinner last night. They provided the convivial atmosphere, music (a beautiful recording of the Dalai Lama "chanting", but it was actually more like singing and it was very enjoyable), salad, the brown rice, and the beverages. Kazuko; our mutual friends Yoshi and Susan-Marie Yoshihara (who made the greatest miso here on Denman Is.-- Shinmeido Miso); and Norie (pronounced Noree-ay) McGillivray, a young professional Japanese chef and cooking teacher (specializing in macrobiotics and sushi), all cooked traditional Japanese gobo dishes for us to sample (actually, we feasted!). They very kindly made everything vegetarian. (Also present was Norie's young son and the Masutani's lovely daughter-in-law, Nobue (pronounced Nohbu-ay.)


I wait for DH to finish taking pictures of the food before we can sit down and eat!

Susan-Marie grows gobo (burdock root) in her wonderful garden. She uses a Lee Valley Dandelion Digger to dig out the slim roots without breaking them-- good tip! If you are interested in growing burdock, it's hard to find info because of it's bad reputation as a weed in North America, but I found some good information here.

Anyway, on to the dinner. What a treat! What a delight to the senses! I don't have their recipes, but they did tell me some of the ingredients, and I am including online recipes to investigate.


Norie brought the dishes above, some beautiful Soba-Sushi and Shikai-Sushi, along with some Kaki-Age (Julienned Vegetable Tempura) and Maze-Gohan (Japanese Rice Pilaf) wrapped in a banana leaf.




Norie is famous for her sushi here on Denman Is. (and rightly so!). Look at that beautiful Shikai-Sushi-- the square ones-- which translates to "Four oceans Sushi", Kazuko told me, because it looks like four waves closing in. The tempura (on the bottom) was delicious, too. Here are some online instructions for making Shikai-Sushi. And here's another page. (But neither tell you how to get the purple effect that Norie did-- I'll have to ask her about that! UPDATE: a commenter noted that purple shiso leaves are used to color rice pink or purple, but here is an article on coloring sushi rice with common vegetables.)

Here is a page on how to make Soba-Sushi (Norie made two kinds-- one with buckwheat soba [Japanese noodles] and one with spinach soba).


Norie also brought a type of salad, Classic Kinpira Gobo, made with burdock and carrot. It was delightful! Here is a recipe for it. 

Yoshi also brought a dish of Maze-Gohan (Japanese Rice Pilaf), but it was a bit different from Norie's (I don't know what she put in hers). Yoshi's was Yuba-Maze-Gohan, containing strips of simmered yuba, hijiki seaweed,ginger pickle, soy sauce, sugar, and sesame oil. He instructed us to roll spoonful of it in squares of nori seaweed-- it was delicious that way! Here's a basic recipe for Maze-Gohan, but you can use all sorts of ingredients in it. I really liked the yuba in it! Yoshi said you could add a dash of hot sauce, such as Thai hot sauce, also known as Sriracha or "rooster sauce", if you like.



Yoshi's second dish was Kiriboshi-Daikon, a salad made with shredded carrot, strips of fried tofu (atsuage), onion, soy sauce, sugar, sesame oil, and dried daikon radish. The dried daikon has a more intense flavor than the fresh radish, giving a pleasant "bite" to the salad. There is a recipe for this here and another one here.


Kazuko made a delicious "Chinese-Style" Oden, or stew (I forgot to ask her why it was considered "Chinese-style"). It contained daikon radish, potato, burdock root, fried tofu (atsuage), seaweed, ginger, carrot, shiitake mushrooms, green onion, garlic, soy sauce, star anise, 5-spice powder (maybe that's the "Chinese-style" part?), sake, and sugar. There are many types of oden, but here is one recipe and here is another.

Kazuko also made a delicious appetizer, which we failed to photograph. She steamed carrots lightly (the Japanese prefer their root vegetables cooked) and cut them into pieces, and served them with a dip made of miso, crushed black sesame seeds, white wine, and sesame oil, if I remember rightly. It was absolutely scrumptious! She just made it up on the spot, so I have no idea of amounts, but I'm going to try to replicate it.

Susan-Marie provided the dessert, with two things from her garden-- it was a sort of crustless rhubarb custard "pie" (or pudding, I guess you could call it), made with only half of the usual sugar, due to the addition of the herb Sweet Cicily, which, according to Brenda Hyde, "It can be added to some dishes to reduce the sweetener, but it's not actually a sugar substitute."

It was really delicious! Unfortunately it got served and eaten before I could take a photo! Susan-Marie said she got the recipe from her friend and fellow Denman Is. Gardener, Phyllis Fabbi, but I found a similar recipe, for a Rhubarb and Sweet Cicely Pudding Recipe from Yorkshire (not vegan, of course). I have a vegan recipe for Sour Creme Rhubarb-Orange Pie which might be a good place to try Sweet Cicely.

Kampai!