If you are like me and don't have much time to cook, here is a meal that takes so little time, yet really satisfies. White rice, edamame, miso soup, and some gyoza. A COMPLETE meal with nothing left to desire! Even better, all the items can be bought at the Japanese market (I go to Sunrise Mart in East Village) for less than $15. Sure as hell isn't gourmet, or especially nutritious, but it gets the job done!
On a night that I do have a little extra time, I make rice (short grain Japanese rice in a rice cooker) then freeze the left overs so I can just pop it in the microwave for a future meal. I learned this little trick from my Japanese room mate in college. You simply scoop out a fist-sized amount of rice onto some plastic wrap while it's still hot, smoosh it together, wrap it up, and throw it in the freezer! (To heat up, just put frozen rice ball in the microwave for 2 min.) Makes life MUCH easier the next time you are looking to get your rice on.
The gyoza and edamame can be found in the frozen food section. (My favorite section, obviously. Fresh food is over rated... Just kidding!) I love getting frozen gyoza because A) making gyoza from scratch is a real pain in the ass and takes forever and B) it really doesn't taste like your typical frozen food as long as you pan fry it! (Definitely blows a TV dinner outta the water.) For the edamame, I always prefer making it in boiling water instead of microwaving it. Takes a few minutes longer, but tastes a million times better. The finishing touch? Has to be sprinkled with sea salt. (Not regular iodized salt.)
The miso soup can be made almost as easily from "scratch", but at this point I am pretty exhausted from an entire ten minutes of microwaving, pan frying and boiling, so I go for the individually packaged instant miso. True lazy girl style. The bags come with small packets of freeze dried tofu and wakame- or seaweed if you will, as well as idividual packets of miso paste. You throw both packets into a miso soup bowl, add hot water, and BAM.
My version of a garnish is umeboshi. (Pickled plum) It makes the rice a bit more interesting.
P.S. It probably took you longer to read this (and defintely took me longer to write it) than it did for me to make this entire meal AND eat it. :)
Bonus Pic:
Little Baby Tufo likes his dinner too!
No comments:
Post a Comment