Occasionally I've suggested that yu tsai or yu choi can stand in for nanohana, the greens of the rapeseed plant that are widely available in Japan during the springtime.

In fact, though, rapini, also called broccoli rabe, is far more like nanohana than yu choi is, at least in terms of flavor and appearance. Both rapini and nanohana are generally fairly bitter, and both respond well to blanching.

Although the standard rapini treatment in the US seems to involve sauteeing with garlic and olive oil, the bitterness of rapini mellows out considerably after being blanched for about a minute in acidulated, salted walter, then shocked in ice water. So much, in fact, that such rapini actually seems quite mild in comparison to similarly prepared nanohana.

Tonight I decided to take advantage of rapini for two dishes... one is a simple suimono, or clear soup, and the other is aemono, a simply dressed side dish.

Rapini to Shimeji no suimono

For the soup, I prepared my usual konbu-porcini stock and seasoned it with salt, light-color soy sauce (usuguchi shouyu), a bit of sake, and a bit of sugar. This time, I added a tiny bit of katakuriko to give the soup a little body. After tasting the stock, I added some shimeji mushrooms and let them simmer a bit; just a minute or so before serving, I added the blanched rapini to warm it up before serving.

Rapini no Goma-ae

For a cold side dish, I toasted white sesame seeds in a dry pan before grinding them up. I combined the ground sesame with a bit of sugar and salt, added some water and a tiny bit of soy sauce, and briefly boiled the paste to thicken it slightly. Though it's certainly not the standard choice, I added a bit of a syrupy-thick aged balsamic vinegar at the tail end, which adds a hint of complexity that ordinary rice vinegar wouldn't provide. Since the blanching water was slightly acidic from rice vinegar, I also didn't need much vinegar in the gomadare (sesame sauce).

The sauce is simply tossed with the blanched rapini and served in a small bowl.

In the US, outside of aromatics like onions and garlic, we often seem to try to avoid serving the same vegetable in two different dishes at the same meal. However, in Japan, I found it was fairly common to do so, especially when something was particularly plentiful and in season.

For American and European cooking, we often serve such large portions that it would become tedious to eat too much of the same ingredient. However, the smaller portions in Japanese cooking make it worth considering, especially if you can think of an interesting textural or flavor contrast for a particular item. In this case, one dish is served hot, and the other cold. One is soupy and mild, and one is slighly salty and has a strong flavor from the sesame sauce.

Both bring out something different in the rapini.

I remember a small Kyoto restaurant run by an interesting obaachan I visited almost 4 years ago... Unprompted, she served a hot variaton of a vegetable side dish my friend and I had previously ordered cold, just to demonstrate that greens can be completely transformed with a slight adjustment in preparation.

Whenever I'm faced with a surplus of a particular ingredient, recalling that moment helps me realize that only a small touch of creative energy can make something familiar and boring into something new and compelling all over again...

Raw nagaimo, or "long potato," is a starchy tuber similar to African yams, and is appreciated in Japan for its neba-neba qualities. There's no fair translation for this onomatopoeia, but it refers to a magical kind of slippery stickiness... if there were a nice-sounding word for slimy, it would be neba-neba.

In the US, such foods are often treated with suspicion, but it wouldn't be fair to dismiss this texture outright; Japanese cuisine is more about experiencing contrasting textural experiences than, say, complex seasoning or elaborate technique.

Other neba-neba foods include cooked okra and nattō, and, to a lesser extent, the sea vegetable mozuku. I will never be as big a fan of nattō as Hiromi is, but that's thanks more to the aroma than the texture. I love okra, especially cooked with onions and tomatoes. And mozuku is a favorite treat of mine, served as a simple side dish with a chilled, almost soupy, lightly acidic dressing.

Nagaimo is a kind of mountain potato, or yamaimo. If you grate it with a daikon-oroshi grater, you'll get a madly viscous mass called tororo-imo which can be mixed with a raw quail egg, simply seasoned with soy sauce and chopped scallions, and poured over rice at breakfast. Tororo-imo is also indispensible for making good okonomiyaki.

Fresh nagaimo also makes a nice side dish when cut into matchstick slivers (sengiri), as seen above. This brings out the neba-neba qualities while retaining a pleasantly crisp texture. I now typically use a mandoline to make this task easier; however, in a pinch, a good chef's knife will do. Just expect the cutting board—and your hands—to get slippery. You can avoid that by wearing latex gloves while preparing the dish. You may want to wear gloves while peeling the skin anyway, since some people suffer from a mild itchiness on skin contact with yamaimo skin... I'm lucky enough not to have that problem.

Once cut, place the nagaimo in small serving bowls and splash on a little soy sauce. For the flavor garnish, sometimes I add some chopped umeboshi and kizami-nori, or thin strips of nori. This time I used chopped scallions and a wasabi-seasoned nori, cut into strips with kitchen shears. The goal is to have a little saltiness, a little crunchiness, and some clean but sharp contrasting flavor. This version would be called sengiri nagaimo to wasabi-nori.

For an even more sticky experience, the nagaimo could be mixed with mekabu (wakame sprouts)... but that would be a lot of neba-neba for one night...

Kushiyaki is the Japanese equivalent of kebabs. Most anything that's grilled on a stick can be called kushiyaki, though items that are served already in their sauce tend to have other, more specific names (yakitori, for example).

Ideally, I'd break out my shichirin on a warm night and keep eating various nibbles of grilled goodness until the coals burn out... but since I was dining alone tonight, that seemed like overkill. The All-Clad grill pan came to my rescue. I really only needed one stick, as I had a few other things to eat as well. I started cooking dinner with a persistent headache, so I wasn't in the mood for anything that required a lot of commitment.

Tonight's kushiyaki featured some oversized shishitou, which are generally small, wrinkly chilies with just a slight hint of heat, and some fat shiitake mushrooms.

Shishitou are actually probably best dipped in nothing more than a bit of salt, but I prepared some ginger and soy sauce as a dip for the grilled shiitake.

Thanks to some ibuprofen and the comfort of warm rice and daikon-shungiku miso soup, my headache gradually dulled and mostly disappeared by the time I finished eating dinner. A little imo-jochu might have helped even more...

Two asparagus dishes in a row?

Yes, but it's that time of year. I suppose there will be at least one or two more. 

Actually, I haven't eaten asparagus all that often lately, and local asparagus hasn't quite kicked in. But most weeknights I've been too lazy to take any photos of dinner, and on weekends... well, I guess I've been lazy on weekends too. In fact, Friday night I was so lazy that, straight off the bus on the way home, I went straight to Paseo, the Cuban-ish shop in my neighborhood, and grabbed dinner to go. I almost never grab dinner to go.

Today I made a brief stop at Thanh Son Tofu, followed by some vegetable shopping at Uwajimaya. I originally had planned to make some Japanese foods, but I was really feeling weary once home... all I really wanted was a gin and tonic.

I kicked off the rice cooker, but I didn't do anything at all that would result in a Japanese dinner appearing on the table... A few minutes before the rice finished, I chopped some asparagus, scallions and garlic, sliced some shiitake, and halved some fried tofu. I prepared a very hurried porcini-konbu soup stock. A quick saute, a splash of soup stock, a little piqin chili oil, a drizzling of vegetarian oyster sauce, a few grindings of black pepper, and suddenly dinner was on the table. Not fancy, but flavorful and satisfying...

Sometimes you have to take a few risks.

Sometimes, in order to make a bit of progress at something, you almost have to invite disaster. Tonight I invited disaster home, into my kitchen. To be fair, I did it responsibly. I did minimize the number of potential victims... In spite of popular opinion to the contrary, for a passionate cook there is more than one reason to cook for oneself... taking risks is one.

Many people think me more adventurous or inventive in cuisine than I see myself. I'm perhaps obsessive, but I work within a certain vocabulary. The spectrum of flavors and techniques I work with is perhaps broader than average, especially in an age of convenience, but generally I'm quite content to work from well-understood, classic techniques and flavor combinations. Basil and tomato never gets old for me. I feel the same about ume and shiso.

I'm quite content playing with my food within familiar parameters... Although I push the boundaries often enough, usually simplicity wins out over novelty.

Sometimes I do simplicity with a little novelty.

That's all this was... I was at the supermarket tonight, and I saw kumquats for a reasonable price... I thought, "Hey! kumquats! Suddenly, I feel like cooking with kumquats."

My usual non-dessert impulse would probably be to put them into a salad or something. Then I remembered I bought asparagus a few days ago, and I really ought to use it up.

I wondered, "hmm... what can I do with kumquats and asparagus?"

Well... citrus... butter... it works for artichokes, why not asparagus? Lemon, kumquat, close enough, right? Hollandaise sauce can be made with lemon juice, and asparagus likes hollandaise... Ah, that settles it.

So I sort of simmered the kumquats in way too much butter for several minutes to mellow them out, and added a bit of salt. I tossed in a few slices of shiitake because they were handy, and I had nothing better to sacrifice them to. Later, I added the asparagus, tossed them around in the pan a bit, and covered them for a few minutes. I added some nira (sometimes called garlic chives). After adjusting seasoning a bit, I pronounced the dish done.

It worked. It turned out to be a good combination. The shiitake proved to be more a distraction than anything else, but I'll definitely be repeating the kumquat butter combination, and since asparagus season is just kicking off, I have a feeling the trio will be back in my life soon.

No, I am not a great fan of meat analogues, but every once in a while I get an odd craving for a veggie burger. Most of the frozen products are not very exciting, and they've gotten incredibly expensive in the last few years, so they're almost never on my shopping list. But I do sometimes decide to make them at home.

This week, I still had a substantial amount of leftover okara, the soybean mash that's a byproduct of soymilk-making, a consequence of my godoufu-making endeavors. It really has a short lifespan, so I've been doing my best to make use of it before it's too late.

Some of the okara I had went into a croquette-like dish I made last Sunday. Seasoned okara has a slightly longer lifespan than unseasoned okara, so I repurposed some of the remaining croquette base, and blended it with some of the filling from some mushroom gyoza that was also sitting in my refrigerator. I shaped the resulting mixture into patties and carefully slipped them into a deep fryer.

What goes into such a concoction as okara croquettes or okara burgers? Well, there are other options, but basically I seasoned everything with a little salt, maybe a splash of some soy sauce, some pepper, and, in this case, and some mitsuba, a Japanese herb slightly similar to flat-leaf parsley. I used a little flour, and maybe even an egg yolk, to help everything hold together. The mushrooms added a bit of aroma and flavor, and since they were repurposed from a gyoza filling, they also benefited from the garlic-like flavor of nira, a chive-like herb. 

The okara burgers are, in this case, served on soymilk buns. The excessive surplus of soymilk in my refrigerator perhaps made this inevitable, but it works.

There's no way I'd be able to give a precise recipe for the okara "burgers", but a little experimentation and tasting before cooking should be enough of an indication of the likely success or failure. In this case, I deep fried them, instead of using a frying pan, but either way would work. Deep frying, counter-intuitively, absorbs less oil than using a frying pan, because the temperature is more stable.

They're served with mixed greens, onions, and brie, and the usual mayo/mustard/ketchup (corn-syrup free) condiments.

Potatoes were yukon golds, fried at a bit lower than normal temperature to keep them from browning too quickly, are twice-fried and tossed with porcini salt and a bit of additional sea salt. These would be equally nice roasted in the oven with olive oil.

The soymilk bread is reasonably simple... Unlike the okara burgers, I actually measured the ingredients, though the recipe was still fairly improvised.

Tounyuu Pan (豆乳パン)

• 400 g flour (I guess that's about 3 cups... get a digital scale and be sure).
• 225 ml warm, not hot, soymilk (about 1 cup)
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp. dry yeast or one cube of "fresh" yeast.

Place the flour into a bowl, making an impression large enough to accommodate the soymilk. Pour the soymilk into the bowl and add the yeast. If your yeast requires it, proof it in the soymilk in that impression. Otherwise, add salt and slowly blend the milk with the flour, using small circles with a wooden spoon.

Knead for a few minutes until the dough is smooth and slightly sticky. The goal is to have a fairly moist dough for rolls, so resist the temptation to add much more flour unless the dough just doesn't hold its shape.

Allow to rise for at least an hour, then use a dough cutter to separate the dough into six equal pieces. Massage these into rounds, and use a rolling pin to make each bun a fairly even thickness, roughly 1/2 inch (1.2 cm). Allow to rise for another 20 minutes or so.

Preheat an oven to 200C (425F). Place an oven-safe pot filled with hot water in the top rack of the oven.

Brush a little soymilk or egg on top of each roll. Gently press the wet side into a plate of sesame seeds.

Bake the buns for about 25 minutes, until golden-brown on top. Remove from oven and cover with a cloth, allowing them to mostly cool before consuming.

These buns are, perhaps, a bit too chewy for a "burger" bun, but they're also quite nice as breakfast rolls. They would likely become somewhat less chewy with a touch of sugar, some egg, or added fat such as butter or olive oil.

Godoufu, the soymilk-based mochi-like "tofu" from Saga prefecture, has been featured here before, shortly after I reminisced about my first time tasting it when I was ceramics-hunting in Arita many years ago.

This weekend I got the urge to make it again. It's a bit time-consuming to prepare, so I don't really make it all that often, but I made it twice this weekend. Yesterday I went to a potluck, where my quadruple batch was consumed or otherwise claimed by others. I decided I wanted a bit more for myself today, and I really had more than enough soy milk this time... I made a huge batch of soymilk on Saturday morning.

The basics are simple, but a bit time-consuming. Start with a truly rich unsweetened soymilk. Milk substitute monstrosities such as the popular Silk brand are completely unsuitable, and even most unsweetened soy milks sold at health food stores will not have enough protein or flavor. If you have a local Asian soymilk producer, they probably sell the thicker type of soymilk that will be suitable for the task. Otherwise, you can certainly make your own... That's what I did this weekend, and it's why I ended up with about 9 liters of thick soymilk and a frightening amount of okara.

Godoufu

• 5 cups thick Asian-style unsweetened soymilk (roughly 1200 ml)
• 2 tablespoons kuzu-ko or arrowroot starch (about 55 grams)
• 1/2 cup plus one tablespoon katakuriko, similar to potato starch, about 120 grams

Kuzu-ko tends to be clumpy, so it's best to use a spice grinder, a mortar and pestle, or even the back of a spoon to crush the kuzuko into a fine powder. For best results, whisk the cold soymilk with the starches until the solids are completely dissolved; otherwise, small translucent balls similar to gravy lumps tend to form during cooking.

Bring the solution to a boil, then immediately take off the heat and start stirring furiously with a sturdy spoon. Reduce heat to medium-low, and keep stirring like mad, making sure nothing sticks to the pan. Keep this up for about 30 minutes.

In many pans it's a bit tricky to keep things from sticking and browning at the bottom, but regularly pulling the pan off heat can help regulate the bottom of the temperature. In a pinch, if the bottom of the pan starts to brown, I've been known to pour out the mixture into another pan and continue the process; it's really hard to rescue the godoufu if things start sticking, so I do my best to prevent disaster.

Turn out the mixture into an airtight storage container. Some Japanese sites recommend placing a layer of clingfilm wrap on the surface of the godoufu to prevent a skin from forming.

Next, if at all possible, put the sealed container in an ice water bath for about 5 minutes. Refrigerate a few hours until set. (In a pinch, you can eat after about an hour, but it will hold its shape better if it's refrigerated longer).

In my experience, godoufu keeps reasonably well for about a week, but it must be kept in an absolutely airtight container.

Two typical sauces often used to top the godoufu include:

Irigoma sauce (Black sesame sauce)

• 3 tbsp. ground black sesame seeds
• 1.5 tablespoons sugar
• 3 tbsp. soy sauce

Bring ingredients to a boil. Simmer for a minute or so. Allow to cool.

Shouga no nerimiso (Ginger miso sauce)

• 2 tbsp. miso (akamiso or shiromiso)
• 2 tbsp. mirin
• 2 tbsp. sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp. freshly grated ginger

On medium heat, bring ingredients to a simmer, stirring regularly. Cook for about 5 minutes after the mixture comes to a boil, until it thickens.

This one is nice with a little finely chopped scallion.

Last night I also tried the godoufu with kinako and kuromitsu, which was very similar to a sweet called "tounyuu no warabi-mochi" the Hiromi and I ate in Kyoto a couple years ago. It should also be nice in zenzai (sweet red bean soup) in place of shiratama or mochi.

This time of year, I usually completely ignore canteloupe (aka muskmelon). The taste rarely seems worthwhile in the winter.

If you should have the good fortune to have a competent greengrocer near you, though, it's possible to discover small produce surprises when you least expect them.

When one of the Sosio's folks told me that they had great canteloupe right now, I looked a bit askance at him. It just seemed too unlikely. He challenged my skepticism with a little taste from a fruit he hat already cut into, and I turned into an easy sale.

These melons are surprisingly sweet and flavorful. While they don't reach the insane greatness of the summer Tuscan melons I go out of my way for when the season hits, they're way more than I ever expect this time of year.

This isn't to say that it's a good idea to go out to the supermarket and buy any random melon you might see right now... Chances are it'll be rock-hard and flavorless.

No, the message is simpler: get to know the produce people where you live. The good ones will rarely steer you wrong. They may help you find some hidden gems.  They'll probably know a bit more about what's good than you will.

In the summertime, when so many things are plentiful and good, I've been known to walk in to Sosio's or a similar market and ask them what I want right now. They know what is at its peak.

I've said roughly the same thing before when I talked about late summer tomatoes, but it's good to remember that, even in the winter, you can benefit from the intimacy a good vegetable and fruit shop will have with what they sell.

Simplicity is magical.

Farro is a robust grain... flavorful and filling, the grains gently explode in your mouth when you bite down on them.

It doesn't take much to make farro appealing... I only needed to spend a few minutes preparing and finishing the dish, but it's somehow very comforting and pleasing in spite of very little effort.

I use the rice cooker to prepare it, but after it's done, I like to bring a bit of cream to a simmer in a saucepan and mix in the farro, season with a bit of salt, and let the cream coat the grains of farro, adding a bit of richness. On previous occasions, I've added diced celery, onions and carrots to the rice cooker, but today I left all that out and found the farro equally compelling.

On the plate, I've added halved purple carrots with shallots, and a little bit of hoja santa cheese, a soft goat cheese wrapped in a sassafras leaf. This cheese is velvety and herbal and slightly tart, and just a little is enough to add a pleasant contrast to the nutty farro. It's nice with a little soup and some greens.

I go through these mini-phases. Two weeks eating nothing but Japanese food. A pasta-heavy month. A week full of salsa and guacamole. A lot of tofu in a little time. A series of soups.

Sometimes it's just a matter of what I've been shopping for, and what's in the refrigerator at any given moment. Sometimes, though, I get the feeling that my body is telling me that it wants something. Maybe that's what's been going on this week.

Actually, I remember that I was craving falafel last weekend. It didn't work out; the place I went to was closed, and I ate something entirely different. But when I was going home hungry late Thursday night, I got an urge for hummus. So I grabbed some preservative-free ready-to-eat hummus, pita, and a cucumber at the Wallingford QFC, and went home and ate a light late-night meal.

Friday night, when talking about dinner with a colleague of mine, I suggested a couple of restaurant choices, one of which was Vios Cafe, probably Seattle's best Greek restaurant. I brought another friend along, too. So I had two nights in a row of pita... but wait, there was more! I still had to use up my hummus and pita from the supermarket, so Saturday's lunch was familiar.

You'd think that'd be enough, but with two more pita to go, I realized today that the hummus wouldn't be the end of things.

After having a semi-Cajun lunch at the Pike Place Market, and indulging on little donuts not long after, I thought it would be nice to have a simple dinner tonight. I went to the gym to work off some of the damage, and bought some big marinated gigandes beans and grilled marinated artichokes to take home.

I roasted a red pepper, made a little cucumber salad, and brought out some pickled peperoncini from the refrigerator. Even though the pita are store-bought, I used the restaurant trick of refreshing the bread by grilling the pita a bit, which made them soft and fluffy again. Then I brushed the pita with really good olive oil, which just makes them indulgent.

I still have some of the gigandes and the grilled artichokes, but now that I've finished up the pita, I think I've satisfied any lingering cravings for flatbread. Maybe tomorrow I'll make a little farro.