Thursday, December 07, 2006

okara "potato" salad

Part of tonight's dinner, a "potato" salad made with okara (soy bean curd lees). I found this recipe on the okara package and changed it here and there. It is really easy to make.

Okara "Potato" Salad :serves 4

120g okara
1/2 cucumber, sliced thinly
1/2 a carrot, sliced thinly
1/2 teaspoon salt
pepper
A few slices of ham, cubed
1 tablespoon plain yogurt--no sugar added
1 tablespoon mayonnaise

1. Put the cucumber and carrot in a bowl and sprinkle salt on to it. Let sit for about 3 minutes to draw the liquid out 

2. Take veggies, rinse and squeeze out as much of the water as possible.

3. Add ham, okara, salt, pepper

4. Add yogurt and mayo. Mix well.

Enjoy!

NOTES: You can use whatever veggies you usually put into your regular potato salad (if you use frozen peas and carrots, just omit the salting (Step 1)). This recipe is good because okara has no distinct flavor of its own so it actually tastes like there are potatoes in the salad, even if there aren't! Oh, and if you make it the night before, you can come home from work and just heat up your main dish....Dinner is served!

I also wanted to share with you something that occurs during autumn--A lot of people dry their kaki (persimmons). I've often seen them hanging off their lanais, but this was the first time I got to actually try some. My student, Kazumi, gave me some yesterday, her friend's mom dried them. Apparently, they had so many kaki, that her friend's mom was peeling kaki almost everyday!

It was interesting to see up close, they use nylon type rope and stick the stem of the kaki through the rope to "string" them up. The kaki is sweet and reminds me of dried apricots. Just be careful of the pits, they are quite hard!

4 comments:

  1. We have dried persimmon in Korean too, though I don't know how farmers dry them. I like dried persimmon, but I haven't had it for a long time.
    Apparently if you have too much persimmon in one day, it can cause constipation. :)

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  2. I didn't know that about persimmons, Sue. Thanks for the tip.

    Hope you are having a great week.

    Kat

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  3. i love dried persimmon and had some from a hawaiian friend that sprinkled something first on them (i don't know what it was but it was from hawaii) then put them in his dehydrator. they were so yum. i had tons of fresh kaki (they call these "kaki" in france too) at my mom's. she has a tree that produced millions of them. we were calling her tree the persimillion tree :P and spent lots of time delivering kaki to our friends and relatives. a good opportunity for my visiting too.

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  4. Hi Bourgogne,

    I wonder what was sprinkled on top? Maybe "li hing" powder? It is a kind of sweet/sour flavoring that people in Hawaii enjoy. Persimillion that is funny! :)

    Take care!

    Kat

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