dinners

The weather has been quite gloomy the past couple of days. Cold and rainy, sometimes kind of blustery.

Since it is getting colder, I've been trying to find ways to put veggies into our meals without having to have "cold" salads.

We had vegetable soup for a couple of days with crusty baguette.

On the day we were finishing up the soup, I also made this side dish with ham, fresh shiitake and spinach. The seasoning is a couple of squirts of tonkatsu sauce and a pat of butter. Super easy and really delicious.

The original recipe uses only shiitake, tonkatsu sauce and butter, but I had leftover ham and spinach that I wanted to use, so I threw that in. It came out just as delicious, though I would probably not use ham the next time, just veggies.

Dinner last night was sauteed pork wrapped pumpkin.

This was my first time trying this recipe, but it was easy and fast.

Sauteed Pork Wrapped Pumpkin Serves 2 adapted from Orange Page's "Aki ni Oishii Kondate"

6 slices thin pork shoulder
6 slices of pumpkin about 1/4-inch thick, cleaned, skins left on
1/2 onion thinly sliced
1 eringi, thinly sliced

Sauce:
1 tablespoon EVOO
1.5 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons shoyu (soy sauce)
2 tablespoons sake (rice wine)

Slice pumpkin 1/4-inch thick
Wrap slice of pork around pumpkin
Heat oil, medium heat
Cook pork 1 minute, turn and cook another minute
Add onion, eringi and sauce
Cover for 3 minutes
Turn pork and cook another 3 minutes
Take cover off and turn heat up to high
Cook until liquid evaporates.
Serve with lots of rice.

NOTES: The pumpkin slices I had were longer than the meat I had, so I cut the pumpkin slice in half and wrapped each piece with pork.

I liked this, though it may be a bit sweet for others with the combination of the pumpkin and the sauce, you may want to cut back the sugar in the sauce if you don't like things too sweet. Since the pan I used doesn't allow heat higher than medium (non-stick), I cooked it on medium until there was just a little liquid left.

How is the weather where you are? What have you been eating for dinner?