May is bamboo season. Japanese cuisine is often very seasonal and some ingredients are only available at certain times of the year. Although you may not get your favorite food all year round, eating in Japan remains at least varied and exciting. You are always happy when it is finally time for certain dishes again, and the food itself is always something special.
And that's exactly how it is with bamboo, of which actually only the shoots end up in the kitchen. This spring again, we had the great fortune and some Takenoko (that's what they call bamboo shoots over here) have found their way to us. Bamboo comes in different varieties and the shoots here ine in front of us belong to specimens of the bamboo family, which can grow several meters high, especially in the first year. Of course, this means that won't be any space for grwowing them in planter, but I am sure they would make a good impression in front of or behind your own house. By the way, bamboo grows like wild, so you better be careful and think twice before planting bamboo in your garden.
But since we don't have a garden, the bamboo shoots ended up in the kitchen, where they were skillfully processed. Depending on your mood, you can prepare a variety of things from it, especially popular with us is a dish called Tousani. Here, the bamboo is first boiled until soft and then steeped in a broth of water, soy sauce, mirin, dashi powder and a little sugar. Also important is a little Katsubushi, those small flakes of dried and smoked Bonito fish, which give the whole a slightly smoky flavor.
In addition, we tried our hand at takegohan, bamboo rice. We put small pieces of already pre-cooked Takenoko together with the local specialty Koshihikari rice in the rice cooker, added some broth and let them simmer together for a while. A delicious little change from the almost everyday white rice, which of course I also do not want to miss.
Dish number 3 has no special name, but I just call it yakitake, fried bamboo. For this we fried some precooked pieces of Takenoko with a little butter or margarine and some seasoning in the frying pan. Very tasty, it recently became my favorite way of using Takenoko.
As you can see from the photo, I got to enjoy all three variations at the same time, treating myself to a delicious yet healthy dinner.
Unfortunately, the Takenoko time is only short, since the bamboo grows simply too fast to be used for eating. Therefore, we need to wait until next year, but fortunately until then there will always be something delicious on the table. At least we won't run out of rice anytime soon, so we should definitely get enough to eat. So there's no need to worry at all.
I hope you will have something tasty on your plates today, too. And in addition as much sun in front of the door as we get offered today. That way we should have a pretty decent Wednesday after all.
γΎγγ matane