Simple food for summer

Today (Wednesday 6^th August) was ridiculously hot in Tokyo.  This is not weather for humans.  This is weather for lizards. 

One of my students told me that before she came to my flat in Nerima to take an English lesson, she found a woman in the train station toilets who had collapsed because of heat exhaustion.  She was waiting to be taken away by ambulance.  If you are in Japan over the summer, take care and remember to take lots of fluid. 

A few weeks ago I promised to write down a recipe.  I am not sure that the type of food I cook will be popular amongst many of my students.  It is very simple.  I decided to stop eating meat at home, although I still cook fish.  I don’t add any salt, sake or soy sauce when cooking, although I often use lemon juice, yuzu or salsa dressing to flavour food. 

But maybe such simple food is particularly suited to summer.  If it is very hot it is nice to eat fresh-tasting dishes, which are not thick or covered in sauce. 

So I will give a brief recipe for a very simple dish below, and hope that at least one person tries it and can tell me how they enjoyed it.  This will serve two people: 

Buy two packs of natto (fermented soy beans).  Buy one cucumber, a pack of mizuma (a leafy vegetable; lettuce would also be okay).  Buy a carrot, some baby tomatoes, some salsa sauce (this is a Mexican sauce which is red and is a little spicy; you can find it in some Japanese supermarkets).  Buy a bag of Doritos (I think that is a brand name but basically it is a kind of Mexican snack made from corn).  Cook some white rice as well. 

First, let’s make the salad.  After washing the vegetables, cut the mizuna into small pieces and put it in a bowl.  Then grate one carrot and add this to the bowl.  I recommend using organic carrots.  I can’t taste the difference between some organic vegetables and cheap supermarket ones but I can really taste the difference with carrots. 

Anyway, next cut the baby tomatoes into quarters and add them to the salad.  Then add in the salsa sauce.  Add as much as you like.  I usually add about five tablespoons of salsa. 

Now let’s make the curry.  This is very different from a typical Japanese curry.  This will be a soup curry which we will pour on top of the rice and natto, a little bit like ocha-zuke.  It’s also really, really easy. The salad will be a little spicy so I don’t use much curry rue.  Put two pieces of the rue into a pot.  Now boil the kettle and pour in some hot water.  I don’t use a measuring cup but I guess about three cups of hot water will be enough.  Next, chop the cucumber into small cubes and add this to the curry.  Mix the rue until it has melted. 

Put some cooked rice into two bowls and add one pack of natto to the top of each.  Now pour the soup curry on top of each.  Eat it with a spoon. 

Finally, add the Doritos to the salad.  You have to add it at the end because otherwise it will become soggy.  Divide it into two and it is ready to eat.

 Enjoy!

 

Vocabulary:

Ridiculously hot – Crazily hot.

A lizard – A kind of animal.  It has cold blood.

Heat exhaustion – If you stay in a hot place for a long time and become ill, then you are probably suffering from heat exhaustion.

Fluid – Liquid.  Water is a fluid.

To be suited to something – To match something; to go well with something.

Organic – If something is organic then it is grown without using many chemicals.  It is grown using a more natural method.

Typical – Ordinary or usual.

To melt – To become a liquid.  If ice becomes hot, then it melts into water.

Soggy – If something hard becomes soft when it is wet, then we can say it is soggy.