Do you know one of Japanese comfort food called Menchi katsu?
Sounds weird? Yes it is. I didn't realized that the name from(maybe) Minced meat Cutlets.
Menchi Katsu is a popular deli item like crockets.As the original name in English, minced meat (mostly chicken)with some vegetables fried with cutlets crust. 
Sounds so meaty? Yes.. but this vegan version won't make you feel missing something.
The recipes are with easy Tonkatsu( pork cutlets, very popular dinner menu, we usually have special sauce) sauce too.Normally making tonkatsu sauce takes time forever but this is a quick version.
 <Ingredients>2 servings
*Tofu cutlets filling
Tofu about 200 g, crushed and mushed by hand.
Green onion 1-2 pieces, very thin sliced 
Garlic 1 clove, chopped in very small
Mushrooms 2-3 pieces diced in very small
Flour 1 Tablespoon
Soy milk or almond milk 1/4 cup
Nutmeg
Salt and pepper

*For the Crust
Flax seed, ground, 2 Table spoons + 1 cup water, leave it for at least 15 min
Flour for dusting, as your need
Panko(bread crumb) for breading, as you need
Frying oil.

*Tonkatsu sauce (easy version)
Apple sauce, 1/4 cup
Dijon, 1/2 Table spoon
Tomato paste, 1/4 cup
Balsamic vinegar, 2 Tea spoons
Agave or Maple syrup or sugar, as your sweetness, I added agave 1 Table spoon
Tamarind 1/2 teaspoon(optional.But when you add this, the taste would be very special)
Cinnamon 1/8 tea spoon
Soy sauce 2 tea spoons
Veggie Stock 1/2 cup
Bay leaf 2pieces
Garlic, 1 cloves, minced​
Tahini 1 Table spoon
Salt and pepper
<Method>
Make Tonkatsu sauce.Get the all ingredients in a small pot and heat it up, keep stirling.
Once the sauce got thick, stop the heat and set aside.
Make the filling. Put tofu paste and green onion, garlic in a bowl.Fry the chopped mushroom lightly, put salt and pepper, and add it in the tofu mixture.Add nutmeg and Soy or almond milk, mix well, add flour and mix until the mixture get slightly sticky.
Make the mixture in shapes. It would be the best medal shape. Easy to cook.
Make your breadding station. All crust ingredients separate in containers.
Put the filling in this order : flour, flax seed water, bread crumb.
Heat up the frying oil as 350 F and fry them. 9-12 min each side until the surface got golden brown.
Put the cutlet and sauce in a plate. 

I got green tempeh from Tempea foods.It is their new product - Edamame and pumpkin seed tempeh.
It has nice flavor, as well as colour is beautiful.
I was thinking a recipe with keeping nice green colour.
Then made this.
Inspired by "Nanban zuke".Nanban means white barbarian(haha) but the word is pretty old when Portugal arrived in Japan for spreading their religions. Many of things arrived with them called "nanban". Food with Curry taste, chinese inspired, portugal style egg cake..etc. 
Anyways. "Nanban zuke" is kind of chinese style dish, it is way less oil than the chinese ones, and usually make it with fried sardines and other white meat fish.   
Put the fried fish in vinegary sauce with sliced vegetables.
The crust getting soggy? That is the best point to Japanese.
We like soggy crust. The crust sucks sauce is very good matching with rice.Sounds gross? Try it. You will like it.
However. I wrote this recipe less soggy. But still soggy.

<Ingredients>2 servings
*Sauce
Vinegar, 3 Tablespoons
Soy sauce, 2 Table spoons
Agave or maple syrup, 1 Table spoons(if you like sweet taste, add 2-3 T)
Dashi stock (or water), 1/2 cup 
Salt to taste

*Fried tempeh
Tempeh (Edamame one or regular), 300g, sliced in 8/1 inch thin
Corn starch, less than 2 cups
Frying oil (I will recommend coconuts oil) As you need

*Sliced veggies
Onion 1/4 piece, slice very thin 
Yellow or red pepper 1/4 piece, slice very thin julian
Carrot, celery, green onion, as your choice.
Salt

<Method>
Put all vegetables in a heatproof bowl and salt, set aside.
Boil all ingredients for the sauce.
When it reached boiling, stop heat, pour hot liquid into the veggies in the bowl.
Fry the tempeh.
Heat up frying oil. Dust the tempeh with cornstarch.
Once the oil reached high heat, fry the tempeh.
Watching the heat, be patient.It will take time to get the surface completely dry.
When the tempeh fried, put them on a plate.
Put vegetables, then pour sauce very end.

Dashi stock.
Sounds complicated?
It is pretty simple.
There are a few method to get it better, but I will write simplest method here.

2 inch by 1/2 ich kelp
2 litteres of water.
If you like to get more umami, add a few pieces of dried shiitake. 
Boil a piece of Konbu( and shiitake)  from cold water, once it reached boiling, stop heat and leave it for a while.
Konbu will be slimy so take it out when it's cool down.
You can keep it in your freezer or fridge.

Curry Udon.
Udon is Japanese wheat noodle. You can get it as frozen, or dry, or raw. Or you can make it at home id you like, but it will be a lot of work.
Usually we make curry udon when we made Japanese curry and got leftover next day.
This time.. you can get double recipe. Curry and curry udon.However. It is just add dashi stock to the curry. Pretty simple.
I added tempeh for the topping, however you can substitute it as tofu.
Keeping tempeh in your freezer is very handy. Whenever you need protein for your meal, you can add it on. If you are in Vancouver, I'd recommend to have tempeh from Tempeafoods
<Ingredients>
Onion, mideum size, 1/2 piece, sliced
Garlic, 1-2 cloves, crushed
Ginger 1/4 inch, chopped
Carrot 1 small size, cut in pieces
Potato (Yellow or purple) 1, cut in pieces
Bayleaf, 3 pieces
Shitake mashrooms, a few small ones
Okura(optonal)
Curry powder 1/4 cup
Miso, 1/4 cup
Soy sauce, 3 Table spoon
Tomato paste, 3 Table spoon
Dashi stock : 3 litters + 1 litter separate or vegetable stock
Corn starch, 3 table spoons, add 1/2 cup water and set aside
Green onion (optional), chop in small
Tempeh(optional), cut in small pieces, fried
Udon( dry or wet), cook in last minute
Oil, salt and pepper
<Method>
In a deep thick pot, stir fry sliced Onions until they got slightly caramelized, add garlic and ginger, potatoes and carrots.
Once carrots and potatoes got cooked, add curry powder and mix well, then add dashi stock(or veggie stock) and reach to boil.
Change the heat as mideum heat, add tomato paste and miso, soysauce, mushrooms and okura.
Cook it for a while, and add cornstarch mixture and stir. Add good amount of salt. Likely 3 Table spoons.
You can add sweetner like sugar or mirin, I don't really like taste too sweet personally, I didn't add sweetner.
It will get good thickness after you added the corn starch mixture, if you want to have curry rice, just have it with rice.
If you like curry udon, add little more stock.
Cook udon and put in a bowl, then add the curry sauce. 

<Ingredients> *about 2 serving
Sunchoke, about 1 lb 3-4 pieces
Cucumber, cut in cubes , or your choice, salted
Raddish, very thin slice, put in cold water 
Vegan mayonaise 1/2 cup 
Salt and pepper
Vegan mayo recipe: Here is some good recipes from Minimalist baker and Seitan is my motor
​
<Method>
Wash the sunchokes. Use scrubby, just take off the dirts.
Put sunchokes in a pot, pour water to cover them, add 1 table spoon of salt, heat up the water.
Once they boiled, take them out from the pot and cool them down. Cut in small sizes with skin.
Put the sunchokes, cucumber and mayo, toss well.
Make taste with salt and pepper, put sliced radishes on top.

Just finished my event last Monday.
It was 3rd edition, my event called "Far East" (#fareastyvr) and the theme was " Roots and culture", I used lots of roots vegetables and culturing(fermented) methods for the menu.
This event's base theme is Japanese Monk food - They forage, farm, culture food. Respect to the season, appreciate the nature. Inspired by those monk food method and theory.

The largest part of collecting ingredients and getting menu ideas are foraging. Forest inspires me a lot.
What is interesting about foraging(wild crafting) is "discovery".
Forest isn't like wholefoods , you CAN'T find whatever you want. Because some of plants are very seasonal and only short time, as well as we never can expect they will be the same spot every year. However instead of what you couldn't find exact ingredients, you can discover new ingredients and ideas.
I always ask Museum eats( Camille Flanjak, the lady on the photo) when I had questions for the wild ingredients. This time is second time to get foraging together with her for Far East. I constantly join her workshops personally. Good things about foraging besides picking plants are being in nature, feel, think about ecology, remember childhood memories.
She teaches guests not only what kind of plants are edible, also telling us story of lands, ecology, science of plants, and more.
 ​

Over all. The event was successful. Thank you for everyone helped at this event, of course my guests, and special thank you for Tempea foods. Thank you for providing tasty tempeh.
Check it out #cookhatter 's facebook page and instagram as well.

What makes your everyday avocado toast special?
The answer would be some things. Sauce.Fresh ingredients.Bread.Good preparations.
I made the best avocado on toast.Ever.
As usual, with Japanese twist.
The sauce is basically salsa verde, but used Japanese ingredients.
For the tomatillo..you may be able to find them at Mexican grocery store or wholefoods.
It is the best to use them because flavour is wonderful.
Shishito is Japanese green peppers, their heat is mild and has good flavor.
Yuzu, Japanese citrus, you can sub Mayers lemon instead.Or just simply, lime.
Shungiku.This is edible chrisantemum leaves.
Sometimes Western people call it Shinjuku, but it is wrong.I don't know who started call them as Shinjuku, Shinjuku is a name of a city of Tokyo.Everytime when I hear it I want to laugh but I haven't corrected it. You can find them at Japanese or Korean market.If you couldn't find them, use cilantro.
And the bread.
I used bread from Vancouver's popular baker Annabel Choi's Companion bread.
When I got home with it, my room was filled with smell of freshly baked bread.Happy moment.
They sell their breads on Sundays at Juice truck's store. Check it out.

<Ingredients>1-2 serving
*For the sauce
Tomatillo 3-4 small ones, cut in half 
Onion      1/4 piece, roughly slice
Shishito   3 pieces roughly cut.Don't worry about deseed.
Garlic      2, clushed
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
​Shungiku or cilantro good amount, as you like
Yuzu extract or Mayers lemon juice 2 Tablespoons 

*Avocado on toast
Avocado, 1piece, cut in small cubes and salted, put yuzu extract or mayers lemon juice
Purple daikon, small piece, thin julian, or as you like.Thin is the best. Salted
Greens
Bread 1-2 slices
Salt and pepper
Olive oil

<Method>
Perheat oven 400F
Put everything for the Salsa verde ingredients besides citrus and shungiku(cilantro) in a bowl, toss with olive oil, salt and pepper. Put the olive oil coated salsa verde ingredients on a pan with a piece of baking sheet and roast off about 10-15 min until the heat get through in everything, remove from the heat.
When it's cool down, add shungiku or cilantro and blend them with blender. Add citrus juice and make the taste with salt and pepper.Set aside.
Toast slice of bread, put olive oil on.
Put Salsa verde on the toast, then avocado cubes, fresh greens, purple daikon, finish with olive oil and salt and pepper. Bon appetito.  

​

Soba salad is pretty popular in western Japanese restaurants.
Most of them are using vinaigrette, mine is a little bit more like "soba meal".

<Ingredients, serving for 1-2 >
<soba>
Soba noodle, dried , 1-2 bunch
<salad>
Dried lily flower (optional) , small hand full
Carrot, cut in julian( like sticks)
Kelp, 2 inch long, 1/2 inch wide
Soy sauce 2 Table spoon
Agave 1 Table spoon
​Salt 1 teaspoon
Purple daikon, or raddish , small piece, thinly sliced
Asparagus, 3-4 pieces, cut the bottom edge
Green beans 5-6 pieces, prepared( cut the top)
Fresh greens, as your amount
pumpkin seed, sesame seed, small amount for topping
Salt, finishing olive oil
<salad sauce>
Tahini, 2 Tablespoons
Miso, 1 Tablespoon
Dashi stock (see last post.Kelp infused water) 
Soy sauce, 1 Tablespoon
Salt, 1 Tea spoon

<Method>
Stew the lily flowers. Rinse them lightly and put them in a pot, cover with water.
Put kelp and heat up with medium high heat.
Once it boiled, turn the heat into low.  

Lily flower in water.

 Christian world is Easter now and people may cook birds and hunting eggs..but this Omelette is without eggs.
Omuraisu is another popular comfort food in Japan. The name came from Omelette (and) rice.
The inside of rice is mostly ketchup rice, but can be other sort of fried rice.
When I make this recipe, I tried to use just Tofu, flour and corn starch,and a little bit of oil, it wasn't succeed.The texture wasn't the best, the omelette was too soft to flip.
Many people uses chickpea flour for omelette, but I didin't want to make complicated recipe so just tried using simplest ingredients.
I was thinking about the texture - How can I get the curdle-y, sort of gel-ish texture like cooked eggs.
Then tried adding Agar agar. I assumed it would be cooked while cooking the omelette.
Then it was succeed.The inside is curdle-ish, outside is crispy.
Here is the recipe. With Japanese-y tomato sauce.

<ingredients, 2 servings>
<Omelette >
Silk tofu about 1 cup
Soy milk or other neutral milk 1/4 cup
Flour 2 Tbsp
Corn starch 1 Tbsp
Agar agr 2 Teaspoon
Frying oil
Salt and pepper

< For filling>
Left over cooked rice 2 cups
*Left over vegetables : chopped in small dice. : Optional
Garlic 1 clove, minced
Tomato Ketup or tomato sauce , 2 Tbsp
​Frying oil
Salt and pepper

<Japanese ish tomato sauce>
Tomato paste, 1/2 cup
Celery, 2 steaks, diced
Onion,1/4 piece, diced
Garlic, 1 clove, chopped
Capers, 1 tea spoon
Apple cider vinegar, 2 teaspoon
Kelp, strip,1 inch long, 1/2 inch wide
Water, 1cup  
Agave syrup or other sweetener 2Tbsp (As your taste buds.)
Salt and pepper
<Method>
Make tomato sauce first.
Put water and kelp in a small pot, boil until fully boiled, then leave from the heat,leave it around 15 min and take out the kelp.This is easy dashi stock.
Put all ingredients in the dashi stock pot, then heat up with medium high, when it is bubbling, change the heat as low heat, leave it  20min.
Blend the tomato mixture with hand blender, set aside.

Make the filling.You can do it while you are waiting to done the tomato sauce.
Fry the rice with a little bit of frying oil, if you want it with vegetables, veggies first (does it sound like ladies first?! Dad joke).
Mix in ketchup or tomato sauce with the fried rice, make taste with S+P.   
Put it on a plate, make it like nice small hill.

Make omelette.
Blend all ingredients with hand blender, beside frying oil.If the mixture was too thick, add more neutral milk.Make it as the same texture of pancake dough. 
​Fry the tofu mixture.
Put little bit of oil in a frying pan, put it on medium high heat.
​Ladle the tofu mixture in, about 1/4 cup (4oz). You can eyeball it.
Spread it as your size, change the heat as medium low, wait until the edge looks dry.
Make sure the bottom of tofu mixture was fully fried, then flip. You will get nice crust on the top.
Fry it for 1-2 min or so, put it on the ketchup rice hill.
​Put the tomato sauce.Done.  

-Ingredients: for one serving, the grains would be for 3 -
<for the topping>
Frozen edamame, if you could find without pod..1/2 cup
Tofu, 2 inch long, 1/4 inch thick for pan frying.
Vegetables for roast, slice & line with drizzling olive oil, salt and pepper on a baking sheet with parchment paper.
The vegetables are as you like..
I used zucchini, rainbow carrots, aaasparagus. I’d recommend Kabocha squash, red peppers, mushroom, cauliflower, etc.
Frying oil, salt, pepper
<sauce>
Barsamic vinegar 1 cup
Soy sauce 3Tbsp

<grains>
1/2 cup barley
1/2 cup buckwheat
1/2 cup brown rice

<general info>

*soak them over night works faster to cook, overall, need to soak them at least 2 hours.
*equipment for the cooking grains: A deep pot, it’s the best because it boils over easily.
​

Cook grains.
Wash grains together and put them in a pot.
Add water. Measure the water level as your first finger line when you put your pointing finger the top of grains. I don’t know who told me, but this works for all kinds of grains.
Put the pot on the heat. Medium high with a lid. Watch out boiling over.
In the mean time, roast vegetables with olive oil and salt and pepper with a oven (around 450F, 20 min).
When it reached the boiling point, change the heat to medium low heat and get the lid slight off to evaporate the steam.
After about 20 min, check the pot, if there is no liquid, change the heat as low, simmer down for 10 minutes. You might think this is done but this is the Japanese trick..steaming. Put the lid back on completely close, then steam 5-7 min.
Finally, the grains have been cooked.
​

Fry the edamame beans with oil, salt and pepper. Just fry them quickly with high heat and set aside. Fry the sliced tofu as your doneness.
Put the grains in a bowl, then put edamame on, then sauce lightly on top, vegetables and tofu,sauce again as your good amount.
​Bon appetite.