HERE I COME!

Fresh from Cait and Miko’s diner with some yummy wakame recipes for you! Wakame (pronounced like wah-kah-may) is a cheap and highly nutritious sea vegetable that is consumed on a daily basis here in Japan, most often in soups. I was running out of ways to cook and eat it, and it was while I was doing a google search for wakame recipes that I first came across Olivia’s site – a fortuitous discovery, as it happened. I never did find any interesting wakame recipes in the end. But nowadays I just bung it in everything. It goes especially well in stir fries. Don’t cook the wakame, as it will lose its nutritional value. Simply soak it for a bit, and then add it to soups or stir fries at the end of cooking.

Here’s a favorite in the diner:
Chop a quarter of an onion and one clove of garlic and saute in canola oil until soft. Add a bag of bean sprouts and a very finely chopped green pepper, and saute for a short time (don’t ever overcook bean sprouts!), together with some beef stock powder or preferably fish stock if you can get it. At the end of cooking, add several strands of soaked and drained wakame. Mix and season to taste. Serve with a bowl of plain boiled rice. If you serve this dish with a bowl of miso soup, you will have a complete and virtually vegetarian meal that is not only healthy, but very very cheap!