Thank you everyone for the kind comments and wonderful suggestions on my 1st Blogiversary Giveaway post and I wish you all good luck. In case you have missed the post, you can still enter to win the giveaway ($50/$25/$25 gift card) until the 15th. Please read the details on the giveaway post.
Also, some of you might have realized that this post is published on Thursday. This year I decided to publish two posts a week on Mondays and Thursdays. As a part of my new year resolution, I am trying to be a little more healthy by going to bed early and spending my free time for exercise instead of sitting in front of computer! I hope this will help me improve my lifestyle and become healthier. Have you made any new year resolution?
My mom is visiting till Sunday so my day’s occupied by taking her to fabric stores (she’s a quilter and teaches quilting in Japan) and shopping between my kids’ school and extracurricular activities, so please forgive me with my slower than usual response to your emails and questions. I promise I will get to them as soon as I can.
It looks like a lot of food bloggers are sharing healthy meals and recipes in January to help people lose those holiday pounds (which I also need help with). I had received a lot of requests for vegetable dishes so I’ll be sharing a popular Japanese veggie dish today.
Kinpira Gobo is a traditional Japanese dish often enjoyed at home and you might be familiar with it since it’s typically served in bento box from Japanese markets. It’s really easy to cook if you have all the ingredients (and these are very common ingredients for Japanese household). The most tedious part is that you have to julienne both gobo (burdock root) and carrot, and if you are not used to chopping veggies, it might be challenging (but of course you don’t have to be so precise). Kinpira means a cooking style that you stir fry and simmer with sugar and soy sauce. The most common ingredients used for Kinpira is gobo and carrot, but lotus root is another common ingredient for this cooking style. My recipe is a very simple one which children can enjoy. It’s optional to add chili to make this dish spicy which also tastes really delicious.
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- 1 gobo (burdock root)
- ⅓ carrot
- 1 Tbsp neutral flavor oil (vegetable, canola, etc)
- 2 tsp sesame oil (roasted)
- 1 Tbsp white sesame seeds (roasted/toasted)
- Ichimi Togarashi (Japanese chili pepper) (optional)
- Korean Chili Thread (optional)
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Gather all the ingredients.
- Peel gobo’s skin with peeler or traditionally we scrape (peel) the skin off with the back of kitchen knife. Then diagonally slice thinly so that each piece is about 2 inch length. Then collect some of the slices and cut into thin matchbox strips. Soak the gobo in water or vinegar water (just one drop of vinegar would do). Change water a couple of times until the water becomes clean. Then leave the gobo in water until you are ready to stir fry.
- Cut carrots into matchbox strips.
- In a frying pan, heat the oil over medium high heat and stir fry gobo first. Then add carrot next after you cook gobo for a few minutes.
- Add the ingredients for the seasonings and cook until most of liquid evaporates.
- When the liquid is almost gone, add sesame oil and sprinkle sesame seeds and ichimitogarashi.
Recipe by Namiko Chen of Just One Cookbook. All images and content on this site are copyright protected. Please do not use my images without my permission. If you’d like to share this recipe on your site, please re-write the recipe in your own words and link to this post as the original source. Thank you.
