Lake Trail

A recipe inspired by Okinawan and Mediterranean food culture for a long and happy life. (Rcp# 27)

Ingredients for ‘Lake Trail’

• General ingredients and equipment you will need:
  • Canola oil (mild)
  • 2 ½ liter of homemade broth (see recipe at [Vegetable Broth])
  • Salt (stone salt, mild)
  • Medium sized coated pan (to work without oil while frying)
  • 3 pots (one rather flat with 2 l cooking space and two with 3 – 4 l cooking space)
• Ingredients for Scenery 1: ‘Blooming Bushes on the Shore’
  • 2 large garden cucumbers (400 g = about 200 g each with peel and seeds)
  • 2 tablespoons apple vinegar
  • 1 large ginger toe
  • 7 dried apricots (pitted)
  • 1 tablespoon aronia berries (or any other local edible dark berries)
  • 1 tablespoon date sweet (or 5 dates, dried and pitted)
  • 1 teaspoon of rosemary in olive oil (see [The Princess of Oil Fruit] for instructions)
• Ingredients for Scenery 2: ‘The Fields’
  • 30 small to medium kale leaves
  • 150 g hoccaido pumpkin flesh (no skin, no seeds, fresh or frozen)
  • 120 – 150 g of tobinambur
  • ground caraway
• Ingredients for Scenery 3: ‘The Woods’
  • 700 g red carrots
  • 350 g green beans (for example bush beans)
  • 2 teaspoons herbs in oil (mine contains oregano, thyme, bush basil, tender ginger greens, dandelion and broad-leaved plantain, see [The Princess of Oil Fruit] for instructions on how to make it)
  • 1 medium rosemary twig
• Ingredients for Scenery 4: ‘Bolders and Pebbles on the Beach’
  • 350 – 400 g sweet potatoes (two big potatoes)
  • 350 – 400 g beetroot (mix, for example: kohlrabi, yellow or orange beetroot, cabbage beet)
  • (plant-based) butter
• Ingredients for Scenery 5: ‘The Jetty on the Lake’
  • 300 – 350 g shitake mushrooms (as small and fresh as possible)
  • 100 – 150 g salty-smoked protein source (made from soy, mushrooms, edible sweet lupines etc. or smoked boneless fish)
• Ingredients for Scenery 6: ‘The Lake’
  • 1 teaspoons of ginger in oil (see [The Princess of Oil Fruit] for instructions)

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Preparations for ‘Lake Trail’

• Cooking Instructions for Scenery 1: ‘Blooming Bushes on the Shore’ (needs to be prepared 1 – 2 days in advance)

1. Wash and peel the cucumber, radish and ginger (keep the radish peel). Cut the cucumber in half (lengthwise) and scoop out the seeds with a spoon (looks like four little canoes after). Cut each radish into four quarters (halving and halving), then slice the pieces (between 0,5 and 1 cm thick). Cut the cucumber ‘canoes’ into slices (1 – 1 ½ cm thick). Cut the ginger into very small pieces.
2. Roast the radish slices with the ginger bits and 2 tablespoons of canola oil in a shallow (2 liter) saucepan. Saute on medium heat until the radish is tender (about 8 – 10 minutes) then reduce the heat to minimum.
3. Cut the apricots into small pieces (0,5 x 0,5 cm) and add them to the pot, along with the cucumber slices, 1 teaspoon of salt, the apple vinegar and the freshly ground pepper.
4. Pour 500 ml of hot water in, heat up and bring to a boil. Boil for 5 minutes, then lower the heat and simmer for 15 minutes over medium heat.
5. Remove from heat and add date sweet, aronia berries and rosemary in oil. Allow to cool completely and refrigerate for 1 – 2 days.

• Cooking Instructions for Scenery 2: ‘The Fields’ (must be prepared fresh)

1. Wash cabbage leaves and cut off stems (keep stems and set aside). Cut the leaves into pieces (as you would cut a lettuce into pieces that fit in your mouth). Wash, peel and slice the tobinambur (you will need pieces of the same size). Dice the hoccaido flesh (it should be maximum twice the size of the tobinambur slices).
2. Sauté the chopped cabbage leaves with canola oil in a large pot (3 – 4 l cooking space). Place them in layers, sprinkling each layer with a little canola oil (about 1-2 tablespoons for each layer). Saute over medium heat until the amount is reduced to about 1/5 of the original filling of the fresh leaves (yes, they will shrink).
3. Add the tobinambur pieces to the pot and cover all generously with broth. Simmer over medium heat for 10 minutes, then add the pumpkin cubes and simmer for another 10 minutes.

• Cooking Instructions for Scenery 3: ‘The Woods’ (can be prepared 1 – 2 days ahead)

1. Brush and slice the red carrots (set aside the front and back of the carrots). Wash and cut the green beans into 1 ½ cm pieces.
2. Heat up the pot with 3 tablespoons of canola oil to a medium temperature with the rosemary twig(s) in it (don’t burn). Add the carrots in 3 tablespoons and saute them. When they are tender but still have a ‘little bite’, add the beans plus 3 tablespoons of broth and saute everything together over low heat for 10 minutes.
3. Turn off the heat and add the herbs in oil.

• Cooking Instructions for Scenery 4: ‘Bolders and Pebbles on the Beach’ (must be prepared fresh)

1. Brush the sweet potato and the beets. Cut out any bad spots, but leave the peel on. Then slice both the sweet potatoes and the beets (about 1 ½ cm thick).
2. Pour the rest of the broth into a pot (the liquid should be down to about 1,5 liters) and heat it along with the cabbage stalks, the carrot tops and the radish peel. When it comes to a boil, add the beet slices and simmer over medium heat for 8-10 minutes.
3. Add the sweet potato slices. If the broth does not cover everything, add a little boiling water to just cover the contents. Simmer for 10-15 minutes (sweet potato and beets should be tender but still have a little bite). Move the slices frequently in the pot so that they can receive equal shares of heat and liquid. Carefully monitor the heating up of Scenery 3 and the preparation of Scenery 5 (below), so that they can be served warm together. Remove the beet and potato slices and serve on a platter with dollops of (plant-based) butter. Keep the broth, leaving the two carrots, the pumpkin peel and two chunks of beet in it (you will need them for Scenery 6).

• Cooking Instructions for Scenery 5: ‘The Jetty on the Lake’ (must be prepared fresh on the spot)

1. Clean the shitake mushrooms. If you cannot get small mushrooms, remove the stalks (cut off the dark slice at the end, as with all larger mushrooms) and quarter the heads. Cut the salt-smoked protein source
2. Heat a non-stick pan (no oil). Sauté the shitake mushrooms over medium heat until they have shrunk to their final size (the liquid is out and is now in the pan).
3. Add the sliced protein source (tofu, fish, or other) and heat both together until the protein source is heated throughout.

• Cooking Instructions for Scenery 6: ‘The Lake’ (must be prepared fresh on the spot)

1. Take the two red carrots, the pumpkin peel and two slices of beets from the cooking broth of Scenery 4 and cut them into pieces suitable for a soup spoon (small).
2. Strain the broth (remove all solids) and heat it in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and add the pieces of red carrot, pumpkin peel and beet (from Scenery 4) and two tablespoons of shitake mushrooms (no fish). Let everything simmer together for 5 minutes together, then turn off the heat and remove the pot from the stove.
3. Add the ginger in oil and a pinch of salt.

Makes 5 – 7 servings.

Please note: You must make Scenery 1 ahead of time, because the cucumber salad needs time to settle. Scenery 1 is served cold. Scenery 3 can be made in advance and be reheated. If you keep it in the refrigerator, cover it. Add three tablespoons of broth to Scenery 3 before heating it (parallel to the preparation of Scenery 5). Also, after turning off the heat, add one tablespoon of olive oil.

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Side Notes:

• We tried salted and smoked tilapia in this recipe. As keeping with Okinawan food style, we used only a small amount of fish per person, like a condiment. It worked very well. The tilapia came from responsible fishing. Also, tilapia is a fish that is very good for ecological fish farming because it is very resilient (when given good food and its fair share of space, of course) and will convert any food into almost the same amount of body mass. I drew this wisdom from a children’s book about good food and nutrition in my favorite library. Oh yeah, and I chose the shitake mushrooms instead of other typical local dark mushrooms because they are actually grown here.
• As I wrote in the post accompanying this recipe, I made this dish a subject of true fusion cooking: part Okinawan, part Mediterranean, part my style and based on previous recipes from this blog, plus part traditional northern cooking. So the idea of using a bitter cucumber came from Okinawa, but the inspiration for this salad came from a specialty made in my grandmother’s family called “Azia Cucumbers”. They used to prepare it every year from big cucumbers out of their own garden in the backyard, and I loved it as a kid. There is also a little bit of my California heritage in here, because sweet potatoes remind me of Thanksgiving, which is coming up. Of course, this dish is at its best when you have good friends or family over. That’s why I made it a little bigger this time.
• The idea with the sceneries came from my husband (thank you, my dear). He ate the components of the dish and said: “Wow, this is like walking through a landscape with different types of scenery lined up.”
  Later I added the idea of the lake (Scenery 6), which is a reflection of the whole landscape around it. This also gave the dish its name.