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You barely even had to ask, @more-berry!

First, here are some pictures from Nana's limited release cookbook that was published a couple of years ago.

So Nana's cooking is philosophy as much as practice. It's about making the best use of all your ingredients. It's about recipes that are delicious because they're wholesome and wholesome because they're delicious. This is different from "health food", which focuses on limiting fat/sugar/whatever. Nana was never afraid to oil a pan or sweeten a sauce, but never to excess. The "teri" in teriyaki means sweet, so Thursday bento required a sauce made with brown sugar. But it was never as sweet as store-bought sauce, because it didn't need to be. The sauce was flavorful because of the richness of the ingredients.

And this all starts with a simple vegetable stock.

Here's the recipe as it appears in the cookbook, but below is my recollection of how we did it in the restaurant. I'm positive that we never used onion and garlic in the broth. Nana once told me that she didn't want people to have too much onion or garlic at lunch and then have to go back to work with that on their breath.

Ingredients per 4 cups/1L water:

1 large carrot, big as you please (peeled and chopped)

As much celery as carrot (rinsed)

A thumb-sized piece of ginger (scrape off the skin with the edge of a spoon)

1 handspan-sized sheet of Kombu (dried kelp, it's a thick, leathery seaweed)

2 Shitake (dried)

Optional: At least one clove of garlic (cut off the butt-end with a knife, then smash it against your cutting board to make the rest of the skin easy to peel)

Optional: onion makes soup taste better, so peel and slice up, I dunno, 1 medium onion?

It doesn't need to be precise; you're not running a restaurant. You can also use the nubs of any scallions you cut, or any other kitchen scraps you choose. And if you live somewhere without reasonable access to kombu or shitake, you can leave them out without ruining the recipe. They're like the tuba in the orchestra; you'll get the same song, but it will be missing a certain depth.

Low-medium boil (some bubbles, not a lot) for a few hours until the carrots taste like basically nothing.

Strain the broth into another pot where it can gradually lose its heat.

Compost the ginger, carrots and celery (Nana would say they're so cooked they can't even be composted, but I disagree).

Keep the kombu and shitake! Put them into a small pot, add enough soy sauce to cover, and cook on medium-low to reduce the liquid until there's just a little left. I call this shoyukombu (shoyu means soy sauce).

Put the shoyukombu in a food processor (or a bullet blender) and blitz it into paste. This umami paste is more flavorful than soy sauce, and you can add it to rice like a little black button on top.

The shoyukombu is just one example of how this stock is foundational to almost every one of Nana's recipes. It's got some natural umami from the fungi and protista, but on its own there's absolutely nothing remarkable about it. It's an ingredient.

Nana's Miso Soup

1:16 miso paste to broth (or 1 tablespoon miso per 1 cup broth)

Like 5-10 of 1cm cubes of firm tofu

Heat the broth in a pot (microwave is fine, but fire is good for the soul) and stir in the miso paste.

Nana used white miso, but red is fine too. I've tried other soybean pastes and they don't taste quite the same, but the plastic tubs aren't priced at a premium so do as you will.

It's good hot or cold, any time of day. When we had extra soup at the end of the day, I would take it home with me and drink it the next morning as part of my breakfast. Out of a cup, like it was morning coffee.

What should I do next?

Chicken Miso Ramen and Inari Udon

Sesame Chicken or Tofu

(surprise me)

Voting ended onAug 5, 2025

#Culinary arts #nana's japanese cafe #japanese food #simple recipes #veganfood #vegetarian #teachblr #I'm not a vegan or a vegetarian but I do eat a hell of a lot of vegetables