炊きこみご飯 (Takikomi gohan)

 

In Japanese language class, I learned about a dish called "takikomi gohan." I found a vegetarian version and made something close to it. This recipe serves 2-3 and takes almost an hour to make (plus 3 hours prep time).

First soak 4-5 dried shiitake mushrooms in 450 ml water for at least 3 hours. (I could only find fresh shiitake, but it did create a stock of some kind.)

Wash 300 g sushi rice 3 or 4 times to get rid of most of the starch.

Mince an onion. Heat 2 tbsp oil in a high pan and fry the onion in it for 8 minutes. Cut 90 g carrot and 150 g smoked tofu into matchsticks. Slice the shiitake. Add all three to the pan. Stir-fry this a couple of minutes. Then add the water in which you soaked the shiitake, as well as 2 tbsp soy sauce, 1 tbsp sake, 1 tbsp mirin, and 1.5 tsp sugar. Bring the whole thing to a boil and simmer 3 minutes. Then use a sieve to drain only the liquid into a measuring cup. You should have at least 340 ml left, top it up with water if need be. (I had plenty more, 400 ml at least, and used all of it.)

Next, put the rice into a big, high pan, then pour the stock over it. Cover and leave alone (no fire) for 15 minutes to soak. Then add the veggies on top —don't stir!— and bring to the boil. This time, cover and simmer for 18 minutes on the lowest possible fire. After that, turn off the fire, but still leave it for another 15 minutes, without taking off the cover; no peeking!

What you're left with is lots of rice, which has soaked up the flavorful stock and the veggie flavors, mixed with delicious fried and soaked veg. If you're not meatless like me, you could also have used chicken breast instead of tofu.

Book review: "Glennkill - Ein Schafskrimi" by Leonie Swann

 

(Note: This book was published in English under the title "Three Bags Full." I read the Dutch translation.)

It wasn't until I was well into adulthood that I really started considering the animals we share this planet with, and their perception of the world. It's why a crow is my Mastodon profile pic, why none of my recipes have meat in them, and why I post a frog on the daily.

Ethical debates about animals typically revolve around the question of how intelligent they are compared to us, and whether they have what we call self-awareness, consciousness, a sense of morality and so on.

But ethics aside, there's the very simple fact that animals observe the world differently from us, in a way that we can't fathom. We'll never truly know how a pigeon, a badger or a sheep experiences the world. But we can try.

You could go the extreme route, as naturalist Charles Foster did, and live for a while as a badger or a fox, rummaging around in the forest, eating bugs and earthworms, and generally trying to be as badgering or as foxy as you can. 

Or you can do what German writer Leonie Swann did, and write a murder mystery in the Irish countryside, in which a flock of sheep are the sleuths. The result is a book that's funny, thoughtful and, if you're willing to read it that way, philosophical. (It's actually least satisfying as a mystery.)

Most of the book is presented from the perspective of the sheep. We learn that they have a hard time understanding the human perspective, and because we see the world through their eyes, the reader struggles, too. For example, the sheep can't read, so they describe letters by their shape, leaving us to reconstruct what they mean. In this way, the book forces us to take their perspective.

At the same time, their sheepness also affords them benefits: they can eavesdrop on conversations of unsuspecting humans. They can move around the scene of the crime, investigating, without raising any red flags. And they have all the time in the world to ruminate while ruminating.

In the end, the book is a real tour de force, giving us a glimpse into the minds of other beings.