Making our own meal is one of the key factors to live long and live well.
Home food is much healthier than outside food because we know what ingredients we use to cook the dishes. The goal of restaurants or delivered food is not to make us healthy, but to make us feel good. So they use anything to make us feel the food is delicious.
Even though we know home food is healthier, we have a number of excuses not to cook by ourselves. Busy, tired, no time for grocery shopping this week, etc.
I have a solution.
Cook just one easy but balanced dish, and throw away perfectionism.
That for me is miso soup with a lot of ingredients inside ― both vegetables and protein. It doesn’t have to be miso soup for you, it can be consommé soup or curry soup, etc.
This is what I cooked.
I was inspired by Yoshiharu Doi, a famous Japanese chef, who wrote “Suggestion of One Soup Plus One Dish for a Daily Meal” (<=The title is my translation. The original title is Ichiju Issai de yoi toiu teian 一汁一菜でよいという提案）
In the book, he encouraged us to cook miso soup with a lot of ingredients and rice. No need to cook other things.
“Rice and miso soup with a lot of ingredients. We can take enough nutritions we need each day only with these.”
<Ichiju Issai>一汁一菜
What does “Ichiju Issai” mean?
Ichiju is one bowl of soup, and Issai means one dish.
This words came from “Ichiju Sansai,” meaning one bowl of soup and three dishes, which is a typical style of traditional Japanese dishes.
Traditional Japanese dishes consist of one bowl of soup and three dishes, which include a main dish such as fish or meat.
Mr. Doi said we don’t need any dishes as long as we have miso soup with a lot of ingredients.
What I like about his suggestion is he moves away from perfectionism.
Actually we are busy every day, and don’t have enough time to cook. If we think we need to prepare a proper meal with several dishes, we keep procrastinating because we feel guilty when we cannot do it as we want.
But when I follow his suggestion, I feel I am doing enough.
Here is the recipe for the miso soup. Follow your heart about the quantity of vegetables you put. Go by a rule of thumb.
1) Put water inside a pot (400 ml for 3 bowls)
2) Add Dashi powder if you have (we can omit this process). Dashi powder is a soup stock, made from fish soup, seaweed and so on.
3) Cut vegetables and add into the water.
I recommend to put in this order.
If you use root crops, such as potato or carrot, add them before you heat.
And switch on the heat.
After water starts boiling, put leafy vegetables.
Then put tofu and seaweed.
4) Poach an egg.
5) When the egg becomes solid, switch off the heat. I like to make it half boiled.
6) Switch off the heat.
7) Add one scoop of miso, and stir.
Important tips
Don’t boil miso a lot. This will spoil the flavor of Miso.
Ingredients I used in the miso soup above. You can use anything you like, and do some experiment.
Garlic
Ginger
Carrot
Erinji mushroom
Brown mushroom
Leek
Kale
Tofu
Wakame (seaweed)
Egg
LET’S DO THIS
Cook soup with at least 5 vegetables and one protein inside.
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