Baked Tofu and Nishime Vegetables with Millet

A few weeks ago I picked up a cookbook called The Healthy Hedonist. I had roasted, fried and boiled tofu many times before but a recipe in the book for baked tofu sounded really good. It was simple a block of tofu (pressed for 30 minutes between two plates with a can of soup on top to weigh it down) cut into triangles and marinaded for 30 minutes in sesame oil, brown rice vinegar, apple juice, mirin, shoyu and toasted sesame oil. The recipe called for a very small about of toasted sesame oil, but I didn't have any regular sesame oil and thus used about 3 tablespoons of it, replacing the regular. Myra Kornfeld, the author of the cookbook, says not to cook with toasted sesame oil and juts to use it as a condiment. She might be right but I've been using it all Summer and appear unscathed. A little goes a long way, however, so using regular and just adding a small about of toasted sesame oil is more economical. It is then baked at 375 for 40 minutes. Really good.

To accompany this I cooked up some Nishime vegetables. This is a popular cooking style in macrobiotic cooking. In a large heavy bottomed pot, place a piece of Kombu sea vegetable. Then layer different types of vegetables that you would like to eat. Seasonal, local vegetables are of course best and if you are eating macrobioticly you of course want to pay attention to balancing yin and yang qualities. You could layer them from the most yin to most yang or just put the hardiest vegetables at the bottom. I used red onion, yellow squash, carrots, white button mushrooms and spring onions. The last of these might be a bit odd but I had them and wanted to eat them.

Millet was my grain of choice for this meal. I like millet a lot, but mostly because it makes a really delicious porridge the next morning. Just put it in a pot with a little soy milk or water, add any nuts or dried fruits you want just like you would with oatmeal and wait for it to heat up. So good.