“Ingen no Gomaae” is one of my favorite food when I was child.  Still, I sometimes want to eat it, but it’s rare that restaurants have it as a regular menu.  I think it’s usually a side dish, never be main dish.  Perhaps restaurants serve several kind of side dishes alternately.  If you have a chance to eat it, you may be lucky.

Gomaae is one of cooking methods which will be used also for some vegetables such as spinach.  It’s not special food and easy to make.

Ingredients (for 1 dish):

• about 40g Kidney Beans (Ingen)
• 25g Sesame
• 1 table spoon Sugar
• 2 tea spoon Soy Source
• 1 tea spoon Mirin

How to make:

1) Place Sesame  and Sugar in a bowl called “Suribachi” and grind roughly with a stick called “Surikogi”.  Don’t grind sesame finely.

2) Add Soy Source and Mirin and mix them.

3) Cut Kidney Beans about 3 to 4cm width.

4) Boil Kidney Beans for about 1.5 to 2 min.  Then remove moisture with cooking paper.

5) Add boiled Kidney beans in a bowl and mix with the source.

Tips is to grind sesame roughly and to boil kidney beans a little bit hard.  To do so, you will enjoy the crunchy of kidney beans and sesame in addition to good smell of sesame.

Suribachi and Surikogi are cookware which are be used together to grind or make paste foods.  Suribachi is a kind of bowl which has gutters inside and usually made of ceramics.

You may be noticed this cooking method doesn’t use any oil.  I think it’s very Japanese style.  There are many traditional Japanese foods, sometimes called Washoku, which doesn’t use any oil.  I think it is related to old food culture not eating meat well.  Even cooking methods for fish since old time doesn’t use any oil.  For example Shio Yaki or Nitsuke.  It’s one of unique feature of Japanese food.

Enjoy meal!