Hijiki Pasta

The pictures above are my favourite Pasta dish “Hijiki Pasta”. Since I had attended Macrobiotic Cooking class, I try to eat Organic foods and traditional Japanese foods, as much I could.

When I was kid, my Grandma used to cook “Obanzai”, which are everyday meals in Kyoto region, using Kyoto Vegetables like “Mizina”-Japanese rocket leaf, “Nappa”-Japanese Green leaf, with deep fried Tofu “Abura-age”, meat, or dried sea vegetable. Grandma’s cooking was all the time simple, using seasonal vegi, which came from our family field and meat or Abura-age, seasoned with local ly produced Soy-sauce. As a small child, I did not fancy “Obanzai” and wanted to eat processed Hamburger steak or Salad with mayonnaise dressing.
But now I understand what real taste of food is, and sometimes I’m so desperate to eat Obanzai. Luckily our previous house was quite close to the local Farmshop “Calcott Hall”, so we used to go to there and buy lots of vegetable and fruit, and Sainsbury, one of UK giant supermarket store also provides lot of organic items at reasonable prices in recent years. It’s little bit hard to gain fine quality “Abura-age” here in Essex. (I heard there is one stall which sells organic homemade tofu in Borough Market. ) But whenever I go back to Japan, I buy lots of Japanese dried foods such as Hijiki, Koya-tofu and bring them back to the UK , so that I can cook my original West-meet-East style “Obanzai”