kinpira

[torakris]

Kinpira is one of my favorite dishes and the best thing is you can kinpira almost any vegetable (except the greens, save those for the goma-ae).

The most popular is probably gobo (burdock root) or a mixture of gobo and carrots, but I have had kinpira of just carrots, celery, renkon (lotus root), daikon peels, kabocha, eryingii mushrooms, etc, sometimes they have some beef added but usually they are with out.

The recipes can vary slightly for each vegetable but the common ingredients to all are usually sesame oil, red pepper and soy, some add mirin, some add sake, some add sugar, I have even seen dashi in the ingredient list.

I usually heat the oil in a frypan toss in a chopped up dried chile add the vegetable and sautee until just crisp, then add the "sauce" usually a splash of soy and sake, sometimes a pinch of sugar and depending on the vegetable a splash of mirin at the end.

What are some of your favorite kinpira variations? recipes?

[torakris]

forgot to add sometimes the chile is not used and instead they are sprinkled with sesame seeds, sometimes I have seen both.....

[ankomochi]

For things I love about Kimpira, as Kristin mentioned, is I can use any vegetables to make a great and tasty dish. Soy sauce, mirin, sake/white wine, red chili/shichimi togarashi, and sesame seeds are the basic ingredients I use for Kimpira. Standard vegetables -- Gobo, Carrots, Renkon, potatoes. Not so common vegetables I have used are Celery Roots and Jerusalem Artichoke. I also have used konnyaku. Is it still called kimpira?

Last week, I tried to make kimpira with beets. But, it didn't reallly work.... as you can imagine.

[smallworld]

Lotus root with carrot. With shichimi- a fancy Kyoto blend- instead of togarashi.

[torakris]

I too sometimes leave out the chile and sprinkle it with shichimi, mine is also a fancy blend with lots of yuzu.

[Wimpy]

I remember my mom's kinpira-gobou comes with bits of tofu skin (i think similar to what is used in inari-zushi) in additiona to carrots and the distinct sesame oil flavor.

[torakris]

I remember my mom's kinpira-gobou comes with bits of tofu skin (i think similar to what is used in inari-zushi) in additiona to carrots and the distinct sesame oil flavor.

I think you are referring to aburage or tofu pockets, I am going to have to try that one!

My daughter's school lunch last Thursday was a dish the school kitchen called kawari-kinpira (kawari can be described as something different from the norm, a susbstitute or replacement) and it consisted of:

pork, satsumage,carrot, gobo, peppers, potatoes and konnyaku

seasoned with sugar, soy, sake, shichimi and sesame.

[gus_tatory]

My daughter's school lunch last Thursday was a dish the school kitchen called kawari-kinpira (kawari can be described as something different from the norm, a susbstitute or replacement) and it consisted of:

pork, satsumage,carrot, gobo, peppers, potatoes and konnyaku

seasoned with sugar, soy, sake, shichimi and sesame.

why don't they sell this in north american school lunches?

[torakris]

any new kinpira stories?

[Hiroyuki]

Tsukushi no kinpira, of course!, which I mentioned in the Japanese Foods--Shun no mono" thread.

My wife is good at making daikon no kinpira.

I guess you can go to two extremes: a single ingredient to enjoy the taste of that ingrediant only and a variety of ingredients to enjoy their harmony.

Do you know how kinpira got its name? I didn't, so I searched for an answer.

The answer is:

Sakata Kinpira is the name of a fictitious character in a "joruri" play that gained popularity in the Edo period, who was depicted as a very strong man. Thus, the word kinpira was used to describe something strong. You get strong when you eat kinpira??

Definition of joruri:

じょうるり【浄瑠璃】

joruri； （a） dramatic narrative chanted to a samisen accompaniment.

New College Japanese-English Dictionary, 4th edition © Kenkyusha Ltd. 1933,1995,1998

According to Eijiro on the web:

浄瑠璃

ballad drama // the Japanese-type puppet play

[Hiroyuki]

I found a site on brocoli core kinpira:

http://orange-box.sunnyday.jp/food9.html

(Japanese only)

Seems like worth giving it a try.

[torakris]

I found a site on brocoli core kinpira:

I actually make a kinpira out of broccoli stalks for my husband's bento quite often, one small stalk is perfect for an adult bento.

That version with miso sounds good though, i might give that a try.

Thanks for the history information!

[helenjp]

Another "green" kinpira is piman (green pepper) kinpira. And yes, it's a great lunchbox item too!

[torakris]

I had a recipe for celery kinpira that was really wonderful, and I can't find it any more. It was a little diferent than a normal kimpira and I have been unable to recreate it with success...

Kinpira is also a great dish to make with part of the vegetable you might normally throw away! Like kabocha skins, satsumaimo skins, daikon and carrot skins, etc.

[torakris]

I made a kinpira last night with eryngii mushrooms, very enjoyable!

[melonpan]

i heart konnyaku... i also like shirataki in my kinpira.

im not very good with prep work though (my knife skills are very weak) so kinpira is always a hard one for me.

[torakris]

My son returned home from preschool yesterday with a large bag of satumaimo (that he pulled out of the ground himself ), so I turned two of them into kinpira!

[BarbaraY]

Since there is no gobo available here, I have only had it with carrots. The broccoli stem sounds like it would be very good and I have some nice broccoli in the fridge.

[torakris]

carrot and onion kinpira

[helenjp]

This one's for smallworld - I noticed a recipe for kinpira using maple syrup instead of mirin. It wasn't carrot though, which is probably too sweet to go well with maple syrup.

[MoGa]

Bit on an old thread I hope no-one minds me bumping.

I bought gobo (burdock root) in London for the first time yesterday - from Seewoo, Lisle St. Cleaned/scrubbed and cut the whole thing (about 700gms - a bit fatter than the gobo I've seen and used in Japan) into 7cm long matchsticks. As the gobo wasn't premium quality I made sure the matchstick shards were really fine.

These I then soaked for some time in cold water with a generous slug of vinegar, the water started going brown before I finished cutting and adding shards of the gobo.

Once I'd left the whole lot to soak for a few minutes, I rinsed away the vinegar in a colander with cold water and started turning them into kinpira. My very first attempt (I've had at my grandmother-in-law's house and really enjoyed it there).

Using approx 500gms of shredded gobo (the rest is going into a miso soup)

Heated a large frying pan/skillet and added about 3 tablespoons of sesame oil. High heat.

Immediately added the rinsed and drained gobo shards, turned them to coat in the hot oil and, once coated, added 1 heaped teaspoon of Korean chili flakes. Cooked for about a minute longer stirring constantly.

Reduced heat to medium (which for me involved switching pan to another electric hob... wish I had gas!) and added

15 tablespoons of sake, 3 of caster sugar, 5 of mirin, 5 of soy sauce and (because the gobo didn't have as much flavour as others I've tried) 1 teaspoon of rice vinegar.

Kept cooking and stirring until liquid was all absorbed. Took the pan off the heat and once the gobo had cooled a little, I stirred in 2 drops of sesame chili oil (ra-yu) and a generous tablespoon of a raw soy sauce I particularly like. Kinpira then transferred to large plate to cool fully.

This will be eaten today (we've already had a large portion from tasting it - couldn't stop ourselves) and added to most of next week's lunchboxes. Definitely something I'll be making again, probably quite often. The timeconsuming part is the scrubbing and cutting of the gobo, but it's actually really nice to slice compared to many other vegetables. As long as you have a sharp knife and enjoy using it, it's actually quite therapeutic.

Edited May 10, 2008 by MoGa (log)