Teppanyaki Supper

We like Japanese food. Teppanyaki, although usually considered a meateater's dish, lends itself well to vegan eating with a selection of vegetables seared on a hot plate and served with dipping sauces and side dishes to complement the cooked food.

Because we're still dieting, tonight we didn't worry about creating an entirely authentic menu selection but simply chose those items that we really wanted to eat that weren't too culturally inappropriate.



On the griddle were six sorts of vegetable; butternut squash, potato, parsnip, mushrooms, yellow peppers and onions, each sliced thinly so that it would cook quickly and evenly. Starting with the squash, which takes longest, all the vegetables were added in cooking order, finishing with the parsnip shavings, sliced very thinly so that they would brown and crisp almost immediately on hitting the heat. The sugars in the root give a great caramelised flavour.

We cooked everything at once so that we could eat together even though normally the cook serves each item as it is cooked and doesn't get to eat until all the other diners are sated.



To go with the hot vegetables we had edamame soy beans, maki sushi filled with homemade kimchi radish or yellow pepper and tomato, steamed tofu with spring onions and sesame oil and a couple of dipping sauces, one soy sauce and rice vinegar, the other a hot sweet chilli sauce. The original menu called for miso soup also but we overlooked it and never missed it in the abundance of food on offer.