My friends often give me interesting food to try. Recently my friend Junko gave me two plastic containers of food. She said they would be good with rice and beer. One of the containers had small fish she said her father had prepared (no idea what kind but I think they came from Lake Biwa.) They were sauteed in soy sauce and sugar - kind of teriyaki style. I'm pretty sure the sauce was exactly the same as that used for the large cooked grasshoppers a friend from Nagano once presented me with. The fish were indeed delicious with rice, but quite bony. I wonder if small fish bones are worse than crunchy legs...
The other container had sweet potato stems, which I had no idea you could eat! And they were really good, a little sweet, and slightly sour. I wonder if the Maori people in New Zealand ever eat sweet potato stems?
As far as I know, kumara doesn't really have stems as it has a leafy vine-like top to it. Maori did eat the leaves sometimes. But taro definitely is edible top to toe. The leaves and stem and root. My Indian next door neighbour grew taro just for the leaves and threw away the actual taro bit. Sweet potato madness!
ReplyDeleteI'd try the fish, Cathy, but I personally wouldn't go for graashoppers... Ginger and soya sauce are a winning combination, for sure.
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