Nori goma furikake

If you've never had furikake before, it's one of those condiments that you won't remember how you lived without once you try it. You'll want to put it on everything--not just your congee, but your popcorn and noodles and fish dishes. You'll sneak it onto sandwiches and into salads--and because it's rich in vitamins A, B12 and C, not to mention iodine, iron and zinc, you'll feel virtuous while doing it.

This simple furikake is just one of countless possible variations on furikake; many versions include bits of dried fish, miso, sea salt, egg, preserved plum, or roasted rice. If you're not as excited about making your own as I am, you can buy all kinds of prepared furikake at many grocery stores that stock Japanese ingredients. Here's a neat photo from Yelp user Chad Y. of the furikake shelf at Pacific Mercantile Company, an Asian Market in Denver. Look at all those different furikakes!

Another benefit of this particular furikake is that it can help to tonify your Kidney qi, because it uses hei zhi ma (black sesame seeds) and nori, which is black in color and therefore tonifying to the kidneys.

Here's the kind of nori I buy.

Nori goma furikake:

1/2 c black sesame seeds (hei zhi ma)
5 sheets nori
2 tbsp soy sauce (use gluten-free tamari instead if you need to keep this recipe gluten-free)
1 tbsp mirin
1/2 tsp chili flakes

Preheat oven to 320 degrees Fahrenheit.

Line a baking sheet with a silicone non-stick liner or parchment paper.

In a medium-sized bowl, mix the soy sauce, mirin, and chili flakes.

Tear or scissor the nori into small pieces. They don't have to be super-small; you'll crumble them smaller later. Put them in a small bowl and toss them with the soy sauce mixture.

Spread the nori mixture on the baking sheet and bake for 10 to 25 minutes.

Should look wet and clumpy like this.

Check after 10 minutes and every 5 minutes thereafter. Pull the nori out of the oven when it feels dry and crisp to the touch.

Dry and crisp now, not wet and clumpy 

While the nori is baking, prepare your sesame seeds this way.

When the nori is cool enough to handle, crumble it into teeny-tiny pieces. You're going for sprinkle-size pieces, about the same size as the chili flakes. You can also use small kitchen shears for this, but I think crumbling it in your hands is more fun. Mix with the roasted sesame seeds.

Stored at room temperature in an airtight jar, this stuff will keep indefinitely. Sprinkle it on your congee, then try sprinkling it on everything else. It's seriously heaven on popcorn.

This is a pretty subjective recipe, by which I mean your preferences for salty, pungent and spicy might be very different from mine. Play with the ratio of soy sauce, mirin and chili flakes each time you make this recipe till it tastes exactly right to you.

White rice, rampant omnivorism, and how to enjoy both of those things and good health at the same time

So here I am, this integrative healthcare provider, counseling you to eat a breakfast composed largely of white rice. What's up with that? 

chicken rendang congee with sweet-sour cucumber carrot pickle (recipes coming soon to this blog!)

If you're wondering, "But isn't white rice bad for me? Isn't it totally devoid of nutrients? Won't it make me gain weight at warp speed? And what about my blood sugar?" you're not alone, and kudos on paying attention to what goes into your body. The answers to these questions aren't particularly simple or straightforward, and they require your open-mindedness in considering both Eastern and Western nutritional philosophies. 

plain congee (bai zhou) with sauteed beet greens, homemade sriracha, and homemade goma furikake

Let's look at the Western component first. White rice is just brown rice with the hull taken off. But the hull is where most of the nutrients--including thiamine, a crucial B-vitamin--and the fiber are. Without the hull, white rice is a refined carbohydrate, and one that converts quickly to sugar during the digestive process, which is why it's a concern for diabetics and anyone else monitoring their blood glucose levels. 

Now the Eastern perspective: Nothing wrong with brown rice--it's absolutely a healthful grain choice. That being said, white rice has value as well. For one thing, the insoluble fiber and minerals in the hull of brown rice (as well as other whole grains) can actually cause harm to people with certain health conditions, such as ulcerative colitis or renal dysfunction. White rice digests more quickly because it's easier to digest, and when you give your digestive system food that's easy to digest--especially first thing in the morning, when it and you are still waking up--it can focus its energies away from the grind of digestion and towards distributing nutrition to the body. The entire body is thereby allowed to process, heal, and generally move through whatever stages it needs to move through for you to feel well. 

chicken rendang congee with minced fresh kaffir lime leaves, soft-boiled egg, and cucumber-carrot pickle; rooibos chai tea to drink

Being gentle with your digestive system, instead of putting it through its paces by throwing fiber at it, actually allows it to more effectively perform all of its necessary roles. It's the difference between starting the day with military-style boot camp cardio class and starting the day with a meditative yoga session: both are valid choices, but each exercise has different goals. Most traditional Chinese medical practitioners, me included, would recommend the meditative yoga session--because we put a lot of stock in moderation, including a moderate, moderated transition from sleep to wakefulness. Congee, particularly congee made with white rice, is a way to allow your digestive system the same gentle, easy waking-up process. 

bai zhou with fresh spinach and egg cooked in coconut oil

It helps to remember that there's really not a lot of white rice in even a big bowl of congee. The eight to one water to congee ratio and the way rice absorbs water and releases starch as it cooks ensures that your breakfast bowl probably contains less rice than it would take to make a quarter cup of white rice. Adding protein--in the form of a tea egg, say, or chicken, or tofu, or peanuts, or mung bean sprouts, or sesame seeds--and fiber in the form of vegetables will help to keep its impact on your blood glucose levels negligible.

chicken rendang congee, spinach, chicken leg, hard boiled egg

Of course, if you're still concerned, you can certainly make congee out of brown rice. If you do, you should increase the water ratio--maybe 10 to 12 parts water to one part rice--and be prepared to let it simmer for up to an hour or so longer than white rice congee. I'd recommend one of the more fragrant brown rice varieties, such as brown basmati, or else one of the shorter-grain rices, such as brown sushi rice--but any brown rice will work. You can even make congee out of quinoa or amaranth or farro or any grain that you'd like; each grain will produce its own distinctly flavored and textured congee.

But if you love your white rice congee, like I do? Enjoy in good health, without guilt, and with a variety of additions and toppings. As always, "all things in moderation" is the simplest and best path to health.

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bai zhou, sauteed greens, roasted black sesame seeds

I'd love to hear about your congee-making experiments with brown rice or other grains. And I'd also love to answer any other questions that come up around the health benefits, preparation or enjoyment of congee--just shoot me an email at lorelle@thesaxenaclinic.com.

bai zhou, poached egg, spinach, shiitake mushrooms and homemade sriracha

Roasted black sesame seeds (hei zhi ma)

Ever have a hard time getting fully awake in the morning? How about staying warm--are you the first person to reach for a jacket, trying to ward off a chill, when everyone else is opening windows and turning on fans? Do you notice nagging lower back pain that's worse with cold weather but responds well to massage? These are all pretty common complaints, but when they're all presenting together, they might point to a diagnosis of what Chinese medicine terms Kidney Yang deficiency. That's Kidney with a capital K--I don't want you to think there's anything wrong with your actual, anatomical kidney. I'm talking here about the Chinese medical concept of the energetics of that organ: your Kidney Yang can be conceptualized as the steam engine to the train that is you--the source of heat and active energy for your body. Some other signs of Kidney Yang vacuity can include diminished libido, fertility challenges, chilled feet and hands or cold lower back, water retention, general lassitude and a low appetite. A traditional Chinese medical practitioner's diagnosis of Kidney Yang vacuity corresponds, very loosely, to a Western medical practitioner's diagnosis of adrenal insufficiency.

Sesame seeds are one of the more effective dietary therapeutics for Kidney Yang vacuity. Black foods in general--black beans, black rice, nori (the seaweed that wraps around sushi), shiitake mushrooms-are all great Kidney tonics, and therefore black sesame seeds are the most Kidney-tonifying variety of sesame seeds and an extraordinarily directed Kidney Yang tonic.

Need more reasons to get excited over sesame seeds? They contain unique lignans that have been shown to lower cholesterol. They're an excellent source of calcium, copper, manganese, magnesium, selenium and lots of other valuable nutrients. A mixture of sesame seeds and rice contains all the amino acids present in a complete protein. And they're fabulous, beyond belief, on congee--I put a little sprinkling of them on my New Year's Day congee, and it looked so pretty, and I took a picture. And then I put a whole bunch more on. After basically avalanching my congee with little black seeds, it wasn't all that photogenic, but it was delicious. 

I like roasting sesame seeds to bring out their full, nutty, umami flavor and sprinkling them over my congee. I always get black ones, for the benefit to my Kidney yang, and also because they're pretty--but you can use any kind of sesame seeds you like best.

Here's the how-to:

1. Heat a dry, flat-bottomed pan, large enough to hold all the sesame seeds you want to roast, over medium heat on a stovetop until the pan is quite hot. It should be too hot to comfortably touch. 

2. Spread your sesame seeds over the bottom of the pan.

3. Toss them around almost constantly, as high as you dare. Try not to spill them all. The goal is to keep them moving so none of them get burned.

Woo-woo! Action shots!

4. You'll know you're done when the seeds smell nutty and fragrant. This might be as quickly as one minute, depending on how many seeds are in your pan and how hot you got it before putting them in.

5. When they're fragrant, immediately remove them from the pan to cool. The "immediately" part is critical, as sesame seeds' high oil content means they'll keep cooking after they're pulled away from heat.

That's all! You can store these in a tightly-closed jar in a cooler area (or your fridge; I like to keep mine on a shadier part of the counter) and sprinkle them on your congee to pretty it up...they're a flavorful, healthful, simple condiment; one of those things you didn't know you were missing till you've had them. In Japan, roasted black or white sesame seeds (iri goma) appear on supermarket condiment shelves, both on their own and in jars of furikake, another terrific topping/condiment that I'll post a recipe for later this week--promise!--or in gomashio, basically iri goma with salt.

Enjoy these on your congee, and if you find other applications for them, please share those with me!