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Hi, it's Russell James.
You're watching the Raw Chef TV.
In this episode, I'm going to address a question
that I actually had on my Facebook page.
And if you want to head over to my Facebook page,
and leave a question for us-- maybe something
you want us to answer on the Raw Chef TV, then please do that.
It's therawchef.com/facebook.
Now, I got a question from someone
who had bought some seaweed.
And they weren't specific about what
seaweed it is, or could even tell me
what seaweed it is, other than saying,
I've just bought some seaweed.
It was on a whim.
It seemed like a good idea.
I know it's healthy.
What on earth can I do with it?
And so from what that person said,
I deduced that it was probably arame.
So we're going to do a nice little shiitake broth
soup with some arame, and make it look a little bit chef-y.
And we present it nicely for you as an idea.
But you can also take this, and you
can make it into more of a hearty dish as well,
and an every day kind of dish too.
So let's get straight into it.
So the first thing we're going to do
is take this mooli-- or daikon radish,
depending on where you're from-- and we're going to peel this,
because we're going to turn it into these nice,
kind of semi-dehydrated cubes.
And again, this is just a little bit of a fun thing to do.
It makes for a really nice presentation.
But if you're making as a kind of every day dish,
you don't necessarily need to do this.
But if you have got a dehydrator,
give this a go because it's kind of like in substitute for tofu.
They end up being a little bit squishy, really full of flavor,
and make a really nice addition, presentation-wise to this soup.
So we want to cut them into as even sized chunks as we can.
So I'm probably going to go into three pieces lengthwise there.
And ideally, if you were being really mindful
of your presentation, you'd make a kind of stick, uniform size,
and just cut them all exactly the same.
OK, so these are the ones I've cut.
So all exactly kind of the same size, uniform shape.
But if you're not too worried about that,
then you can just add in all the other pieces as well.
Pop them into a bowl.
And then we're going to add a little bit of salt, some rice
wine vinegar, some mirin, and also a little bit of water
to cover the daikon, or the mooli, completely.
And they all want to be within that liquid,
sitting in the bottom of the bowl like that.
And then we're going to leave these
to marinate for at least a couple of hours,
but preferably overnight if you've got time.
And then we're going to pop them on a dehydrator tray.
And what you should end up with is
something that looks like these, that I'll just
take out of the dehydrator now.
So as you can see, this have being dehydrating for just one
to two hours at about 115 degrees Fahrenheit.
And they're kind of-- they go a little bit squidgy,
kind of like tofu does.
And they've got all those beautiful flavors
that they've absorbed, as well.
So the next thing we're going to do
is to take this arame seaweed, which
was the seaweed in question as I mentioned
at the start of the video.
And this is it in it's dry form.
So we need to soak this for at least an hour
so that we get this kind of consistency.
And you can actually just soak this overnight
if you'd prefer, as well.
Just so you can kind of leave it and forget about it
until the next day.
And then that needs to be really well strained off.
OK.
So as you can see, there is a big difference
between the dry and the soaked.
And it will take up to three times its own size in water.
And you can just add this to salads as it is,
but to make it taste even better within this soup,
we're going to add in just a little bit of toasted sesame
oil, some rice wine vinegar, some mirin, and also
some tamari.
I'm going to give that a good mix in,
and I'm going to put it to one side.
Allow it to soak up those flavors.
Again, that would be great overnight, but you can
you can literally just do it just before making this broth
if you're short of time.
And then we'll move onto making the broth
itself now while that's soaking.
So for our broth-- we're going to make this really nice
delicately flavored broth here.
And that's achieved by just soaking
some dried shiitake mushrooms in water and tamari.
And then we soak those overnight, and drain them off.
And that gives us this, and that's ready to go.
Now if you wanted to make a heartier option,
you could actually make almond nut milk with this mixture.
So you put your almonds in the blender,
along with this whole mixture, and strain it out
just like you would nut milk.
And you end up with this nice, thicker shiitake broth.
So to demonstrate, we're going to just keep
this nice and simple, and not to the nut milk version.
So you literally just strain off the shiitakes,
and then that is ready to go.
And I like to pour it into a bottle ready for the plating.
OK, so let's just put this all together.
So to start plating this, we're just
going to prepare a few garnishes.
So I've got a spring, or green, onion here,
and we want to chop that slightly at a bias.
Really nice and thin.
And then we'll do the same with a couple of these shiitakes.
Nice and thin.
OK, and we've got some red pepper here.
Again, we'll cut it at a real bias, nice and thin.
And then lastly, we've got these little radish here.
We can make a beautiful garnish for the soup as well.
OK, so we've got everything we need now.
So we'll take this nice large, deep white bowl.
And take our arame.
Just let that drain off.
We don't want too much of the excess marinade in there.
And just pop that right in the middle.
And depending on how much of a fan of the seaweed you are,
you can put a little bit more or less in there.
If it's your first time trying the seaweed,
you might want to just put a smaller amount to begin with.
And then we'll take these nice thin pieces of radish.
Place those around the outside of the seaweed.
OK so we've got an odd number.
Which looks better, in this case, than an even number.
We'll just build these up.
So perhaps a few pieces of chili on here as well.
It doesn't have to be on every one.
Some of the shiitake.
Some of the daikon, or the mooli.
And the last thing before the broth
is these nice little pieces of spring onion.
So then when you're ready to serve--
you can do this at the table as well, if you're doing this
for dinner party guests, it adds a little bit
of drama and theater.
And then to finish it off, a little bit of black sesame
seeds.
And perhaps a little bit of toasted sesame oil.
And we're done.