日本語のレシピは、最後の方に書いてあります。
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It is the midst of rainy season in Japan.
In fact Japanese people do not call this season “rainy season”.
It is called “Tusyu” and it literally means “Plum Rain”.
What a sweet word, isn’t it ?
For me it is indeed a plum season, not rainy season as I live in a town full of plum tress.
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It used to be just an unpleasant season before I moved to this town.
But since six years ago, June turned to be one of the exciting months.
You can see how I am excited during the plum season from my last year’s entry.
Though all the plums were already fallen off the tress,
my home is now full of preserved ume in different forms.
This year I made four jars of umeboshi/ dried plum preserved in salt.
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They are waiting for the red shiso leaves to be accompanied.
I also made some bottles of ume jam.
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The best part of jam is actually the seeds.
I love to mix them with water to make into juice.
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The most fun moment comes after drinking juice, rolling the seeds in the mouth with my tongue.
The sweet and sour taste can last for some time in my mouth.
I tried the juice with mirin for the first time this year.
Mirin is a kind of sweet rice wine.
Since I totally stopped consuming honey since a few years ago, I needed to try to make juice with other sweetners.
None of my trials were satisfactory, but this year’s mirin version was tasty and I found it goes so well with plum juice.
(You need to evaporate its alcohol by boiling it first if you want to try this method.)
Today I introduce you very simple sauce using umeboshi/dried Japanese plum.
You can keep this for months in your fridge and it is very useful as it goes well with many kinds of vegetables and also with tofu.
Umeboshi Miso Paste
Ingredients
3~5 Umeboshi (about 50g)
150g White Miso
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Procedure
1. Deseed umeboshi and chop to the paste
2. Mix with white miso.
3. Transfer into the glass jar.
I like to mix this paste with radish or cucumber especially.
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The top right one is radish mixed with this paste.
The bottom left is the tiny ume marinated in salt called Kari Kari Ume.
The bottom center is the radish marinated in plum vinegar.
Other vegetables are pickles marinated in shio koji.
This set of vegetables are the one I prepared for lunch for umeboshi making class in June.
梅干し白みそペースト
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材料
梅干し 3粒~5粒（50gくらい） 白みそ 150g
作り方
1. 梅干しから種を取って、包丁でたたく。
2. 白みそと和える。
3. 瓶などに入れて、保存する。
大根やきゅうりを 千切りにして 塩をして絞ったものと和えると おいしいです！
さいころ状に切った木綿豆腐と和えてもおいしいですし、表面に塗って、田楽のようにして焼いてもおいしいですよ。
Happy Cooking !
