Japanese Inspired Dinner

My whole family love Japanese food. Other people's kids whine for lollies at the shops, but for mine, it's sushi. The tasty tofu-wrapped sushi called inari is a perpetual favourite.

In my recent trip to the Asian supermarket at Sunnybank (opposite the old Magic Wok premises), I bought a pack of inari wrappers. Then I was shopping and saw a vegan tempura mix on the supermarket shelves (Trident brand).

So, this meant that a Japanese inspired dinner was on the menu.



Here there are inari sushi, vegetable tempura and caramel tofu.

Inari are small packets of thin flexible marinated tofu wrapped around sushi rice. To make the inari, I used a pack of 40 inari wrappers and an entire Sunrice sushi rice pack, made according to the packet's instructions. Simply insert the rice in the prepared wrappers. Use enough rice in each wrapper to allow the packet of marinated tofu to fold shut at the bottom.

The caramel tofu is made as per my previous post.

The tempura was pumpkin, sweet potato, mushrooms, beans, zucchini and carrot, sliced finely other than the beans and mushrooms. Prepare the vegetables and then simply follow the directions on the batter mix packet. My favourite tempura was the delicious small whole mushrooms.

Everyone loved the inari and tofu, as usual. The two younger children were less enthused about the vegetables, but then they are not vegetable enthusiasts. Mr Brisvegan, J and I loved the tempura. J happily ate some of the other kids' left over tempura (as did I!). This is the sort of food that you can easily feed to the general omnivore public, as they are traditional recipes that are naturally vegan. They don't scan as "weird vegan food".

The remaining inari were used for school lunches the next day. They do well in an insulated lunch box, with a cold brick or two.