時期はずれの芽キャベツで作るかて飯 "Katemeshi" (rice mixed with vegetables and grains) made with out-of-season Brussels sprouts
貧乏人の歳時記
A minimalist's seasonal calendar
ストーリー
Recipe trivia
「かて飯」をご存知だろうか？
今の日本では白いお米を食べるのが当たり前のようになっているけど、高度成長が始まるまでは、これは一般庶民の食生活ではなかった。江戸時代の統計を見ると、当時の米の生産量では、当時の人口でも日本人全員が米を口にするのは難しかったのがわかる。その頃、大部分の農民が口にしていたのが、このかて飯だ。江戸の末期には、農村でも貨幣経済が成立していたので、年貢で納めた以外の余剰米があっても、現金を得るため、これを売ることが多かった。だからふだんの生活では米だけを食べることは、まず無くて、お祭りや、特別な行事のときにだけ、米だけの飯をたべるのが普通だった。自家用に残した米からハレの日のための米を分けて、残った米を普段のケの日の食事に充てる計算をすると、当然米だけでは農作業の肉体労働には全然足りない。そこで、他の農産物で暈増しした。「農作業の糧になる飯」という意味でかて飯なのだ。さらには、保存性の良い芋や大根などは市場価値があるので、保存に回したり、現金を得るために売ってしまうことが多かったので、結局、残るのは、雑穀とか、大根や蕪、人参の葉っぱとか、芋がらとか、市場価値のない時期はずれの半端な収穫物ということになる。こういう売り物にならない保存性の低い残った収穫物を米に混ぜて炊いたり、雑炊にしたのだ。お隣の中国も同じで、日本の街中華から連想する人は肉が沢山というイメージがあるけれど、かつての農村部の食事はそんな贅沢ではなく、菜飯（ツァイファン）と呼ばれる、菜葉などの土鍋で米や雑穀と炊き込んだ食事が一般的だった。菜飯といえば上海菜飯という土鍋の炊き込みご飯が有名だけど、これはレストランバージョンの贅沢菜飯だ。どこの国でも、庶民が毎日のように精白した穀物や肉を口にするようになったのは、ごくごく最近のことなのだ。
Do you know what "katemeshi" is?
In Japan today, it is common to eat white rice, but the diet of ordinary people was different before the start of the high economic growth. Looking at statistics from the Edo period, we can see that with the amount of rice produced at that time, it was difficult for all Japanese people to eat rice, even with the population at that time. At that time, most farmers ate this katemeshi. At the end of the Edo period, a monetary economy was established even in rural areas, so even if there was surplus rice other than what was paid as tax, it was often sold to get cash. Therefore, it was not common to eat only rice in everyday life. It was normal to eat 100% rice only on festivals and special events. If you set aside rice for special days from the rice left over after selling it and use the remaining rice for meals on ordinary days, rice alone is obviously not enough for the physical labor of farm work. So they added other agricultural products. It is called katemeshi in the sense of "rice that serves as food for farm work." Furthermore, potatoes, melons, radishes, and other vegetables that are easy to store have market value, so they were often used for storage or sold to earn cash, and in the end, what was left was miscellaneous grains, radishes, turnips, carrot leaves, taro stems, or other crops and wild plants that had no market value. These unsellable crops were mixed with rice and cooked, or made into porridge. The same is true in neighboring China, where people associate Chinese food in Japan with a lot of meat, but in the past, rural meals were not so luxurious, and meals called cai fan, which consisted of rice and miscellaneous grains cooked in a clay pot with cai leaves, were common. Speaking of cai fan, there is a famous clay pot rice dish called Shanghai cai fan, but this is a luxurious restaurant version of cai fan. In any country, it is only very recently that ordinary people have started to eat refined grains and meat every day.
園芸上手な人が羨ましいが、僕のような素人がプランターで育てる野菜はそれほど器量は良くない。おまけにズボラな管理をするものだから、収穫時期がずれて、アブラナ科の野菜の薹が立ってしまうことはしょっちゅうだ。ここのところ、芽キャベツを植えているのだけど、冬の収穫に間に合わず、今頃になってやっと脇芽が伸びてくる。ただ、温かいものだから、きちんとは葉が結球してくれない。芽を出し続けている株を切ってしまうのはもったいないので放置してあるのだけど、図らずも、プチヴェールと見間違えるような、芽キャベツになり損ねた物体の大収穫になる。やはり種まきが遅く、６月に入ってやっと実が着き始めたえんどう豆も収穫できたので、両者を合わせてかて飯にした。僕は電子レンジも炊飯器も持っていないので、朝ご飯を炊くと、夕方は昔の人みたいに、冷飯をそのまま使う食事のサイクルになる。おまけに、この手の製品未満のプランター野菜が毎日収穫できる。だから、必然的に夕食はかて飯が多い。
I envy people who are good at gardening, but the vegetables I grow in a pot as an amateur aren't very good. Plus, because I'm lazy, the harvest time is off and the flower buds of cruciferous vegetables often appear. I've been planting Brussels sprouts lately, but they didn't make it in time for the winter harvest, and the side shoots are finally starting to grow now. However, because it's warm, the leaves don't form a head properly. I don't want to cut the sprouts that are still sprouting, so I leave them alone, but I've ended up with a big harvest of things that didn't turn into Brussels sprouts, which look like petit verts. As expected, I was sowing the seeds late, and I was able to harvest peas that finally started to bear fruit in June, so I combined the two to make a meal. I don't have a microwave or a rice warmer, so after cooking breakfast, I cook cold rice based meal in the evening like the old days. Plus, I can harvest these kinds of sub-production pot vegetables every day. So, inevitably, dinner is often a "katemeshi"
Ingredients:
材料：
冷やご飯（ここでは五部づき米と雑穀ですが、普通の白飯でも）
収穫した芽キャベツの出来損ない（大根の葉とか、人参の葉とか、なんでも良い）
えんどう豆と可食な鞘
自然塩
Cold rice (I used half-polished rice and millet here, but you can also use plain white rice)
Broken brussels sprouts (radish leaves, carrot leaves, anything will do)
Peas and edible pea pods
Natural salt
procedure:
手順：
土鍋か厚手の鍋に冷やご飯入れる。
そこに、適当な大きさに刻んだ野菜の葉を入れる。買って来た葉物の場合には、農薬が残留していることもあるので、十分に水洗いするか、５０度洗いをすると良い。
水を米の３倍の量注ぎ、塩を振って、強火で煮る。
沸騰してきたら、ごく弱火にして、葉がくたくたになるまで煮る。
Put cold rice into a clay pot or thick-bottomed pot.
Add vegetable leaves that have been chopped into bite-sized pieces.
Add three times the amount of water as the rice, sprinkle with salt, and bring to a boil over high heat.
Once it starts to boil, reduce the heat to very low and simmer until the leaves are soft.
Tips and tricks:
コツと応用のヒント：
じっくりと焦げ付かないように炊くと、とびきり美味しくなるので、土鍋かそこの厚い層構造の無水鍋などを使うと良い。
お粥のように、生米からたいても良い。オートミールを使っても美味しい。
葉物はなんでも良い。わざわざ葉物を買ってきてまで作る料理ではないので、葉物が傷んでしまいそうな時や、家庭園芸で収穫を持て余した時に作ると良い。僕の街の農協の直売所では、大根や人参の葉を捨てていく人が圧倒的なので、買い物のついでに売り子さんに「葉を捨てるなら譲って欲しい」と告げると大抵喜んでタダでくれる。家庭園芸をしない人は農家の直売所が狙い目。昔の人は肉体作業が多かったので、葉物が多いと腹持ちが悪いと嘆いていたらしいけど、炭水化物ダイエットが必要な現代人には好都合。青菜を山ほど入れると良い。可愛らしいサラダの小鉢では絶対摂りえない栄養素が摂取できる。青菜をくたくたに煮ると不思議ととても深い野菜の滋味を塩の添加だけで引き出せる。余計な調味料は要らない。
市販の葉物には結構な農薬が残留していることも多いので、心配なら５０度のお湯に浸けて洗ってから、通常の水洗いすると良い。５０度だと野菜自体の成分が流れ出ない範囲で、表面の農薬などを、冷たい水よりも多く、洗い流すことができる。
他に、野菜庫に残っている野菜屑を総ざらいして、余っている野菜を入れても良い。大根の皮や尻尾、人参のヘタ、キャベツの葉脈とか、ほうれん草の根っことか、椎茸の軸とか、もやしの使い残しとか、そういうのが余っていたら全部放り込んでしまって良い。
ひじきやメカブも、使い残しがあるなら放り込んでしまおう。
近所に空き地があるなら、野草を摘んできて入れると良い。
これ一品で、タンパク質も補給したいなら、薄揚げ、お麩、高野豆腐、炒り大豆を一緒に煮込んでも、最後に豆腐を入れても良い。
どうしてもという人は肉や魚介を入れても良いけど、野菜の滋味を楽しみたい僕には蛇足に思える。
最後に、すりごまや、ごま油、ラー油をトッピングするのはありだ。アクセントの欲しい人は柚子胡椒やかんずり、山椒などを添えても良いだろう。
It's especially delicious if you cook it slowly without burning it, so it's best to use a clay pot or a waterless pot with a thick layer structure.
You can cook it from raw rice like porridge. It's also delicious using oatmeal.
Any leafy vegetables will do. It's not a dish that requires you to go out of your way to buy leafy vegetables, so it's good to make when the leafy vegetables are about to go bad or when you have excess harvest from your home garden. At the agricultural cooperative store in my town, the majority of people throw away radish and carrot leaves, so if you ask the salesguy while shopping, "If you're going to throw them away, please give them to me," they will usually be happy to give them to you for free. If you don't do home gardening, a farmer's store is the place to go. People in the past did a lot of physical work, so they complained that eating a lot of leafy vegetables didn't fill them up, but it's good for modern people who need to diet low in carbohydrates. It's good to add a mountain of green vegetables. You can get nutrients that you would never get from a cute salad bowl. When you simmer green vegetables until they are soft, you can surprisingly bring out their deep flavor with just the addition of salt. No extra seasonings are needed.
Commercially available leafy vegetables often have a fair amount of residual pesticides, so if you are worried, soak them in 50 degree water and then rinse them with regular water. At 50 degrees, you can wash off more of the pesticides on the surface than with cold water, without washing away the ingredients in the vegetables themselves.
You can also go through all the vegetable scraps left in your vegetable drawer and put in the leftover vegetables. If you have leftover radish skins and tails, carrot stems, cabbage veins, spinach roots, shiitake mushroom stems, leftover bean sprouts, etc., just throw them all in.
If you have leftover hijiki or mekabu seaweed, throw them in too.
If you have any leftover vacant land nearby, you can pick some wild herbs and put them in.
If you want to replenish your protein intake with this one dish, you can simmer some thin fried tofu, gluten, freeze-dried tofu, or roasted soybeans together, or add tofu at the end.
If you really want to, you can add meat or seafood, but for me who wants to enjoy the nutritious flavor of vegetables, this seems like an unnecessary addition.
At the end, you can top it with ground sesame seeds, sesame oil, or chili oil. If you want to add some accent, you can add yuzu kosho, kanzuri, or sansho pepper.
Guide to where to get ingredients and equipment 材料と機材の入手先ガイド
※Amazonのアフェリエイトに参加しています。もしご購入の際はここからクリックしてご購入いただけると、コーヒー代の足しになるので、嬉しいです。ちなみに僕はコーヒー依存症です。
*I participate in Amazon affiliate programs. If you purchase this product by clicking here, it will help pay for my coffee, so I would be very happy. By the way, I am addicted to coffee.