Just Bento

I'm looking forward to seeing the replies you get for this post. I'm horribly boring with miso soup - I tend to use it as instant soup at work, and just put in a pinch of some stuff my friend Yoshio gave me, which is dried wakame, dried spring onion, and these little curled up things that might be bread or might be tofu - who knows. A very small pinch grows into a lot of stuff in your soup, anyway.

The only other way I use it is as a base for a full on udon thing (or at least my attempt at the Tokyo udon you can get at a place near my work), with egg and fish and crabstick and noodles and fried tofu and greens etc etc. Probably highly inauthentic, but delicious none the less.

I use dashi-miso, but I have tubs of a couple of Korean bean pastes that I will add if I feel like something a bit hotter. I have no idea what they are though, the labels on the shelves just said "bean paste" and the tubs are different colours but the same brand.

I invest quite a lot on great tasting miso (usually red) and generally don't like to add very much to my miso soup, I even tend to omit the tofu, but wakame and spring onions or chives are a constant.
I do really like it with
- yuzukosho or dried yuzu peel
- small clams and true spinach
but can't get hold of the clams (or the spinach) that often.
For those times I don't make miso shiru with dashi, there's a recipe I posted here: http://justbento.com/forum/vegan-miso-based-soup
which is basically
- jerusalem artichokes, onion and thinly sliced cabbage. The sesame oil is also an important component with this combination.

My husband likes his with lots and lots of sliced onions. Leek is another favourite.

i didn't know there are so many spinachy vegetables out there! i personally agree with maki- only real spinach is real spinach, the others are other kinds of leaves.
"ein stiel" would be a stem, "stiele" being the plural.
the beet family (beta) is huge, as it was cultivated since the bronze age. it contains all kinds of beets as well as chard, which is Mangold in german. there's another beet plant, Mangelwurzel or Mangoldwurzel, of which the root (=Wurzel) may be eaten, but it has been used mainly to feed livestock and is not cultivated any more, i think. so all of these are beets, even if some look like cabbage.
the turnip, on the other hand, looks like it should be a beet but this is a brassica, cabbage, another old family of vegetables. this one's even bigger! there's mustard and broccoli and brussel sprouts and kohlrabi and swedes.. and another spinachy thing with a light mustard taste that i don't know the name of. but it's quite good in miso soup, too.
oops, ranting! i'd better go sleep some.

As miso soup, I'm pretty boring using wakame, tofu, and shiitake.

When I stopped in to visit my aunt in Okinawa, she made some miso soup with pork, gobo, carrots, daikon, green onions, shiitake, and garnished with kaiware sprouts. There may have been other item(s) but it was 15 years ago so my memory is a bit fuzzy.

When I make ramen/udon with miso soup base, the sky's the limit on what I add.

Red miso, hondashi, wakame, large cubes of firm tofu, and crack an egg in there. No need to drizzle the egg, just drop the whole thing in. Eat the yolk while it's still soft on the inside.

Sometimes I also go for the ramen approach and add spinach, asparagus, cilantro (take it out when it's done cooking), slices of beef, egg, mushrooms, etc....

I love miso soup with the blended? (Shiro) miso, as well as tofu, green onion, garlic, and zuchinni!