Rice cooked with oat

These days, Japanese people eat rice as their staple. But in former days, many of them used to eat rice blended with barley. Barley was less expensive than rice and considered to taste worse. Rice cooked with barley is called mugimeshi and was regarded as food for the poor. However, it is now eaten as healthy food that is richer in fiber, vitamin, and protein compared with white rice.

The other day, I found a very interesting kind of food in a supermarket Bio Atsumi. It is called “rice oat” or oat that can cook with rice. According to the package, you can take resistant starch, β-glucan, protein, etc. from this.

I cooked rice with the same amount of this oat. Before it was cooked completely, I grated Japanese yam to pour on the rice cooked with oat. This is one of most popular ways to eat mugimeshi. Though it was oat, not barley, I was sure that yam would go well with it. Now, they were ready.

The rice cooked with oat didn’t look very different from 100% rice. But it was elastic and lighter than 100% rice. It reminded me of mugimeshi, so I poured the yam on it, added a little soy sauce, and mixed well.

 The combination of rice and yam is called tororomeshi and I like it very much. In MayOne in the station building, there is a restaurant specialized in it. There you can eat rice as much as you like (not yam), however, they use fish broth to add flavor to yam. I don’t think it necessary to use any broth because yam itself is a unique food with stickiness resembling that of natto or fermented soybeans. I like to eat it as simply as possible. I also enjoy the combination of hot rice and cool yam. Whenever I eat it, I have a second helping, and I did so also this time.

In addition, I had salad of tomato, onion, and basil flavored with soy sauce, sesame oil, and garlic. I also had edamame tofu containing edamame or green soybeans. I sprinkled some salt according to the instruction of the package.

I found the edamame tofu quite tasty. Unlike ordinary tofu, it was good just with salt. It was pale green and looked beautiful, both outside and inside.

This is the second piece I ate later. There were four pieces of tofu in the package that was sold at a reasonable price. I’m thinking of using the remaining two for salad.