After my decadent lunch at The Counter today, I’m glad to be cooking some simple tasting food for dinner. Fall’s just around the corner even though our heatwave seems to be hanging on still. I want to take advantage of fall and winter vegetables more and what better way to welcome autumn than to cook kabocha.

I made a really easy mashed kabocha dish. It’s kind of like mashed potatoes, but with kabocha squash instead. I just wrapped a quarter of the squash in plastic wrap, microwaved it till the orange part was tender, then scraped it out into a bowl. Then I mashed it with a teaspoon of margarine (you can use butter too) and a teaspoon of white miso. The sweetness of the kabocha went perfectly with the white miso.

I also found some shishito peppers at Mitsuwa and figured it would be good to add some green to dinner. I just stir-fried these in the wok over high heat with some soy sauce, minced garlic, and grated ginger. Shishito peppers may look spicy but they’re pretty mild except for the one or two rogue peppers that always seem to be more spicy than the rest.

Last was the star of dinner: simmered tofu topped with egg. The simmering sauce was 120ml water, 2Tb soy sauce, 1Tb mirin, 1Tb cooking wine, 1 clove grated ginger, and some chopped up white parts from the green onion. I then cut up some silken tofu and put it in the sauce, simmered it for about 20 minutes, added in a beaten egg on top, simmered till the egg was set, and topped with chopped green onion.