Dau miu furikake ( 振り掛け / ふりかけ ) -- A Japanese condiment made with Chinese greens :)

Blogging is making me shop for unusual and unfamiliar ingredients which I see often in supermarkets here, but which I never dared to buy before as I din't know how to cook them. Nowadays, that part is easy.... you don't need to go to any expensive cooking schools to learn new stuff. For me google is the best teacher .... :) And blogging is teaching me a lot of things. My son loves Japanese food and he loves topping his rice (any rice whether it is Japanese, Indian, Thai, Jasmine...white or brown) with something called "furikake".  It is a dried mix of vegetables, fish, nori (seaweed), salt, sugar and MSG. I get his favorite brand from Japan, when my kind friends visit. 

I bought "Dau Miu" or "dou miao" greens (豆苗) from the local chinese supermarket, as I thought they looked similar to Indian "Methi", and I planned to to use them to make "theplas" which is a kind of another flat-bread. I did make it,(Here is the recipe for dau miu theplas/flat bread) but i used just 1/4 of the greens, so I used my favorite search engine and found the recipe of furikake here. It looked very easy and ready in about 30 minutes. More information about dau miu (pea shoots in English) at the wiki page.

An interesting recipe, to make kids eat their "green veges" ...:)

dau miu furikake

Ingredients:

• Dau miu (pea shoots) about 150 gms
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp sugar(I din't use)
• 2 tbsp sesame seeds

Recipe:

• Wash and clean the leaves well. 
• Dry them on a newspaper or a kitchen paper. Try to remove as much moisture as you can.

• Chop them finely. I used the food processor.

• Lay them on a parchment paper on a baking sheet.

• Bake the chopped leaves on a pre-heated oven at 160-170 degrees for about 15-20 minutes. Keep an eye on them, they shouldn't burn. Mine browned a shade darker than what I wanted. You need them dry and crunchy and brittle.

• Take them out and cool them completely.

• Once they are cooled completely, rub them between your fingers to get any bunched up leaves to crumble finely.

• Add the toasted sesame seeds, and salt and sugar and combine with a spoon.
• Store in air tight container.

• Serve as a topping for steamed rice or onigiri.

Quantity:

• Makes about 1/2 cup.... that is quite little compared to what i started with ... will try with more quantity when I make it next time. 
• But you need to use only about a tsp for every bowl of rice, so I guess it should last me for a week (If my kids want to eat  rice everyday).... :)

Notes:

• I think you can make this with any green leaves. Just bake the leaves till crunchy and brittle, crumble them and season them.
• I am going to try with fenugreek and spinach leaves, as I use these greens often. Will update the post when I do so.
• Also, blanching the leaves in hot boiling water and cooling in ice cold water, before chopping the leaves will preserve the green color, that's what I read in the original recipe and I forgot to do.... :)