My Domestic Goddess Project:
Pork steak and Komatsuna (こまつな（小松菜）)

Ever since I started cooking Japanese food, the Chinese characters of Komatsuna, 小松菜, has intrigued me. The characters, according to Wanchen's dictionary of free translation, were literally interpreted as "the vegetable of Little Pine". Of course, it was partly because I didn't know how to pronounce it in Japanese. Yet, the pastoral image that my literal translation projected, 'the vegetable of Little Pine', had been quite satisfactory to me. I imagined that it was a kind of vegetable that was initially grown by a little boy called Little Pine. Every morning, he would jump out of the bed and hurry to his small allotment in order to see how the little veggies had been. Dews on the leafy komatsuna were shining like pearls and mirroring Little Pine's happy face.


Then I found an easy recipe to try komatsuna. (Imagine how I was excited in the supermarket when I picked up a bag of this romantic veggie!) After the steak and komatsuna were shallow fried, they were ready to serve.

I found that the way I cut the tendon of the steak
made it look like a butterfly (or moth) flying over a meadow of komatsuna 小松菜.

This recipe was found on p. 50, Pork: Garlic Steak (ポークとガーリツクステーキ), in ひとり暮らしの簡単ごはん: Let's Enjoy Cooking.