Being stuck at home and making Japanese curry from a store bought curry block started to get me going. I used to do more "cooking" at home when I was younger but these days. Needed something to do.




Green beans or string beans. Can either boil in water or steam it, I chose to steam it.

That is it for green beans. Now to dressing. Use sesame seeds, specifically white sesame seeds are used here. If bought sesame seeds from stores, first you have to dry roast sesame seeds on a pan at home before uses. It is commonly used items in Japan that if you go to Japanese grocery stores, you can buy pre-roasted sesame seeds even in the U.S. If you do not find one at Japanese grocery stores near you then it is not a real Japanese grocery store.



I use Japanese cooking mortar and pestle, suribachi (すり鉢). First grind sesame seeds.



Will smell of sesame seeds. On some other dishes ask to grind sesame seeds till it become paste, like peanut butter. However, on this dish you do not want to do that. It is perfectly alright to have few seeds which did not get grind. Then add sugar.



Continue grinding till seeds and sugar are evenly mixed. Then add soy sauce little at a time.



Continue grinding by adding soy sauce little by little. Once all soy sauce is added, finished with the dressing.



Then add cooked string beans and the dressing together


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You can do same using spinach, which is another popular dish in Japan. One nice thing about this dish is you can pre-make this and keep it in refrigerator for few days, green beans do not become soggy, remain crunchy.