Kitchen Reflections | Satoko Nagata, Dean of the Faculty of Nursing and Medical Care

While browsing social media, I occasionally come across recipes that catch my eye. A recent favorite is a ground meat crumble made by sautéing a mix of ground beef and pork with finely chopped broccoli, seasoned only with salt and pepper. Sake-steamed saury, which is easily prepared in a frying pan, has become a staple for me in autumn. It is a joy to see new faces appear on a dinner table that had become somewhat routine.

That said, the long-standing staples are hard to give up. A dish made simply by simmering sliced beef with plenty of green onions, grated ginger, soy sauce, and sake has been a regular for over 30 years. During my days as a nurse, on night shifts when we had a bit of downtime, we would sometimes sample the side dishes we had brought from home. A senior nurse would often request, "Bring that beef dish again for the next night shift." Given my personality, I am not suited to following recipes exactly, so I appreciate menus that require no measuring and are impossible to mess up.

Speaking of foolproof dishes, stews and simmered foods come to mind. While simmered yellowtail with daikon radish or Chikuzenni (simmered chicken and vegetables) are good, Western-style stews with tomatoes are also family favorites. Summer vegetable ratatouille is rich in umami, making me truly appreciate the underlying power of tomatoes, garlic, and olive oil. Minestrone with soybeans is another staple. I prefer making it with fresh tomatoes rather than canned ones; when I find ripe tomatoes at the store, I buy them in bulk, remove only the stems, and freeze them. When it is time to use them, the skins come off easily under running water, and they can be roughly chopped for use in stews or pasta, which I highly recommend.

I delivered side dishes two or three times a week to my father, who lived alone nearby. Since his dentures stopped fitting well around this spring, my cooking for him had centered on soft stews and soups. He could never remember the names "ratatouille" or "minestrone," but he would return the empty containers saying, "That thing from the other day was delicious."

This summer, I ended up staying at my father's house for a while. With no time to cook between caregiving duties, I relied on convenience stores, and my father relied on commercially available retort-pouch nursing care food. One day, the stress became overwhelming, and I had my family take over for a few hours. What I did at home was soak in a bath at my leisure and cook in the kitchen. I neither love nor excel at cooking, but while I was making what I liked in my familiar kitchen, I was unexpectedly overcome by the feeling that this was where I belonged. I made the beef dish, a chicken and onion stew, winter melon soup, and potato salad all at once. Bringing them back to my father's house to eat with my family truly put my mind at ease, and I felt firsthand the importance of food and the effectiveness of respite care.

Now that my caregiving duties have ended, there is no longer a need to prepare soft meals, but stewed dishes are still the best in autumn. For a family birthday in October, I plan to make a large pot of minestrone.