The Okara Cookbook: Okara Anzacs

Sunday, September 30, 2012

Okara Anzacs

An Australian institution, Anzac biscuits (that’s cookies to you folks in the US) have their origins back in WWI, when they were made to send in packages to the Australian and New Zealand soldiers fighting in the trenches in Europe. Here I have replaced the traditional coconut with okara. If you would like a chewier biscuit add just a smidgin more golden syrup.

(Makes about 35 biscuits/cookies)

Ingredients:

1 cup rolled oats

1 cup flour

1 cup sugar

3/4 cup toasted coconut okara

1/2 cup butter

2 tbsp. golden syrup

1/2 tsp. bicarb. soda (baking soda)

1 tbsp. boiling water

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 150oC. Combine oats, flour, sugar, and Toasted Coconut Okara in a bowl. Melt butter and golden syrup together over low heat. Dissolve bicarb in boiling water, and add to butter mixture. Add butter mixture to dry ingredients, and stir to combine.

2. Drop teaspoonfuls of mixture onto lightly-greased cookie sheets, allowing room for spreading. Bake for 20 min. Loosen from trays while still warm, but allow to cool on trays.

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What is okara?

Okara is the Japanese name for soybean lees - the fibre-rich byproduct of making soymilk.

Anyone who makes his or her own soymilk and tofu knows about okara. If you’re not careful and forget to use it, soon your fridge and freezer are bursting with little bags of clumpy white stuff. In desperation, you can feed it to the dog or add it to the compost heap, but this is a real shame, because okara is very nutritious stuff. It’s the fibre your body needs. It’s where the nutrients that didn’t make it into the tofu ended up.

Adding okara to your baked goods – muffins, bread, pancakes, whatever – is a no-brainer, and no recipes are needed for this. Adding it to other “dump and guessem” dishes like soups, stews, and chilies, is also a no-brainer. There are also many traditional Chinese or Japanese recipes for simmered and stir-fried okara. These are delicious, and worth chasing up.

I turned to the Internet in desperation years ago when I got my first soymilk machine, and didn’t find what I was looking for - hence this cookbook. It was originally a simple page, hosted on a public server, and I used to get masses of hits on a daily basis. But times have changed: the Internet is a bigger places, there are more people making their own soymilk, more cooks willing to share their tips, and there are lots more recipes out there now. I hope my collection will be a good addition to the wealth of knowledge out there. Excuse the lack of pictures! The recipes are from the original page - when posting pictures of your recipes was Just Not Done - and I'll add them as I can.

Aknowledgements must go to William Shurtleff and Akiko Aoyagi, whose seminal work, “The Book of Tofu”, has inspired me and countless others to turn to soy and reap the benefits.