The useless ingredients tart

I usually shop everyday for diners and breakfasts when in Tokyo execpt for the fruits and vegetables I bring back from the country, but a few rare times I have an idea, shop for it and by the time I arrive home I have a new and better idea, or I remember there’s something that needs to be eaten first, or I just run out of time to prepare according to my original plan. So a few times I end up with a piece of tofu, herbs, a few vegetables that I need to prepare rather than having them in the fridge for ever.

This time I had a big piece of tofu, the left over celery from the ravioli, and a few cherry tomatoes. What best then preparing a tart with these ingredients. A simple sable dough with olive oil, a mixture of egg and tofu, a strict lining of tomatoes and a rough scattering of celery cut in pieces. In the oven for 30min, and a delicious dinner ready to enjoy!

July 31, 2015

Jumbo ravioli

I’ve been craving for ravioli recently but I wanted something different than the ravioli al raggu, and I can’t make cheese ravioli (remember, my husband don’t eat cheese). Hopefully I’m very resourceful (no kidding!) when it comes to inventing some new recipes and I thought that some fish ravioli would be great. Unfortunately, there has been a few typhoon coming and going, a lot of wind too, so the choice in fish was quite limited, and I ended up with a beautiful piece of salmon. I didn’t want to serve it wigh spinach (too winter-like) so I picked some fresh celery. And here’s what I did:

I prepared a dough with half white flour half buckwheat flour, pass it in the pasta machine a few times, then diced quite finely the fish and the celery (both leaves and stick), add some salt and pepper snd prepared the ravioli. I cut the dough in 5cmx5cm to be able to put a lot of filling in. Then I boiled some water with some of the remaining celery leaves and boiled my ravioli. I just served with olive oil and lemon juice.

July 30, 2015

Simple summer lunch

When the temperature exceeds 30deg day and night I only can eat very simple food. Japanese rice is really delicious when it’s hot, and it suits very well simple preparations, without any fat nor dressing. Donburi is always a good and simple way to prepare a rice based perfect meal. This time you can’t imagine something simpler: plain white Japanese rice, fresh cucumber, grilled chicken breast chopped, and a lot of shiso leaves finelly cut, a few sesame seeds for perfection. Served with a glass of cold green tea. How do you cook when it’s hot?

July 29, 2015

Red lentils patties

There are days when I am desperate to find something new to prepare with what I have in the fridge and in my cupboards that goes beyond the usual vegetable tart, the fresh vegetables salad or the pasta with sauteed vegetables. And there are days when you find instantaneous inspiration, when ideas just flow naturally. Today was the former. But hopefully there is instagram and some of the people I follow gave me the perfect inspiration I needed to use these red lentils I had. So thanks a lot cearaskitchen for your post and the delicious idea! Of course I hate to follow recipes so I had to change it and adapt it to what I wanted to eat and it ended up with these delicious 99% red lentils patties, that I accompanied with a tomato-cucumber-ocra salad with no dressing and a little black pepper drip yogurt. For the patties I just boiled the red lentils then drained them, add a little curry powder, a little rice flour to form them and then baked them in a pan with a little of olive oil. So easy! Thanks again cearaskitchen!

July 27, 2015

Black olive fougasse

What’s better than a delicious fougasse to go with local cheese from Takahide farm? I’ve already talked about classic fougasse, this time I just added a little of black olives in the preparation. It gives a nice aspect to the bread and a subtle additional taste and texture. So delicious that my fougasses at home don’t last long.

July 26, 2015

Power lunch

My husband and I usually play tennis together every Saturday morning for aboug 2h, and sometimes the stakes are really high: we play for the color of our new car, its model, the options, and sometimes even what we’ll have for lunch. That’s how my husband win his piece of meat ;). After our game we usually head to the beach for a refreshing swim, so once we’re back home we’re literally starving so I need to fix something quick and nourishing. Japanese rice is always a good option because it can be cooked unsupervised and gives me enough time to drop by the shower! Cucumbers, tomatoes and all other vegetables that can be eaten raw, Japanese pickles, scrambled eggs… are also very handy. Finally, leftover and tofu make our lunch look like something awesome.

This time it’s a mixture of all that. Plain white rice topped with some sesame seeds, sesame-tofu from Mount Koya, miso green beans, and raw cucumber.

July 25, 2015

Chick-pea flour and vegetables thin tart

It’s summer, it’s hot and still a bit humid, the farmers market is full of beautiful and ripped tomatoes, the last asparagus and green beans. And I was craving for a thin tart with a thin and crispy dough. So I prepared a brisee dough with 2/3 of chick pea flour and 1/3 of wheat flour, olive oil and water. In a large tart dish I set the dough and add raw asparagus, green beans and diced tomatoes, and finish with eggs mixed with a little of water, salt and a lot of grinded black pepper. Then bake for 20min in the oven at 210deg. Simply delicious!

July 24, 2015

Rye vivarais bread

Long time no baking recipe because I’ve prepared us a lot of pancakes, crepes and similar in the past days for breakfast, but with the hot days baking bread has been so much easier than in winter that it would be a shame not to enjoy the warm weather.

This time I prepared a rye Vivarais bread. It’s a French traditional large bread, delicious anytime of the day. For one large bread I used 250g of rye flour, 250g of white flour, 155g of water, 13g of dry sourdough, 2g of yeast, 5g of salt. The process for manual kneading is always the same. Only shaping the bread differs. Here it gets a little more tricky, because after shaping the bread you need to cut it quite deeply, turn it on a floured clothe for 90 minutes and then bake it the floured face up, 10min at 230deg, and then 15min at 210deg. My nread was delicious but I’m not 100% sure I got it all right!

July 23, 2015

Summer fruits crumble

It is rare that I cook desserts, unless we have guests, because we usually snack around 17h and dine around 21h, so I prefer to fix us something good for our five o’clock snack: small cakes, tarts, crepes, always with fresh ingredients, seasonal fruits etc… and skip the dessert. But with the heat recently, we’ve just snacked on fresh fruits and I decided to prepare something that I don’t often cook: fruits crumble. It’s strange enough that I always forgot about crumbles and bake tarts often. Maybe because it always ends up with no shape and it’s not as elegant as a tart or a clafouti where the fruits are perfectly aligned (control freak!). Well tonight I’ve made one and I wish I could share with you the delicious smell of my kitchen!

I used a random recipe (without really caring for the quantity but more the texture) for the crumbs mixing flour, brown sugar, baking powder, salt, butter and vanilla. For the fruits I used fresh blueberries, peaches and plums. Cut the fruits in bite size, make a layer of fruits in a pie dish and then add the crumbs on top. Baked 30min at 190deg. And it’s ready to eat after it has cooled down.

July 22, 2015