Lotus root – 蓮根

As you may have noticed already I really love to cook lotus roots (renkon-蓮根) . They have a beautiful white color that goldens when cooked, a very crispy texture, a nice shape and a delicious taste. And practicaly they’re super easy to peel and cut, and don’t require a lot of cooking time. It’s quite simple to find some all year round but spring for tiny ones, and autumns for larger ones seems the best periods. They grow in many places in Japan so local lotus roots are also easy to find, though the best I’ve ever had came from Kanazawa, which is famous for lotus roots.

Lotus roots accomodate very well with other veggies and I like to cook them with carrots, shishito, kabocha… I also love them in homemade chips. This week I’ve been working late pretty much every day, so fixing dinner in a short time was quite a must. So for this recipe I simpl cut and wash the peeled lotus root, stir fry in a bit of oil, added some shishito, and in the mean time cooked some rice with sweet potatoes. I served the rice, topped with the lotus roots and shishito, added some sesame seeds and a bit of salt. Dinner’s ready!

October 24, 2015

Deal!

From left to right: ginger in vinegar, candied ginger, gono

You may remember that I gave away to my neighbors my gingko nuts because there were really too many. So to thanks us our little 84 years old neighbor prepared us some nice Japanese traditional condiments and brang them to us timely just before lunch, so I just had to cook some rice. There were three different preparations: ginger in vinegar, candied ginger in soya sauce, and gobo simmered with mirin, sake, soya sauce, sugar and small fishes. All of them were really delicious and now I want so badly that she teaches me how to prepare these!!!!

October 22, 2015

Mushroom spread

Once I’ve made a delicious bread, I like to eat with different things and I really love vegan spreads because it’s an easy way to prepare and keep veggies for a few days. I’ve had in mind making some mushroom spread for a long time now, but never did before. But the other day we went for lunch to a nice Japanese macrobiotic cafe and I bought a recipe book where there was a recipe for a spread. So largely inspired by this Japanese recipe, I changed it to suit better my bread. So it turns out being a mushrooms-olives-thyme spread. It’s simple and delicious.

I roughly cut the 150g of mushrooms of all sorts: here fresh shiitake and shimeji, and cook them in a bit of oil. Then in a food processor I mixed the mushroom, pitted black olives (just a large table spoon), salt (adjust the amount depending on the olives), and thyme leaves (3branches, so probably the equivalent to one tea spoon). Add a little of olive oil if necessary, process to puree or chopped as you like. I put the paste in a bin for easy handling. Ready to serve and you can keep it a few days in the fridge. Perfect with my original bread for example!

October 20, 2015

My first original recipe for bread

It’s been some time now that I’m baking bread following thoroughly recipes from books, but this time I felt like I can change that and start thinking about my own mix and recipes without opening a book. once you’ve learned the basic proportions and you know what kind of texture you need to achieve after kneading it’s not difficult at all.

So my first original recipe is a warming whole wheat and rye bread. I used 160g of rye flour, 90g of whole wheat flour, 180g of water, 12g of sourdough, 5g of salt, 3g of yeast, knead until smooth and soft. After the dough has taken enough volume I shaped it, leave again a few hours, and finally baked it at 235deg for 10min, then at 220deg for 20min.

October 19, 2015

Persimmon jam

One of our persimmon trees about 2 weeks ago

In Japan, persimmons are quite popular and common. Everywhere in the country at that season you can see their trees with little or no foliage, just magnificent orange fruits against the blue sky. And this year there are so many fruits on each tree that it is really amazing! There exist a few varieties from the very sweet used in different recipes more often in salty versions, to the sour ones (shibui kaki – 渋いカキ) used dried: hoshi kaki (干しカキ). Since the season is just starting there’s going to be many opportunities to prepare persimmons.

In our garden we have three persimmon trees, two sweet and one quite old sour one. I don’t use the sour ones I leave them to the birds, because old ladies from area told me that Ohara is too warm to dry kaki properly without them rotten. But I use the sweet ones in several recipes. And this year because there are so many I’ve decided to make jam and jelly. I used only persimmon, brown caster sugar and a bit of agar agar. I peeled a dozen of persimmons, cut them in pieces, remove the seeds, add a bit of water, brown caster dugar and cooked at low heat for 1h. In the last few minutes I added a bit of agar agar because I had no natural pectin to really make it jelly like.

I then prepared the bins and and wait until cold to try on my original bread! I’m not very much used in making jam and preserves so I’m still learning, but the persimmon jam is nice, but as expected the taste is very subtle. I may have tried to add some flavor with vanilla beans may be. I made two variations: one pure jelly, and one with large chunks of fruit as on the picture. So if like me you have plenty of persimmons that could be a good manner to use them, if not I wouldn’t buy any to make jam with, unless you have a better recipe than mine, which I’ll be very happy to try because I’ve only harvested a 10th of our persimmons yet!

October 19, 2015

Unpredictability

Well, well, well, Friday evening after an other long day at work and a busy week, I was really happy to get back home, finish packing for the week-end and go and pick-up the car downstairs to leave.

It was without counting on a little unexpected event: damned new car with tones of high tech sensors and the ones measuring tire pressure… OK, so let’s put some air in the damn tire, drive a bit, decide that it’s not a good idea to drive to the country in the middle of a rainy night with a defective tire, park the car back and go back home with the luggage and just a bit upset: it’s rainy, and I can sleep one more night on my dream pillows!!!

Saturday morning we went to had our tire check: flat tire due to a vis!!! And while it got repaired we walked in a nearby open house village, you know these places where they have models home you can visit. Found a nice one and decided to visit, and got plenty of ideas and hints for the reform of our bathroom in Ohara, a thing that we’ve had in mind for a few years already!!! First nice discovery of the day!

With our repaired tire and ready to drive car we finally head to the country but we decide on our way to stop at Ichihara lakeside museum to try their pizzeria with view on the lake. They serve homemade pizze prepared with local products, and really enjoyed it: fresh, simple, delicious, and local! Perfect, second nice discovery of the day!

We then decided to have fun and drive the small roads of inner Chiba: Naka Bosso (中房総) and took the long way to Ohara. We discovered the beautiful Yoro valley, its old fashioned onsen and a very mountain like landscape and atmosphere, extremely different than the one of the Pacific coast, though it’s only 30km away! A recommendation to enjoy soon the autumn colors and a good fun drive! Third discovery!

And we finally arrived home at tea-time, for which I quickly baked an apple tart with a thin sable dough and one apple thinly sliced on top, nothing else. This unpredictable flat tire just led us into a beautiful day!

October 18, 2015

The perfect pillows

I can fell asleep and nap pretty much anywhere, even at the dentist during a consultation, or during my pilates sole work out! Yet I’m very sensitive to sleeping quality, and it’s gotten worst in the past tears with a constant lack of sleep. So finding the perfect sleeping gears has been quite difficult but I think that now I have finally it!!! Several years ago when we settled in Japan I bought a big duvet at Muji and I must say that I’ve never expected it to be so nice, and fluffy and warm after all these years. For the bed we once decided to get rid of our futon and got a wonderful Simons bed. Never regretted that investment! I even often miss it when we are traveling!!! But for the pillows it’s been more difficult. We’ve had plenty but never satisfied until we stayed at the Mandarin Oriental in Paris and I tried their pillows. The first time I thought it was just by chance that I slept so well, but after a few nights I was just in love with these pillows, super voluminous, yet like giant marshmallows, with super support and softness.

So finally I undressed one pillow to check out where they came from and discovered Ploh (http://www.ploh.com). Ploh is Singapore based company making luxury down bedding. Once back in Tokyo I started to hate my pillows and finally ordered Ploh pillows. After one week they were delivered via Fedex. And no disappointment! They are just as great as I hope they would be!!!

Sweet dreams!

October 17, 2015

Left over diner

We had friends at home for diner the other night, and I over spec the diner portions, so, rare enough, I had enough left overs for a second diner. But because I don’t like eating twice the same thing I arrange it in completely different maner.

The original dinner consisted in plain white rice, Japanese autumn veggies (sweet potatoes, litus roots, carrots, eringi mushrooms, turnips…) in dashi and sake, salt-grilled sawara, and a mushrooms and tofu miso soup.

The new version was a cha-an (sauteed rice) with sawara and sauteed veggies, with sesame. For that I fried the rice in a bit of oil, added a table spoon if sesame seeds, added the veggies, and stirred often. I removed the skin and bones of the fish and crumbled it in the rice, stirred again and served. A super delicious diner, ready in 5 min, just perfect after a long day at work!

October 16, 2015

Experimental tart

I was running out of flour and wanted to prepare a leek tart, so I made a little experiment for the dough and give a Japanese twist to my tart. I prepared the dough with rice flour (2/3) and soy flour (1/3), vegetal oil and soy sauce, and of course water. The mixture was incredibly soft and nice to work, so I made a rather thin dough. For the leek it’s Japanese thin ones, so I just halved them and set them in the dough. I baked for 30min at 180deg.

The result? Taste-wise it was just somptuous, a mix of crispy, melty, juicy and dry. Amazing! Plating and eating wise: the sides of dough were really crispy, so hard to make a clean cut. The whole length leeks are difficult to cut, so not optimal. Need some work here, but couldn’t help sharing the recipe of that delicious dough, very likely perfect with shiitake and other Japanese vegetables.

October 15, 2015