Month: December 2015

Late after-work dinner

This week is the last one before flying to Italy, so there’s quite a number of things I want to finish to be sure that I’m leaving with everything sorted out. Days at the lab have been extremely long and busy juggling with meeting, students, lectures and administrative work. So when back home I want to prepare aome light and comforting food. These little tortellini are just perfect. But rather than simply boiling them and serving them with olive oil, this time I opted for a fresh veggies broth made with leek, carrots and carrot leaves. After boiling the veggies in water for 3min I added the tortellini and boiled them for about 10min (you don’t want to over-cook them). I served it as a soup and for those who like it I served with some gratted Parmegiano.

Flounder and spinach

Most of our diet is made of simply delicious fresh organic products and mainly local. My recipes are usually trying to take the best of these ingredients while being everyday cooking recipes, so something that can be prepared in less than 15min and ready to eat in less than 30min. The other thing is that I almost never cook twice the very exact same thing.  So when I found this beautiful flounder prepared for sashimi, and this big bag of little spinach I immediately thought of a slightly fried fish with just steamed and buttered spinach, for a simple and delicious dinner. I just cut the piece of fish in two, floured it and fried it in a little oil. To enjoy the taste and texture I decided to add nothing: no salt, no pepper, no yuzu, no nothing! 

Looking for the perfect madeleine recipe: may be I’ve found it!!!

Well, an other rainy Sunday to test some madeleine recipe and I think this time it’s the right one. At first I was a bit reluctant in trying it because it has a lot more butter in it, but so far it’s the one that guarantees the best bumps and the perfect consistency. So, too bad for the butter outage that we still have in Japan, this is the recipe I will adopt as a base for my madeleines from now on!

I found it on the blog Piroulie (http://piroulie.canalblog.com/archives/2008/12/03/10442707.html) and it’s a Lenotre recipe. I always do smaller amounts so I used: 100g of flour, 85g of butter, 40g of brown caster sugar, 2 eggs, 3g of baking powder, a pinch of salt, a large table spoon of honey, then whatever you want for flavoring. This time I used neroli. I first melt the butter in a little pan. Then in a bowl I mix the eggs, the sugar, the salt and the honey, and batter well until a foam starts forming. Then I add the flour, the baking powder and continue to mix. Finally I add the butter and the flavoring and refrigirated for 30min. The oven is preheated at 230deg and as soon as I insert the madeleines I drop the temperature to 200deg as Piroulie recommended. After about 5-7min I again lower to 180deg, then the bumps appear nice and big! I bake until almost all golden, and remove from the mold as soon as I take it out. Quite simple and really delicious!!

Baking bread again!

I’ve the impression that I haven’t baked bread too often recently, and I was happy to kneal again this weekend. Because I wanted both a bread for breakfast and to accompany our lunch I decided to prepare a half-half rye-white flour. I ise now a pretty simple and standard procedure for my bread: 250g of flour (whatever you like or mix), 14g of dry sourdough, 3g of natural yeast, 6g of salt, 150g of water. Though my bread don’t have giant bubbles forming, probably of a too low temperature, I love them for the delicious taste, the crunchy and soft combination, and the smell in the house!

Mushrooms, yuzu pasta

Sorry for this little break from TPS. Work has been really busy in the past weeks, often coming back home pretty late and I’ve also had some end of the year parties, and dinner out with friends, so these last days have been pretty low on cooking. I’m happy to spend the weekend in the country and to have time to cook. So today, for our post tennis game I prepared these nice fusilli with grilled mushrooms: shimeji and shiitake with fresh yuzu peel and yuzu juice, dressed with a little of olive oil, sea salt and pepper. A perfect lunch to continue with a few hours in the garden trimming trees and preparing for winter. Have a good weekend!!

Improvised dinner

Having always a fridge ready with fresh veggies is just perfect when you want to prepare an improvised dinner for a friend stopping by. I had in mind two menus after checking its contents, a vegan-mexican or a Japanese one-plate dinner. Vote has decided for Japanese and so it was a simple rice with katsuobushi and veggies in soya sauce. For the veggies I used what I had in the fridge: carrots, turnips, potato, purple sweet potato and broccoli (they had this massive-beautiful-just cut broccoli the other yesterday at the local farmers place near the university that I couldn’t resist). I wash and cut them (recently I seem to like sticks over slices). I first cook at high heat in a bit of olive oil, then I add a bit of soya sauce and water and cook under cover until the potato is cooked. The rice is just plain white rice to which I add katsuobushi thin flakes after cooking.

Red cabbage salad

Nothing here too experimental with this recipe, but I’ve been craving for red cabbage salad. And it makes a perfect Monday fix for dinner when I’m in a rush. 

So I just sliced thinly about 1/4 or less of red cabbage, added some fresh baby leaf salad or just a few leaves of salad and fresh spinach also cut, I added some olive oil, some pumpkin seeds, some walnuts and some okara, a bit of salt and a pepper and finished with a little curcuma. Additional some cubes of gruyere cheese, and a slice of bread.

Another version of the kabocha tart

Spending the weekend in Tokyo we often eat out, so at last I wanted a simple dinner at home on Sunday evening. I hesitated between risotto and tart and finally we opted for the tart. As for the veggies to put in it was all decided: leek, tomato and kabocha, I had also some nice bacon that I added to the mix but it is optional. 

So, in a pan with a little of olive oil I grilled the leek cut in slices, the bacon, then added the kabocha and the tomato. I cooked until all the moisture from the tomato was gone. I also added 2 beaten eggs, salt and pepper before putting it in the dough. For the dough I opted for an olive oil base half-half white flour and buckwheat flour. II baked 20min at 180deg. Ready to serve.

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