Month: March 2016

Cooking and baking, yes!

Finally the weekend, almost done with my administrative duties at the university, and also done with two crazy weeks of dining out. So the first thing we did when we arrived in Ohara was to rush to the local farmers market to shop fresh food, then I started baking and cooking!! Hurray!!  

Baking a big bread for our breakfast tomorrow; and cooking our dinner, something simple but fresh: plain white rice with fresh shiso leaves chopped; lotus root cooked in sardines dashi and then slightly fried; and bonito, just cooked in a hot pan. Back to simple and delicious homemade food, back to the country with our stray cats, back to spring with the frogs now in the rice paddies!

No cooking or so little

This week I ‘ve had only one dinner home, all the other nights I’ve had business related dinners, and when it’s the case I always try to prepare something for A.. Something he likes and that can prepared in advance. A. likes sausages which are not really a favorite of mine, so I cooked some new onion, shiitake and new potatoes stew with sausages for him. It super quick to prepare, it cooks while I get myself ready to work, and A. is happy when he comes back alone to have a nice dinner ready!!! 

Still playing winter-spring

After a gloomy week of rain and cold weather, now the sun is back for a few days and the temperature gently increases during the day, spring veggies and wild sprouts are more and more present on the market, while classic veggies like mushrooms and spring cabbages are also taking a large part of the show. I wanted to cook some risotto primavera but couldn’t find all the proper ingredients so I decided to change it to a green peas-eringi-bacon version. Simply delicious with the softness of the rice, the chewiness of the eringi and the sweetness and crispiness of the peas. I didn’t use any broth because I use the bacon as a base. Then add the eringi, finish just one minute before serving with the peas to keep them just a little hard.

Saturday alone in Tokyo = soup day

A. had a company outing so I spent part of the week end alone in Tokyo. A cold and grey weekend so I went only for a long walk, did some shopping and took the opportunity to prepare our apartment for the arrival of a new sofa in our living room, just the third one!!! I also add a party with students and former students, but usually I just have one drink a these kind of parties and don’t touch the food. I found it was a perfect time to have a little monodiet for the day and made some super simple fresh veggies soup with one leek and three little carrots diced thinely and only boiled in water (no stock, no broth, nothing) to which I added, for the energy, a few little Sicilian pasta. Just added a bit of thyme and a drop of olive oil. It was both lunch and dinner and After eating out so often it was perfect!!!

My cooking process

It’s always the same. There are weeks when we are just busy and then there are weeks when we are busy and we have friends visiting in Tokyo, colleagues from abroad, party and outing with work all at the same time. This means a lot of dining out and much less sleep than usual and less workout, it also means a more or less empty fridge. And then my body gets crazy and crave for even more simple food. So today I decided to prepare a simple Japanese meal. I started by preparing rice of course and some ichiban dashi (konbu and katsuobushi). Then I use the dashi to cook daikon and to serve it with some yuzu miso, as I did before. I just love it. But then I was wondering what to prepare with. I found tomatoes in the fridge and remember about these delicious dashi-tomatoes I may have seen somewhere so I prepare some: easy just wash tomatoes and boil them 2 min in dashi, then peel them. and serve with some hot dashi. And finally I found wakame that I got from the country and haven’t used yet, so I added some again in the dashi, added an egg to poach and served all in one plate. All came while I was cooking and that’s my normal cooking process, I create the meal in real time as I am cooking. That’s why I never cook twice quite the same thing and why Tokyo Paris Sister is so important to me, because it is a trace, a diary of the inspiration of the moment and it helps me keep track of all these ideas I had.

About plating

Cooking is about ingredients, taste and visual for me, yet plating is still an art that I don’t masterize at all. There are few reasons that can explain that, yet I would like to improve my skills. The reasons why my plating is sloppy are simple: First TIME, 99% of the meal I cook are prepared in less than 30min, 80% are prepared in less than 15min. Second QUANTITY, I don’t serve for our daily dinner a 5-course meal, it’s more or less a one-plate or one bowl with just the necessary amount, not a cherry tomato and a snap pea with s slice of carrot and a spoon of quinoa!!! Third WASTE, beautiful plating require a lot more than you actually eat just to make the plate perfect: just the head of this beautiful asparagus but we don’t need the rest, so what shall I do with the rest????

Yet I still want to have a nicer plating, and I find that Instagram is a great source of inspiration for that, from super chefs to amateurs there’s a variety of option and ideas to work with. I like @gourmetartistry for the amazing plates they show almost every day. But I also some Japanese pages with perfect musubi or onigiri that look just too delicious. What are you favorite plates? How do you serve your food everyday?

Dinner fix

Anytime I go to my pilates class I come back late and starving, so I need to fix us a dinner super quickly, and doesn’t require to much attendance to have time to do all I have to in the mean time. Psta are great for that: once they’re in the boiling water you are free for 10min. And before the water was boiling it gives enough time to prepare the veggies for the side. Recently I found that spinach and shiitake go very well along and I like to serve them with pasta, eggs…  The spinach are simply boiled or steamed, the shiitake grilled with a bit of oil (here served with pasta so olive oil). Then I just serve, add olive oil, pepper and ready to eat!!!!! 

Brioches

With the temperature increasing slightly it’s becoming much easier for me to make breads. Normal people living in normal houses don’t have this kind of problem of course, but if your house is a Japanese traditional old house made roughthly of paper, that matters! Now I can knead and I know the result is gonna be nice, so it was high time for a brioche. Usually I cook them in a rectangular pie dish, but this time I wanted them round and golden all over, so I made them smaller and round.

kneading brioche requires a bit more time than bread and your hands get really nasty, but it’s too delicious!!! So for 6 of these beauties, you need, 250g of hard white flour; 40g of brown caster sugar; 6g of salt; 10g of sourdough; 7g of yeast;  3eggs; 120g of butter at room temperature; vanilla. Mix all the dry ingredients, add the eggs and finish with the butter. Knead until smooth and soft. It can take more than 30min. Then keep in a warm place until it has taken a bit of volume (it does not double or whatsoever). Then keep refrigirated for about an hour. On cooking paper, cut in 6, and shape the brioches the way you want; wait an extra 2h; you can then use an egg yolk for a golden finish, and bake at 170 for 25min.

One-plate salad

This morning the farmers market showed me once again that it is not clear which season we’re in!!! The transition seems to take an unusually long time and daikon and cabbages were lined together with strawberries and new wasabi leaves. It gave me the idea to prepare us a warm/cold salad with warm green lentils from France and thick fried tofu, fresh tomatoes and wasabi leaves, with an olive oil and soya sauce dressing and finished with a few sesame seeds!

Proudly powered by WordPress | Theme: Baskerville 2 by Anders Noren.

Up ↑

Verified by MonsterInsights