The best way to enjoy umeboshi is with simple plain white rice in my opinion. Since I got a big pot of freshly made little shiso umeboshi from our neighbor (mine are big plums without shiso), I really wanted to try them. I prepared simple white rice, and to make it a dinner I added a little of ginger grilled pork and some little radishes grilles too.
The plum are just freshly pickled and in their juice to they are salty-sour-sweet, very tasty and melting in the mouth. Actually they are delicious without rice too and now I understand why a Japanese traditional snack for kid is umeboshi. There are so many ways to prepare them and so many ways to eat them!!
Sometimes things are just like that: in the fridge there is a yellow zucchini a yellow capsicum, new carrots and eggs and the first things that comes to mind with this chilly grey weather is curry-rice. In the end it gives a all yellow everything plate. Simply delicious and tasty, but very well presented I reckon!!! I need to work on my plating again… How do you do your plating for everyday’s food that has no real shape like curry-rice?
It’s a fact rare enough to be mentioned: I’ve cooked shrimps!!! Indeed it is awfully rare that I cook shrimps: 1. Because it’s not so easy to find wild shrimps; 2. Because I prefer them without head, don’t you think too these giant eyes are kind of weird? 3. It smells quite strong after… Anyway, I found some wild shrimps prepared for sashimi: head removed. They were not giant prawns like I like best but still a lot of conditions were there to give it a try. And I decided then to prepare them with what might already the last zucchini of the season (extremely short season in Chiba) with ginger and rice. So I gratted fresh ginger and marinated the shrimps in. Then I grilled them on a hot pan. I just steamed the zucchini and added small pieces of ginger and soya sauce. Served on top of Japanese rice, decorated with black sesame seeds. That’s all!!
We have a bayberry tree in our garden. At first it was so much fighting with the surrounding trees it was small and not giving really fruits but now that we’ve trimmed trees around and at the foot remove all the weed and tiny bamboos it’s growing quite quickly and this year it is giving tones of fruits. A large part of them felt during the big storm early Saturday morning so I decided to harvest the one still on the tree and ripe enough, which means that I hervested 2kg of fruits. Bayberry are very similar to strawberry tree fruits but they are an Asian species. I only know the Asian version in syrup in cocktails in Asian restaurant when I was a kid! Actually they taste a little like cranberry while having a very different texture.
I didn’t know what to do with that many fruits thanks to IG followers advice and a bit of net browsing I managed to know how to prepare them:
wash them under running water
soak them 2h in slightly salted water to be sure there is no bug in: I collected a little worm only! Remove the stems.
wash them and dry them with a clothe.
Jelly
now they are ready for any preparation. I did some sugar syrup with 700g of fruits and 700g of block sugar. Now I just need to wait for the sugar to melt and for the syrup to be ready. The other thing I had in mind was jam. Unfortunately without any pectin it does jellify apparently so my jam ended up in an other syrup that I used right away and o make jelly for dessert adding just agar agar to the syrup and using a mold. I like my jelly no too stiff do I used little agar agar, and added a fruit in each piece. I have also used the same syrup for flavoring a cake for our breakfast tomorrow. I removed the seeds and added the pulp and syrup to a yogurt cake mix without any oil or butter in. I am sure there are many more variations to think about!!!
30m pool with view for lapsroom with viewbathroom with view too
What a nice experience to stay in a beautiful hotel in your own city! Last time we did that was for our wedding almost 10 years ago, when the Mandarin Oriental Tokyo was still brand new and we hold our casual party in the same building. Since then none of the new hotels in Tokyo really attracted me enough to want to stay in a hotel in Tokyo, the two things that attract me the most in urban hotels being the swimming pool and the view. During the summer I often thought about staying at the new Otani or the Okura for their outdoor summer pools, but in the end weather and work never managed to be right. Until the Aman opened last spring… The minute I saw a picture of the black pool and the view I wanted to go. At first it was almost impossible to have a room there without planning long ahead etc… Right after it opened and my parents were visiting we went for a drinkonly, but now that the press boom is all about Amanemu in Ise, the Tokyo hotel has more availability on last minute booking. So we finally did it and I’m very glad we did. The place is impressive, not just the lobby but the rooms too, and the pool of course that we amply used. It has nothing to do with wabisabi, it is Japanese in style but not in dimensions, it’s like a cathedral. I loved the material, in particular the lava stone for the bath room. Simple, efficient and elegant without being pompous. Everything is about the view and that’s exactly what you want. I loved the modularity of the room and bathroom with the giant sliding doors, the steps that creates a partition in this huge space while preserving the view from everywhere. And the sofa by the window to srutinize outside, the streets of Otemachi, the construction sites, Hibiya park… Like looking at a model.
A. asked for croissants for breakfast last weekend and I really wanted to try making some again after my last trials that were so so. Indeed I tried twice before to make croissant and if there was always something to complain about. For my first trial they had the consistency and taste of brioche, delicious but not a croissant at all. My second trial, more than one year ago, the taste was perfect but they didn’t really grow fluffy so they were tiny and heavy and slightly unbaked because it took actually more time to cook them and I was worried they would dry. This time I used the same recipe as before but the temperature was higher so they grow bigger, but I made a little reading mistake when finalizing the shapes and instead of one layer of dough I rolled two: heavier, less fluffy than expected and twice less croissants! But perfectly baked with the longer time and very promising. I’m getting close! Can’t wait to try again!!!
When I harvested the garden plums I had in mind to try one recipe of simmered plum from my Shojin cuisine book. So I kept 6 of the largest and greenest plums for that recipe. But busy with other things I didn’t prepare them right away and the plum have turned from green to a beautiful orange, and were ripening very quickly. So I decided to go for an other manner to cook them, simply preparing some kind of compote. I put the plums in ample water and boiled them at low heat for 2h under cover; then I drained most of the water and kept only 5 to 10mm in the pan, added 2tbs of brown sugar and simmered at low heat again for 30min without cover, or until almost all the syrup is gone. Instead I obtained a thick jelly (the brown paste in between the plum on the picture).
You can serve the plums warm, at room temperature or cold.
With the leftovers of the salmon filet and the Swiss chard I prepared a soup for our dinner tonight. Simply by boiling some little pasta (some Sicilian pasta for soup I had left from our trip to Italy last December) in salted water and adding the cooked fish and Swiss chard 3minutes before serving. Added olive oil and black pepper and served hot.
This winter I talked a little about the cooking books I got for Christmas and I tried several recipes from them. I also use them as source of inspiration. Recently I was attracted by the Nordic cookbook and in particular by salmon recipes. I wanted to prepared cured salmon. So finally I bought a nice salmon filet and was about to prepare it when A. told me that he rather have it right away than wait for 48h for the cured fish… Well.. I left the cured fish for an other time and opted for a butter grilled one. And just blanched the beautiful baby colorful Swiss chard I found at the farmers market and baked some 100% buckwheat pancakes. Added some pickled cucumbers and served all together. Simply delicious. For a Nordic experience I guess that cream and dill would have been on the plate too, but I didn’t have any!
