Month: October 2017

Simple food

There is one thing that I always think about cooking when in a rush to prepare our meals and want to eat some Japanese food, it’s simple seasonal vegetables sautéed, deglazed in a bit of soya sauce, served with rice and pickles. It is so very simple and yet so delicious that it beats any other recipe. It requires no thinking, a very short preparation for the vegetables and then everything in a pan with a few drops of oil, under cover, just stir once in a while. Which frees the hands to do something else! Perfect when the week is super busy with many deadline at work, friends and family visiting, a weekend away in preparation and A. leaving for Europe for 10 very long days…

Autumn version of sautéed vegetables (one plate dish for 2 people)

– 1 Japanese sweet potato

– 3 shiitake

– 2 little turnips (long or round) 

– any other seasonal vegetables: a little piece of kabocha, a few green beans, gingko nuts, shishito, eringi…

– 2tbs of soya sauce

– some vinegared pickles: I love rakkyo (Chinese onions) which are served with curry.

– 1 cup of Japanese rice

Star cooking the rice. Wash and cut the vegetables. In a pan greased with a bit of oil add all the vegetables (except if some have very short cooking time like green beans) cook at high heat for two minutes and stir. Lower the heat and cover. Cook for 12min and stir once in a while. Add the soya sauce, and stir for one minute. Serve all together.

Kabocha soup

Autumn seems to have arrived. Mornings and evenings are much chillier and days are getting really shorter already. So it’s time to prepare some warm simple soups. After eating so many butternut squash, now I have started to cook kabocha. This little Japanese pumpkin with very green skin that can be eaten too. And making soup with it is really simple and it always make a good starter or a whole meal if accomodated a bit with crouton or grilled bacon. Here is my basic recipe. 

Kabocha soup for 2 or 3 people. 

– 1/2 kabocha

– 1L of water

– 1 little pack of fresh cream

– 1tbs of soya sauce

If you want your soup orange remove the skin, if greenish is ok for you wash the kabocha and keep the skin. Remove the seeds and cut in pieces. Boil in 1L of water under cover. Check the cooking with a toothpick. When very soft stop. With a wood pestle work directly in the pan and purée the kabocha (you can use a blender also if you want!). Add the cream, the soya sauce. Heat before eating. Add black pepper, bacon, parmegiano or whatever you like!!!

Persimmons harvest

Together with the gingko nuts, the season for persimmons has also started, and our two trees in the garden are literally covered with fruits this year. Since this is way to much to eat them all, that pretty much everyone has a persimmon tree in their garden, contrarily to gingko nuts, they are difficult to give away. I tried jam but it was not a huge success, and I run out of ideas on how to preserve them. These are not really persimmons you would dry, like shibui kaki… So I harvest a few, give a few to friends who don’t have a garden, and usually offer the rest to the birds, bees and butterflies who seems to be loving their sweetness and juiciness. 

One of my favorite recipe with persimmons is in salad with cucumber, turnip, sesame and tofu. This time I had no turnip so it was just persimmon and cucumber. 

Persimmon, cucumber and tofu salad: 

– 1 persimmon still a bit hard

– 1 Japanese cucumber  

– 1 small block of drained hard tofu

– 1tbs of sesame seeds, or sesame powder

– a bit of salt

Peel and dice the persimmon, sluce the cucumber. Grind the sesame seeds, mix with the tofu and the salt. Add the persimmon and the cucumber. Stir well and it is ready to serve.

persimmons on the tree, with giant bee and tiny frog!
persimmons on the tree, with giant bee and tiny frog!

Gingko nuts – 銀杏

So, we have a gingko tree in our garden. The first few years it didn’t give fruits and we thought we won’t have the pleasure to eat fresh gingko nuts but also not the nuisance of the horrible smell. But then… it started to bear fruits and we started to harvest them, or sometimes it was more just to clean and limit the smell in the garden!!!! So the season has arrived again to collect fallen gingko nuts (about a bucket every day!), and to give away many (most) of them to our neighbors, but this year we also prepared some for ourselves with an enhanced technique! I remember having the nauseous smell in my nose for days after preparing them last time. So we came better equipped: masks with a drop of tea-tree essential oil. Then to remove the small bits of skins we used stones in a bucket and water and it was really easy. And dried them in the sun rather than the oven. Finally it was a bit long but not at all as terrible as I remember it was!!! Next is the cooking, but for that I know for sure we’ll have rice with gingko nuts, grilled gingko nuts, and probably vegetables stew!

Gingko nuts drying in the sun
Gingko nuts drying in the sun
The gingko tree in the garden, covered with fruits yet to harvest  
The gingko tree in the garden, covered with fruits yet to harvest  

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