Since we bought a house in the countryside, I’ve been fancying a kitchen garden. The first year the whole garden was such a jungle, after being unattended for almost two years, that we decided to focus on fixing the existing trees, shrubs and plants. The second year we finally decided to start something. My mother sent me a book on square tiny but efficient gardens. I liked the idea of a contained space and the permaculture approach, so we started by making the squares and planting a few endemic species: cucumbers, eggplants mixed with some flowers, herbs and a sansho tree. Despite the summer heat, the fact that at this time we wouldn’t go every weekend we had a modest harvest, nothing exceptional but we were proud of it. Enthuse with the experience we decided to continue it with more flowers and some winter vegetables: cabbages of different kinds. That’s when things got tricky. First we had the snails, but the cabbages survived, then we had the kion, or barking dogs, these little deers, that eat literally everything you could could care for in particular what is soft or has flower. And that was it… after a couple of weeks all that remained of our cabbages was a mere stick with chewing marks… but kion are quite cute and fun, and I reckon that our baby cabbages looked delicious… so that was it… we also realize that our production wasn’t worth the investment of seeds and time, as you can by very nice vegetables for the a 10th of the price… so except for herbs (that kion didn’t eat) and that I like to use freshly harvested our kitchen garden turned into a nursery for the ever growing number of plants in the garden. Indeed the Japanese weather is so incredible and the endemic species just grow, grow, grow and multiple themselves at an impressive rate.

But last autumn when we went to pick bamboos I had in mind to make fences for fun, and then to use them to make a fully protected enclosed kitchen garden to protect my crops from kion, inoshishi (wild boar) and most of the other animals. The idea was for it to be small, navigable and easy to maintain, while various. I used the same strategy as the square garden.

I first tested its animal proof ability with some flowers I know kion love very much. After two weeks they were untouched so we started planting. A bit of herbs, as usual, broccoli (that failed being edible but grew into nice flowers), peas, potatoes, celery, ukon… but what I am really interested in growing is things that I usually can’t find at the farmers market: fennel, beets, salsifies, celery root. Again I got the seeds from France and I am now seeing them slowly growing. We’ll see how I succeed… in the mean time I started harvesting my first peas and they were good!

And what did I cooked?

A very singular recipe that I invented on the spot and turned out to be terrific!!!

So here it is… it starts a bit like a socca but it is a little twisted…

– 100g of chickpea flour

– water

– olive oil

– ground pork meat (optional)

– fava beans

– snap peas

– black pepper and salt

In a bowl mix the chickpea flour with the water to obtain a creamy paste.

In a fry pan heated cook the pork until well done. Add olive oil generously and pour the chickpea flour mix in to make a large pancake 3-5mm thick. Cook at medium low heat until the top is dry and the bottom is crispy. In the mean time blanche the vegetables and peel the fava beans. Cut the pancake in four, serve. Top with the vegetables, ground black pepper and salt. Finish with a bit of olive oil.

You’ll see it’s divine!