Month: May 2020

The garden doesn’t wait…

I know it, but sometimes nature reminds it violently to me… whether it’s a roof tile broken during a typhoon by a branch we neglected to cut, an overflow of the gutter because it was filled with fallen leaves… I learn my lessons. I also now monitor more closely the plants and trees, can predict and treat ahead of pests to avoid damages, so I’ve been busy… but when I discovered my potatoes were sick I was very disappointed. Last year they grew so easily… so last weekend I took action by making horsetail decoction to treat them and harvesting the most endangered ones. Which ended up beautifully in our plate with plenty of new potatoes to eat!!!

But today when I discovered that two large trees I like particularly have been attacked by pests I was devastated. Seeing them weakening and loosing all their leaves… I again took action immediately… but all nursing my plants and trees I had little time to harvest plums, so tonight, right before the sun went down, I decided to start. Only to realize that I will have to downsize my production of plum syrup, because in this last week the warm weather has turned the green plums into a pinkish orange, and they now will be more appropriate for umeboshi… the garden never waits for you. If you’re in time good for you, if you’re not, too bad… you need to move on, and wait another year…

Hopefully, I still harvested a few green plums to prepare some plum syrup ume shiroppu 梅シロップ. I have something with syrup usually in summer, but not only, I always have had. I have always loved them and I remember my dad bringing me a glass of grenadine syrup, very diluted, in the morning before going to high school… I’ve never been a morning person and for more than 20 years I never had breakfast except something to drink. The plum syrup is really nice because it can be drunken cold or hot, which makes it year round drink, very enjoyable in the winter after a body boarding session or on the tennis court. Indeed, because it is very simply made, not only it tasted great, it is also full of nutrients, highly diluted it makes a good recovery drink after effort. Add to that the salty plum juice umezu 梅酢 from making umeboshi and you have the perfect energy drink sweet and salty, 100% homemade and sweet and salty to your taste! For 500ml of recovery drink I use 2tbs of plum syrup and 1tbs of umezu then add water. When it’s really hot or effort really intense I use 2tbs of each.

Fava beans

Now is the season and it’s always a feast for me!!! Well… it wasn’t always like that, it took me time to enjoy fava beans but now I love them and I was thinking of doing a fava beans week like I did in the past for many of my favorite ingredients: 5-7 days, 5-7 recipes, but by the time I got to actually seat and write a post I realize I published so many pictures of recipes with fava beans on IG that in the end it wasn’t making sense anymore. So once again the fava bean week has been postponed… I decided to go with a summary of my favorite recipes, may in one or two posts.

One thing that took me some time to understand was how delicious fava beans or sora-mame in Japanese そら豆 are when simply blanched and pealed. I use to eat them whole (don’t get me wrong not whole whole right! Just the beans inside the pod!!!)… but after preparing some Shojin cuisine recipes some years ago, I understood the difference between pealed and not pealed fava beans, and I would never not peal anymore.

One of my favorite fava beans combination is with tomatoes. For some reason Isumi produces beautiful and delicious tomatoes. Very large and ripe ones, I love to cook them slowly with olive oil and reduced into a thick tomato sauce. They are sweet and tasty. Add a new onion to the preparation, soften by the long and slow cooking at low heat, and this is perfection!! If you have made tomato sauce last summer, my preparation is probably close to that, even thicker, so if you still cannot find proper tomatoes just use tomato sauce. I just then add blanched and pealed fava beans and use it for accommodating Japanese rice white and brown, or pasta, long and short or just a slice of made bread.

Tomato and fava beans topping brown rice

One other recipe is to use the fava beans as a base for pasta sauce. Instead of just blanching the fava beans I cook them a little longer so that they become creamy when pealed. Then mash them with olive oil, salt and pepper and add to pasta. Here I added a bit of smoked snapper.

Fava beans pasta sauce with smoked snapper

Finally, one of my favorite way of eating quinoa is to start as a soup, but let the liquid evaporate almost entirely and add plenty of vegetables from the start. I usually do this recipe in winter but spring is also good with all the spring vegetables, here a large tomato for the sweetness, a new carrot, and pealed fava beans and green peas. That’s it!

Have a good day!!!

Pastizzi tal pizzeli

It is really interesting how much Maltese food has left a strong impression on me. I’ve already shared some of my favorite recipes from Malta, but one is still missing: that of pastizzi tal pizzeli, one of the three types of pastizzi, that with spicy peas. Why did it take me so long? Because I was waiting for the season of green peas to make them with fresh green peas. And now the season has come and I have gotten plenty of green peas so I tried making pastizzi. But for the genuine recipe you’ll have to wait longer, my attempt, though delicious, is a disgrace to the true Maltese pastizzi such that in the picture below.

If you look on the internet you’ll find several different recipes for pastizzi, one of the main difference is those that use spilt peas, and those that use green peas, but they all have in common that they are prepared with puff pastry and the inly spice they use is curry, hence they are often called curried peas pastries, but in my memory the taste was more complex than that, or the Maltese curry is different than that we have here… hum… anyway, the challenge was to start with the puff pastry, not something I am confortable making (I need a serious training for that!), in particular when I remembered how thin and delicious it was in Malta, almost like filo (something I should also try to make!), so I decided to go with a rough puff to save some time, and spare me the disappointment of a poorly done puff pastry. As for the filling, I used half of a new onion, two handfuls of green peas, curry, a bit of clove (after all this is the Maltese spice by excellence), salt and pepper. I boiled the peas, I chopped the onion thinly and cook it in a pan with olive oil at low heat until just golden and soft. In a mortar I puréed the peas, add the spices and the onion. Stir well. Then roll and cut the dough in 8 squares of 12cm and filled them. I used an egg batter and baked at 200deg until golden. Well that was it. It was tasty, delicious but it was not a pastizzi!!!

I’ll try again! 😉

One week…

This week was just like another, but it felt looooong and painful, busy with work (I’ve started a new online robotics course that keeps me busy, among the many other things I work on)… It was also our first week of telework for the both of us together in our new apartment with schedules not necessarily matching very well to have lunch together or go for a walk together. And the first week of really warm weather, summer warm, and of air conditioning. I always have a hard time adjusting to it and I felt little appetite for a few days, rare enough, and even more rare no appetite at all for chocolate. Instead I craved simple food and simple ingredients and in these situations rice, more particularly ochazuke, has been one of my best answer. Since ochazuke with vegetables is seasonal, ochazuke in May is different than ochazuke in December and the recipes I have posted so far, even if the base dashi could be similar. For a spring ochazuke I used a plain dashi of katsuobushi, but ichiban dashi would work as well, and if your vegan or vegetarian you can opt for konbu dashi only or shiitake dashi, in which I cooked some green peas (there will be more green peas recipe coming soon!!!) and some snap peas. I added after serving a bit of sesame seeds.

This dish is perfect eaten not too warm, it provides energy while having greens and liquid with strictly no fat. And it is tasty without being overwhelming.

And in a flash the week was almost over, passing with me not sharing any new recipe as I have cooked a little less or rather very simple food… I promise to do better next week!!

Yama udo

One of the wild spring green I like to cook is udo or rather yama udo ヤマウドウ. It is a kind of long stick that likes to grow on steep road sides and is very easy to prepare, with a distinctive taste but not strong such that of fukinoto. One preparation that is really easy is with miso in miso ae. Usually I would blanched it to soften it a bit and remove its bitterness or tartness, but I realized while doing a bit of reading, that vinegar water would work as well, which for the lemon-miso ae I wanted to make was more than perfect. Indeed, while I am waiting for my lemon tree to bear fruits (I lost all last year in early strong winds and heavy rains), I found some delicious lemons at the local market. Hence, recently there has been a lot of lemon in my recipe, the lemon cake, lemon pancakes, lemon pasta… The vinegar miso ae is taken to a new level of rich flavors with the addition of the lemon. It works the same way as yuzu miso. That said my recipe today is really super simple, and if you can’t go to pick yama udo yourself or find some, you can try with regular udo. Its taste is much milder but that works very nicely too. And if there is no udo where you live, try with wild asparagus or green asparagus, that will work fine as well.

Yama udo with lemon miso ae (2 servings as side)

  • 1 udo
  • 2tsp of miso (I used my homemade miso)
  • 3tsp of vinegar (I used rice vinegar)
  • 1tsp of sugar
  • a little bit of lemon zest
  • a little of lemon juice (about 1tsp)

Peel the udo and cut in 3cm long pieces. Then slice vertically with about 2-3mm thick, then make sticks. Set in a bowl with water and 2tbs of vinegar for 15min.

In the meantime, in a bowl, mix the miso, 1tbs of vinegar and the rest of the ingredients. Stir well.

Drain well the udo and add to the miso mix. Stir well and serve. That’s it, really simple isn’t it?

I served it with grilled sawara (Japanese Spanish mackerel) and plain white rice.

Green peas

I love spring greens and new vegetables, but among them I love green peas more than the others probably. I love the taste and texture, the color and the versatility, but I also love to shell them, I’ve always had. I remember as a child how many times I helped my mother or my grand mother doing it… it’s the season when days become longer and warmer, the approaching end of the school year…

In Japan green peas are not sold by the kilo, rather in tiny amount, and used as a small green touch in rice or here and there. You don’t eat a plate of green peas… so it has always got me a little frustrated to only have a handful of green peas. Japanese prefer them snap peas, which I love too… but it’s not the same.

So when our British friend came to enjoy tea in our garden and arrives with 3 kilos of green peas he just harvested in his garden, I was as happy as could be!!! First because I wanted to eat green peas so badly, may be because the Maltese pastizzi were too good, and I haven’t found any yet at the local farmers, and because now I could play with peas for real!!!

Despite the classic recipes I love to make with green peas, I wanted to test new things… May be pastizzi themself if I manage to make a good puff pastry… but also I had some cornmeal sitting in my fridge (remember I keep most things in my fridge to avoid pest) and I wanted to cook something with it… a bit of digging in recipes with cornmeal made me lean towards croquettes, and adding peas and spices was the next thing that I found would be nice… or here is what I did plus a few recommendations to make them even better…

Cornmeal and green peas spicy croquettes
– 100g of green peas, shelled
– 150g of cornmeal
– water
– ground cumin
– a pinch of ground clove
– salt and pepper
– a bit of oil to cook the croquettes

In a bowl add the cornmeal and a bit of water and let rest while you shell the peas. This will soften the cornmeal and avoid the croquettes to be too dry. Then add the peas and add water a bit to obtain a paste rather sticky and hard. Add the spices, stir well and heat the greased pan. With two tea spoons set the dough in small mounts in the pan and cook until golden, then flip and repeat. You can either eat like this or make a tomato sauce or a yogurt sauce to dip them…


Have a good day!

Inspiration from the kitchen garden

The fancy of a beautiful kitchen garden, abundant in vegetables, berries, herbs and flowers that I’ve always had, may be because both my grand fathers had beautiful ones… may have been just a dream. The kitchen garden we created last year and that gave some beautiful potatoes, peas and peanuts last summer, didn’t deliver up to my expectations. While I was very excited about the harvest, most of the plants didn’t produce anything, didn’t grow or just died… instead of being a place like the rest of the garden, of surprises and enjoyment, it’s been a place of great frustration. In most of the places in our garden, things and edibles grow almost unattended: plums, citrus fruits, spring wild vegetables, shiitake.., but in the kitchen garden, regardless of my constant efforts, things are not working as they ought… I know I am totally inexperienced and I am learning, but I found my efforts completely vain. My onions that I shall harvest now are too small, the celeriac that was supposed to grow this winter is only starting now to finally grow, even my seedlings don’t really go well. The soil should be good and I make a lot of efforts… but I am slow at learning and not so many chances once I missed a season.

Luckily the winter was rather warm and none of the herbs froze, so I still have abundant parsley, fennel tops, and celery branch, mint and rosemary, sansho too. So while it is frustrating not to harvest properly what I had planted, at least these ones surviving for more than a year now are a great source of inspiration in their scarcity. While being simple, they add a great flavor to simple ingredients, more particularly on Friday evening when we arrive, that the fridge is close to being empty and we are starving. They help me twist a simple recipe into something new, great, fresh and green.

My last idea was an olive oil sautéed new potatoes pot to which I added celery and parsley freshly cut in the garden. That was divine.

To boost cooking time I cut the potatoes thinly, and cook them in a bit of olive oil. Then add the celery washed and chopped, stir. Finally toss in the chopped parsley. Salt and pepper and all set for dinner. So no mater how irritating or saddening it is to work in my kitchen garden, I will continue learning and trying, because even for a few parsley leaves or a handful of peanuts… it is worth the effort, as the pleasure of going down there and thinking of the next recipe counter balances everything else.

May be one day, in a far future, I’ll finally manage to obtain one of these beautifully curated kitchen garden where colorful flowers and perfectly grown vegetables are lined and create an amazement of the eyes and the promise of a generous and rustic taste.

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