Month: August 2020

Having a country house…

While we are celebrating the 8th anniversary of the purchase of our country house, I thought it was time to reflect a bit on how this purchase has modified our lives, probably more deeply than we could have expected or maybe realized and in many ways how this house and its surroundings have changed my shopping and cooking habits, and play now a central role.

Here’s the quick story on how we bought a house in Isumi. After a few years living in Tokyo, we realized that with earthquakes, and the real estate in the city it wouldn’t be reasonable to buy a house there… yet… owning a Japanese style house was something we fancied, and we spent hours day dreaming on the catalogue of country houses and properties of furusato.com, a website that sells all kind of properties in remote Japan. The seed was there. Our friends’ house and their life style in Tsunan probably helped a lot in making the idea grow, and one day, out of the blue in June 2012 we went to visit one house in Yokosuka… ocean view, pool, but not quite it… the next Friday, A. sends me a link, I call the real estate agent. Appointment to visit the next morning. It rains as usual in June, the hydrangeas are blooming, the garden is a mess of lush greens, the house needs serious refurbishing and reform but no serious work. This is it! For the sake of pleasing the agent and being sure of our choice we go to visit another one, but our minds are all set. This is the one! And in a snap the deal is done.

The day we bought our house in Isumi

We often work like this. We mature something for a loooong time, but when we’re set we’re set, and never regret. It took us 3 years to decide to buy our first car, 1 test drive to settle, it took 7 years to decide to buy a country house in Japan, 5min to settle.

So now that’s when things get even better than we could have ever imagined… Every year has its reforming and embellishments. Of course we were not totally stupid on our choice. We decided to pick a house in a not too touristic place (avoiding the big weekend crowds of Hakone, Karuizawa, Hayama…), quite rural, and nearby the ocean. And 100km away from Tokyo, so that the driving wouldn’t get too long. While our plan was to go every once in a while, we quickly got addicted to being there, the space, the light, the green, the quietness. Keeping yourself busy with something in the garden or in the house is something that is priceless. Being outside, in the open air, surrounded by greens or the ocean made me stronger, and more confident. It also has given me a lot of time to think, while the hands are at work trimming and pruning, about the career moves I wanted to do or not do, to understand where and when I was in perfect equilibrium. It also constantly makes me question what I do and why. This country house and the life we live there show me the absurdity of our societies and help me understand its profound problems. Of course it doesn’t give any answer, there is no magic here… just learning to observe more, be more patient in the kitchen garden, manage frustration when a parasite destroy your crop…

All these changes happened slowly, when we discovered little by little the communities living there, the amazing resources, the many enthusiastic and passionate people we meet. We learn about Japanese wood craft, we learn earthware craft, we learn about farming. We now live on food that is produced right there (some people challenge themselves to live on food that comes from less than 100miles, we could say that most of ours comes from less than 10miles, and we don’t even need preserves as each season has its harvest!!!). Isumi is rich in all kind of food from vegetables to fruits, sea products and cattle farming. The dairy, the eggs, the seaweed, the fishes, the pork, the rice are incredible… there is a community of permaculture farmers and organic farmers… Living in Tokyo had given me such a limited choice of food and quality, even when I was shopping at local farmers near work, they didn’t have the choice we can have here. Living in Isumi, I discover new greens every season!!!

Having a lot of variety in food is nice, learning how to prepare it is just even better. Thanks to new friends and neighbors I have shared so much. My 89 year old neighbor teach me not only to sew, but also to garden and to cook or prepare local products such as umeboshi. Our other neighbors and friends too. We make umeshu together, miso, we exchange seeds…

Yet one thing was missing from the city: the good bread shops from Tokyo for our breakfast. And that’s when I took on baking bread. At first it was just a once in a while thing. It was tedious, not always very successful but I didn’t give up. I studied, and tried over and over. I enjoy the kneading, the shaping, the eating! I also teach friends about some local French breads making…

The other thing I learnt to deal with was the uncontrollable humidity/dryness and heat/cold in the house that prevent you from being able to keep any non Japanese staple longer than 6 months. Forget about having a bag of almonds or cookies in your pantry, they turn bad in no time. Who cares I’d say… I realized that making pancakes, crepes or scones takes only a few minutes and they are much more healthy and delicious!! Making cookies also is just that simple too!

So this little house with its green surroundings has been the source of a constant amazement and bliss, every single second I think about it, even when I am worried about it when a typhoon passes or the earth shakes, I feel it was a very good decision and we got lucky. Japan (but not only) countryside is full of surprises and being able to discover and experience it in deep is now an essential part of our lives.

Now why didn’t we make a bold move to the country is another question I’ll answer later…

Super easy pickles

In the summer it is nice to enjoy refreshing pickled vegetables. After many attempts of different methods to make pickles there are a few that I find particularly not adapted to our life style, and some others that require too much equipment. But there are two that I really like and that are very simple, can be done everywhere, require little ingredients or equipment and work in a few hours. Today I want to introduce the simplest and most efficient way, that works with many of the green summer vegetables such as cucumber, uri, or togan, but also with radishes and daikon. It is called shiozuke 塩漬け in Japanese, and as the name suggested it is a method of pickling vegetables in salt. As a matter of fact it is the same method as making umeboshi or pickled Chinese cabbage… expect that with summer vegetables it takes only a few hours instead of several days or weeks! Today I present the recipe with uri 瓜 a kind of melon/cucumber that is very popular in summer in Japan and that just made its entry in the glossary.

Shiozuke summer vegetables

  • 1/2 uri or 1 Japanese cucumber
  • 1/2 tsp of salt
  • a little piece of konbu (optional)

Wash and cut the vegetable. It is not really necessary to peel them. Slice them thinly. Cut the konbu in thin pieces. in a bowl large enough, add the sliced uri, the konbu, sprinkle the salt on top. Use a piece of wrap to top and set a weight the size of the inside of the bowl (I used a honey pot filled with water) on top to press the mix. Wait for a few hours before enjoying, and keep in the fridge in the liquid for a few days.

Beware that the liquid when pressing may overflow the bowl, so set the bowl in in a tray or the sink, or use a rather large bowl compared to the amount of vegetable that can receive all the liquid. Another option is to make them in a sealed plastic bag (ziploc…), but I don’t use such plastic bags…

 

Another new friend: Water spinach 空芯菜

I am amazed by my lack of culture when it comes to greens… every month or so I am discovering something new… something I can’t remember having seen before or tried before… This time it is water spinach or 空芯菜 kushinsai. Actually I even grow some in my garden that I received as a sprout from a friend, devotedly planted but as I didn’t know what it was I just let it grow quietly when the other day, at the farmers market I found them on the shelf… Well… I just got some and tested them… The leaves resemble a lot that of Japanese spinach, smaller and thinner, and the stem is wider and hollow. When cooked it indeed resembles spinach in texture and flavour, without the tartness that spinaches often have, bonus, it grows in the summer, making it a good new summer friend to add to the collection with moroheya and tsurumurasaki.
I first cooked it in a Japanese version to top rice. Simply blanched and then deglazed in soya sauce. It is always a good way to test a new local green. Most Japanese people will tell you they eat them like this, so I don’t bother asking anymore!!!!

Kushinsai, tomatoes, pork filet in soya sauce topping plain rice

Once this test passed, I use the vegetable in more European ways, with pasta and olive oil, that is the second test. And the vegetable is adopted in my list of easy-daily vegetable. If it doesn’t pass both test it stays in the list of once in a while vegetable, that requires special treatment or attention, like uri (you’ll see it soon), togan, takenoko…

Water spinach passed both tests easily is now adopted in my everyday routine. Good with bacon, good with pork filet, good with pasta, turmeric and parmigiano… basically as you would used spinach… next test probably will be the quiche, but I already know it will pass easily that one too!

Bacon, egg, kushinsai on spaghetti

I could also try some more south Asian recipes, but I barely cook Chinese and Taiwanese… if you have good recipes to use my new friend in cooking let me know and I’ll be happy to test them!

Turmeric, kushinsai, tagliatelle… top with parmigiano for the perfect finish

Pain au lait

I’ve been baking a lot of breads these days but suddenly I felt like eating a variety of other baked things such as brioche, until A. saw a picture of a pan bagnat in a magazine and asked me to make one for him. I didn’t see the picture, and instead of thinking of the classic pan bagnat from the south of France, that you can eat in Saint Tropez or in Nice, in a kind of ciabatta bread, a little dry, I thought about the soft and melty version in a pain au lait, went straight to the kitchen and started making dough for pain au lait. I used to use the recipe from Kayser bread book, but decided to change, and opted for a mix and match version. The whole thing ended up in delicious, soft and tasty perfect little breads. And that’s when A. told me that the pan bagnat he saw was not in a pain au lait… 🙁

No problem I said, how about egg and ham sandwiches instead???

And that’s how they turned out… and it was damned delicious. So here is the recipe of the pain au lait.

For the egg sandwich filling, I simply hard boiled 3eggs, chopped them with a knife, add a table spoon of olive oil, a table spoon of mustard, that’s it.

Pain au lait (makes 8)

  • 280g of flour
  • 3g of dry yeast
  • 70g of butter
  • 35g of sugar
  • 100g of milk
  • 5g of salt
  • 1 egg + 1 egg optional for cooking

In a bowl mix the flour, the sugar, the salt and the yeast, add the egg and the milk and knead. Add the butter and knead until smooth and not sticky, it may take a bit of time. Let rest under a cloth until it almost doubles. You can flip the dough once in the meantime. Rising time will depend on your room temperature, your yeast, and the original temperature of ingredients. For a faster rise, use ingredients at room temperature.

Once the dough has doubled almost, dust your working surface with flour and the ball of dough. Flatten it and then make a rough oblong shape. Cut pieces of 70g-90g each, shape roughly in sausage. Don’t work too much the dough. And set on a sheet of cooking paper. Leave for 1-2h. Pre-heat the oven to 175deg. If you want perfectly golden little breads, use an egg batter. I you don’t care about the color, just spare it.

Bake at 175deg 10min then at 170deg another 10min or until perfectly golden. That’s it!!!

Have a good week!!

A new veggie

There’s always something new to discover or to learn… that is true in any discipline, but even more in cooking!!! The quantity of potential ingredients is really enormous, and the variety depends so much on customs and climate that I am far from having explored a hundredth of what exists. Even in after 16 years in Japan, there are still some surprises. Products that are not necessarily Japanese but made their way a few decades or century ago. That’s the case of the yard-long bean or in Japanese jūrokusasage 十六ササゲ. Something I had never seen before, that attracted me at the farmers market, and so I tried it and it made its entry in the glossary. I really like how farmers manage to grow locally so many different vegetables in such a beautiful way! I wish I could one day…

As the name promised, it’s a double long long green bean like vegetable, but the flavor is more subtle and more grassy. As I wasn’t sure how to prepare it first, I decided to blanched them and serve with soya sauce, grilled thick fried tofu atsusge 厚揚げ and that was perfect and top with katsuobushi.

What is the last new vegetable that you tried?

The end of the rainy season

After days of grey, humid and heavy days, suddenly one morning the sky is perfectly blue, the wind is perfectly warm, the sun is deliciously burning, the cicadas sing. At dawn and dusk the kanakana mushi sing along and you know it is the perfect summer day and you hope for more to come. The rainy season has finally ended, the typhoon season has not yet started. Everyone was waiting for this time to take their pickled plums outside, and so did I, to dry them and store them for the coming year, it is also time for lazy walks and long dives in the ocean.

It is a perfect day to take a walk and enjoy the rice paddies bright green before they start turning yellow under the sun. It is also the time to harvest myoga, this little edible flower that is so characteristic of Japanese cuisine and so refreshing.  Myoga grows easily in the shaded and humid areas of Japanese gardens or in the wild. We are lucky to have a lot of them that grow wildly in our garden, so the foraging is simple: avoid snakes, identify the female plant, look 2~5cm around their base and find the pinkish buds or the white eerie flowers. Delicately cut them. 

AS for cooking myoga, I find that it doesn’t support much cooking so it is better to eat it raw or only slightly cooked. My favourite recipe is a simple dashi clear soup where the myoga is chopped in. It is fresh and warm at the same time, the flavours of dashi balance well with that of myoga, this is simple but always perfect. For me, myoga does not only go well with katsuobushi, but it is also a good match with soya sauce and summer Japanese green bell peppers, another classic Japanese preparation, where the bell peppers are simply cut and cooked in a bit of oil, then steamed a bit and deglazed in soya sauce, sometimes with an addition of katsuobushi small flakes. But more often you will find myoga served with tofu, a little as a replacement of ginger, which I do not like so much as the myoga flavour is too strong and overwhelms the delicate flavour of tofu.

Pickled plums on rice and clear myoga soup, together with okaka okra
Green bell pepper, soya sauce and myoga with rice and scrambled eggs

For me, summer means swimming in the sea or the ocean, so I spend most of my free time there, catching some waves rather than in my kitchen, yet I never neglect to prepare us a good meal full of energy!

How do you like to spend your summer days when not at work?

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