Author: Gentiane

Sautéed new potatoes and green sweet peppers

That is not much of a recipe I reckon!!! Who needs a cook book to make sautéed new potatoes honestly??? But in the meantime, as I cook to enjoy the ingredients I have around me and to sustain our bodies, not just to make pictures on instagram, I believed it was cheating not to mention sautéed new potatoes as they are one of my favorite ways of eating new potatoes, even though I prefer them tiny tiny, but I failed in growing my potatoes properly for that.

To twist them just a bit I added green sweet pepper or shishito -シシトウ in Japanese. And because I didn’t have much, I served them with scrambled eggs. It could be breakfast, lunch or dinner, you have the choice!

Tonight we have guests at home so I not sure I’ll have a new recipe for you, but I’ll for sure serve some of my kitchen garden potatoes!!!

Have a good day!

Purple potatoes soup

Continuing the week with a recipe that this time uses only purple ratte potatoes, that is simple, delicious and beautiful: a cold creamy soup.

All you need is a few purple potatoes, some fresh cream or milk, salt and pepper. Yes! That’s the only ingredients in my recipe.

Cold potatoes soup

– 3 purple ratte potatoes (vitellote)

– 150ml of cream or cream

– salt and pepper

Wash the potatoes and boil them until very soft (actually if you do it a couple of hours before it is even better as the potatoes will cool down naturally and you won’t have to cool them under excessive water or in the fridge!).

Blend the potatoes with 300ml the cooking water, or just water, add the cream or milk, blend again. If too thick add a bit of water and blend again. Repeat until it has a creamy texture. Serve, top with salt and pepper.

That’s it!!

Potatoes Japanese style

Day 2 for this week of freshly harvested potatoes. Today it’s a Japanese simple recipe that can be made everywhere, every time. Of course it is much tastier with new potatoes but it can work with old ones too. It has all the distinguishable flavors of Japanese cuisine: the cooked sake, the soya sauce, the sweetness, and the katsuobushi, well the umami as it’s called and as it’s all over cooking and gourmet magazines.

Simmered potatoes Japanese style

– a few (new) potatoes. Pick 3 midsize (billiard ball size) new potatoes per person for a main dish, 2 for a side.

– 3tbs of soya sauce

– 3tbs of sake

– 2tbs of brown sugar

– some katsuobushi, optimally ultra-thin cut (see below)

Wash the potatoes and cut them in four. In a pan, set the potatoes and cover with water. Start boiling under cover. When the potatoes are almost done, add the soya sauce, the sake and the brown sugar. Simmer a little and turn the pan so that all the sauce will pass over all the potatoes. Do not stir!! You may break the potatoes and end up with a purée!!

Cook at high heat will turning the pan once in a while. When the sauce is almost gone move in serving plates or a bowl. Top with ultra thin cut katsuobushi (itogiri katsuobushi – 糸切り鰹節). Eat right away or after it has cooled down. Enjoy!!!

Colorful potato salad

The first recipe for this potatoes week is very simple. I wanted a preparation that would let us enjoy the difference between the two types of potatoes we grew and would be a full lunch. Well… I simply decided on a self grown plate with only staples from our kitchen garden. Well the choice is still quite limited but here is what I had: salad, celery branches, snap peas, overgrown snap peas that turned into green peas, basil, mint, rosemary, fennel leaves, parsley. The beats are struggling after a bird and a bug attack, the passion fruit is just having flowers…

So celery and peas appeared as the best options. Olive oil, salt and pepper as the best dressing.

I simply washed and steamed (or boiled) 4 small purple ratte and 4 small potatoes, blanched the peas and, and wash and cut the celery, then dressed the plates, topped with olive oil, salt and pepper, and lunch was ready.

Steaming the potatoes allows for a simple tasting where the flavors and texture are untouched, but don’t over cook them. As soon as they are cooked plunge them in cold water.

Have a good week!!

Potatoes week

In March we planted potatoes in our new kitchen garden. We went for two species: some melty white potatoes and some purple ratte potatoes. It was our first time ever growing potatoes on our own, so I guess we made some mistakes: soil too rich and too compact, lack of leaves clearing… but I still harvested a few plants and we got a decent amount of potatoes. Enough for the two of us, to eat fresh and new (I am not good with preserving food for long). So I’ve decided this week will be a potato week! And I’ll share with you some of my favorite recipes. Stay tuned for the first recipe!!!

Blind Donkey

It is difficult to find new nice restaurants in Tokyo, not that there is none but rather that the offer is to wide. And because of our busy schedules, finishing work late pretty much every day, the idea of eating out is rarely an option. But we have guests or visitors we’re always happy to take them out and on these occasions we usually postpone a bit of work to finish early. That’s exactly what happened this week with P. and E. staying at our place. And in March we were recommended a restaurant in Tokyo, very close to our place actually, by a friend working in permaculture in Isumi. She emphasized the background of the chef and the sourcing of the products they use in the kitchen. We tried to go when we had visitors in April, but the restaurant was closed for a month for some rework of the menu or so, and finally I got a reservation for June. I have standards for restaurants that are not necessarily easy to meet. I’m picky with the food for sure, but also service, decor and overall atmosphere. I like places that are not packed, not too noisy, and where the staff is nice since being overly obsequious or marketed. And well… to be honest the Blind Donkey met all my expectations. I like the location, the space and the food, service was a bit rushed but nice and friendly, space between tables is nice, and you can have a conversation with your party without feeling you have to shout and becoming deaf. The food was great. The ingredients, the preparation, and the plating. All was simple but delicious. No extra.

So if you are in town you should try it.

The blind donkey

3-17-4 Uchikanda, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo

Pictures are from the restaurant instagram.

Plum plum plum…

June is the time for the rainy season, and every day the weather reminds us that, but it is also the season for plum harvesting and plum pickling.

Even though I trimmed many of our plum trees this winter, the amount of fruits they produce it still enormous and it’s also time for giveaways. 1Kg here, 3Kg there… yet the harvesting is tedious and with one rainy day following the previous one, it doesn’t make things easy.

Once harvested I pickled quite a bit of our plums. I usually make plum wine and plum syrup with the green plums and umeboshi with the yellow ones (which is about 7 to 15 days after harvesting the green plums).

But because only our visitors drink umeshu and I still have plenty from last year, and we drink little syrup and again last year I made plenty, I decided to try new recipes. One new syrup recipe and one of savory plums in soya sauce. Because the preparation has to sit for three months I have no idea what it would taste like but just wanted to share that recipe because it looks really nice.

Soya sauce pickled plums

– 1kg of green Japanese plums

– 1/2L of soya sauce

– 4tbs of brown sugar

– 2 pieces of dry konbu (4x4cm)

– a handful of katsuobushi flakes.

Wash the plums and remove the stems. Dry them well. Pick them to make a few small holes in. In a clean and sterile bin, set the plums, add the sugar, the konbu pieces cut in four, the katsuobushi flakes. Cover with the soya sauce. Set to rest for 3 months. Turn the bin every week. We’ll see in the results together in 3 months!!

Have a good week!

Chocolate focaccia

Yes! You read well… I told you I was back to back to baking… When I was a first year PhD student the first international conference I attended and presented at was a huge conference held in Barcelona. At that time A. had plenty of holidays and surely plenty of time to take them, so we were always traveling together. We spent one week in Barcelona and a couple of days in Sitges. And one culinary thing that stayed for ever in our mind was the dinner, or more the dessert, we had on lovely terrace nearby the museum of contemporary art. The museum was still fairly young and the surroundings all in development. Using the base of the traditional pan con tomate it was a pan con chocolate. You can imagine with bread and chocolate in the same dish we would go for it, and this has surpassed our expectations by its simplicity and its tastiness. It was simply the same as pan con tomate replacing literally the tomatoes by dark chocolate: a toasted slice of bread with melting dark chocolate topped with fragrant olive oil and salt sprinkled. Back home I remember cooking some once in a while and always enjoying it. So this time while I was making the dough for my rosemary focaccia, I decided to keep a bit of the dough to test a chocolate focaccia. And like I though it would be, it was delicious. I’m sure you’ll see some more soon, in particular the picture doesn’t give a fair idea of how delicious it was!!

Sugar bread

When I was a child we use to spend part of August in my parents country house on the Causse Mejean, France. It was a long drive to go there, we would often stop have breakfast or lunch on the way, have a swim in Gard, and then start the winding road that goes up and down and up and down and finally up. This road is the Corniche des Cevennes and is definitely a beautiful one I would recommend to everyone who likes driving. Once up in our house, the nearest shop is a mere 30min drive. By then their would be food trucks coming with bread, meat and some groceries. I remember the fouace that we would buy and then have for breakfast. It was a heavy kind of brioche but nit buttery, with a sticky crust. After I was 10, this bread wasn’t sell anymore, so it’s been some time I haven’t had any. You can then imagine my surprise the first time I cooked sugar bread from Kayser bread book. It was exactly that. I made sugar bread a few times, and each time it took me back there. So now I want to share this recipe with you. If you think about it, it a classic bread recipe in which you add a bit of sugar, and finish with a syrup to have the sticky soft crust.

Sugar bread (500g bread)

– 250g of white flour

– 160g of tepid water

– 5g of yeast

-5g of salt

– 40g of brown sugar

– 3tbs of sugar and a bit of water for the syrup

Mix all the ingredients together except those for the syrup. Knead until soft. Prove for 2h. Shape as you like. I made a ball but I could also have made a braid. Leave to rest for 1h. Then bake at 200deg for 30min.

Make the syrup by mixing the sugar and water in a bowl. Apply the syrup everywhere and let cool down before eating.

Enjoy your week!!

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