Author: Gentiane

Before leaving

In a few hours I will be in Beijing for work, giving talks, meeting with new students and new research partners, attending a conference and presenting proposals. Well a very tight schedule for less than 72h. Usually eating is not central to these trips, even less cooking, if I ever find time to grab something I’ll be happy! Even more in China, as I am not a big fan of Chinese cuisine: too spicy, too weird, and too sticky-sweety-juicy… I’d love once to find a great Chinese restaurant that does vegetarian or vegan cuisine and not dimsum (i love dimsum). So before going I wanted to prepare food I like and that is very satisfying for the palate.

With my sister visiting last week, I was happy she had thought of bringing something not easy to find here: some fresh cantal cheese. A cheese I particularly love, that is always delicious both straight or in preparations, just like Parmigiano is. So I didn’t eat the whole piece in cubes and slices, rather I kept it to put in a simple recipe made of leftovers pork filet mignon, and a whole blanched cauliflower. I cut the cauliflower in fleurettes and heated the filet in a pan with a bit of oil. Added the cauliflower, salt and pepper, a few drops of olive oil and topped with grated cantal cheese… melting on the hot cauliflower… so delicious and a so perfect combination.

See you on Saturday when I an back Beijing!!! Have a good week!!

Autumn…

November has arrived in a flash… and with it the first chilly evenings that make you want to roll yourself under a plaid with the cat and drink hot yuzu with honey. It’s also the perfect time for long walks to the beach, gardening and receiving guests. This time guests were my sister, her husband and my nephew. In order to have plenty of time to go to the beach I prepared a very simple grilled vegetables with mustard dish inspired by a photo I saw on IG (recipe below) and because my nephew wanted to eat some tonkatsu I ordered a few pieces of filet-katsu at our favorite local meat shop Genji.

Walking to the beach we could enjoy seeing the persimmons on the trees and those prepared for drying already. Something I want to try to prepare once, but this year there was only a few fruits only on our tree… maybe next year…

Autumn vegetables grilled with mustard

– 1 sweet potato

– 1 lotus root

– 1/2 burdock

– 1 carrot

– 1/4 kabocha

– 4 shiitake

– a bit of mizuna

– 2tbs of seeded mustard

– 1tbs of olive oil

Wash, peal when necessary the vegetables, and cut them as you wish, except the kabocha, slice it. In a large pan heated add the olive oil and the carrot, the lotus root, the burdock. Cook at high or medium heat and stir often. Add then the sweet potato, the shiitake, cook at high or medium heat to roast the vegetables add the mustard and stir well yet gently not to break the vegetables. In a pan or in the oven roast the kabocha slices. In a serving bowl add the vegetables then the kabocha slices and top with the mizuna. Enjoy!!!

October craze

October is always a busy month… start of the new term and teaching again, hunting for the new students for the next spring, a few business trips usually, people visiting from Europe and the best season to enjoy outdoor and prepare the garden for the winter, so days and nights are way too short…

But there are always great things happening in October… Yesterday we had the visit of M.-san… though we’ve been in touch through SNS we haven’t met since May 2016 when we delivered to her house two of the four little kittens Pablo has left orphans. When we met then I was heart broken from the loss of our beloved stray cat and of having to split with the kittens so I remember barely the lunch we had together… Time has showed that M.-san is a loving mother for the cats, they’ve grown beautifully and I see pictures of them often on IG!!! But it was time to meet again, and I was happy when she said she would visit us. M.-san is both into cooking and into flowers. And she does that for a living… so it’s very inspiring for me!!! But it was challenging to chose then what to cook for her, as she teaches cha-kaiseki. I decided to prepare something very French, classic and simple, using the products from Isumi. And I opted for a classic quiche lorraine with Isumi smoked ham, milk and eggs from Chiba and a sablé pie crust. I served it with a simple shredded salad, cherry tomatoes and olives from the garden in Aix.

And for dessert a spicy apple compote. Nothing too amazing but simple fresh and delicious products only… we had a great time chatting about food, flowers and cats of course!!!

Japanese pepper – 山椒

Back in June I was posting about the making of Japanese pepper in saumure after harvesting the delicious little seeds in the garden. Now that more than three months have past it is time to eat the little beads! One classic recipe would just to had a few to Japanese white rice, and this is delicious. But since I have quite a few I wanted to try something different and explore with which fall vegetables it would work well. Though cauliflower looks like a winter vegetable actually fall is the peak season, and the farmers market starts to have beautiful small ones. Sansho is a strongly flavored little seed so it has to go with something that is both typically flavored but without being overwhelming. I thought that roasted cauliflower would be great, together with chicken breast. So in a slightly greased pan I roasted chicken breast cut in bites and then added the cauliflower. When all golden I added a tea spoon drained of sansho, stirred a little and served with new rice and a little salad.

Very simple and a really nice match with a Japanese x Western combination.

SUP on the Isumi river

Three years ago we went to visit surfer friends in Chigasaki and took us paddle boarding on the ocean. It was great experience and I really enjoyed it. What I loved is that you can surf waves if any, otherwise you can just explore places and move around basically like on a canoe. Since then we’ve been thinking of buying a paddle board but given the space we have and the car we have, it has never been further then looking at a few websites… we then start looking for places where to paddle in Isumi and found the little SUP club and their initiative to clean the Isumi river. Once a month they organize a SUP cleaning cruise so we finally registered for the October one. Honestly, rivers in Japan are not looking too clean: I have serious concerns about the chemical quality of the water and I don’t think that there is an actual check and I would not swim in any except for mountain streams. I may be wrong, and hope I am. Nonetheless my target was not to fall in the water at all. The Isumi river is a beautiful winding river in a quite deep gorge sometimes with no real accessibility, so boat, canoe and paddle board are the only way to discover its surroundings and it’s really nice to have a different perspective. Just after the rain has stopped we gathered at the SUP club and we headed to the river bank all equipped. 7 people, 3 boards and a canoe. The trash along the river is just infinite and the cleaning we’ve done is a drop in the ocean. And they clean every month… cleaning properly would take forever and many more people… yet it was fun and interesting to join that event which I highly recommend and I think we will definitely go again. The people at the SUP club were really nice and it was a great fun.

After that we felt quite hungry and tired and skip our tennis practice for once, but we didn’t skip the 5 o’clock tea with a little reinvigorating snack: crepes. Crepes are the easiest and fastest snack to prepare and it is easy to make just a few. Here is my recipe.

Crepes (makes 4 25cm crepes)

– 70g of flour

– 1tbs of sugar

– 1 egg

– 1/3l to 1/2l of milk or whatever liquid you want (water works too)

– butter to grease the pan

– filling of your choice: chocolate, sugar, butter, jam, lemon juice, honey…

In a bowl mix the flour, sugar and egg, then add the milk little by little to obtain a rather liquid and smooth texture. If not enough liquid add a little more (this will depend on the size of the egg).

Heat the pan and grease it with butter. When hot pour a thin layer over the all pan. Cook at medium to high heat, flip once, add the filling and fold, serve and eat. Repeat.

Chickpeas flour

Chickpeas flour is a very typical staple in the south east of France, in Provence we use it for panisses, more east on the Cote d’Azur for socca, and it is always delicious!!!

I always have chickpeas flour in my pantry, I use it to prepare socca and panisses for sure but not only! I use it for making pasta and pie crust. For this quiche recipe, with shiitake and spinach, I wanted an oriental flair so I added cumin powder. Here is my super simple recipe:

Chickpeas flour, shiitake and spinach quiche

For the pie crust (vegan)

– 80g of chickpeas flour

– 80g of regular flour

– 1/3 cup of olive oil

– water

– 2tbs of cumin powder

In a bowl mix the two flours, add the olive oil, stir. Add a bit of water at the time while kneading to obtain a smooth dough. Add the cumin powder and knead a little more. Roll and set in the pie dish. Bake at 180deg for 7min.

For the filling

– 4 fresh shiitake

– a bundle of spinach

– 3 eggs

– 1/3 cup of milk (I used almond milk)

Wash and dice the shiitake, wash and chop the spinach. Cook quickly in their own water in a large pan to soften the vegetables. In a bowl mix the eggs and the milk, add the cooked vegetables. Pour in the pie crust and bake for 30min.

Butternut squash week day 6

And here is the final recipe for this week of butternut squash!

I have opted for a last Japanese style item after the gyoza and the ae. A Japanese classic: croquettes or コロッケ kolokke. Because it should involve deep fry I don’t do much of it, and mine are actually pan fried. I like the contrast between the creamy melting purée inside and the crispy outside of the panko. I served them with ginger and shallots chicken mini meat balls on skewers and a large pickled plum I made last July.

Butternut squash croquettes

For the filling I actually used the same as the gyoza (to be honest, the leftover)

– 100-150g of butternut squash boiled and puréed

– green shallot 小ねぎ

– fresh ginger grated or diced

– panko

– oil for frying

I mix the boiled and puréed butternut squash with the ginger and the green shallot to obtain a thick rather dry homogeneous mixture. In a plate I put the panko and with a spoon I take some purée, make a cylinder, roll in the panko. The number of croquettes you can make and panko you need will depend on the size of the pieces of purée and the moisture in the purée. Heat a fry pan with a few mm of oil in it or a deep fryer. Then put the pieces in one by one. Cook until golden every where. Turn gently if pan frying. Serve and enjoy while hot!

Butternut squash week day 5

Ok… the weekend is here and I’m still cooking butternut squash!!!

Using it again today in a recipe that is the pure product of my imagination: vegan gyoza. I don’t know why The other day, on my way to the station I had this vision of simple gyoza, filled with a butternut and green shallots and served hot with soya sauce and ra-yu (you know the slightly vinegared and spicy oil that you mix with soya sauce when eating gyoza). So on my way back from work I stopped to buy the shallots, the ra-yu, and gyoza dough because it was already 21:00 I didn’t have boiled my butternut squash yet and making the dough meant eating too late. Making the dough is very simple, just water and flour, but you need to wait 30 to 60min before making small balls and rolling them. So it was out of the question. Luckily it is rather easy to find fresh prepared gyoza “skin” in Japan that has only the basic ingredients. All good supermarkets have some. Here is my recipe below the picture.

Butternut squash gyoza for 20 pieces

– 100g of butternut squash pealed and boiled

– a pack of gyoza skin

– shallots greens 小ねぎ

– soya sauce and ra-yu

– optional: fresh ginger grated

If your butternut squash is not yet pealed and boiled like it was the case for me, start with that. You don’t want to have a filling that is too hot because it makes the forming of the gyoza more difficult: the skin breaks more easily, in particular when hand made.

Drain the butter well and purée it. Wash and chop the shallots green, grat the ginger if you want to use some. Add to the butternut squash purée and stir well. Take a round gyoza skin in the left hand, deep your right index in water and moist the outskirt of the skin. With a spoon set a bit of filling in the middle. Fold in two and start making small pleats to close the gyoza (see the movie below). Then once they are all ready, in a heated pan with a bit of oil and water cook at medium to high heat and flip once until golden on both sides. Serve with greens (I served simple boiled komatsuna) and the soya sauce and ra-yu.

http://gentianeetantoine.com/igk/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/img_7761.mov

Butternut squash week day 4

All these pumpkin and butternut squash muffins in magazines and on instagram were just looking too good not to try something. I wanted something for dinner that could be eaten with simple greens like a fresh salad. Indeed the autumn vegetables may be coming one after the other, in Tokyo fall only arrives in mid November or later… so while it’s still 25 degrees outside it is hard to go for warm soups and rich recipes. My butternut squash savory cake had to be fluffy and refreshing somehow!!! I achieved that by using a lot butternut squash both puréed in the mix and whole pieces also here and there like in an apple cake. And to give it a little crispness I topped it with grilled bacon and served it with a simple rucola and spinach leaves salad, and a bit of olive oil.

So here is my recipe:

Butternut squash cake

– 150g of flour

– 1tsp of baking powder

– 1 pinch of salt

– 3 eggs

– 1/2 of oil

– 200g of boiled butternut squash cut in chunks

– 3 slices of bacon

In a bowl mix the flour, the baking powder, the salt and the eggs. Then add the oil, 2/3 of the butternut squash and stir well to purée the butternut squash. Pre-heat the oven to 160deg. In a greased pie dish or cake dish pour the mix, add the remaining pieces of butternut squash.

Cut the bacon and grill it rapidly in a pan, top the cake with it and bake for about 30min or until a knife comes out clean and the top is golden.

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