After a whole week in Seattle, it’s good to be back home. Though the city has numerous farmers markets, with very attractive food, the hotel life allows only for limited purchases and preparation. There are also a lot of food trucks but honestly the idea of having lunch standing or seated like punks in the street is not very attractive, though the food looks good. As for restaurants, food was ok, fresh but I didn’t find anything outstanding. The best we had was surely grilled salmon or grilled halibut with asparagus. There might be some nice places serving local food (not limited to seafood, which is not what I like best) but we couldn’t find them… It’s really a pity because driving around Seattle one can find again tones of organic farms selling their products, fruits, veggies, delicious yogurts…
Chimacum local farmers shop
So being back home it is time to go back to the kitchen and improvise some summer recipes with fresh food and light enough to beat the jetlag and the heat. So we’re back to the basics: quinoa and bulgur as a base, baby leaf salad, cherry tomatoes and cucumber, yellow zucchini, ocra, and to finish pumpkin seeds, flax seeds and white chia seeds. Back on the tracks!!
While in Capetown last year, thanks to our hosts at the Manolo we managed to have a table at the very demanded Test Kitchen. One of Capetown best restaurants, and sometimes ranked in the top 10 xorld’s best restaurants. The experience was great abd what I apprfciated a lot is their flexibility to propose vegetarian full course and vegan full course menus that have nothing less than the regular full course menu. I picked the vegetarian one and was delighted, in particular there was some mini fried tofu balls presented as tofu fallafels. With a crispy deep fried outter shell and a melty inside. Since then I’ve been thinking about it and finally I’ve finally come up with my own idea of a soya fallafel. What I like in the fallafel is the mixture of texture with roughly cut peas and the pureed ones. So my recipe is really simple: I used dry soya beans (daizu-大豆) that I rehydrated and boiled, then roughly blended them and add some firm tofu, stirred well and then made balls and fried in a pan (probably deep frying is ideal).
Though different than the fallafel from the Test kitchen in Capetown it was really delicious!
My experience of making croissants was great but not perfect, so before I manage to make the best croissants in town, I am still looking for the best you can buy. You know, the one that are light and buttery, crispy outside and melty inside, well… THE perfect croissant. Hunting truly delicious croissants in Tokyo is as difficult as in Paris and I must admit. There are really a lot of bakeries that make croissants, and I’ve tried quite a lot of places already. In many places the taste of butter is not present, in others they top the croissant with some sirup making them too sweet, and sometimes they just have the appearance but nothing for the tate. Here is my list of bakeries in Tokyo making “real” croissants with hopefully a permanent address (a lot of shops move, open, close in a short time so it’s hard to track them):
1. Johan (in Mitsukoshi Nihonbashi, but there are some other places for sure)
2. Le grenier a pain near Hanzomon
3. Kobeya kitchen at Hiroo crossing
4. Vie de France (pretty much everywhere near a train station)
There might be some local stores I haven’t tried yet, so if you have a good address let me know!!!
There are a few big names in the bakery market but for croissant you can forget about Paul (never liked them, even in Paris), Viron (too dry and crispy, baked too long it seems), Kayser, Le pain quotidien (not fresh enough, and buttery enough)…
I’ll keep you updated if I find anything to add to that ranking, but you can send your addresses too and I’ll try!
The other day I was introducing some locally produced cheese by Komagata cheese factory in Ohara, the problem is that it’s not easy to find and so far I’ve seen it only at one of the local product retailer Na no hana. So that’s quite limiting.
Sunday morning we went to Ohara market on the harbour. I thought it would be fish-only market but in fact it is a quite big (for Japanese standards) farmers market, selling also fresh vegetables and many other things than fishes. That’s where I found the stand for Takahide cheese factory. A farm higher inland in Isumi, near Kuniyoshi. Their cheeses look a lot like the ones from Komagata, with a little variation. I picked the Isumi white moon (いすみの白い月) and did not regret that choice. It is perfect!!!
Takahide farm
Very much pleased with that choice, we decided to go and check out the farm directly. It’s a short drive from our house and a nice one among rice paddies and traditional farms. The Takahide farm is up a hill in a kind of group of dairy farms. There is a little shop where they sell directly, but the stock is not big and I recommend giving them a call before if you are looking for something specific because it seems they don’t hold stock very long and depending on the time not every thing is ready yet. They also sell fresh milk and seems to organize some events.
Where it is interesting for you, if you live in Japan and looking for delicious cheeses is that you don’t necessarily have to go to a big department stores or an import stores to buy some cheese from France or Italy anymore! Takahide cheese factory has an online shop where they sell their cheeses and fromage blanc!!! It’s not cheap but it’s really worth the try and it’s local at least.
Since cheese cannot be dissociated from bread for me, at least the cheese that you eat, right not the one to top pastas etc… I prepared a plain fougasse with just a little of salt to eat with the Isumi no shiroi tsuki cheese, a very good match. And I tried their reblochon style cheese: Makiba no taiyo まきばの太陽 with a whole wheat bread. It’s just insanely good!
Isumi no shiroi tsuki and fougasse (Plate from Kutani yaki)Makiba no taiyo with whole wheat bread
Information:
Takahide farm in Isumi 高秀チーズ工房: http://www.takahide-cheese.com
Ohara farmers market 大原朝市: every first and third Sunday morning of the month, plus some extra days during holidays, on Ohara harbour.
Yesterday was Showa day. Showa was the governing emperor from 1926 to 1989. Of course it covers WWII events, but what is really interesting for me is the postwar development of culture and style during and after the American occupation, after Japan’s been defeated. This period has been marked by a lot of movies, a radical modern style, the development of large housing complexes in the suburbs: danchi. This is very well depicted in a few movies I love: elegant beast (1962) by Yuzo Kawashima, Tokyo drifter (1966) by Seijun Suzuki, Good morning (1959) and Tokyo twilight by Yasujiro Ozu. It is also permisible from the works of Kenzaburo Oe. For a real taste of it, it is possible to visit a reconstructed danchi unit in Matsudo museum in Chiba prefecture and a few of this kind of units are still standing. After a trend for demolishig them (the beautiful Asagaya housing complex…) there is a trend now to refurbish these units and use them as community housing where young people and old people would share space and benefit from the proximity of each other, hipster housing…
Asagaya housing complex in 2011 when we visited it, before it was demolished
And just yesterday I found this amazing photo book that covers a lot of Showa style. The pictures are really nice and gives a good idea about what it was. More than just covering architecture it really covers style and a bit of fashion and habits.
When traveling it’s always hectic with food for me, I don’t like eating out 3 times a day. Most portions are way too big and I get quickly bored with the amount of mix tastes that surpasses my imagination. As you may know now, I like simple delicious things. So when in the US I really enjoy organic groceries that can be found pretty easily in main cities and sometimes opened round the clock (even better for jetlag and busy working days). It seems particularly true in Boston. There, you can buy things I didn’t even imagine exist, almond milk yogurt with coconut taste, super delicious cereal bars, fresh cut fruits, natural cheese, teas (i usually pack on Chai), tons of different types of flours (well I’m not baking in my hotel room…) and my favorite drink, non organic though but from sustaible harvested ingredients: the Naked fruit smoothies, just perfect for middle-of-the-night-breakfast!
During this short stay in Boston I tried the new to me (haven’t been to the US for 2 years!) pineapple-mango-coconut water Naked, and just loved it, not as thick as the regular mango one! And I found super delicious bars from Earnest eats, my favorite is the almond trail mix. The taste of almond is really strong but it’s really good and just not too sweet. That and a bowl of fresh raspberries was my post-swimming breakfast.
Because, yes! I always pick hotels with a swimming pool. I love to swim early in the morning to recover from jetlag. Doing laps before starting a long business day, after a long trip is just making me feel really good. How do you do to keep a good balance when traveling?
Finding delicious natural cheese, not industrial in Japan is not easy task. By pure chance, our country house in Ohara is very close to a cheese factory. Yes yes! a cheese factory in Japan! and not in Hokkaido! But, sadly it is impossible to just go there and buy cheese… At least all my trials didn’t success. But, at last, I have found a place where to get some: Na no hana local products shop!!! They have a selection of cheeses from Komagata and so far what I’ve tried was really good. On the picture only the fresh one, because they have a selection of wilder things that are impossible to capture with a camera! Each was a perfect match to my cereal favorite homemade bread! A French girl, even in Japan is still French!!! And if you love cheese there is still means to find some (took me 10 years though!).
And you, what are your plan to find delicious locally made cheese??
Every Saturday we spend in Ohara, the first thing we do is to go to the local JA cooperative to shop for vegetables, fruits, eggs… Every thing is locally grown in very little farms or by old folks, using no chemical, it’s super fresh, super tasty and super cheap. We’re lucky because Chiba prefecture is famous for growing a lot of things and our area is known for strawberries, nashi, tangerines in particular. There is also an amazing variety of tomatoes and cabbages. Nearby, they also produce eggs, pork and milk, and Ohara fishing port has great fresh fishes and spiny lobsters (and s fish market on Sunday once a month). It’s just fresh food heaven.
