梅酒 – umeshu

One of the plum tree in the garden, covered with plum

Prunellia’s post on her favorite Japanese drink is timely because it is just the season to harvest plums and to prepare umeshu. In our garden we have a lot of plum trees and each year they produce a lot of fruits. Last year for the first time the fruits were harvested and used to prepare umeshu. As Prunellia mentioned, Umeshu is prepared from still green plums and usually with shochu (a white traditional alcoholic drink made of rice, potato, sweet potato…). The recipe used here to prepare the Umeshu uses nihonshu, which is regular Japanese sake or rice wine and gives a milder taste to the preparation. I’ve got the recipe from a lady living nearby. Actually last year she prepared the umeshu with our fruits, but this year I was very much tempted to prepare some myself, so she gave me her recipe and helped me out for my first time.

Umeshu from 2014 harvested plum just ready!

The recipe is really simple, but be aware unlike a lot of alcoholic preparations that are ready in 60 or 90 days (peach wine, verbena liquor… that I used to prepare according to my grand mother recipes), this one takes a whole year (you can try earlier but one year guaranties the best taste/color).

You need Japanese hard plums, rock sugar, sake or shochu, and a large jar (usually plastic or glass) with a tight lid and a big mouth to fit the plums in. First wash the plum and remove the stems, then wash again and dry them properly. Weight the plums that can fit 3/4 of the jar, weight the half amount of rock sugar. Clean and dry perfectly the jar and then pick the plums with a fork a few times around and make layers of plum and rock sugar until the 3/4 has been reached. Cover with the sake or shochu up to 2-3cm higher than the level of fruits and sugar. Close the lid tightly, store in a cool and dark place for almost a year. Once in a while you can shake the jar to help the sugar melt.

Prunellia, I’m counting on you to come next spring or summer to try my homemade umeshu with the plums from the garden!

June 23, 2015

Summer time = fruits time

It’s official it’s summer!

Thought it is not yet super hot, summer fruits start to appear everywhere in the garden and at the market. Shiny pinkish plums, soft and pink peaches, melons, blue-berries, addictive cherries. Soon to come also the delicious nashi, watermelon etc… So I’m happy because it means fresh and juicy fruits every day that are going to replace the usual kiwi and pineapple! It means new recipes of smoothies and of clafoutis.

Clafoutis are so simple to prepare, and so delicious for breakfast, dessert or snack that I prepare many during the summer. It’s a very simple mixture of any kind of flour, a bit of sugar, eggs and milk or equivalent. Proportion vary depending on the aspect you want the clafouti to have. More milk and egg for a flat custard like type, less if you want it to look like a Brittany’s famous “far”. In a buttered pie-dish set the mixture, and then add the fruits. Finally baked in the oven around 180deg for 20 to 30min depending on the size (if no oven, you can bake in a greased pan under cover at low eat). You can add any type of fruit in that support heat: berries, cherries, plums, peaches, apricots… You can eat warm or cold.

June 22, 2015

La “soupe au pistou” reinterpreted

“La soupe au pistou”, pronounce ” la souuuupopiiiiistuu” (or pesto soup) is a traditional summer preparation in Provence. Like any traditional food each family has her secret recipe and variations are quite Infinite. Shall it include small pasta or king of cut spaghetti, or none; shall it be served with grated Parmigiano or grated Gruyere; how many types of bean should be used etc… Honestly I would say that each version tastes different but cannot be bad.
For me this soup is synonymous of summer, holidays, family gatherings… I can’t even recall when I first it it, probably at an age whe it is not possible to recall. The recipe comes from my grand mother that probably came from her mother and so on, my mother is using the recipe. For us the pesto is made of fresh basil leaves, pine nuts, gratted garlic, grated Parmigiano and ollive oil, a lot of olive oil. The soup consists in tomatoes (big, red ripe summer tomatoes), green beans, broad beans, zucchini, white beans and marbled beans. The beans are inserted by cooking time and it’s cooked during a long time at low eat, and it is served with grated gruyere. No pasta… Though I recall some argument about that!

Reinvention of the soupe au pistou in the making

I’ve been preparing a lot of this soup even in Japan, though I can’t find fresh marble beans and white beans, it is easy to have some dry, and broad beans are really easy to find, fresh and delicious. I adapt the recipe to circumstances and when I serve it as a single dish I usually add a few little pasta. I never use garlic, fresh or dry, so I took it off the recipe, and my husband doesn’t like pine nuts nor cheese so usually I take them off as well… hum… well my pesto is just basil and olive oil and just as good! This time I was about to prepare one when I realized I had no white beans nor marble beans and I was not really in the mood to eat soup on my own, since my husband was out for dinner for work. So I decided to treat myself with a recipe that I just invented on the spot (missing ingredients are the best inspiration!) and went for a dry soupe au pistou. In a pan I diced a tomato and cooked it with olive oil, then added the green beans and the braod beans, finally I added the chopped basil leaves, salt pepper and olive oil and cooked under cover 15min. The served it with pine nuts, and finally topped with Parmigiano (which is totally optional). Perfectly delicious though a bit far from the original recipe but that is evolution!

And ready to eat (I spare you the Parmigiano topping!)

June 20, 2015

Japanese dinner at home

When we have visitors from Europe for dinner and it’s there first time in Japan I usually cook Japanese for them, but I cook what I call “soft Japaanese”. I don’t try to impress them with my skills in cha-kaiseki cuisine with elaborated tofu mixes, plain white rice and strongly miso tasting fish and Japanese sweets for example. I prefer to introduce them to flavors their palate can identify and distinguish if they don’t. And if they come on week day, since I don’t have the luxury to spend more than 2h for grocery shopping+cooking, I need to be very organized.

This time our guests have been in Tokyo for a few days already, and travelling the world before arriving there so I crafted a menu where they can enjoy Japanese food while still feeling the casual home made touch:

somen with a chicken meat ball as a starter,
ginger grilled pork (buta shoga yaki) with white and whole rice,
miso soup with silky tofu and mitsuba.
for dessert, just fresh summer fruits in salad: Japanese grape, Japanese plums and Japanese green melon.

If the main dish and dessert are quite common, for the starter I composed a recipe from cha-kaiseki and adjusted it to the market. The original recipe is using snapper and togan, a kind of summer gourd; but I couldn’t find neither so I replaced the fish with chicken meat balls made out of grinded chicken breast and startch, boiled in konbu dashi, and the togan was replaced by thinly sliced cucumber. The whole thing seasoned with a few drops of soya sauce. And I added two slices of dried shiitake. Since it is almost summer I chosed somen and served the whole refregirated. Bonus: since It is refrigirated you can prepare the bowls and just take them out of the fridge to serve!

The starter: somen with chicken meat ball and cucumber

June 19, 2015

Bagels

For lunch I eat quite often bagels that I buy in supermarket nearby my work. They have one brand that I like quite much but not always. It’s been a long time I’ve been thinking about making some bagels myself but I imagined that making them with a good shape and the boiling+baking kind of stopped me from trying: it’s gonna take too much time I was thinking. How stupid!!!

But recently the itch of trying got more and more important and I finally did. First, it was much shorter and simpler than I thought and quite fun; second, shaping them was easy and fun; third, they are the best bagels I’ve eaten so far, except maybe in NY, but I don’t remember well, it was quite some time ago!! I made only very few, rather small (the proportions were for 4 or 5 bagels, I made 6), plain and multigrain types.

As for the recipe, since it was my first time and it was too perfect, I want to try again with more variety before giving you a recipe. I’m thinking there was a lot of beginners/first timers luck there!!!

June 18, 2015

Apple and loquat tart

In the very back of our garden we have a loquat tree. Most of the time it is impossible to eat any because the birds eat them much faster but this time I manage to save two! Loquats are a little lique apricots, but with a much milder taste and I really love to it them raw or prepare tart with them, just as apricot tart. Since two loquats is not going to be enough for a tart I decided to mix them with an apple and to make small tarts with just a brise dough with very little butter, oat bran, brown sugar and water, and add some apple sliced and half a loquat on top. This ultra simple recipe allows to fully enjoy each ingredient without any addition, the loquat brings a juicy note to the whole thing. The oat bran some granulosity to the dough without having to add an egg.

June 16, 2015

Gâche bread and Italian cheese

On Saturday evening I often prepare bread to have something fresh and delicious for breakfast on Sunday morning. This time it’s a bread called gâche. I used half whole wheat flour (83g) half white flour (83g) to prepare it, then the usual 8g of sourdough, 2g of yeast, 3g of salt, 100g of water. It takes about 90min for the first rise, 60 for the second, and in between plan about 45min. Baking time is about 18min. If you’r in Japan I would recommend to prepare your bread right before being eaten because the weather is so humid that the crust gets soft very quickly, and originaly the crust of that bread is quite soft.

Well, if this bread was just perfect for breakfast, I then went to Eataly (I mentioned it in an earlier post) . Eataly is my best provider for delicious fresh Italian products, in particular San Daniele ham, pancetta and fresh cheese. They use to have fresh ravioli, but it didn’t last long. This gâche bread with a little La Tur cheese was just stunning!

June 15, 2015

One-bowl lunch

I love bulgur and it’s very handy because it takes little time to cook it compared to rice for example. So I find it very convenient when I want to fix something for lunch after playing tennis. And this time the fix was really quick: pork and parsley balls, mini tomatoes, cucumber and bulgur. For the balls I roughly chopped parsley, mix it with an egg and grinded pork and cook then until golden in a pan. Ready in a very short time, full of energy, proteins and colorful! Yummy!

June 13, 2015

Veggie tart

I’ve always loved oat bran, may be because I’m a horse girl and it reminds me when we were feeding the horses at the club, and sometimes trying the horse food (though I never tried hay!); or may be just because I love this kind of dry, little taste food. Anyway, I’ve been using oat bran often, and even more since I bake breads and even even more since I know that it is a good source of proteins and fiber. One of my favorite use of oat bran is in tarts dough. I gives a granulous consistency that fits perfectly with the sable of the dough and the softness of the vegetables and the egg custard.

Perfect with a rye or whole wheat dough, but even with plain white flour. Here is a butter based dough with oat bran, and the tart is garnished with green beans, brocoli and cherry tomatoes. I apply the dough in the pie dish directly with the fingers, so that explains the rough edges. A simple and delicious recipe for a late diner.

What is your favorite recipe with oat bran? I’d love to test it!

June 12, 2015