Fresh home-made food every day
This bread looks a lot like foccacia but is shaped in a ball shape and is thus less oily and more fluffy. The recipe is basically the same, but a little less olive oil and fresh chopped basil leaves are mixed in the dough. Delicious with a summer salad, grilled vegetables, or just olive oil…
We’re not talking about food here! Though there is this trend that eating insects is good for the planet and healthy, and actually there is a tradition in Nagano prefecture to eat a type of grasshoper that lives in the rice paddies, prepared with soya sauce, mirin, sugar, I pass. I can’t eat anything that has the shape or features of a living animal. No here I talking of a little DIY. When Prunellia was here and found these metal broches at a nearby old shop, I immediately though of using them to make an insects collection. And here it is. I’ve made several and these are my first boxes so maybe not the best.
I bought thick frame boxes, colored paper for the back, I punched two small holes in the metal broches and pick a pin in each hole, fixed it with a drop of liquid transparent glue, and ready!
OK we’re talking a lot about food, but what about drinks?
I’ve always been a heavy tea drinker may be because in my teenage years I wanted to be British for the pony rides in Hide Park and the tea-time at the Brown’s, the check pants and the Dc Martens boots for Carneby street, and the cabriolet as soon as the sun is out! I have had all of it, but my overall favorite drink is still definitely Earl Grey tea. My taste varies with years and seasons but it is always what I go back to. I had a post earlier about one of my favorite Earl Grey from Marks and Spencer, but I also like very much the Clipper organic Earl Grey, and the Mariage Freres Imperial Earl Grey. The Tazo Earl Grey is nice but never in a paper cup and it has to be lightly infused and is better with milk.
Of course being in Japan my taste for green tea as developped a lot and I am quite picky with it too. If black tea works well for me all year round, I find green tea much better in warmer days. Because the water should only be around 60deg, and it has a fresh taste I find it less warming and comforting in winter. In Japan buying green tea is really simple. There’s already a lot of loose leaf tea in supermarkets, but tea shops offer a greater variety in quality. One delicious tea is “new tea” (新茶=shincha) the tea freshly collected, it’s much sweeter and soft than regular tea and can only be bought in spring and needs to be quickly used. There are many regions in Japan producing tea: Shizuoka, Uji, Miyazaki to cite only a few. Luckily we have friends with family everywhere in Japan and receive gifts from them often. This time it’s delicious shincha from Miyazaki that I enjoy every morning! But if you don’t have this chance I really love the tea from Mikuniya Zengoro which original shop is from Fukui prefecture.
What is your favorite tea?
There are days when the market offers a new recipe ideas instantaneously: beautiful salmon filet for sashimi + fennel + red onion + new potatoes (I’ve decided to buy more potatoes). Finding fennel is quite rare in Tokyo and usually the only place you can get some imported is Nissin or National Azabu. Local one? Never seen any. But this time at the local farmers cooperative they were having fennels from Isumi! I jumped on the occasion. And then when looking at my purchased back home the combination of red onion, new potatoes, fennel and salmon all cooked in the oven together came instantenously.
So I finely sliced one red onion, two new potatoes, one fennel, the salmon filet then added dill, pepper, salt and olive oil and cooked 30min in the oven. And the result was just as expected, perfectly juicy and tasty, perfect for a casual diner.
It’s funny because I like potatoes but I seldom cook some except to make gnocchi and I have no idea why I don’t prepare more potato-base recipes. So I had two potatoes in the fridge that were waiting there, and suddenly I come up with a potato salad idea. Here in Japan usually potato salad (just like macaroni salad) means a lot of mayonnaise and I hate that. My potato salad is completely different: for 2 I used 2 new potatoes (about the size of an egg) boiled with the skin; 2 branches of celory; 1 cucumber (Japanese cucumber, right?); one boiled egg chopped; a few slices of smoke salmon; pumpkin seeds; flax seeds; olive oil. Et voila! A super delicious salad, but that doesn’t look so on the picture! And many more ideas for potato salads!
Et voila! Busy weeks, long working hours, the one-plate dinner is back!!!
Quinoa and bulgur for the energy, salad for the green, cherry tomatoes for the red, momendofu (hard tofu) for the white and a little shiso omelet fr the taste. Seasonned with just olive oil and we’re set.
Remember to always drain your tofu, and cook the omelet under cover at slow eat to avoid the flipping task!
After a whole week in the US, I was cruelly missing Japanese rice and Japanese food. So I fixed this little dinner with rice, green peas and green shiso and shoyu-grilled Tachiuo fish (beltfish). Simple and perfect!
The rice is just steamed, in the last few minutes I add the fresh green peas, and just before serving I add chopped green shiso leaves. The fish is grilled in the oven with a bit of soya sauce and served immediately.
I can’t stop making bread and trying new recipes each time. And each time being delighted by the result, yet the other day I bought some bread at Viron (the top place for me to buy bread in Tokyo) and I realized that I need much more practice to attain such a stability in the result.
Anyway, it just mean more fun!
Here is a recipe of a delicious meslin bread. For a large bread you need: 250g of flour, 250 of rye floor, 25g of sry sourdough, 2g of yeast, 10g of salt, 350g of warm water. As usual start by mixing well the ingredients, then stirr until soft. Wait for 90min, shape the bread, wait an other 90min. Spread flour on top of the bread and cut in a cross. Bake for 25min at 230C.
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…
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!!
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