Category: Cooking

Brown rice and curry double-tap

With all the fresh spring vegetables now available, in particular carrots, lotus roots, snap peas… and the weather changing quickly from sunny and warm to windy and chilly, a warm curry is always nice, accompanied with brown rice.

And with friends around I cook always much more than we can eat so I often have left over and brown rice makes a great base for a crunchy pie crust. So here are my recipes.

Spring coconut milk vegan curry:

– carrots

– lotus roots

– snap peas

– new onion

– red bell pepper

– coconut milk

– curry powder

– salt

– brown rice

Cook the brown rice in a rice cooker or in a pan at low heat under cover with twice more water than usual.

Was and peel the vegetables and cut them as pleases you. In a large fry pan or wok start by cooking the onion at low heat to soften them a bit, then add the lotus root, the carrots, the coconut milk and a tsp of curry powder, a pinch of salt. Cook at low heat for 10min. Add the red bell pepper and finally the snap peas. I like my vegetables crunchy so I try to avoid over cooking. Serve the rice and the curry together.

Brown rice quiche:

The base of this recipe is the left over from the previous, but you can start from the scratch.

– cooked brown rice

– flour

– vegetal oil

– sesame oil

– new onion, snap peas, and any other vegetables of your choice

– tofu

– eggs

For the pie crust, in a bowl mix the brown rice, flour and add a bit of water and vegetal oil and sesame oil to obtain a very granulated dough. Roll it on cooking paper to a thin layer the size of your pie dish, plus the sides.

Drain the tofu. Wash and cut the veggies (if using the leftover then it’s all set). Mix the tofu with the eggs, the vegetables and pour everything in the pie crust. Cook at 180deg for about 25 min. If you didn’t use the leftover you can still add coconut milk and curry to the tofu-egg batter.

Have a great week!!!

Golden week

We have almost always spent our golden weeks in Soto Boso, even before we had a house there. Our first golden week, we spent it in Onjuku in a fishing minshuku, except that we weren’t fishing! Then for may be 4 or 5 years we came by scooter, touring from north to south, and also the central part of the peninsula. I very well remember the first time we went to Otaki castle, how when driving between the rice paddies, looking at the beautiful colors of the freshly planted rice, the blue sky, and the dark green of the trees I totally was under the spell of this Japanese countryside. And now it’s been probably 4 or 5 years we’ve been spending the golden week in Ohara with friends visiting us and staying with us. It’s a time to be outdoor and to cook quite a lot then.Manki castle

It’s the perfect time for starting the day with a great breakfast taken in the garden. I like to have all the best products from the region: eggs, strawberries, honey, jams, cheese, ham… and freshly baked bread.

And similarly, for lunches I like to have a few things that can be eaten with no specific order, that please everyone and that are fresh snd local. And with all the snap peas and potatoes now, a big salad is perfect. I chose it because it can be made a bit ahead and kept at room temperature, allowing to be prepared when it is still quiet in the house, and enjoy time with friends.

Potatoes and snap peas salad

– 2 potatoes per person

– 1/2 new onion per person

– 1 handful of snap peas per person

– olive oil, salt, pepper and eventually mustard

Peel and cut be onions and the potatoes. In a large pan heated add olive oil then the onion, and the potatoes. Half cover with water and cook. Prepare the snap peas, add them 2 minutes before the potatoes are ready or before most of the water is gone. Add olive oil, mustard… and serve

More seaweed

Wakame is one of the multitude of seaweed used in Japanese cuisine. The two other very much used are konbu and nori. They all come in different shapes and level of preparation. Konbu is probably most famous for making broth and nori for maki sushi, but there are a multitude of other way to use them in their different variations. Today I’ve used some nori in my quiche. Not exactly the nori for maki sushi though. Something a little less processed 素焼のり or “unglazed nori”. And I made a quiche with it, spinach and zucchini. Something simple and fresh. Here is my recipe.

Nori quiche

– flour, olive oil and water for the pie crust dough

– 1 block of tofu

– 3 eggs

– a bundle of fresh spinach

– 2 handful of unglazed nori (you can try with regular maki nori cut in bites)

– 1/2 zucchini

In a pan cook the washed spinach in their water, add the chopped zucchini and finish with the nori. Cook at medium heat until the mix is not too much moistened anymore. Prepare the dough and roll. In a pie dish set the dough. Add the eggs and the drained tofu to the mix vegetables. Pour in the dough. Cook at 180deg for 30min. Enjoy as a main or a side with some grilled fish for example.

New wakame

There’s a season for everything and now is the season of new wakame apparently. This dried seaweed that is most often used in miso soup and in salad can be used in a variety of recipes I assumed and so I tried something half French half Japanese for this recipe. It all started with the finding of wild (should I mention) splendid alfonsino (kin me dai 金目鯛) that really attracted me, and some green peas (I’m a big big fan of green peas), that could complement the snap peas and new onion I had already. For the fish I simply grilled it on the skin side in a pan without any thing added, and flipped it when almost done to obtain a crispy outside. For the vegetables, that’s where the new wakame goes, I simply blanched the peas for 2min then drained them and in a pan with a bit of olive oil I grilled the onion and the added the wakame cut with scissors in small bits, and finished with the peas. Wakame, new or not is a dried seaweed, it needs a bit of moisture to return to its normal condition. The oil and the moisture from the onion and the peas is the perfect amount to keep it a little crunchy, too much moisture makes it quite chewy I find. Stir a bit and serve. No need to add salt, it’s already salty from the wakame.

Oh! I forgot! It’s the beginning of golden week in Japan! So happy golden week!!!

Recurring failure

I’m usually pretty confident in what I do, and in cooking more than anything else. I can try new recipes or invent new ones on the fly with quite some easiness and usually I obtain very very good results (it was one if the motivations for me to start this culinary journal, to keep track of my inventions).

That said (a little bit of self flattering never hurts!!!), I am not super human and there are things that I can never manage to master. Croissants are a great fancy for me and I love the idea of freshly baked croissants, buttery and fluffy, with a perfect puff to start a great Sunday. Despite having tried 4 or 5 times, having checked different recipes, watch videos and read books… I failed poorly in reaching my goal every single time. The taste is always great but the result is never a puff pastry croissants, it is a bread-ish, brioche-ish, milk bread-ish thing but never puffed. I don’t know what’s wrong with what I do or use. I’m incriminating the floor, the yeast, the kneading, the rolling and the folding… tried to improve each but didn’t succeed. If you are a successful croissants maker I’ll be more than happy to receive first hand feedbacks and hints to succeed next time. I’m also considering finding a class, if you know any I’ll be happy to learn about it…

Please help me make puffy croissants for Sunday morning breakfast !!!

Poached eggs and spring vegetables

When I have guests at home for dinner I usually serve fish, and if I cannot find fish that pleases me, I would serve pork or chicken. I love eggs, and cook them often for breakfast or when we are just the two of us, but I often forget that eggs are amazing and that they can actually be quite impressive when perfectly cooked and dressed. The “Cuisine and vins de France” issue for Easter has reminded me that, and I remembered that back then in Paris I was serving our guests some delicious spinaches and sprouts salad with poached eggs. For our guests last night I decided to make poached eggs back on the menu! This time for a spring version. Eggs are great to eat with some carbs, the make a great combo, and when cooked perfectly creamy, with some dry ones: bread, pasta, potatoes, rice… I opted for a mix of Italian faro perlato and black Tuscan rice. And the vegetables, simple: radishes, carrots, snap peas and green peas sautéed in a bit of olive oil.

Poaching eggs is ultra simple and impossible to mess. Simply take the eggs out of the fridge a little ahead of cooking them. Boil some water, add a tablespoon of white vinegar in the water. Break the eggs in the water, one by one. Wait 3-4min and drain. Serve.

Yuzu-choco cookies

Sudden rainy and chilly days, after some really warm and sunny weeks call for some sweetness… and since we’ve recently planted a yuzu (and also a lemon) tree in the garden, to broaden our range of homemade citrus fruits, I’ve started to harvest a few yuzu fruits. It’s late for the yuzu season but they are none the less delicious and juicy. That’s how the idea of making yuzu cookies came from. The recipe I used for my cookies is rater simple, and you can add whatever pleases you inside.

So here is my yuzu-cholate cookies recipe. If you cannot find fresh yuzu, you can replace by dry yuzu peels rehydrated, or orange.

Yuzu-chocolate cookies

– 110g of butter (at room temperature)

– 150g of flour

– 40g of sugar

– 1 tea spoon of baking powder

– the juice of 1/2 yuzu and the peel of 1/4 yuzu

– 50g of dark cooking chocolate

– a pinch of salt

Mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, add the butter and knead well. Add the yuzu juice, cut the peel in tiny pieces and add. Knead a little more. With a knife cut roughly the chocolate in chunks, add and knead. Keep refrigerated for 20min (or 10min in the freezer). Preheat the oven to 180deg. Make small balls of dough and squeeze them flat on baking paper. Bake until golden or hard enough. Cooking time should ne around 10min but it depends on the actual size and thickness of the cookies.

After baking the cookies until golden at 180 degrees I kept them in a cool dry place before eating them.

Bamboo shoots – 筍

The season for bamboo shoots has started for sure and it goes together with the season for Japanese pepper or sansho 山椒 fresh leaves also called kinome. The sansho shrub in our garden is actually growing steadily after I thought it might be dying last summer and there are plenty of new leaves and soon plenty of fruits. Bamboo shoots and sansho leaves are a very classic mix in Japanese cuisine and it indeed matches very well. I already introduced the recipe two years ago after we tried an amazing version at the shojin cuisine restaurant Daigo. My recipe is not exactly the classic one since I use simply olive oil and kinome. Nothing else. It is really simple and very tasty. It makes a perfect starter. Bamboo shoots are always a little long to prepare because they need two cooking. The first boiling to make them tender and remove any bitterness, the second for the final preparation, but they are definitely worse trying. Remember that to remove the bitterness it is good to cook bamboo shoots in rice water (the first rinse of white rice) or in rice nuka, but honestly rice water is much simpler and cleaner!!! This time I used katsuobushi dashi for the second cooking. Then cut in thin slices and added chopped kinome with olive oil.

Cresson quiche

To conclude this series of watercress recipe I would like to present you a simple quiche recipe where I have added some watercress to the egg base. For the pie crust I used an olive oil base because I was short on time and I find that kneading with olive oil is much faster than with butter that is just out of the fridge. For the rest it is just a regular quiche, the watercress brings some nice flavor and a nice texture to the creamy egg base.

Enjoy your Friday!

Watercress quiche

For the pie crust:

– 120g of flour of your choice

– olive oil or butter

– a bit of water

For the filling:

– a bundle of watercress

– ham (optional)

– 4 eggs

– 150ml of milk or cream

– salt and pepper

Start with the pie crust. In a bowl mix all the ingredients and knead until the dough is smooth. If you have doubt about the amount of butter/oil and water, add little by little until the right consistency is reached. Roll and set in a pie dish.

For the filling, wash the watercress and remove the hardest parts. In a bowl mix the eggs and the milk, add the watercress and the ham cut in bites, salt and pepper to taste. Pour in the pie crust. Cook in the oven for 30min at 200. If the pie is thick, cooking time may be longer.

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