Category: Cooking

Butternut squash lasagna

With a tight schedule: in Nagoya yesterday, a rehearsal for the show next Tuesday where our robot appears, a few lectures and talks to prepare and the preparation for moving in less than a month, days are pretty short! But I am always happy to prepare a dinner for friends and never cancel an invitation! And with a bit of planning and organization and waking up 30min earlier to have the time to prepare the vegetables and start cooking nothing is impossible. Of course for week days dinner I usually cook simpler recipes, and to celebrate A. new job and our new life I prepared an Italian inspired dinner. In that case, lasagna are a very good option (though they are hard to plate!!!). This time, I had a beautiful butternut squash and used it as the base. I only added a bit of chicken breast and rosemary and topped with gratted mozzarella. Everybody loved it!!!

Butternut squash lasagna 

– 1 butternut squash  

– 2 skinned chicken breast

– 1 or 2 branches of fresh or dried rosemary

– lasagna pasta ( homemade, fresh or dry) 

– some cream

– some olive oil

– salt and pepper

– mozzarella to grat

First cut the butternut squash and steam it with the rosemary. Once it has cooled down, peel it and remove the seeds. In a pan greased with olive oil cook the chicken breast until golden. In a blender mix the chicken and the butternut squash, add a few leaves of rosemary, and a little of cream. It must not be liquid but rather a purée. If you use dry lasagna pasta poached them. In a large oven dish greased with olive oil lay a layer of pasta, cover with a layer of the chicken-butternut mix, add a bit of cream, add a layer of pasta, then of mix then a bit of cream… up to where you want. Finish with a layer of pasta, and cover with gratted mozzarella. Bake in the oven at 150 deg until the mozzarella is golden!

Enjoy! 

Cold corn soup

As I was mentioning in my earlier post, I didn’t grow in a family where eating corn or cooking corn is a tradition.  I am still quite unable to cook it in many ways, and I usually limit myself to boiled corn, rice & corn, or corn soup. Since the weather is very hot and humid these days in Tokyo I really like to prepare cold soups. And since the corn season is going to end soon, I bought a few more corn and prepared some cold soup. Similarly to the hot one it is simple and very nice as a starter. The only “problem” with cold soups made from ingredients that must be cooked (contrarily to gaspacho) is that you have to plan a bit ahead (2-3h) to have time to cool it.

Cold corn soup (for 2 bowls)

– 2 corns

– soya milk

– salt and pepper  

First remove the leaves and hairs from the corn and boil until soft. Wash under running cold water to cool them. Take all the grains out and blend until smooth (adding no other liquid help obtaining a really smooth texture), add salt and pepper. Add soya milk to obtain the desired texture. Again, when cooled the texture will be slightly thicker, so think about it to obtain the texture you really want. Blend a little longer. Cool in the fridge or the freezer before serving.

Have a nice week! 

Green beans salad

For very hot and humid days like it was today, I like to prepare extremely simple, fresh meals with mainly vegetables. A green beans salad is a classic for me, but instead of preparing it with potatoes like I would usually do I prepared it with hard boiled eggs and fresh ginger and myoga thinely chopped. It gives a very interesting twist to the whole recipe. I guess adding potatoes is still possible.

Cold soup

How is your summer? In Tokyo these days summer looks like the rainy season… and it’s even not too hot! Which is perfect for this first week back to work, except that I was expecting having dinner on the terrace (maybe for the last season since we might move to a new place without a terrace) with our guests but rain didn’t stop for the last week more than just a few minutes. Anyway, this doesn’t affect much my cooking! And after eating out in so many cafes I really enjoyed having a little soup to start with and a cold one for the summer. So for our guests last night (one allergic to lactose) I prepared a potato-leek soup. You know this all-time classic that is so warming in winter… but in a cold version. The only problem with cold soup os that you need to prepare them at least 6h before eating so that they really are really cold when eating. 

Vegan cold leek-potato soup:  (4 servings)

 – 1 leek

– 2-5 potatoes depending on the size

– olive oil, salt, pepper

Wash and chop the leek. In a pan, heat some olive oil and add the leek. Peel the potatoes and cut them. Add to the pan and cook at medium heat until slightly golden, stir every once in a while. Cover with 1L of water and cook until the potatoes are really soft. Blend to obtain a creamy soup (add first the vegetables and then the water little by little in the blender to be sure to have the right consistency. It must slightly more liquid than desired since the cooling will densify the mixture). Add olive oil, salt, pepper. Cool in the fridge for a few hours. Stir the mix before serving to make it homogeneous. Enjoy!

Lotus root sushi – 蓮根寿司

When we were in Fuefukigawa, our ryokan had a very nice library where we enjoyed spending some time. It’s very nice to go to someone else library because you can discover many things through others books. That’s how I discovered a little cook book with some inspiring recipes. And I tried one of the inspiration as soon as we got back home. It was a recipe of lotus root sushi. So basically vinegared rice and vinegared lotus roots, served with ginger and sesame.  It’s been many years I haven’t made sushi rice so I was happy to prepare some again. Since it was served with the vinegared lotus root I didn’t make it too sour, and I served it with some ginger-pork sautéed.

So here is the lotus-root sushi recipe. It is quite simple if you can find fresh lotus roots (which in Japan is obviously very easy) and it has a very Japanese flair. 

Lotus-root sushi: 

– 1 cup of Japanese rice (I always use Koshihikari but choose your favorite one) 

– 1 large lotus root, fresh

– a bulb of fresh ginger, not too big

– 2 or 3 myoga

– 3 tbs of golden sesame

– 3 tbs of white vinegar

– 1 tbs of natural sugar

– 1 tsp of salt

– 2 tbs of sake (optional) 

First wash the rice, and cover with 1cup of water, the sake and cook as usual. While the rice is cooking, peel and wash carefully the lotus root. Cut in very thin slices (I used the mandolin for that). Set in a bowl, add some water to almost cover, but don’t put too much. Add most of the sugar, the salt and 2tbs of white vinegar. Stir with the hands, and let rest. Stir once in a while. Peel and cut thinely the ginger and the myoga. In a frypan roast the sesame until it starts to smell. Once the rice is cooked and has cooled down a bit add the remaining 1tbs of vinegar and the remaining sugar, stir well. Add the ginger, the sesame to the rice, stir; add the lotus root drained. Add the myoga. That’s it!!!

Socca lunch

Once in a while I like to prepare traditional socca as a base for a lunch one plates. It’s very quick to prepare and easy to serve with fresh vegetables. Since I’ve found huge eggplants at the farmers market I decided to make some basil (I have plenty in my herb garden) eggplant caviar and I made a big batch. I used very little olive oil in so that it can be eaten endlessly! I found it matches very well the socca and was a good dip. So I simply dresses the plates adding a few pan fried eggplant slices, some tomato and okra.

Eggplant caviar: 

For a big bowl. 

– 3 eggplants (not the small Japanese ones, the big ones! Otherwise you may make a small bowl!) 

– a bit of olive oil

– salt, pepper

– fresh basil leaves, or carvi seeds, or sesame seeds… 

Preheat the oven to 200. Set the eggplants on a cooking paper shit and put in the oven. Bake until it feels soft inside. Let them cool. Then peel them. Remove the extra water if any by just squeezing them.  Put all the peeled eggplants in the bowl of a blender, add salt and pepper, a bit of olive oil and blend to a smooth purée. Add the chopped basil, or the carvi seeds or the sesame seeds. Ready to eat, with bread, in a dish…

The recipe fir the socca is available here 

Special guest: cooking in Tsunan

We are back to our friends’ place in Tsunan for a few days and as usual having fun cooking with K. the local products and vegetables from their kitchen garden. In the summer they grow a lot of tomatoes that are always super delicious, a lot of eggplants and cucumbers too. K. is very good at cooking, she knows a lot of different inspirations from their travels and she mixes it quite well to Japanese traditional cooking and Japanese ingredients. Cooking with her is always very inspiring for me, and I learn a lot helping her in the kitchen. But I also cook for them some dishes, this time a blueberry tart.

Even if there is often some meat in many of her recipes, she uses a lot of fresh vegetables from their garden and she always make a twist to Japanese traditional recipes. This time she prepared shabu shabu, but served it with celery, fresh lettuce, sprouts, mizuna, pickled cucumbers, snap peas and soya sprouts… the vegetables only where so delicious. And of course there was as always, one of her wonderful tomatoes salad. K. always peels her tomatoes for the salad and serves them with many different dressings: sometimes just black pepper and salt, or just green shiso (perilla) sometimes with more complex preparations. This time she prepared a sesame dressing with roasted and grinded sesame (about 4tbs), soya sauce (3tbs), rice oil (3tbs).

K. in her kitchen
K. in her kitchen
S. kitchen garden  
S. kitchen garden  
Modest harvest of the day
Modest harvest of the day
Modest harvest of the day
Modest harvest of the day

Wind of change

As crazy as can be it’s the first time we are taking summer holidays!!! Back when we were leaving in Paris we usually would take holidays in the end of September, and since wéve mived to Tokyo holidays mainly rimes with business trip of one or the other, except for Christmas. But this year I was finally relieved of any summer duty at the university and A. could take some vacations easily, so we decided to took off. After investigating several options: Belize vs Buthan vs Road trip in Japan, we opted for the latter. Enjoying Japan in the summer, visiting some friends in the mountains and discovering places we’ve always have had on our bucket list convinced us. Also the attraction of no plane/no jetlag was very strong. Free to go at anytime. It seems that a bit of wind of change is blowing right now with our first summer holidays (actually second, when we were still students we once went to Berlin for a week in the August), and we’ve decided to ride on! Enjoy the present! For those in holidays, have fun, and those still working in emptying cities, enjoy! Summer is too short to let it go!

Before going, a last oneplate dinner, with just a few things: rice, pickled radishes, tomatoes, okras, and some satsumaage (fish paste fried) with some burdock.

Summer butternut squash

If two or three years ago it was not so easy to find butternut squash (see my previous post about it), now it is almost on possible to find it all year round at the farmers market… and since it is so easy to cut and peel and so quick to cook I’ve thought that it would be perfect even in summer. Of course no pumpkin spice or warm and rich preparation in summer, but rather a very simple one: cold soup.

Butter cold soup:

– 1 butternut squash  

– water

– salt

– pepper black and pink

– curcuma  

Simply peel and cut the butternut and remove the seeds. Boil it in water until very soft. Remove the water to have the butternut just covered. Smash and stir with a spoon or a fork until almost smooth (or blend). Add salt and curcuma. Cool in the fridge before serving. When dressing the plates add some black and pink pepper. 

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