Every year in Japan, on January 7th it is a custom to eat 7 herbs rice porridge おかゆ. Since I am not a huge fan of rice porridge I develop a new recipe every year (other recipes). Last year I prepared a 7 herbs rice omelet. This year I prepared it with grilled cod. I cooked some plain white rice. I grilled some fresh Hokkaido cod cut in pieces, and the turnip, then I simply washed the herbs and chopped them roughly and add both the cod and the herbs to the rice. Simple, tasty and delicious! How do you eat your 7 herbs???
Cooking Japanese is not necessarily difficult and it can be really quick. In winter I love daikon cooked in konbu (kelp) dashi and served with white miso, but this is not a whole meal so I prepared also in the same dashi some warm thick fried tofu served with little raw spinach and for the energy a bowl of rice mixed with 16 types of beans and seeds.
Prepare a konbu dashi with a piece of konbu in 1l of water, bring to boil and keep under cover. Cut 2-3cm high slices of daikon, one pr person is usually good, and cook them in the dashi. Check with a toothpick and remove them when soft. Serve in a bowl with one tsp of white miso on top. In the dashi still heated, add the thick fried tofu (atsu-age 厚揚げ) and cook for 5min, it washes away the oil from the deep fry. If you cannot find thick deep fried tofu you can warm momen (hard) tofu. When warm serve with baby spinach and a bit of soya sauce or a bit of ponzu sauce, or just a bit of the warm dashi. For the rice, I use a mix of seeds and beans that can be found in any organic supermarket or similar (if you cannot find some leave a comment I can help providing with some). That’s it. Keep warm and have a good weekend!
When Japan meets Italy and Gentiane is cooking, it gives a new recipe of ravioli. Now well equipped with my new ravioli rack for large pieces I can prepare ravioli with more granulous and rough filling. The first thing I tried back in Japan was speck and shimeji. Shimeji are a very Japanese type of mushrooms with a typical taste, speck brings in a salty-smoky note. I prepare the filling first and always wait until it has cooled down to make the ravioli, otherwise the pasta dough melts with the heat and moisture and the ravioli break. I chopped thinly a bundle of shimeji and a little piece of speck, and cooked them in a heated frypan. Add salt and pepper to your taste. No need to add fat, you want the filling to be rather dry. Once it is well cooked, let cool down. In the mean time I prepared the pasta dough with my classic recipe (100g of flour, 1egg, a pinch of salt, a litlle of olive oil), rolled it. If the air is dry, like in Japan in winter, you can moist it a bit, otherwise by the time you’ve rolled it, it is dry and cracks. Then I made the ravioli. Finally, when diner time has come I boiled them and served with freshly grated parmegiano, olive oil and grilled shimeji.
After one week in the south of Sicily trying local products and visiting historical sites, it was obvious I would not come back to Japan with empty hands. And with both Christmas and my birthday I was spoiled. Here is a bit of the Sicilian delights and gears I took back with me. Starting from the top right corner and going clockwise. First a new ravioli rack and the wooden roller, for large ravioli this time. I already tried it for the foie gras ravioli and for the ricotta ravioli, amazing! Very easy to use, larger ravioli seems much easier to make than smaller ones! Then a cooking book of Sicilian cuisine: “la cucine Siciliana”. My rusty Italian has gotten much better this year, so reading in Italian would not be a problem. Then some speck, some fresh ricotta salata. A little gnocchi rack to shape my gnocchi instead of using a fork! Sicilian flours for bread and pasta, polenta. A ceramic fruit plate from Caltagirone, I am totally in love with these ceramics, but I had a hard time finding some vintage ones. And in the background a new apron! So, very soon on Tokyo-Paris sisters some recipes using all these! And you, what do you bring back when you travel?
A. cooks once a year and it is for making my birthday cake. I like to have it with tea, because then it all about the cake rather than having it for dessert. Every year I choose the cake I would like to eat and he makes it the way I like it. He usually searches for recipes on the internet, and from this base adjusts it to the gears and ingredients we have, and to my taste. Since he has little experience he usually gets a bit of help or some advises from who is available around. This year, since we were in Sicily, country of citrus fruits, I chose a lemon tart with meringue. But I like my cakes not too sweet, not too buttery, not too creamy, so my mum and I helped him a bit. The result was amazing. So here is what he did for a 25cm tart: first pre-heat to 180deg ghe oven.
for the dough: a classic sablé dough with 200g of flour, 1 egg, 75g of butter. Mix all the ingredients and roll the dough to the size of your pie dish. Bake for 10min, the dough must not change color too much.
for the lemon filling: instead of preparing lemon curd we opted for something easier. The zest and the juice of 2 lemons is mixed with 2 egg yolk and 1 egg, 120g of brown sugar, and 4tbs of fresh ricotta. Mix all the ingredients to obtain a smooth creamy texture. Set in the dough. And cook in the oven at 180deg for 30min.
for the meringue: 2 egg white, 70g of icing sugar, a pinch of salt. Beat the egg whites and the salt until firm, continue beating and add the icing sugar slowly until all is smooth, shiny white and firm. Put the mix in an icing bag and decorate the tart as you like. Bake at 180deg for 10min. Check to be sire the meringue doesn’t burn.
We finished the decoration with some very thin slices of Sicilian sweet lemon grilles on the oven for a few minutes.
Being in Italy we eat fresh pasta quite often. And being with our mother we cook all together. This time it’s a recipe that our mother created. Very simple, taking advantage of the seasonal products and that can easily be prepared ahead and for large tables. This is tagliatelle with radicchio, spinach, speck and pine nuts. Served with fresh parmegiano. You need one radicchio, a few bundles of spinach, a few slices of speck, a handful of pine nuts, olive oil, fresh parmegiano. In a large pan, heat some olive oil, wash and cut in bite size the vegetables, cut in bite size the speck. Add all in the pan and stir until soft but still colorful. In a small pan, grill the pine nuts, when golden roughly crush them, add to the vegetables. Boil the tagliatelle (homemade, fresh or dry), when al dente, drain them and add them to the vegetables mix, add olive oil, stir well and serve. Top with parmegiano.
Celebrating Xmas with our families in Sicily I prepared an Italian x French ravioli to be served in a little herbs bouillon prepard by my mother. Cooking together we come up with mew odeas snd new tastes. The ravioli are foie-gras ravioli for everyone but me, mine are ricotta. For that it is really easy. I used my classic pasta recipe: 100g of flour, 1 egg, a pinch of salt and olive oil. I don’t have a pasta machine, so I rolled the dough manually. For the filling: fresh foie-gras made by my mother (she is very good at preparing fresh foie-gras). But you can use some foie-gras you buy. You need one dice of 1cm height for one ravioli. For my ravioli, just fresh sicilian ricotta. I bought in Catania a new ravioli rack for large ravioli and used it. For the bouillon it’s super simple. We used some greens of fresh onion, but you can use the green of a leek, some fresh parsley, a slice of orange peel, and a bit of the foie-gras fat. In a large pan, heat a little bit of the foie-gras fat, cut in thin filaments the fresh onion/leek green, add it in the pan, stir in the fat at low heat until soften, add water, add the parsley, the orange peel. Boil for 10min. Keep to serve. Boil the ravioli and serve together.
With some yellow carots, red carrots and normal carrots, some lotus root, some potatoes, and with some Italian beans soup mix that I cooked for lunch, I made for dinner this warm and rich vegan soup. Very very simple and so quick if you have cooked the beans before (optimally leftovers). In a large pan I put the cooked beans, water, quite a lot, and then cut the veggies and add them. I like both when it’s overcooked and veggies melt in the mouth, or when they are still crunchy, in particular the carrots, so I adjust the insertion time in the pan and the cooking time depending on that. I served warm, optionally with some gratted parmegiano, a good preparation foe our stay in Sicily!!!
I was in the mood for a little cooking experiment: something in between an okonomiyaki and a galette, with plenty of veggies. Vegan, gluten/free, delicious and colorful. I used plenty of the veggies I had in the fridge: sweet potato, sato imo, lotus root, and carrot. I peeled and cut them then grilled them in a pan. In the mean time, I mixed buckwheat flour, rice flour and water with a bit of baking powder to obtain a quite thick dough. Then in a smaller pan I layed the vegetables covered them with dough and cooked at very low heat under cover then flipped it. And served. Use bulldog sauce like for okonomiyaki if you like.
