Spinach risotto and cod

As expected, it is now getting cold in Tokyo and the real winter is here. Nothing better to get warm than a kind of thick ice soup or wet risotto with veggies and fresh cod.
In a pan greased with olive oil, first grill the rice (arborio or carnoli), then cover twice with some veggie consome of your choice, and cook. When the consome has lowered by 1/3 add some fresh spinach roughly cut, and cook until the consome is now just on top of the rice. Add the cod, a slice of lemon and cook some more until the liquid has almost vanished. Serve immediately while still wet, and eat when hot.

January 14, 2016

Cauliflower soup x katsuobushi

Too happy with the mix cauliflower and katsuobushi in the tart the other day that I decided to try it in an other version: a warm soup for a cold evening. And the magic worked again!

It’s crazily simple and delicious: boil a cauliflower (I just removed the green leaves, washed it and boiled it all in one piece in 3cm of water under cover. Once soft I roughly crush it with a wooden spoon and mix it with the remaining water in my blender, add black pepper and the soup is ready. When I serve I add some thinly cut katsuobushi (usukiri), that’s it!

January 13, 2016

3 types of cabbage tart

At the local farmers market the other day I found beautiful cauliflower, romanesco and broccoli. Having all them together I couldn’t help but cook something mixing it. I love the idea of having ingredients close in shape but different in taste and color, and the first idea that I had was to make a tart with a piece of each. And becauseI really love the idea of mixing Japanese flavors with western ones I decided to add in the base some katsuobushi flakes. For the dough, I opted for a classic sable dough. A perfect balance.

January 12, 2016

Miso-parsley-pork meat balls

Nothing better than a one-bowl meal for a perfect lunch. Donburi are really easy to prepare in endless seasonal variations, with meat, fish or vegan, with white rice, brown rice, a mox of grains…

For this one I used plain white rice, seasonal veggies: turnips, carrots and shiitake, and prepare miso meat balls. For that I used pork meat, about 100g, 1 egg, 2 or 3 branches of parsley, 2 table spoons of panko, and 2 table spoons of miso (of your choice). I mix all together and cook the balls in a frypan until golden. The mix miso-parsley is really delicious!

January 11, 2016

Fluffy tofu omelet

I am extremely picky on the quality of the food we eat and I find it ridiculous to want to eat absolutely meat or fish at every meals or everyday. I’m more inclined to cook a really fresh and delicious piece when I find one and skip it the rest of the time. Lot’s of people curiously worry about proteines intake but not about vitamins or other as much important nutrients. I care about none because I know that what I cook is perfectly healthy. I’m a vegetarian that eat sometimes a bit of cooked white meat or fish. And I’m an egg lover!

Eggs are perfect from breakfast to dinner, they can be prepared and combined in so many ways that I could cook them differently pretty much everyday!! So when I found myself with a bloc of momendofu in my fridge, immediately I though about a delicious fluffy omelet for dinner. The tofu always needs to be drained for a better taste so never skip that part. In a bowl I put the tofu and 3 big eggs, a little of salt and pepy and I mixed until it took some volume up and started to foam. In a large frypan I heared s bit of vegetal oil and cooked on both sude the omelet. Then cut and serve with steam veggies.

January 7, 2016

A little veggies medley

Broccoli, turnips, potato, shiitake for a good meal after work, there’s nothing better. Add a little of pork filet diced if you like it, sautéed in a pan with olive oil!

January 5, 2016

The avocado curse

This morning I went back to work. I hate when the clock rings, but when it rang this morning I was dreaming that it would rang as many times as there are fountains in Rome, and I just didn’t bother… But after a while I had to go back to real life… to open the curtains and see a beautiful blue sky and mount Fuji in the background. Hum… Not too bad after 17 days of the same weather to have another one. In the train, surprisingly empty I was thinking about writing something about Sicily, or about Rome, and share some of these beautiful things we’ve seen and amazing places we’ve been, but I quickly got immersed in my emails and forget to write anything. When the train arrived in Koganei, I got off mechanically and headed to the supermarket to grad something for my lunch later. That’s when I got stricken by the fact that really in winter the only thing I find suitable enough to eat is the sandwiches I make with wholewheat and seeds bread, cream cheese and avocado. I got a bonus apple for my snack and then I realized that I AM going back to work and that I NEED to break this avocado-sandwich routine to something else, but right now I’m unable to figure out which substitute could work for me and I have the impression to be under the avocado curse (like in Kid Icarus, a game I used to play on my gameboy when I was a kid where you get cursed by an eggplant!!) … What do you have for lunch at work? I’m open to ideas… Pleazzzz

January 4, 2016

Ravioli testing

Too happy to have found the cooking gears I was looking for in Rome and the super Sicilian flours, I couldn’t wait to try them so I decided to make ravioli of course. For the filling since we arrived late on 31st I didn’t have so many options left for shopping, so I decided it’d be pork filet and shiitake. For the pasta I used my usual recipe (1 egg for 100g of flour), but used the “semolina di grano duro” instead of regular flour. The pasta is much drier and easy to roll, and the taste is perfect. I used the ravioli rack, but my filling was not smooth enough to cut the ravioli properly, so I finished them with the roller. Both are super easy to use and I was very satisfied with the result for a first try, I don’t how I was making ravioli before! It’s so much better. It makes them perfectly regular, and the taste and size were perfect. Now I need to work a little more on my filling to have it smooth so that it’s easier to fill the ravioli, but without loosing the taste and without cheese for my husband… Many trials to come!!!

January 3, 2016

First bread of the year

When we left Japan in December it was still the end of autumn, in our garden the Japanese mapple trees were all red, the gingko had just lost all its leaves, the camelias were starting to bloom. 15 days later, the mapple leaves have all fallen, at first sight only the camelias haven’t changed, but with a closer look, the daffodils are blooming, the magnolias and the plum trees are full of buds already big, and the garden is metamorphosing slowly towards spring. From now on it’s going to be the coldest days, but the garden needs a lot of attention to get ready for spring: tree treaming, weed removing, cutting, grooming, planting… So we spend a lot of time outside in the cold, and there’s nothing better to start such days with a warm energizing rustic bread for breakfast. My recipe is simple: 50g of rye flour, 200g of white flour, 170g of water, 14g of sordough, 4g of natural dry yeast, 6g of salt. 20min cooking at 230deg, plus 5min in the oven cooling down. Perfect with jam, honey, butter or whatever pleases you!!!

January 2, 2016