Category: Italian food

Insalata di riso – インサラータ・ディ・リーゾ

In France, the early summer is the end of the school year, and more than often children go on day trips. In which case parents should provide a lunch box. I have no idea what today’s lunch boxes look like, but when I was a child (saying that feels like I 80 years old or something!!!!), one very popular recipe for the lunch box was “rice salad”. There were two main versions: the cheese and ham one, usually with mayonnaise dressing, and the tuna one either with mayonnaise or olive oil. I personally liked the later best. With a piece of fresh local bonito, some cooked rice, and summer vegetables plenty, the menu for dinner tonight was all set: it would be a classic rice salad. Of course rice is a key ingredient in the recipe and I wasn’t sure it would work well with Koshihikari rice, but it is truly perfect.

For the other ingredients, that would be normally can-ready food: corn, tuna… but I don’t by much canned food, and it is the season for delicious local corn now. And it makes a much much better meal. Almost fancy!

Here is my recipe.

Rice salad (2 servings, one dish meal)

  • 1/2 cup of rice
  • 1/2 fresh corn
  • 1/2 filet of fresh bonito
  • 1 tomato
  • 1/2 cucumber
  • Olive oil
  • Salt and pepper
  • 1 leave of laurel

First, cook the rice, and boil the corn.

In a pan set the bonito filet, some olive oil and salt, pepper, laurel add a little of water and cook slowly under cover.

Dice the tomato and the cucumber.

In a large bowl, set the rice (much better if it has had time to cool down. Generously splash olive oil and stir. Add the tomato and the cucumber. Stir again. Once the corn is cooked and had cooled down, add the husked corn, pull the bonito, like you would do with pork and add too. Stir, add salt and pepper if you feel it’s needed. Enjoy at room temperature or chilled.

A close up of the finalized salad

Chestnut risotto

Last winter I trimmed our chestnut tree to try to improve its production, because we usually have very few chestnuts, despite it being a rather large tree. And it work perfectly, we had plenty of chestnuts, I could enjoy seeing them growing slowly, and I was already thinking about all I would do with them, and give away. But in early August with the drought (since July 10 it’s been 32deg at least every day and it rained may be twice or thrice just a little), most of the beautiful chestnuts felt when they were still small. In the end I only collected 10 chestnuts 🌰…. Basically the same amount as usual… just enough for one or two meals.

Instead of the classic Japanese kuri gohan, I prepared a western version with Carnaroli rice, olive oil, and a bit of kale. I replaced the Parmigiano by fresh grated comté cheese. Super easy, and very delicious! Here is my recipe.

Chestnuts risotto (2 servings main dish)

  • 10 fresh raw chestnuts
  • 1 go of carnaroli rice, or other risotto rice you like
  • 2 leaves of kale (tender is better)
  • 1tbs of olive oil
  • Salt and pepper
  • Comté cheese (optional)
  • Water

Boil the chestnuts for 50min. Let cool and peel them.

In a large pan heat the olive oil, add the rice and stir until the rice is translucent. Cover amply with water, add salt and pepper and the chestnuts roughly broken into bite size. Let cook under cover for 15min. Wash and chop the kale, removing the hard parts. Add to the pan. The liquid must have almost all reduced, and the rice should be almost cooked. If that’s not the case: if the rice doesn’t seem cooked yet and there is no liquid anymore, add a bit of water and cook under cover. If there us still too much liquid and the rice seems cooked, remove the cover, and slightly increase the heat.

In the end, the rice should start grilling in the bottom of the pan. That’s when you want to serve, with just a bit of crisp in the bottom.

Serve, add grater comté cheese if you like and enjoy.

Goes well also with prosciutto or better with Speck. Unfortunately recently Japan has a ban on Italian cured meat so that’s not an option…

My summer favorite: edamame paste and pasta

The summer is slowly reaching its end and the end of summer vegetables start to arrive such as butternut squash and kabocha, but before the summer ends for real, let’s enjoy a little more the summer vegetables: eggplants, cucumber, edamame and jute mallow…

Autumn ravioli

Last Friday a strong windy typhoon passed nearby, and we had a few things to fix in the garden Saturday when we went on our usual inspection. The wind chopped a palm tree in two, many dried branches felt and a bit of cleaning was more than necessary. While doing so, A. found a few chestnuts fallen from our tree that animals haven’t had time to touch yet. A few meaning exactly 5.

But that was perfect. With the butternut squash I had and the dried porcini I just bought at an Italian grocery store newly found in Tokyo, dinner was all decided. It would be ravioli. And that came to a more satisfying recipe for A. when I told him I could use some local sausages too. We were so hungry and happy with ravioli for dinner that I didn’t even take 1min to take a picture!!! The only I had taken was the ravioli before cooking them.

So here is my recipe, simple as usual and very very tasty! I opted for super jumbo ravioli to enjoy the filling, but you can make smaller ones too.

Autumn ravioli (2 servings)

  • Same as usual for the pasta: 100g of flour, 1 egg, water
  • 5 chestnuts
  • 200g of raw pumpkin, butternut squash…
  • Dry of fresh porcini (10 pieces dry, 2 mushrooms fresh)
  • optional: fresh sausage (I use local sausage)
  • Olive oil
  • Salt and pepper

Start by boiling the chestnuts. While they gently do, prepare the dough for the pasta, and let it rest while you prepare the rest. Which is to peel and chop the butternut and boil it with very little water or best steam it, until soft. Return the dry porcini in tepid water, or if you use fresh ones, wash and slice them. By then the chestnuts should be ready, and after cooling down a bit peel them. If you use sausage, remove the skin if the sausage. Then in a pan mix together he butternut, the chestnuts chopped, the sausage, salt and pepper, cook at low heat while stirring, mashing to obtain a rather puréed filling.

Roll your dough, and make the ravioli.

Boil enough water for the ravioli (if you used dried porcini add the water used to returning them in there too). In the meantime in a large pan sautéed in olive oil the porcini, add salt and pepper. Boil the ravioli and add to the pan. Stir gently and serve in the plates for immediate enjoyment!!!! Et voila!!!

Too much routine

I need to go outside of my comfort zone in the cuisine… but I don’t know how…

Making ravioli, pancakes, scones, quiches, breads etc… has become such a routine and is so effortless that I miss the challenge. Because, yes indeed, I am a challenger. Whether it’s at work, on the court, in the ocean, or in front of my sewing machine I like challenges. That’s how I ended up registering to a bodyboard school last year and I still enjoy learning to ride waves better and to spin on my board! That’s why I enjoy sewing (and here the challenge is massive!!!) . But recently cooking has been more functional than challenging. Even the steam buns, the bread in a pan etc… are now basically classics and I rush them between two meetings!!

Since my main source of inspiration : experience and local sourcing during our trips has dried up in the past 18months, I have decided to use my imagination and my recollections of some our trips. First stop: Firenze of course! I remembered these gigantic sandwiches they would sell in something resembling focaccia (scaccia in Florence) and I never tried because it is just too gigantic and there was too much fat left on the ham (I have always hated meat fat) and since I just bought some prosciutto it was the perfect timing. So I baked a plain focaccia, and decided that we would have a savory breakfast.

Trying a new type of breakfast: focaccia, prosciutto and fresh tomatoes and peach…

And then because I made a rather giant focaccia we went for it again for lunch, this time in a real panino version with grilled vegetables. (Top picture)…

It wasn’t much but it was a change. Not yet far away from the comfort zone, but new enough!!!

I’ll keep searching my memories!

Ravioli piccolini

Ravioli… oh! It’s been really a while I didn’t make ravioli… it was high time to fix that… but with all we got from the local shops I wasn’t sure about what use for s filling: korinki and cream cheese, asparagus, eggplant, or flounder… after a certain thinking I had in mind flounder in a sort of bouillon and served with rouille… I was thinking of my own special way of making bouillabaisse… but then something came up at work, upset me and I was working instead of cooking… the dough was ready, the flounder grilled, but neither the bouillon nor rouille were to be done anytime soon… and the clock was ticking and A. was hungry… and past 21:00 I had to go back to the kitchen. Except that now it was too late for a fancy dish… So I ran in the kitchen garden, chopped some fresh parsley, add it to the fish and decided that would be it. Rolled the ravioli dough, filled them in tiny size, and while I was poaching them I felt it was missing something, so I added some asparagus, a fragrant olive oil and that was it.

And you know what: flounder x parsley was a killer filling and I will do again!!! A creamy sauce could have worked fine as well I reckon…

Parsley and flounder filling

Double tap ashitaba gnocchi

For those who know me, it is no secret we love ashitaba 明日葉 since we visited Hachijojima a long time ago. Actually ashitaba is a native plant of Japan and more particularly Izu islands (Hachijojima…), Miura peninsula and Boso peninsula (where ouf country house is). So imagine how happy I am every year when the season comes!!! One of my all-time favorite is my recipe of ashitaba is ashitaba gnocchi, that in my opinion I don’t make often enough. And this time I decided to go for a double ashitaba gnocchi+ashitaba pesto.

Its taking the flavor to an extra level of green and refreshment. The recipe is simple as always and not very different than the previous ones. But just in case you would need one…

Ashitaba gnocchi & pesto (2 servings)

  • 2 potatoes
  • A bouquet of ashitaba
  • Salt and pepper
  • Olive oil
  • Flour

Boil the whole potatoes until tender. Peel and mash. Blanch the ashitaba. Blend without water until smooth. Filter half of the blended mixture through a tea net, jeep both the juice and the leaf puree.

Mix the leaf puree with the potatoes. Add flour to obtain a slightly sticky dough. Shape the gnocchi. Add a but more flour if needed while shaping them.

Pour back the juice in the blender, add olive oil, salt and pepper. Then move all to a pan and heat at medium heat while stirring once in a while.

Boil a large amount of water, and poach the gnocchi. When they float move them to the pan and roll them in the sauce to coat them. Serve and enjoy right away.

Bamboo shoot pizza

I know that may seems strange… but there are some associations that work perfectly and need to be more explored. The one I totally love is bamboo shoot/tomatoes that I discovered last year by chance. The other thing that I love is grilled bamboo shoots. It reminds me of the grilled thin bamboo shoots we had first harvested with our friends in Tsunan ages ago now… something like 2008… So thinking about how both tomatoes and grilled bamboo shoots could be combined, obviously pizza was going to be a great combo. It just needed to be made. So the night before I prepared the pizza dough with my sourdough. Classic bread dough recipe in which you add a tablespoon of sugar and a generous drizzle of olive oil. You leave it to work gently. And once we get back from surfing in the morning I rolled the dough a bit thick for maximum softness, sliced two tomatoes, a new onion, the takenoko and a local piece of cheese, all in the oven for about 20min at 220deg. Once cheese was golden and crust too, I took it out of the oven, cut and served with a drizzle of olive oil and a bit of ground black pepper. As simple as it is I like my pizza with just 2-3 ingredients in addition to tomato and cheese and I like mixing seasonal vegetables. Many of the Japanese local vegetables actually work well on a pizza. I had already tested burdock, now I know that takenoko is great too!

More Wafu pasta

I have a principle that I apply for pretty much anything and even more when I cook or think about cooking, it’s to be always flexible and opened to opportunities, or see change in plans as one. Nothing is definite. A recipe evolves and comes to life as ingredients are mixed together, taking the mood and the time into consideration… This is exactly how this wafu pasta recipe was created. It all started with a bicycle ride to go diy shopping. On the way back, if we take this road, I like to stop at the little stall that sells local fresh vegetables grown right on the spot. Sometimes the shelves are empty, and sometimes they have little treasures. They just had many little treasures this day. In particular a big bundle of tiny sweet leeks appealed me. I just picked it, slid a 100yen coin in the box and off we went.

But what to do with them… I had no plan… until a few days later when time for dinner came and it was decided we would eat pasta. Tagliatelle. A bit of sesame oil was remaining in the pan from some little rice crackers I made, so I decided to use it. Chopped the little sweet leeks, coated them in sesame oil, added a very ripe large tomato (that can easily be replaced by a good tomato sauce or preserved tomatoes), and cooked at low heat until I obtained a creamy tomato sauce with the delicious flavor of the fragrant sesame oil, slightly confit. Added the boiled pasta, stirred well and added a bit of sesame seeds before serving. A new version of the wafu pasta…

How do eat your pasta Japanese-style? Have you ever tried???

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