Fresh home-made food every day
What best when it’s getting chilly outside than a bowl of hot and steamy white rice? And to complete the lunch, a plate with angelic (ashitaba-明日葉) omelette, grilled pork, grilled cherry tomatoes and turnips with miso. Very quick to prepare, tasty and warming!
I am also very pleased to use my new Arita yaki bowls!
As I was telling you, I really love the mix fresh parsley and burdock. May be because it makes the burdock taste even more artichoky, a vegetable I love but that is not common in Japan (though I’ve spotted some lovely artichokes plants in my neighbor’s potager garden!). As we will be traveling to Sicily, I know I’ll have opportunities to eat plenty of delicious artichokes very soon! Yet, I prepared burdock with parsley in an Italian manner with a mix of grains for Italian soup (from last year Italian holidays!) and carnaroli rice, prepared like a risotto. I cooked in a bit of olive oil the burdock peeled and sliced, then add the rice and the grains, finally cover with water. Cooked until the liquid has vanished, add generously some fresh ciseled parsley, serve immediately. Perfect with freshly grated parmegiano if you like.
It’s been quite a while I wanted to try making stuffed lotus root, but somehow, I never did… Probably because usually I buy rather small and thin lotus roots and I cannot imagine how to stuff them. Finally, I found some huge lotus root, very fresh and nice, so it was THE chance! I hesitated with different option for the filling, but finally opted for chicken. Just chicken. I peeled and washed the lotus root. Stuffing was very easy then I cut them in large slices and cooked them in a bit of oil in a fry pan, flipping them a few times and until golden on both sides. I served them with rice and nori, and with a few little pickled plums. And will try again to stuff lotus roots with some vegetarian or vegan options very soon!!!
12 years ago we arrived in Tokyo and moved in our first Tokyoite apartment in Nezu. At that time I was working at the university of Tokyo, a 5min walk from there. Settling in Tokyo without speaking Japanese was a lot of fun but not always easy. A. was not working at that time yet and he’s missions most of the days was to go and investigate for what we needed and then buy it and install it: washing machine, telephone, desktop computer, internet… We were very lucky to have friends to help us. The thing that took us the most time everyday was grocery shopping if you remember my post there. Thanks not only to my Japanese cooking book for beginners but also to our friend Shotaro, who is a very good cook and was living in Tokyo at that time. He came at home and we cooked together. For a reason very unclear, while I was grocery shopping yesterday I saw some nice sticky potato or yamaimo 山芋, and suddenly remembered about that salad we cooked together: cabbage, yamaimo and sesame dressing. And because before starting Tokyo Paris Sisters with Prunellia, I already had a site to share French recipes with our Japanese friends and Japanese recipes with our French friends, I just dug in to find that recipe back!!!! It was even simpler than I thought! At that time we used industrial sesame dressing but last night I came with a vegan homemade version that was really nice! So here is the recipe for 4 servings as starter:
For the dressing: a piece of yamaimo of about 1-2cm; 2tbs of sesame powder, known as surigoma-擂り胡麻 ; 1tbsp of soya sauce; water; salt.
Fir the salad: 1/2 cabbage; a large piece of yamaimo, or half one yamaimo.
Cut the cabbage in bite size chunks, if you like it crunchy use it raw, if you like softer, blanched it and cool it. Cut the yamaimo in 5-8mm x 4cm sticks. I a serving bowl put both ingredients. Now prepare the dressing. Grat the yamaimo to obtain what is called tororo-トロロ, a kind of slime that will give a creamy consistency to the dressing, add the surigoma, add the soya sauce, then mix well. The mix is quite dense and now you need to add water little by little still mixing (optimally with chop sticks) to obtain the consistency you want, it as to be creamy without being too much liquid. Top the vegetables and enjoy!!!
Rice, rice more rice, white, brown, red, black, wild, arborio, carnaroli, koshihikari, camargues. Whatever, we love rice!!! This time it’s a mix of koshihikari white and brown rice, served with enoki, these long, thin and white mushrooms so easy to find st that the time of the year, and lotus roots, cooked in a bit of oil until golden then glazed in soya sauce, and the all thing is topped by a poached egg for the creaminess. So simply delicious!
I was in Toulouse for two days and it was not 2h since I landed back in Tokyo to be in my kitchen and prepare some simple meal for A. and me. I miss very quickly cooking, and preparing a nice little dinner is perfect to recover from the jet lag. In particular when the fridge is still well filled with some fresh vegetables. And after being away, I wanted to eat Japanese, so I opted for rice, and a dish of leek, sato imo and purple sweet potatoes, cooked in soya sauce and served with a large pickled plum. Colorful, tasty and light!!!
This week, our nice little grandma neighbor gave us some salt pickled chinese cabbage. She has offered to teach me how to make it if we like it. Of course we liked it! So next weekend I’m looking forward to learn how to make it. In particular because I like Chinese cabbage but they are too big, and if I buy one we have to eat some for 3 consecutive days of more and I get tired of it. So pickling a part of it seems a very good option to keep it a little longer. And I find actually quite easy to use when pickled, even more than raw.
Last night I used it in an improved recipe where I found it brings the perfect salty-crunchy taste and texture to a very simple saffron pasta soup. I used 1 cup of small soup pasta, 1 dose of saffron, a little piece of butternut squash peeled, a puece of pickled cabbage thinly cut, a piece of flounder, optional, black pepper.
In a pan I boil 0.75l of water, add the saffron and the butternut squash cut in small cubes, the pasta. Separately I grill the flounder in a fry pan. A minute before the pasta are ready I add the cabbage. Stir well. Serve the pasta/veggies then the fish, add black pepper. That’s it!
Working Saturday on campus, coming back home and deciding to head to the country to enjoy the beautiful weather, I had to prepare dinner in a bit of a rush once we arrived, with an empty fridge and very few ingredients. Hopefully A. is always ok with simple vegab food, and I prepared steamed leek with miso, steamed spinaches with yuzu and miso, served with a bowl of white and green rice, and a few umeboshi. I actually was impressed by the spinach, and want to share my improvised recipe. I steam the spinach until bright green and then cool them and drained them to stop the process and keep their beautiful color. Then I cut them into 3-4cm, add 2tsp of miso (mild granulous miso in my case, white could work fine too), and mix the miso and the spinach with the fingers. I cut a slice of peel of fresh yuzu and thinly cut it (you can grat it if you prefer) and mix it too, keep a few for the decoration. Shape the spinach as a little mound, top with some yuzu peel. Eat with rice, white fish…
It’s been a year now I’ve started some barter process with our neighbors in the country. Some gingko nuts here, some citrus fruits, some plums, some bread etc… in exchange one would sew a kimono, teach me how to make umeboshi, give us a few pickled vegetables, and more often they would give us fresh vegetables from their gardens. Last weekend we’ve found on our door step a bag full of turnips, sato imo and a very strange vegetable that looked like a root that has grown and that I have never seen before. Since a few weeks ago I gave gingko nuts to several people, I couldn’t identify where the veggies came from and ask directly what was this strange vegetable. I couldn’t find it either in any cooking book. So I decided to use my resourceful Instagram friends to help me in that task and in less than 5min I had an answer that confirmed my guess. It was a sort of sato imo, but instead of the round gingle bell like, it’s a specie called bamboo shoot imo (takenoko imo – たけのこ芋) because of its bamboo shoot shape.
I cooked it in dashi with the skin (washed), together with turnips and peeled the root once boiled. The skin peels very easily. I seeved it with barley miso and grilled salmon from Iwate, and a bowl of plain rice. I really like the creamy texture of sato imo and this takenoko imo was really delicious. For the miso I hesitated between white miso and barley miso, but I found that the granulous texture of the barley miso a much better fit with the takeneko imo, and I was not disappointed. Fresh simple ingredients soeak for themselves, that’s it!
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