In a few hours I will be in Beijing for work, giving talks, meeting with new students and new research partners, attending a conference and presenting proposals. Well a very tight schedule for less than 72h. Usually eating is not central to these trips, even less cooking, if I ever find time to grab something I’ll be happy! Even more in China, as I am not a big fan of Chinese cuisine: too spicy, too weird, and too sticky-sweety-juicy… I’d love once to find a great Chinese restaurant that does vegetarian or vegan cuisine and not dimsum (i love dimsum). So before going I wanted to prepare food I like and that is very satisfying for the palate.
With my sister visiting last week, I was happy she had thought of bringing something not easy to find here: some fresh cantal cheese. A cheese I particularly love, that is always delicious both straight or in preparations, just like Parmigiano is. So I didn’t eat the whole piece in cubes and slices, rather I kept it to put in a simple recipe made of leftovers pork filet mignon, and a whole blanched cauliflower. I cut the cauliflower in fleurettes and heated the filet in a pan with a bit of oil. Added the cauliflower, salt and pepper, a few drops of olive oil and topped with grated cantal cheese… melting on the hot cauliflower… so delicious and a so perfect combination.
See you on Saturday when I an back Beijing!!! Have a good week!!
Three years ago we went to visit surfer friends in Chigasaki and took us paddle boarding on the ocean. It was great experience and I really enjoyed it. What I loved is that you can surf waves if any, otherwise you can just explore places and move around basically like on a canoe. Since then we’ve been thinking of buying a paddle board but given the space we have and the car we have, it has never been further then looking at a few websites… we then start looking for places where to paddle in Isumi and found the little SUP club and their initiative to clean the Isumi river. Once a month they organize a SUP cleaning cruise so we finally registered for the October one. Honestly, rivers in Japan are not looking too clean: I have serious concerns about the chemical quality of the water and I don’t think that there is an actual check and I would not swim in any except for mountain streams. I may be wrong, and hope I am. Nonetheless my target was not to fall in the water at all. The Isumi river is a beautiful winding river in a quite deep gorge sometimes with no real accessibility, so boat, canoe and paddle board are the only way to discover its surroundings and it’s really nice to have a different perspective. Just after the rain has stopped we gathered at the SUP club and we headed to the river bank all equipped. 7 people, 3 boards and a canoe. The trash along the river is just infinite and the cleaning we’ve done is a drop in the ocean. And they clean every month… cleaning properly would take forever and many more people… yet it was fun and interesting to join that event which I highly recommend and I think we will definitely go again. The people at the SUP club were really nice and it was a great fun.
After that we felt quite hungry and tired and skip our tennis practice for once, but we didn’t skip the 5 o’clock tea with a little reinvigorating snack: crepes. Crepes are the easiest and fastest snack to prepare and it is easy to make just a few. Here is my recipe.
Crepes (makes 4 25cm crepes)
– 70g of flour
– 1tbs of sugar
– 1 egg
– 1/3l to 1/2l of milk or whatever liquid you want (water works too)
– butter to grease the pan
– filling of your choice: chocolate, sugar, butter, jam, lemon juice, honey…
In a bowl mix the flour, sugar and egg, then add the milk little by little to obtain a rather liquid and smooth texture. If not enough liquid add a little more (this will depend on the size of the egg).
Heat the pan and grease it with butter. When hot pour a thin layer over the all pan. Cook at medium to high heat, flip once, add the filling and fold, serve and eat. Repeat.
The other day we went for lunch at cafe Boba and while we were waiting for our food to arrive I browsed an American cookbook on pies. Something that was perfect for the season. And with my basket full of autumn vegetables, I was very much inspired by the recipes with pumpkin, carrots… and one really attracted me. It was a sweet and spicy carrot pie. But of course I didn’t do what the recipe said, I just get the inspiration and made a savory carrot pie with spices. It was super simple and really delicious. I like the idea of a carrot pudding in a pie crust, it makes the pudding easier to serve and gives a good boost with healthy carbs.
Here is my recipe, I hope you’ll enjoy it!
Spicy carrot pie (makes 6 individual pies)
For the pie crust:
– 100g of flour of your choice (I used a mix of white and whole wheat flour)
– 80g of butter
– a bit of water
– cardamom, nutmeg, cinnamon, salt
For the filling:
– 3 large carrots
– 3 eggs
– same spices as above
You can add cream and fresh grated ginger, but I had none.
Prepare the pie crust by stirring all the ingredients and kneading until soft. Roll and set in your pie dish(es)
Peel and boil the carrot, when soft, put them in a blender with the eggs and the spices and purée the mix. Pour the mix in the pie crust. Bake for 30min at 190deg. Enjoy!!
And because I had a bit of leftover pie crust, I made chai apple tarts too!!!
Recently it’s been pretty busy both at work and at home. A new job for A. some new challenges and experiments for me, our days in Tokyo pass through without noticing. And when in the countryside it’s very much the same… when we are not working we have a lot of projects inside and outside the house, some waves to catch, the garden to prepare for the autumn and the winter (there are so many trees to trim!), some landscaping I would like to do and some renovations I had in mind that needed to be done. In the end little time for cooking, or only access to some rudimentary gears (I decided to redo our kitchen top… which I’ll explain later). So cooking wasn’t my priority these last few days and it’s been a lot of simple meals, and a lot of rice and umeboshi, the one I made in June-July this year. I live that simple combination because either you eat it with a nice warm plate of roasted vegetables or with a fresh salad of tomatoes and chopped fresh shiso and soya sauce, it is always good, easy to prepare and quite quick! Rather than using a rice cooker, when in a rush just cook in a normal pan, it takes only 15min and requires no care, which leaves the hands free for doing something else. The problem I realize now is that if we continue like that we will not have enough umeboshi to finish the month!!
Now about kitchen top… when we did our kitchen 6 years ago I wanted a wooden kitchen top. At that time the only thing available and that our kitchen maker would be ok to use (it’s been complicated to deal with Japanese workers because there are things they do and some they don’t want too) was an ikea wooden kitchen top. I was ok with it, it was simple to use, just a bit of oil once in a while. And it was ok until last winter… then suddenly it started to get really sticky… like really very sticky… and to mark when cleaning, and actually not being able to clean it properly. So I was tired of it and after a lot of thinking decided that I would wax it instead with a vegetal natural wax. So I sticked some sand paper and waited for a rainy day to start. My plan: start right after breakfast and finish by noon… Optimistic! it was without counting that this stupid oil would not go with just a bit of sand paper, it would for a glue in a second and polishing would not work… I had to strip it off… putty knife in hand I started to strip… but it didn’t work well until I realized that the oil would go easily if the surface was moisten. Things got much easier but still I under estimated the work for removing all the oil… in the end it took the whole morning and part of the afternoon and A. helped me when I got really to tired. The result with the wax is really nice, super smooth and not too shiny, but better equipped we could have done a much better finish… Anytime soon when we can borrow a hand sander!!
After a day of rain this week the weather as turned from end summer to early autumn. The cicadas voice is getting harder to hear and the wind gets chilly in the evening. Even though I am slowly shifting to autumn vegetables, tomatoes and eggplants have my favors to hold the summer a little bit longer, and when I saw these broad beans I couldn’t help taking them and prepare a meal that would still feels like summer. I chose for that a Japanese classic preparation boiling them in a dashi of konbu, just enough so that when they were cooked the liquid was alsmost gone (katsuobushi, or a mix of both is also perfect) and added okra sliced and jute mallow. I finished with light colored shoyu. Served it with rice and umeboshi and an omelette with finely chopped green shiso.
Well… I’m just back to Tokyo after spending one week in Tuscany, one beautiful week.
It was A. 5th trip and my third in the span of 9months and now is time to share a few addresses and places I really loved.
One of my strong requirement during our trips was to have a kitchen, and for all our trips except that one we stayed in Florence downtown in a very nicely furnished and large enough appartement at the Domux home Ricasoli. The location is ideal to visit the city, go shopping at Sant’Ambrogio market, San Lorenzo market as all detailed in post on Florence. It is also close to the station and to the Duomo.
This time we wanted to avoid crowd and heat so we decided to rent a house in the countryside, something a little typical of Tuscany: a farmhouse on top of a hill. The villa I picked: villa Monterosoli (top picture) didn’t disappoint us. Remote location but still less than 1h drive from all good places and my work places, very quiet and a nice view. A pool for the morning swims, and a cat visiting, some vineyards and olive groves around.
Pip, the cat of the house
As for visiting options they are endless. I usually work in Florence and in Pisa, but there are so many options a short drive away to go for a visit for a few hours. From this summer visits I would say that San Gimignano was a great discovery, Siena’s duomo with the full pavement visible this time was amazing, and Lucca a beautiful small and lively town.
Lucca on top of its historical and classic attractions has a nice vibrant downtown with many shopping options, nice cafes, a cinema in the old villa Bottini with a broad movie selection (old and new), a contemporary art biennale which exhibited large paper sculptures in the street. It felt more crowded than the other places we visited.
Lucca contemporary art biennale: paper-art-designA small bike repair shop in LuccaSan Gimignano from afarView from San Gimignano’s fortified path
San Gimignano was a really great discovery, the scenic going there, the beautiful towers in the city, the churches with beautiful paintings, the paved streets, the view from the fortified path. Everything there was Tuscany at its top. And curiously it was not crowded!
And of course Siena was as beautiful as it was in February when we first visited. The Duomo this time had the full marble mosaics visible (only from mid-August to mid-September) and that was s great surprise. The modernity in the drawings and the beautiful scenes depicted with only white, ocre and black were really stunning.
And of course there are many other small villages to stop by on the way, to discover, to take a short walk, drink a coffee or a freshly squeezed orange juice (my favorite drink in Italy), such as Palaia, Monteriggioni, Greve in Chianti to only cite a few.
There are also the many farmers markets in the morning to go grocery shopping and discover some of the local products. Talk about that in my next post!!!
Sienna’s duomo pavement colorsSienna’s duomo sculptureWalking in Sienna
The weather in Kanto area has been quite amazing these past weeks. The summer is blasting with a real summer heat and sunny days or with just a few clouds are following each other without a drop of rain. Even the evening storms are not really coming… with such heat cooking is becoming more complicated because the kitchen quickly becomes very hot and one would usually prefer preparing raw food: salads and salads. But I don’t mind cooking in the heat if it is for preparing something new and good. So largely inspired by the classic Italian gremolata recipe I prepared a new recipe using fresh anchovies (I found anchovies prepared for sashimi!!!), grapefruit (I got from our neighbor garden) and fresh tomatoes, to serve with pasta. And it was fresh and nourishing, exactly what I wanted!
Anchovies and grapefruit pasta (2 people)
– 1/2 grapefruit (we use both juice and zest)
– 2 large ripen tomatoes
– a dozen of anchovies, fresh, boned etc…
– olive oil
– salt and pepper
– 125g of dry pasta of your choice
Boil water for the pasta and cook the pasta.
In a pan heated add olive and the tomatoes washed and diced (if the skin is thick, remove the skin by plunging the tomatoes in the boiling water for the pasta). Cook at high heat and stir once in a while. Once the juice has reduced add the juice of the grapefruit, the zest of 1/4 of the grapefruit and the anchovies, stir a little bit. Add salt and pepper. Add the drained pasta and stir well.
I really like that in Japan there is a holiday for the sea day (and now one for the mountain too!!!). I think it is beautiful to celebrate things from the nature that concern everyone and that is not even nationalist. Sea day also marks the debut of the beach season, that lasts only a short month. Beach season meaning that this the time when there are lifeguards and protected swimming areas, and beaches get more crowded (though it has nothing to do with French crowded beaches in the riviera!!!). But for us it means that we avoid the beach between 8:30 and 16:30 and go early in the morning or at dusk when it is much less crowded. And it’s been good this year as it synchronizes with the high tides.
Sea day usually also marks the end of the rainy season but this year actually it was over much before and we’re having a heat stroke earlier than usual. This completely decreases my wish for cooking because all I long for is chilled melon, tropical fruits (they grow delicious passion fruits in Isumi!!!!)… and simple fruits clafoutis.
I found some beautifully ripen apricots from Nagano and plenty of blueberries from Isumi and made a simple clafoutis for our breakfasts that we can eat in looking at the garden or take with us to the beach after our morning swimming and bodyboarding, not that the waves are too good though…
What is your favorite recipe for the hot summer mornings?
Every year I wait for this season, when there’s plenty of fruits at the farmers market and you can buy locally grown blueberries by 300g or 500g for a cheap price… something for those that don’t live in Japan seems probably unimaginable when you buy fruits by kilos… but out of this 300g or 500g not a single fruit is damaged or a little bit too ripe and starts to rot…
And with that many blueberries my favorite things to do are: tarts and crumbles; fruit salads; smoothies. But recently I don’t do smoothies anymore rather use the fruits the way they are… and tarts and crumbles are amazing. With blueberries I make a simple buttery pie crust, with not too much butter (I prefer adding a bit of water rather than too much butter), and very few sugar, than just wash a pour the fruits in, bake for 35minutes and enjoy while all juicy. This time I sprinkled a bit of ice sugar for the finish… that’s it. Perfect for tea time or breakfast as you wish…
How do you like your blueberries? The season here is just starting so I’ll be happy to test new recipes if you tell me!
