2018!

Here we are already!!! So best wishes for this new year!!! Last year we promised a few new things for TPS, but we in the end didn’t feel it was reasonable to start this new adventure. Indeed, in retrospect in 2017, P. hasn’t contributed much and it seems that she has no plan to do contribute much in 2018… but who knows? On my side, the end of 2017 has given you a glimpse of what 2018 will look like for me: a lot more travel to Europe and in particular to Florence in Italy. That will be a great excuse for me to cook more Italian food and produces than ever, to try to master pasta and gnocchi, and some others of the many Tuscany’s delights. I’m also hoping to make a Tuscany olive oil tour-and-review later in the spring or the summer. Of course, fresh, seasonal and local ingredients will always be the core of my homemade cooking, and mixing French, Italian and Japanese influences, techniques and produces will continue to be the essence of my preparations. And they will remain mainly vegetarian, sometimes vegan.

Happy 2018!!

January 2, 2018

Firenze!

Good morning from Florence! So here we are, finally in Italy, this time it’s not Sicily but Tuscany, and it’s not for the Christmas holidays with the family but a business trip. Nonetheless it’s the Christmas season and it’s Italy with panettone and Christmas songs everywhere and the many delicious food to eat! In order for me to have enough space to work and to cook A. has rented us an apartment where I have a small kitchen to play with, and just 12h after landing in Florence I was already happily cooking lunch for us!

What was I doing during 12h? Well I slept 6, then woke up at 6AM in the dark… right… it’s Europe, it’s winter and it’s dark until 7:00 or 8:00…
Waking up early is still a great thing, because while it’s still all sleepy and empty and the sun is rising slowly we first enjoyed walking around the Duomo and the Ponte Vecchio before it’s getting impossible to enjoy. And then only we went for some important shopping: food! We first went just around our apartment to Eataly (but honestly when you’re in Italy you don’t need Eataly, there’s so much more to explore!) and at the San Lorenzo market, where they have a food court on the second floor of the mercato centrale where you can buy, take away or eat there plenty of Italian food: pizza, fresh pasta, curd meat, Fiorentina beef, fish… no city is escaping the hipster food fashion with all the good and the bad… Anyway… I got there and around some essentials: olive oil, parmigiano, panettone, honey, tangerines, and for the lunch: fresh vegetarian ravioli with spinach and ricotta and some speck. Everything for a day outside walking all over the city in the cold, because it is quite cold indeed in the narrow and shaded streets of the city.

all what's needed to start with! — all what’s needed to start with!

It is impressive how quickly the city gets crowded on Sunday with groups first and then just crowd and past 11:00 am it gets really crazy, so to avoid most of the crowds we then headed for the Abbazia di San Miniato al Monte, from which the view is worth the small additional climb from piazzale Michelangelo! It’s so quiet and green. And I recommend the funny bucolic and almost rural walk down through the via dell’Erta Canina among the olive trees and the cypress trees. And well that’s how my first day ever in Florence went… beautifully and deliciously! And there five more to come!

December 18, 2017

Double almond pancakes

The last weekend we spend in the country before traveling for a few weeks in Europe: Italy and France, and it is perfectly cold and sunny, just how like the mornings it this season. To warm us up before going outside play tennis and garden, a rich breakfast is now needed and this morning I chose to make rich pancakes, but not muesli pancakes, since A. is not a big fan of muesli. But almond in cakes he likes very much. The recipe is really simple, they are fluffy, warm and nourishing. The recipe is vegan, but you can add eggs if you want them even richer. So here is my recipe with proportions that are about, adjust slighty if needed! Enjoy the weekend!

Double almond pancakes

– 200g of flour

– 1 glass of almond milk

– 80g of almond powder

– 1tsp of baking powder, and a pinch of salt

– 2tbs of sugar (optional)

– 1/2 vanilla bean

In a large bowl, add the flour, the baking powder, the salt the sugar. Stir and add the almond milk. Then the almond powder and the vanilla. The dough must be creamy thick. If it is too hard add a bit of almond milk or water, if it is too wet add a little bit more almond powder or flour.

Heat a anti-adhesive fry pan, don’t grease it. Cook the pancakes on both sides for a few minutes. Eat warm!

December 9, 2017

Shiitake week! Day 5!

And here is the last recipe of this shiitake week! I could have added many more like shiitake quiche, shiitake soup… But weekend is for new creative cooking… we’ll see tomorrow what the farmers market will inspire us… though I am craving for homemade gnocchi, rich quiche and more takikomi gohan… and I have a new cookbook to browse and some older to look at again (I thinking about my Sicilian cookbook and Shojin cuisine cookbook in particular and some older Japanese cookbooks I haven’t touch in years…) . So this last shiitake recipe is basically using shiitake as substitute for porcini. Of course they have a very different taste but in some preparations they can have a very similar texture. And since there is no porcini in Japan, that finding really delicious matsutake that actually come from Japan (they are usually from Canada, US, Korea or China) has become a challenge, regardless of the price you are eager to pay them, using shiitake is a very straightforwardly simple option. I used them with tomato, to serve with polenta and grilled marlin. I simply sliced them, cooked them in olive oil and add the tomatoes. Cooked until it’s all soft and almost dry. Served with the fish sliced and grilled in a pan, and some polenta. That’s it, and it was delicious!

Have a good weekend!

November 17, 2017

Shiitake week! Day 2!

When suddenly the weather is chilly in the country, that it’s late and I want some confort food, I usually prepare a hot pasta soup with a clear vegetable bouillon. Leek and carrots are the two main ingredients for the bouillon, but alone they do not provide enough, so I like to add something else. This something else being more than often shiitake. Mushrooms in general are great to prepare when in a rush. They just need to be washed and are really easy to cut: slices, quarters, dice… they are quick to cook too… some are also good raw, but not really shiitake. In my warm soup I added a bit of parsley, and for the pasta I chose some pretty stelline.

You can finish with a bit of gratted parmigiano. Keep warm!

November 14, 2017

Shiitake week! Day 1!

After weeks trying to get this new rythm, I think we’ve almost got it… and a weekend in the country with tennis, gardening and cooking, plus the cat and a bit of work was the perfect way to completely get it right. My muscles hacking from the tennis and the gardening: trimming a Japanese pine is quite a demanding task, and I didn’t even manage to get it done… For the cooking I have been enjoying a lot the autumn vegetables, in particular most of my recipes included shiitake lately, I put them every where. So this week is a shiitake recipe week! But if you don’t have shiitake you can replace them by porcini or simple mushrooms.

Let’s start with this very nice marcrobiotic French Japanese style recipe of Persillade. Traditional persillade is made with garlic, parsley, oil etc… except that I don’t like garlic (one reason why I never use it, despite all the health benefits it may have), so I have invented this new recipe that ressembles persillade but is much more fun and goes perfectly with shiitake! Here is my recipe!

My ginger persillade (for 2)

– 1 cup of brown rice

– 2 carrot

– 6 shiitake

– 1/2 burdock root

– parsley

– fresh ginger

Cook the rice in a pot, Japanese style, or in a rice cooker. Brown rice requires a little bit more water than white rice.

Peel the burdock, cut in bites and wash abundantly, same with the carrots. Wash the shiitake and slice them thinly. In a heated pan add a bit of olive oil, then the burdock, later the carrots and finish with the shiitake. Stir once in a while.

Peel the ginger, cut in thin slices and then dice in 1mm side. Wash the parsley and chop it. Add the ginger and the parsley in the pan, stir regularly. Add a bit of olive oil if necessary. That’s it!

Serve the rice, the vegetables and enjoy your meal!!!

November 13, 2017

New rythm

Pfou… it’s not easy to find a mew rythm when days at work are 13h and one day you start early, the other you finish late… even less easy when A. has meetings until quite late… Cooking dinner past 22:30 when lunch is that far away and you’re starving requires food that can be prepared quite rapidly… but I still want to eat fresh, seasonal, local food. There are a few tricks to do that:

– trick No 1: stock on daikon radish, carrots and miso. It takes 2minutes to peel and cut daikon sticks (even faster than carrots!!) and 3minutes for a carrot or two. Dipped in miso they are the perfect snack!

– trick No 2: pack on food that can be prepared in hot simple pot and don’t need to much time to prepare (no peeling…): kabocha, sweet potatoes, carrots… in 10min they can be cooked and preparing them is simple: wash & cut!

– trick No 3: prepare your rice cooker in the morning and schedule cooking or cook rice in a thick pan on gaz directly (it reduces cooking time to a mere 20min)

And while you eat you veggies with miso and you smell the veggies roasting and the rice boiling you can open your mail, chat about your day and admire the result of your first experience of making pottery on a wheel!

November 9, 2017

Long weekend

After a series of very rainy weekends, so many that I don’t even count them anymore, a perfect autumn weekend was more than welcome, and even better: it was a long weekend. We spent sometime in Tokyo and most of the time in Ohara with D. and C.. The planning was simple: outdoor activities and delicious healthy local food. And it was easy with such a weather, the garden providing persimmons and herbs, and the farmers market full of autumn vegetables. So basically ocean swimming and hikes, drives and cooking together was our agenda. Among the many things we cooked were black wheat bread, whole wheat fougasse, muesli pancakes, hot pot veggies with snapper for girls and pork filet for guys, and a thin crust mushrooms quiche, vegan and gluten free. Now it’s time to get back to work, with a busy week ahead! Have a beautiful one!

From all we cookedI loved the quiche quite a lot so here is the recipe.

Mushrooms quiche:

– 1.5 cup buckwheat flour

– 1.5 cup rice flour

– 4tbs olive oil

– about 1/2 cup water

– plenty of different types of mushrooms of your choice (enough to generously cover your pie dish

– rosemary

– salt and pepper

Mix the buckwheat flour and rice flour, add the olive oil and stir. Add the water little by little while continuing stirring. Stop addind water when the dough is crumbly dry. Since there is no gluten in both flour it is better to keep the dough drier. Knead briefly to obtain a silky dough.

Roll it thinly and set in a pie dish. Wash and cut thinely the different mushrooms. Toss them in the pie crust, add a bit of olive oil, salt, pepper and fresh rosemary branches. Bake at 180deg in the oven for 30min.

November 6, 2017

Muesli pancakes

Since A. is away, I was thinking of having muesli and fruits for breakfast, so I stopped by the supermarket last night to buy some nuts muesli and some soya milk. But then this morning I was up at 6:15 and decided that after a bit of workout I would rather eat pancakes. So basically I prepared my muesli in a large bowl, covered it with soya milk, added a mix powder of black sesame, almond and kinako (grilled soya beans), add 2tbs of flour, a bit of baking powder and stirred well. Then cooked on both sides in a frypan. Finished with my uncle’s honey, added a kiwi sliced and I got a delicious breakfast, or rather two! Because I prepared a bit too much… I so much used to cook for two people… it’s hard to be alone!

October 12, 2017