Category: Life-style

Left over diner

We had friends at home for diner the other night, and I over spec the diner portions, so, rare enough, I had enough left overs for a second diner. But because I don’t like eating twice the same thing I arrange it in completely different maner.

The original dinner consisted in plain white rice, Japanese autumn veggies (sweet potatoes, litus roots, carrots, eringi mushrooms, turnips…) in dashi and sake, salt-grilled sawara, and a mushrooms and tofu miso soup.

The new version was a cha-an (sauteed rice)  with sawara and sauteed veggies, with sesame. For that I fried the rice in a bit of oil, added a table spoon if sesame seeds, added the veggies, and stirred often. I removed the skin and bones of the fish and crumbled it in the rice, stirred again and served. A super delicious diner, ready in 5 min, just perfect after a long day at work!

Pink veggies in cocotte

The raw veggies ready to be cooked
The raw veggies ready to be cooked

With the autumn settling down and the rainy day, It was high time to get the cocotte back on the cooking range! At the market there was a lot of pink and white veggies: sweet potatoes, little pink turnips, lotus roots, red onions… So I just guessed they would make a perfect and beautiful combination for a light vegan meal.

I sliced the red onion to make a thin layer at the bottom with a bit of olive oil. Then added a layer of leek finely sliced, then I just washed and halved the sweet potatoes, washed the little turnips and just removed the leaves, finally peeled the lotus root and cut it  in large pieces. I cooked in the cocotte for 30 minutes at low heat and just served with a bit of salt. Super delicious!

Once cooked and ready to be eaten! 
Once cooked and ready to be eaten! 

Chai and apple cake

Delicious for a rainy day like today, I made an apple and chai cake with big  apple from Aomori I bought at the coop market. For the chai I made a mix of cinnamon powder, cardamom seeds and fresh gratted ginger. The rest is just flour, baking powder, brown sugar and a bit of vegetal oil. All stired well and baked 30min at 170deg. Served with chai tea for breakfast or tea.

Ginkgo nuts – 銀杏

The ginkgo tree is a symbol of wisdom and it is particularly beautiful in late november when it turn a vibrant yellow. Its leaves have also a very pretty and typical shape, symbol  of Tokyo University.

Fresh ginkgo nuts, just harvested
Fresh ginkgo nuts, just harvested

But ginkgo are doomed because they bare the most ignominious fruit: the ginkgo nut. If you have ever tasted ginkgo nuts you probably can’t imagine where it comes from; if you have ever been close to a ginkgo tree in autumn you probably can’t imagine that the ginkgo nut is actually edible. The ginkgo nut is protected by a yellow-orange thick and watery skin that when broken generate an extremely nauseous smell. The nuts have the bad habit of falling on the ground and get smashed by pedestrians, cars… in town and to rot in the country, still smelling so bad that the tree is a real nuisance! Yet gingko nuts are delicious! 

The nuts are usually collected once they’ve fallen. Luckily the little typhoon that passed over Kanto last week, blown down all the nuts and I managed to collect them before they rot and stink. Always use gloves when collecteing the nuts!!!
The next step is to remove the stinks. For that plunge the nuts in a bucket of water for a few hours. The soaked skin is easy to remove (again, use gloves). And brush and wash the nuts until none of the flesh is visible. Finally dry the nuts in the oven at low temperature for about 2h, while shaking them once in a while. This year I collected so many nuts that I gave away most of them to my neighbors because I didn’t have the time to peel and wash them all.

Now the nuts are ready for cooking and harvesting!

Nuts drying in the oven
Nuts drying in the oven

So what did I get for dinner this week?

Refraining myself from cooking and letting my husband take over I feared that my dinners would invariably be pasta-steak. Hum… Not really my cup of tea… But hopefully with a fridge full of delicious veggies I got plenty of nice things and he cheated once by taking me out. Probably the most elaborated dinner was this soba one-plate with sautéed zucchini and sweet pepper, green beans and tomato, just seasonned with soy sauce. Thanks darling for this week! 

A strange experience

My husband helps me a lot at home and we share the house chores, but he likes to joke and say that he is the one doing everything at home, once he has just finished washing the dishes once in a while! So l’ve decided to let him experience what it is really to do everything! He is now in charge of the grocery shopping, the laundry, the cooking, the cleaning, the driving, the bill paying, the movie picking, the holidays planning and so on. Funnily enough but totally un-correlated this experience coincides with a number of studies I’ve found and discussions I’ve had about how men are happier when sharing house chores with their partner, about how important a supportive partner is to a woman’s career etc…

I’m having an other busy week at work so I won’t enjoy it too much lazying around and I must admit for this first evening it was quite strange to sit on the sofa and browse Wired while he was cooking (or let say struggling) in the kitchen. I felt like I was sick, which happened may be two or three times in the 15 years we’ve been together, I also felt like jealous not to have fun cooking in the kitchen with him, but I felt grateful for the simple meal he prepared for us! Last night the experience was more delectable. I had a late call for work (damned time difference!) and I was delighted to see the dinner ready when I finished, a delicious set of grilled eggplants whith pasta.

With this experience I realized that many of the things I do at home are mechanical and it takes a lot of effort for me not to do them. They are part of a sort of routine just like brushing teeth and require no effort. Also that I  easily accept to give away tasks in which I don’t especiacilly take pride in, but cooking!!! this is much harder… For me it’s like sleeping, exercising or going outside, I need it! Please! Give me my kitchen back! I just can’t stand seating and doing nothing while you somebody else is in my kitchen!

Saturday bowl lunch

Back to our routine, lot of work and week end in the country. Saturday morning tennis and one-bowl lunch. 

Today the market was really good, edamame, green beans, lots of fruits…  So the lunch bowl was really simple: chick peas, edamame, green beans, cucumber, sesame seeds, with lemon juice and olive oil; and for the proteines chicken and black pepper balls. Simple, delicious.

Ingredients for bread

Multi grain and whole wheat little bread made for breakfast
Multi grain and whole wheat little bread made for breakfast

At first when I started to bake my own bread I didn’t know much about it and I didn’t know how to chose the ingredients. As in any preparation the quality of the ingredient is crucial and it is not easy to understand what is a good flour and what is not, and also there are so many types of flours and bread that it took me some time. More over as I access information about bread mainly from French sources adapting to the Japanese available products was a hard task!

After using a lot of French organic products and random flours I could find in Japan, I think I have found a good set of resources locally. My main source of ingredients and in particular raw yeast is Cuoca. They have a wide selection of products, you can order on-line, but for me the best is that they have a shop that covers half a floor at Mitsukoshi Nihonbashi. My favorite flour there is the “Tradition Francaise” by Viron, perfect for every white bread, and in particular baguette.
For most of the bread now I use the organic flour I can find in the supermarket. It is not a local product but the whole wheat flour and the hard flour are really perfect for my breads.
For the seeds, I haven’t find yet something that satisfies me fully in Japan. A lot of the seeds are not organic or comes from China, which I must say worries me because of pollution problems. Right now I use seeds that I buy in France in any organic shop such as Bio C Bon, Naturalia etc… but I hope I’ll find something suitable soon in Japan!

Happy week-end, for me it’s going to be a lot of baking I know!!!

Back to my kitchen!!!

After being away from home for more than 10 days I’m really happy to be back to my kitchen. After eating out a lot (even though recently it’s been easier to find simple food in restaurants in France) I really need to get back to my basic diet. As soon as we were done with unpacking, I went down for grocery shopping, grabbed some fresh Japanese mushrooms: shimeji and maitake (kind of oyster mushroom), and some sprouts. I cooked some plain rice, grilled the mushroom in a pan with a bit of butter, add just before serving some sesame seeds and a drop of soya sauce, and served the whole as a vegan donburi.

Mushrooms and sprouts donburi
Mushrooms and sprouts donburi

In the following weeks you’ll see that while in France I packed a few ingredients I love and still can’t find easily in Tokyo, some herbs from my parents’ garden in Aix, some flour for baking bread, tones of quinoa… and  I’m really looking forward to using them!

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