Category: Life-style

Red lentils patties

There are days when I am desperate to find something new to prepare with what I have in the fridge and in my cupboards that goes beyond the usual vegetable tart, the fresh vegetables salad or the pasta with sauteed vegetables. And there are days when you find instantaneous inspiration, when ideas just flow naturally. Today was the former. But hopefully there is instagram and some of the people I follow gave me the perfect inspiration I needed to use these red lentils I had. So thanks a lot cearaskitchen for your post and the delicious idea! Of course I hate to follow recipes so I had to change it and adapt it to what I wanted to eat and it ended up with these delicious 99% red lentils patties, that I accompanied with a tomato-cucumber-ocra salad with no dressing and a little black pepper drip yogurt. For the patties I just boiled the red lentils then drained them, add a little curry powder, a little rice flour to form them and then baked them in a pan with a little of olive oil. So easy! Thanks again cearaskitchen!

Power lunch

My husband and I usually play tennis together every Saturday morning for aboug 2h, and sometimes the stakes are really high: we play for the color of our new car, its model, the options,  and sometimes even what we’ll have for lunch. That’s how my husband win his piece of meat ;). After our game we usually head to the beach for a refreshing swim, so once we’re back home we’re literally starving so I need to fix something quick and nourishing. Japanese rice is always a good option because it can be cooked unsupervised and gives me enough time to drop by the shower! Cucumbers, tomatoes and all other vegetables that can be eaten raw, Japanese pickles, scrambled eggs… are also very handy. Finally, leftover and tofu make our lunch look like something awesome.

This time it’s a mixture of all that. Plain white rice topped with some sesame seeds, sesame-tofu from Mount Koya, miso green beans, and raw cucumber.

Feels like a Sunday

Yesterday was holiday, and when Monday is holiday I get lost in the days of the week we are, so I have the impression there was two Sundays this week! Not bad! 

Spending one more day in the country, swimming in the ocean in the morning and fixing things in the house at the hottest hours didn’t give me to much time for cooking. So I fixed a rapid one-plate lunch with raw tomatoes and sweet peppers, boiled eggs, soft bread that I made for breakfast and that leftover, for the dressing drip-yogurt (I’ll explain in a later post), salt and pepper. It made a super delicious “open sandwich”.

Eggplant week

Let’s reiterate a vegetable week! I could have chosen grean beans, but I realize I’ve already posted many recipes involving green beans, so I’ve opted for one other summer star: the eggplant. Funilly eggplants are as much used in Japanese cuisine than in Provence cuisine, though in Japan the eggplant species are slightly different, smaller or thin and long. 

They are also used in summer together with cucumber to make horses and oxes than the spirit of dead people ride to come back to the human world during the Obon period, which is either July 15th or August 15th depending whether one follows the new solar calendar or the old lunar calendar.

So, this week let’s celebrate eggplants!

Italian taralli

A few years ago I received this amazing book for my birthday. It is a real jewel to cook Italian with the very basic pasta and classic recipes in the first half and some more elaborated recipes presented by chefs and by regions, that utilize the classic ingredients of the first half. I like that book very much and it’s been of great help when preparing pasta, gnocchi but it is so thick that Even if I have tested and noted a few recipes there’s a lot more to do. And each time I open it I find a new recipe I want to try.

With all this rain I had the time to browse this massive book and test a few recipes. The first one is taralli from Puglia. It’s a simple recipe a bit like gressini but much simpler and really delicious.

To prepare 6 little taralli, which is a good number for 2 people snacks, I used 100g of flour, 25ml of water and 25ml of olive oil, and a bit of salt. Originally taralli seem to be flavored with fennel seeds, black pepper,  olives… Since I had none of these I used caraway (carvi) seeds and that was working real well. I have the impression that just salt might be good too. So, in a bowl you mix all the ingredients well. Then wait about 30min.

Prepare a saucer with boiling water, and preheat your oven at 220deg. Roll the dough in a long and thin lace shape of about 1cm diameter. Cut the lace each 6cm and have the two extremities overlap to make like a ribbon shape. Lightly squeeze the overlapping to close the shape. Dip them in the boiling water form 1min. Dry them on a clothe, line them on a cooking paper sheet or on a oven dish greased with olive oil and bake until golden (15min~). It’s ready to eat, warm or cold.

One-bowl with yellow vegetables

Yellow zucchini again, this time in a yellow combination with yellow sweet pepper and curry, served here with rice and curry meat balls. Again it starts with cutting in small pieces the zucchini, in thin slices the sweet pepper, and having them sauteed in a bit of olive oil at low eat to cook well without frying. Then adding a bit of curry powder to the whole, salt and pepper. The rice is Japanese rice cooked Japanese style. I served it with curry-flavored pork meat balls that are totally optional. An other simple way to prepare zucchinis, with a twisted oriental taste.

My grand-mother stuffed zucchini’s recipe

My grand mother had this wonderful way of making “farcis provencaux” or Provence style stuffed vegetables. This is a traditional summer preparation using the best of summer vegetables, stuffed with meat. Among the vegetables is the zucchini of course, and with it my grand mother would prepare tomatoes, potatoes and onions. What made hers special is the stuffing. Where a lot of people use sausage meat or just plain minced pork meat, my grand mother used a lot of more delicious things, and always non fatty meat: her stuffing is composed of grilled pork filet left over, ham, boneless pork cutlet… all minced together, and then she would add greens (see on the picture how green is the stuffing): tons of fresh parsley, the big green leaves of a lettuce, and finish with one egg, a bit of gratted gruyere, salt and pepper. Actually this base can also be used for cannelloni and hachis parmentier, two other preparations she was masterizing. I’ve seen her preparing that many times, she tought me and I’ve helped her many times too, but I can never reach that taste her stuffing for farcis had. But I keep trying. So this time I prepared stuffed zucchini, actually, usually she would use long zucchini, but I found these lovely round zucchini anc decided to try again, this won’t affect much the taste of the stuffing. So once the suffing is ready you just need to remove the seeds of the zucchini and stuff them, bake them in the oven for at least 90min. Farcis can be eaten hot or cold, you can keep them about 2 or 3 days in the fridge, and are always better the days after being cooked! Enjoy!

Just out the oven
Just out the oven

Buckwheat pancake and vegetables

This recipe with zucchini was invented on the spot. I wanted to eat my yellow zucchini with some green beans and purple asparagus, but didn’t want to eat pasta or risotto, so I prepared a batter with buckwheat flour, baking powder, salt, 2 eggs and water (makes two large pancake). In a pan I sauteed in olive oil the green beans, the yellow zucchini cut in small pieces, and the purple asparagus, then I baked it in a small greased pan at low eat the batter and topped it right away with the vegetables and baked only on one side under cover. The vegetables sink a bit in the dough and it resembles something in between a crepe, a pizza and an omelet. I topped it when done with a bit of salt and olive oil. Simply delicious!

Zucchini cold soup

Zucchni are delicious in soup hot or cold. In summer I prepare a cold soup with mint. For two I just boil a large zucchini with the skin (the skin gives a nicer color to the soup and it is full of nutriments, but only do that if you know your vegetables are grown without chemicals or organic). Then I smash the boiled zucchini with a fork until it looks like a puree (you can blend it too), add chopped fresh mint leaves, salt, pepper and olive oil. For a creamy taste you can add some greek style yogurt or some fromage blancBut I usually don’t. Keep in the fridge before serving with freshly grinded pepper and mint leaves. 

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