The end of the rainy season coincides with the beginning of the true summer days. The cicadas start singing full blast, the dusks and the dawns vibrate with the beautiful and typical sounds of the かなかな蟬kanakanamushi (Tanna Japonensis), probably above all my favorite animal sound… the humidity goes slightly away and the heat climbs up to another level… it’s a short time of the year that lasts just a very few weeks, before the typhoons arrive. The heat brings some kind of slowness to our home, and some restlessness because all I think about is going swimming. But there is much to do too.
What do you think is the very first thing I do when the rainy season ends in Japan?
Well… it’s easy, it’s drying my umeboshi. Gently taking them out of the brine on a nice morning one by one and lining them in the sun. Turning them and doing it another day. I must say that I am getting better at picking plums and the worries of the first attempt are now all gone and I am more confident. This year for the first time I also added red shiso to some and I am quite please with the result.
So if you had pickled plums this year, it’s gonna be about time to dry them and enjoy them. Keep the brine for the summer energy drink. Add a bit to a large glass of water to pack on salt and minerals.
Every time I think I have seen all the possible greens they grow in Isumi, every time I happily discover a new one. I am most attracted by greens and naturally when I see a new leaf on a shelf I can’t help buying it.
This time our local farmers market surprised me with hiyuna – ヒユ菜 apparently amaranth leaves. A nice green leaf, very tender and mild in taste. It is so mild in taste that I found it fits perfectly western cuisine, despite its Chinese origins! While most recipes I found were stir fry pr soup, I used the nice green leaves for omelette or pasta sauces. A bit like spinach. No wonder why one of their name is Chinese spinach!! And a rapid look at its nutritional value showed that this little leaf is packed with iron, potassium and several vitamins, another good reason to enjoy it.
I also found it was easy to prepare, and it goes very well with eggplants as in the picture below. And with tomatoes as in the other picture below. Enjoy if you find some!!!
In Japan okara is a very easy to find and very cheap product. Indeed, as it is a by-product of soya milk and tofu, there’s quite a lot of it. Up-cycling it in your cooking is also very easy. Apparently it has a good nutritional balance, but what I like with it is the little something different it brings. Added to an omelette for example it makes it extra fluffy and slightly pancake like. In a batter it adds some texture and firmness. Okara flavor is usually very mild and it is really the texture it adds that is interesting .
Okara: soya pulp after pressing to make tofu or milk
Okara is used in traditional recipes such as u no hana, or often in croquettes. I had times when I bought some often, but it was months if not years I didn’t. Probably because I liked one specific brand that was sold near the university but the shop selling it has closed and Has been replaced by another one that don’t have it. So when we went grocery shopping the other day at the local store and with the tofu there was fresh okara from the tofu maker I jumped on the occasion. I made some of the usual recipes aforementioned, but I really wanted to test okara in sweet preparations. I opted for chocolate muffins. I simply added okara instead of part of the flour. Added chocolate chips for the tiny ones and made a melty chocolate heat for the larger ones. And bet what…??? A. just loved them!!! And so did I!!!
On a rainy Sunday like today we met with what would be our little hideaway and resting place. (More about how we ended up here here)
Hydrangeas in our garden
The few things that I found charming as soon as we arrived was the hydrangeas, in full bloom under the rain, with their vibrant gradation of blues and purples. The abundant plum trees covered with fruits, and the lush green of the Japanese maple trees, the gingko, the pine and the azaleas. Everything that makes a Japanese garden, Japanese. I obviously didn’t see many thing that were also there: the loquat tree, the strawberry tree… After 8 years I now know pretty much all, even if I am uncertain about the 3 or 4 different types of plums we have, and every year I harvest more fruits than we can process! In particular the plums and the strawberry tree fruits. So I give away a lot. This year 15kg of plums went to my secretaries at the university!!! And used 5kg for syrup and 3kg for umeboshi. The rest is for the birds, the worms and the ants ;).
June garden harvest: plum, loquat, potato, strawberry tree fruits
After years of struggle making umeboshi and failing, I realized umeboshi are not so difficult to make if you have the proper instruments. I use to make them with whatever I had, before investing in a proper pickle box, that is wide enough and has a lid with a spring where you can apply sufficient pressure and get rid of the heavy stone, the overflowing ume juice and the failure… largely due also to the fact that I cannot check them every day. So if you plan to make umeboshi I highly recommend you invest in the proper recipient. I use a pickle box called Picre.
Umeboshi
2kg of Japanese plums (yellowish rather than greenish)
360g of salt
If your plums are really hard or toi greenish, dip them in water a few hours before starting.
Wash them and pat them dry carefully. Remove the stems.
Sterilize your recipient. It should be 3-4 times the volume of your plums to avoid overflowing accidents. Set half of the salt in and create an even layer. Organize the plums on the layer in order to remove space between the fruits as much as possible. Sprinkle a bit of salt. Create a new layer on top remove space as much as possible between all fruits. Sprinkle salt and repeat until all plums are well organized in a compact manner. Sprinkle the remaining salt on top.
Sterilize the lid and set on top to gently squeeze the plums. Set a heavy weight or pressure on top. After a few days the liquid from the plum will start to be released and a brine will be created. This is umezu. A precious liquid to use for pickling, energy drinks etc… after a week, the liquid should be about the height of the plums. It will continue rising and can be 2-3 times the height of your original plums height hence why choosing a recipient big enough.
Leave that way until the end of July. And see you then for the next step!!!
Plum work: after overnight in the water, day 0, day 7
Ravioli… oh! It’s been really a while I didn’t make ravioli… it was high time to fix that… but with all we got from the local shops I wasn’t sure about what use for s filling: korinki and cream cheese, asparagus, eggplant, or flounder… after a certain thinking I had in mind flounder in a sort of bouillon and served with rouille… I was thinking of my own special way of making bouillabaisse… but then something came up at work, upset me and I was working instead of cooking… the dough was ready, the flounder grilled, but neither the bouillon nor rouille were to be done anytime soon… and the clock was ticking and A. was hungry… and past 21:00 I had to go back to the kitchen. Except that now it was too late for a fancy dish… So I ran in the kitchen garden, chopped some fresh parsley, add it to the fish and decided that would be it. Rolled the ravioli dough, filled them in tiny size, and while I was poaching them I felt it was missing something, so I added some asparagus, a fragrant olive oil and that was it.
And you know what: flounder x parsley was a killer filling and I will do again!!! A creamy sauce could have worked fine as well I reckon…
I call summer vegetables the ones I have grown up with: tomatoes, zucchini, eggplants, melons… while here they are for most of them early summer vegetables as they are not endemic. For instance the zucchini season is at its peak now and will end very soon normally. Except that this year the rainy season is rather dry so may be we will have zucchini for longer… that would be good!!! Maybe I won’t have to struggle finding zucchini in the middle of summer to make a good pesto soup!!!
Anyway, at the moment I enjoy cooking them in various ways as long as I can find them. I cook them with my “traditional” or classic recipes but I am also investigating new ways of cooking them. I found that zucchini and green beans go very well together and I came up with a few new nice recipes, super simple and easy to make as I am quite busy these days with several projects on the run… Let me share two recipes here today: a simple savory tart and a vegetable curry-rice. I hope you’ll like them!
Savory tart
For the pie crust: 150g of flour, a pinch of salt, 3tbs of olive oil, water
2-3 zucchini depending of the size
A handful of green beans
150g of ricotta or cottage cheese
Fresh basil
Prepare the dough as usual, and roll it for your pie dish.
Wash the vegetables. Slice thinly the zucchini (with a mandolin if you have one) and set on the dough. Cut the green beans to 2-3cm long pieces and add on top. Crumble the ricotta or the cottage cheese, chop the basil and sprinkle on top. Bake 40min at 180deg or until golden. Enjoy hot or cold.
Veggie curry-rice
1 large zucchini or 3 small (better)
1 large ripe tomato
1/2 onion
10 green beans
Japanese white rice cooked
1tsp of curry powder
1/2tsp of cumin powder
A pinch of salt
Wash the vegetables. Cut them in bite size. In a pan greased with a bit of oil add the vegetables. Cook for 5 min at high heat then lower to medium. Add the spices. Cook another 5-10 min until you obtain the level of moisture you want. Personally I like rather soupy so that the rice can suck it in. Serve with the Japanese white rice and enjoy while hot. (Top picture)
The end of May in Ohara is a beautiful season. The greens on the hills change from fresh greens to rich ones and the paddies from the typical yellow green if very young rice plants to a beautiful shamrock green. It is also the beginning of the rainy season, of hydrangeas blooming and warmer days. At bight it is possible for a few weeks to see fireflies.
Japanese have something for fireflies 蛍 hotaru. I didn’t recall seeing fireflies often as a child, a rare few times in Lozere, but not much. And since we moved to Japan and went to see fireflies at Chizanso in Tokyo with our friend I. who always had the best info about things to do, I kind of understand the sweet magic and the kind of nostalgia they bring. Seeing fireflies at Chizanso was great, but it is an orchestrated event when they release fireflies in the garden. While the magic is there, the artificiality of it is hard to neglect. It’s like seeing lions in a zoo…
In Ohara we are blessed with rather clean streams of water and great nature (I can’t say it is everywhere when I see the palettes of glyphosate at the garden center…) and we can see fireflies in their ecosystem. We first saw some in our garden one Sunday night, and since then every year we go for a walk when the season comes. And for sure with a bit of patience and the habituation to darkness you can spot a little green light blinking. If we want to be lazy, we walk to the nearest stream in the paddies, and there we can see plenty.
A firefly in our garden
The fireflies season is the perfect transition between the end of spring and the beginning of the summer. It brings many greens in the plate broad beans and zucchini. Tomatoes from the green house that are ripe, sweet and juicy. It inspired me for the recipe of the simple plate on the top picture: soba, fava beans and zucchini in soya sauce and a peeled tomato, also with soya sauce. I love when the juice of the tomato mix in the soya sauce, eaten together with the cold soba it is divine.
Just as I was talking very proudly of my sourdough in my last post, it has decided to scare me like crazy by almost dying…
Indeed, I used it over the weekend to make some delicious giant campagne bread, and I found it Monday morning inert and unresponsive. Probably the lack of food and warmer temperatures it’s not been used to but the diagnosis is still unclear. It was smelling perfectly fine and I feed it as I should except that bubbles didn’t come out and texture was rather unusual. So I started to worry and panic. I devised a rescue plan of the rather large amount of sourdough starter I had. First, I split it in two, one in a dough the rest in intensive care: food every 1.5 hours for 12 hours, lots of love and mixing.
It was breaking my heart to imagine I’ve let it die, but after 9h of intensive care, the starter showed a few bubbles… it was going to be ok!
The dough… well it stayed doing nothing for 12h and then after 24h it finally was doing something. Except that in the meantime we left the country and were back to Tokyo, where I still don’t have an oven. So there were a few options: flat breads in a pan, bread in a skillet, or steamed bread. I opted for the latter and was planning to make stuffed steamed breads, except that work was too busy and I didn’t have time to prepare the filling. So I simply prepared 8 balls of dough, and after work I steamed them to obtain round little breads that we enjoyed with a mix of peas, asparagus, chopped pork filet and onions from the garden and soya sauce, that would have been the perfect seasonal filling, but it ended up outside as a side. When cooking while working one needs to be flexible…
The filling that ended up a side…
So not only did I rescued my sourdough, but we had delicious little buns to eat!!!
Having a nice loaf of bread waiting for you for breakfast is one of the many reasons I started making bread. Controlling what is inside and where ingredients come from is also as much important. I have had a hard time finding nice flour, I started with using flour I would bring back from France and shifted to Japanese flour, but honestly finding organic or chemical free local flour has been quite a challenge. And when I finally found it (アオヤギ製粉), discussing with the owner to see if they provide me with whole wheat flour, he told me there will be no harvest for the next 3 years because they need to replace some of their equipment… huge deception… so I order pretty much all their stock to support them (hoping it would enable them to fix their equipment faster) and be sure I would have enough for a year (that’s how long I think I can keep it in the Japanese weather). But I am pretty sure I won’t, now that I realized I use about 5kg of flour per month!!!! So I have turned back to the more commercial organic flour I’ve been finding at the supermarket, made in Japan but sold in tiny 500g bags (and this is the big size, the normal being 300g!!!). But at least there is some whole wheat flour which makes me happy. Indeed one of my favorite bread is pumpernickel and the other is a rich whole wheat bread with nuts, seeds, raisins etc… very dense, energetic and delicious! It reminds me some of the breads we often had at home, toasted with butter. So let me share my recipe.
Some of my flour stock… 20kg of flour is basically 4 months of bread making and pasta, quiche, scones, crepes…
Energy packed bread
500g of whole wheat flour
10g of salt
150g of sourdough
30g of brown sugar
70g of sultanas
70g of whole hazelnut
30g of pumpkin seeds
You can add more but I like it that way….
Water
In a large bowl mix together the flour, the sourdough, the salt and sugar. Add water as needed when kneading to obtain a soft slightly wet dough. Then add the nuts, seeds, sultanas. Knead to obtain an homogeneous mixture. Leave to rest for 6 to 24h depending on temperatures. After it has grown, shape it and leave again for another 2-3h. Bake 30 min at 230deg.
