Category: Recipe

A twisted “nimono” recipe

I love nimono, that is not new… I learned how to make them right with Japanese cookbooks and when I was going to cha-kaiseki classes, but for some reasons, I often wrongly thought that it takes time to make a nimono dish, and so not cook some as often as I should. But as my cooking evolves with time and changes subtly every month, every year, nimono has been more and more often on the menu. Enough often for me to test twisted versions of nimono, using different ingredients for flavouring and always managing to get it right. I also understood clearly that it can be really quick to make depending on the ingredients chosen. One ingredient that goes really well with nimono is green bell peppers. They fit perfectly the recipe and also are a good match with any white fish. And for white fish, we are lucky, in Ohara it is easy to find delicious local fresh ones: snappers of all sorts, sea bass, flounder…
As I don’t often cook with sake, I recently replaced the sake in the classic recipe by my ume-dashi pickled soya sauce. It adds a bit of sourness and a delicious flavour and when in season I love to add a few slices of lime, or of green yuzu, or any other green citrus fruit. So here is my twisted nimono recipe for a simple Japanese preparation that everyone can make!

Twisted nimono recipe (for 2 servings)

  • a nice piece of fresh white fish
  • 4~6 green bell peppers depending on size (red, yellow, orange can work as well but not as good…)
  • 1/2 lime or 1 green yuzu…
  • 2tbs of soya sauce, better ume pickled in soya sauce
  • 1tsp of cooking oil
  • 1/2 cup of water

Wash and cut in rough pieces the bell peppers. Cut the citrus fruit in large pieces. Clean the fish and cut in large byte size. In a wok or pan, heat the cooking oil, add the fish and wait until half cooked, add the bell peppers. stir gently. Add the soya sauce, the water and the citrus fruit. Cook at medium-high heat until the liquid starts to reduce significantly and thicken a bit. Stop here the cooking and serve not too hot, with some white rice ideally.

Tonkatsu!!! No, hirekatsu!

What the heck!!!

Tonkatsu is the famous, and usually most beloved by foreigners, Japanese fried pork cutlet. It is a fatty part of pork, further rolled in panko and deep fried. It’s heavy, fatty and honestly the rice and the shredded cabbage on the side cannot help pumping the fat!!! We never eat it. But there exist slightly better version of it: hirekatsu – ヒレカツ (filet katsu…). Instead of the fatty cutlet it is the most meager part of pork: filet. That makes thing more bearable and not without reminding me the veal escalope my grandmother was making. My father and A. are big fans of it and I would usually (before it closed) buy hirekatsu at Genji in Isumi, and we would have it altogether. So about once a year or so!! Another option would be Saboten, a chain store in Tokyo that prepares on the spot a variety of fried meat and fish and croquettes.

With the travel ban, my parents didn’t come in March and so A. didn’t have had much a chance to eat hirekatsu in the past year… so the now that it is rainy and chilly, I could venture in making some richer food, and just had a nice piece of pork filet from Isumi. All set!! Of course I don’t deep fry, so it is a panfried version, but it works as well… and here is my recipe, but really you don’t need one for making this!!!

Pan fried hirekatsu

  • A piece of pork filet
  • 1 egg
  • Panko
  • Frying oil

Cut the pork filet in 5mm~1cm slices (count 4 slices per person). Break the egg in a bowl and make and egg batter. Set the panko in a plate. Heat sufficient oil in a fry pan at high heat. Dip one pork slice in the egg batter the in the panko until fully covered and fry in the pan. Continue until all done. Turn the piece on all side until golden. There’s really nothing special about that preparation in fact!!!

Serve with some shredded cabbage for Japanese style, or anything else if you prefer: I served with steamed carrots.

Koyadofu – 高野豆腐

There is more than one ingredient in Japanese cuisine that is intriguing, konyaku, fu and koyadofu are some of them. So let’s talk about koyadofu this time…

Koyadofu 高野豆腐 or freeze-dried tofu is a product that has been used in temple vegan cuisine and for traveling warriors for about 500 years. It is a way to preserve tofu for long times in a compact way, and very rich nutritionally. Indeed koyadofu is packed with proteins and fat. It’s a kind of space food in a sense, or one of its ancestors. To be honest, at first koyadofu doesn’t look like an attractive food: it is truly like a very thin sponge, and usually served soaked after simmering or in some kind of bouillon. For those that find tofu insipid, and I know many may think so, they should probably pass on Koyadofu because taste is even thiner and lighter. However, when well prepared it is a very nice ingredient to use and it adds an interesting texture to dishes. Most recipes of koyadofu will be found in buddhist and macrobiotic cookbooks. I find my inspiration from my two favorite of the kind: “good food from a Japanese temple” and “玄米と野菜のワンプレートごはん”. And the recipe I present today is inspired by both, it’s a curry with seasonal vegetables koyadofu served with brown rice. It is really simple and delicious.

Koyadofu curry-rice (serves 2)

  • 1 cup of brown rice, cooked
  • 6 blocks (2cmx2cm) of koyadofu or one large
  • seasonal vegetables of your choice: carrot, potatoes, butternut squash, tomatoes
  • a handful of peanuts (it’s a seasonal and local product in Isumi, so I used fresh ones simply boiled)
  • 1tsp of curry powder
  • 1tsp of ground coriander
  • 1tsp of ground turmeric
  • 1tsp of cumin seeds (carvi seeds or anis seeds can work…)
  • 1 pinch of ground red pepper
  • 1 pinch of salt
  • 1tsp of cooking oil of your choice

Koyadofu always needs to be returned to a moist status. So put the blocks in tepid water for 5min, then drain by squeezing gently, and rinse/squeeze under running water until the water turns clear. It’s basically like washing a sponge… now it’s ready to use.

Peel, wash, cut the vegetables. In large pan or wok greased with cooking oil, toss the vegetables in order of cooking time. And stir once in a while. Add the koyadofu. Stir. Then cover with water, add all the spices, and the peanuts. Cook at low heat until the liquid is almost gone, by then the vegetables should be just cooked. You don’t want to overcook them, to keep an interesting mix of texture. You can serve with the brown rice and enjoy!!!

Have a good day!

Autumn warmth and color

As the summer fades away, autumn days are slowly settling in. Autumn in Japan does not mean yet fallen leaves, cold mornings etc… we’ll have to wait at least another month for that! October is usually a fair month with warm days and just chilly enough evening and mornings to enjoy a walk or a bicycle ride. The food stalls start changing in colors and products too. The new rice harvested in August, the pumpkins and kabocha, the lotus roots… of course some of the summer food will still be around for a while: the super ripe tomatoes, the last crunchy cucumbers…

Combined together late summer and early fool ingredients are perfect such as in this pasta recipe below: tomatoes, butternut, lotus root… simple but delicious.

With the more chilly evenings, it is nice to curl under a little blanket and eat a warming dish, warming by its color and flavors. So I prepared a slightly spicy soup with fresh vegetables and chicken meat-balls, in a bouillon of spices and fresh lemongrass. Here is my recipe, it’s super simple!! Hope you’ll like it!

Spicy soup (2 servings)

  • 1 carrot
  • 1 2cm slice of butternut squash
  • A handful of green beans
  • 100-150g of chicken breast grounded
  • 1 tsp of potato starch
  • 1 pinch of turmeric
  • 1 pinch of chilly pepper
  • 1 pinch of coriander
  • 1 pinch of salt and pepper
  • 1 leave of fresh lemongrass
  • 100g of vermicelli or thin noodles (optional)

Actually you can adjust the vegetables to what you have around… I sliced the carrot with the peeler to obtain very thin slices, but you can also do a julienne or small stick… it’s up to you…

So in in a large pan I heat 1L if water, add the vegetables and the spices. Then in a bowl I mix the meat and the starch. Make small balls (1.5-2cm diameter) and toss them in the boiling bouillon. After 10min all is ready. 5min before eating I add the noodles. They cook very quickly and you don’t want them to become thick and too soft. Serve immediately. Yes… that’s it!!!

Have a good day!

Japanese simplicity

Who said that cooking Japanese cuisine was complex???

I have the simplest and most delicious recipe of miso soup for you today and an ultra easy ochazuke recipe. Of course both require basic Japanese ingredients: dashi, and miso for the first one, and Japanese rice, dashi and umeboshi for the second one. Indeed now is the time rice harvesting in Isumi is just finished new rice of this year harvest is now available. Delicious brown rice, slowly cooked to be just perfectly soft goes perfectly well in ochazuke recipes I find, almost better than plain white rice.

For the dashi of both recipes you can choose from katsuobushi, ichiban dashi, konbu dashi or shiitake dashi. Personally I love ichiban dashi. Ichiban dashi 一番だし is a basic in Japanese cuisine and particularly in cha-kaiseki 茶懐石, so I mostly make ichiban dashi, so let’s start with its recipe.

Ichiban dashi – 一番だし

  • 1L of water
  • 15g of katsuobushi blakes (not too thin)
  • 15g of konbu

In a pan set 1cm of water, add the konbu and bring to a boil at low heat for 10min. Add the bonito and the rest of the water. Keep boiling at low heat for 5 minutes. Let rest and filter. Your ichiban dashi is ready, you can use it as a base for soup, cooking vegetables, fish, tofu, rice etc…

With the dashi made, we can then move to the other recipes. First the eggplant miso soup. Then below the ochazuke.

Eggplant miso soup (for two servings)

  • 2 little Japanese eggplants
  • 1 tbs of miso
  • 600ml of dashi
  • a bit of neutral frying oil

Wash and cut the eggplants (see top picture fir cut). In a frypan greased with the frying oil, cook the eggplants until just golden and soft, serve then evenly in two large miso soup bowls.

Heat your dashi if it was prepared ahead, or use the one you just prepared. Top the eggplants with the dashi. Set half a tbs of miso in each and stir gently. That’s it!!!

Simple ochazuke (2 servings)

  • 1 cup of Japanese brown rice or white rice cooked
  • 400ml of dashi
  • 2 pickled plums
  • 1 bundle of komatsuna or other green (water spinach, spinach…)

Serve the rice in a large bowl. Heat the dashi. In the meantime wash the green vegetable, cut in 5cm long and blanche. Drain well.

Top the rice with the vegetables, then serve the dashi, add the pickled plum. That’s it!

Have a good day!!!

An old recipe

Making a quiche requires quite many ingredients. First flour and butter for the dough, then eggs and milk or cream fir the egg base and finally something to put in: vegetables, bacon, fish, cheese… then it takes 30-40min to bake it to perfection. It’s not something you prepare and serve 20min after you’ve started cooking.

But one day, when I was rather young and staying at my best friend’s house, her mother made a quiche, or rather what in French we call a savory tart with minimum ingredients and cooking time: the mustard tart. Back in France many people buy ready-to-use rolled pie crust so this makes it even simpler, but here what is stunning is the baking time. Because there is no egg base, it is really short.

Unfortunately the original recipe is all about cheese, and this doesn’t work for A. so I barely cook mustard tarts, until the other day when I decided to replace his share of cheese by thinly sliced local sausages. He had his meat, I had my cheese and everyone was happy to have lunch ready in no time!!!

So if you want to try, here is the original recipe and my recipe:

Mustard tart (classic)

  • flour, butter, water for one pie crust
  • 2 large and ripe tomatoes
  • 2tbs of mustard
  • 1-2 handful of grated emmental or gruyere cheese

Prepare the dough and roll for a 30cm low pie dish. Spread the mustard. Wash and thinly slice the tomatoes, sprinkle the cheese. Bake at 200deg until the cheese os melted and slightly golden. That’s it!!!

Mustard tart (meaty version half/half)

  • flour, butter, water for one pie crust
  • 2 large and ripe tomatoes
  • 2tbs of whole grain mustard (makes the whole milder)
  • 1 handful of grated emmental or gruyere cheese
  • 2-4 little sausages

Proceed exactly as above but just slice the sausages, sprinkle them on one half, and the cheese on the other. It is really that simple!!!

Buckwheat gnoccheti and sweet palermo

Discovering again and again new vegetables… this one seems to be a new breed of sweet pepper… not that I am a fan of new breeds… there are so many existing that I am not sure to see the point… in the meantime that’s how many vegetables and fruits have been created… anyway I didn’t know when I bought it, it looked nice and was a good change, as with the end of the summer it’s all about eggplants, cucumbers, okras and tomatoes… and I don’t want to start too quickly with the fall vegetables, there will enough time for that… and it’s still hot, so I don’t feel like kabocha and sweet potatoes yet!!!

The name of this new vegetable is “palermo”… it reminded me Sicily, so I put it in my basket. Yellow, long and firm… just like a bell pepper. I was hoping it wouldn’t be strong and spicy, all the contrary. The taste is very mild and rather sweet. But the flesh is thinner than that of the regular red, orange or yellow bell peppers, so it feels not very nourishing. I prepared it with a fresh tomato sauce, to serve with gnochetti.

Gnochetti that I made with buckwheat. Indeed, the meal I had in mind was very different… I was planning to prepare soba with some green vegetables, when I realized that all the soba were gone and I only had buckwheat flour in the pantry… I didn’t feel like trying to do handmade soba at the very moment, instead I opted for something I knew I could succeed in easily… 😉 gnochetti felt perfect, but then I needed to change the vegetables and thought about the palermo. All set and here are my recipes.

Buckwheat gnochetti

  • 50g of buckwheat flour
  • 25g of whole-wheat flour
  • 25g of flour
  • 1 egg
  • A bit of water

Mix all the flours together, add the egg and knead. Only if the dough is really hard or if all the flour is not well incorporated then add a few drops of water and knead well.

Keep 30min to rest. Then make a 1.5-2cm diameter roll and cut chips of 1-2mm thick (see top picture). Make balls with the chips and roll on a gnocchi board.

In a large pan filled with water boil the gnochetti and remove them when afloat. Put the gnochetti in the pan of the sauce (see below)

Tomatoes and palermo sweet pepper sauce

  • 2 tomatoes
  • 1 palermo bell pepper
  • Olive oil
  • Salt and pepper

In a large frypan, splash some olive oil. Wash and cut the tomatoes and add to the pan. Start cooking at medium heat. Wash, remove the seeds and slice the palermo, add to the tomatoes. Cook at low heat until there is only a thin layer of liquid remaining. Stop cooking.

Add the boiled gnochetti to the sauce pan, add salt and pepper, a splash of olive oil and stir well at medium heat. Serve and enjoy!!!

Edamame and eggplant

Whether on weekdays, when we have little time to have lunch or on the weekends when we are busy with surfing/bodyboarding, playing tennis or gardening, having a good lunch easily ready is important. Moreover, if that can be prepared in advance it is even better! Fresh pasta have been quite a good candidate as they can be accommodated easily, be eaten warm or cold… and since it it is the end of the summer we want to continue enjoying the summer vegetables a little longer, in particular, enjoy the last edamame of the season. I know that we will have eggplants and tomatoes for quite a few weeks or even months but they add a real summer touch to a dish. So I came up with a recipe of edamame pasta with eggplant that is all creamy and divine and I couldn’t wait sharing that recipe with you, as if you want to try you’ll have to hurry!

Edamame, fava beans, and similar are a good match with eggplants and are traditionally used together in Japanese cuisine. I revisited this classic combination in a more western style.

Edamame and eggplant creamy pasta (2 servings)

  • a handful of edamame
  • 2 eggplants
  • fresh pasta
  • olive oil
  • salt and pepper
  • grated Parmigiano (optional)

Boil the edamame, grill the eggplants to be able to peel them. Once the edamame have cooled down peel them completely and in a mortar puree them. Add a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper. Peel the eggplant and add to the mix and pure roughly. Boil the fresh pasta, once drained add the mix, stir well ad serve. Add grated Parmigiano if you like.

Yes! that’s it! Isn’t that simple? And you’ll see it is truly delicious!

Super easy pickles

In the summer it is nice to enjoy refreshing pickled vegetables. After many attempts of different methods to make pickles there are a few that I find particularly not adapted to our life style, and some others that require too much equipment. But there are two that I really like and that are very simple, can be done everywhere, require little ingredients or equipment and work in a few hours. Today I want to introduce the simplest and most efficient way, that works with many of the green summer vegetables such as cucumber, uri, or togan, but also with radishes and daikon. It is called shiozuke 塩漬け in Japanese, and as the name suggested it is a method of pickling vegetables in salt. As a matter of fact it is the same method as making umeboshi or pickled Chinese cabbage… expect that with summer vegetables it takes only a few hours instead of several days or weeks! Today I present the recipe with uri 瓜 a kind of melon/cucumber that is very popular in summer in Japan and that just made its entry in the glossary.

Shiozuke summer vegetables

  • 1/2 uri or 1 Japanese cucumber
  • 1/2 tsp of salt
  • a little piece of konbu (optional)

Wash and cut the vegetable. It is not really necessary to peel them. Slice them thinly. Cut the konbu in thin pieces. in a bowl large enough, add the sliced uri, the konbu, sprinkle the salt on top. Use a piece of wrap to top and set a weight the size of the inside of the bowl (I used a honey pot filled with water) on top to press the mix. Wait for a few hours before enjoying, and keep in the fridge in the liquid for a few days.

Beware that the liquid when pressing may overflow the bowl, so set the bowl in in a tray or the sink, or use a rather large bowl compared to the amount of vegetable that can receive all the liquid. Another option is to make them in a sealed plastic bag (ziploc…), but I don’t use such plastic bags…

 

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