Myoga – 茗荷

Myoga, also named Japanese ginger is a little plant that is often used in Japanese cuisine. It looks a bit like shallots, but with a fresh and strong taste. The most classic use is in miso soup, with a simple dashi base, miso and finely cut myoga. Other option will be with silky fresh tofu and soya sauce. At home we love the taste of myoga and I often use it. One recipe I came with is to top some simply steamed green beans. Just like for the miso soup I finely slice the myoga, steam the green beans, or better boil them in some dashi, and last season with soya sauce. A simple dish that goes perfectly with rice and other small Japanese dishes.

July 20, 2015

Miso eggplants

This quite simple Japanese recipe is really delicious and I like it very much now, but for sometimes I hated it because the first time I tried to prepare it, it was a terrible failure. The first and only time I prepared something to eat that ended up in the trash because it was not edible. I surely made a mess of this delicious recipe! Probably a problem with the mastering of Japanese ingredients at the timeand the proportions! Indeed when we arrived in Japan, cooking was a quite interesting task and grocery shopping an even more startling! Almost every evening we would go to our local supermarket and starre at what at that time we found strange mushrooms, awkward fruits and unknown fishes. So after a few weeks I decided to buy a beginners Japanese cooking book and to try most of the recipes to get familiar with techniques and basic products. The book I picked was in English of course and was clearly written for foreigners, so it was really helpful! However most of the recipes in this book make use of mirin (together with sugar), a Japanese cooking ingredient that I find unify the taste and is not very interesting (a bit like glutamate in Chinese cuisine). So I will give you my version of miso eggplant, the one that is just perfect and doesn’t use mirin.

For two as a side dish I use 1 or 2 Japanese eggplants (they are quite small); a spoon of miso; a tea spoon of grounded sesame or “surigoma”; a little of vegetal oil. After removing the stems and cutting in halves the eggplants, fry them in a very very thin layer of oil. In the mean time, mix the miso the sesame and a very little of oil if necessary to obtain a paste. Once the eggplants are cooked, set them on a serving plate and delicately spread the paste to obtain a thin layer. Decorate with a little of sesame. You can also set the eggplants on a cooking shit, spread the miso, and grill them 3 min in the oven to obtain a roasted miso thin crust.

July 16, 2015

Oven grilled eggplants

The simplest way of cooking eggplants is by oven grilling them. It is so delicious and so handy to cook! For oven grilled eggplants I wash a few eggplants and then slice them with a mandoline or a large knife. In a pie dish I put a thin layer of olive oil, then I set the eggplant slices in a thick layer, top the whole with herbs such as oregano, thyme, rosemary… Then add olive oil again, set in the oven at 200-230deg for 30min. The more they stay in the oven the crispier the top and bottom gets and the more tender gets the middle.

If you like cheese, adding a layer of mozzarella sliced in between the eggplant layers and before the herbs is just too good! My husband doesn’t like cheese so I’m skeeping that… 🙁

July 15, 2015

Eggplant and katsuo bushi

The first recipe of eggplant is a Japanese one. It is awfully simple, yet extremely delicious. It is simply boiled eggplant in katsuo bushi dashi (dried bonito consommé to make it short) served with a topping of katsuo bushi flakes (dried bonito flakes). For that I always use small eggplants, like tiny ones. I cut them in four but keep the four pieces attached by the stem. And boil them in katsuo bushi dashi for 10min. Then I drain them well, eventually using some cooking clothe or cooking paper. I serve them cold most of the time and just top them with some katsuo bushi flakes before serving, eventually add a few drops of soya sauce if you think it needs salt, but usually I don’t.

July 14, 2015

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!

July 13, 2015

French baguette

Well, there is no week-end in the country without a proper Sunday morning breakfast with freshly baked bread or equivalent and fresh fruits. This Sunday is not different, and for the breakfast I prepared French baguette. French baguette requires 1h of autolysis before you can start kneading, so it’s not often I have the time to prepare it, because usually I am to busy outside gardening. This week-end it’s a little bit different since we’re having some workers at home for the reform of our entrance hall I’m not gardening much. Preparing baguette is not more difficult than any other bread but as French there is something special about it, something sentimental when you eat it.

So to prepare one baguette I use 166g of flour; 107g of water; 4g of salt; 8g of dry sourdough; 3g of yeast.

First mix the flour with 2/3 of the water and wait for 1h for the autolysis. Then add all the rest of the ingredients, knead until soft and smooth, and let rest 1h30 for proving. Then lay the dough flat for 15min; finally shape the bread and wait an other 1h30; flour and incise before baking at 230 degrees for 20min. And here you have a freshly baked baguette!

Actually because I love freshly baked bread in the morning, I prepare the bread and replace the last 1h30 by a whole night in the fridge. In the morning just have to bake it.

July 11, 2015

Potatoes and green beans salad

My mother does this very simple classic salad as a starter: green beans or broad beans, potatoes, new onion, olive oil and mustard. I love when the potatoes have marinated in the oil and when the green beans water is mixing in an indiscriptibly delicious juice. This time I mimicked her recipe but made it even simpler: remove the mustard and replaced the onion by some momendofu (hard tofu) crumbles and served it as a main dish for dinner. To enjoy the delicious juice I recommend to prepare the salad one hour before serving and with new potatoes I don’t peel them, just brush them under water.

July 8, 2015

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.

July 6, 2015

Vegetarian stuffed zucchini

Here is an other recipe of stuffed zucchini, but vegetarian this time. For me it’s a classic because my mother has been preparing it for decades and I find this recipe perfect for hot summer days. In her original recipe my mother was using “brousse” or “bruccio” a white fresh cheese from the south of France or from Corsica, since I cannot find easily this cheese in Japan I replaced It by ricotta and it works very well. This recipe is lovely also in small round zucchini, but I couldn’t find any today.

The stuffing is really simple: it’s a mix of ricotta cheese, egg, fresh mint, salt and pepper. Stir the ricotta with an egg, chop the mint and add it to the mixture, season with salt and pepper, stir well. Cut the zucchini, remove a little of the seeds, stuff with the mixture. Line the zucchini in an oven dish and bake at 180deg untill the top is golden. Eat warm or cold.

It is perfect as starter or to accompany a main dish. Here I served it for dinner in a one-plate with a little omelet, home-made pancakes and greens.

July 4, 2015