Category: Travel

Bamboo shoot in kinome pesto

And here is the second recipe with bamboo shoots, the one that I really wanted to try. It is inspired from a dish we had at Daigo in February and since then I’ve been thinking/dreaming of it. It’s a very Japanese dish with taste of spring. It requires some fresh bamboo shoot boiled and cooled down, a table spoon of olive oil and 10 branches of kinome (the small leaves of the sansho tree, we have one in the garden so I just had to go and pick some!). I cut the bamboo shoot in dice, chopped the kinome leaves and add then to the bamboo, then add the oil and stir well. Ready to serve ready to eat.

Bamboo shoot in red miso soup

Spring means greens, but also fresh bamboo shoots. Fresh bamboo is so delicious that I never miss the season and always prepare some. This year I have several ideas of recipe I wanted to try with bamboo shoots, so there might be a dew posts using bamboo shoots. The first one is a red miso soup with simply boiled bamboo shoot sliced and mitsuba. For the dashi I used only katsuobushi. It’s a very simple delicious dish that accomadtes perfectly rice and grilled chicken or grilled fish. 

Isumi pork 🐷 → Isumi ham

The city of Isumi has a special pork meat called Isumi pork (いすみ豚), what is special about it I can’t really say now but it is for sure delicious, very tender and juicy. But since they grow pork in the area, we were thinking it’s really a pity they don’t make ham (it’s really hard to find good ham in Japan in particular in supermarket in Ohara), until our friend S. visited us yesterday and arrived with some fresh ham, from Isumi!!! Super nice ham!!! So we decided to go and check out the place where to get some, a small meat shop near the railway and Ohara station. They have smoked ham and pepper ham. We tried both and both are amazing! Apparently the pork farm is apparently in Otaki. We will probably go and check what they have soon. In the mean time, we are really happy to have found some really nice ham and had some for breakfast with eggs and buckwheat crepes!!

A new delicious combination

We were supposed to have friends for dinner last night but A. had a strike of dust/pollen alergy and we had to cancel. I really to cancel invitations but sometimes it really can’t be helped. Instead of a fancy dinner I wanted to prepare something simple and tasty but I really wanted to use my fresh tomatoes and coriander. I hesitated with couscous (too trivial), quinoa (trivial), but then thinking of the sweet taste of quinoa I imagined that sweet potatoes would work not bad either, be less obvious and more “comfort food” for A.. I was a bit skeptical while cooking, how to do it… But in the end I grilled the sliced sweet potatoes in a bit of olive oil, added the tomato and topped with coriander just before serving. Perfectly delicious!

Marmalade and muffins

The other day seeing the natsumikan trees plowing under the weight of their fruits I decided we needed to harvest them. Our garden is an intricate mess of trees and access to all the fruits was not possible, hopefully the birds will eat some (though with the thick skin it’s not one of the birds favorite). Yet we managed to harvest about 100 fruits!!! This year has been incredible for harvesting fruits: plum, ginko nuts, tangerines, and now natsumikan. They are also super delicious. Usually they be quite sour but this year it’s pure sweetness!!! Yet, it’s too much for just for us. So I’ve given away 2/3 of the fruits, made marmalade with half of the remaining fruits, and kept the rest for eating raw. For the marmalade I used the seeds of an apple to gelify and it worked super well. And since we have now delicious marmalade to eat, We just needed something to spread it on, so this morning I made English muffins. So simple and so delicious!!!

Shojin cuisine – 精進料理

I love kaiseki cuisine (懐石料理) and in particular cha-kaiseki (茶懐石). I’ve learned it for a year and it helped me a lot understand Japanese cuisine and cooking, it also helped me to train my palate. But what I really troubles with kaiseki because it includes quite a lot of raw fish, shellfish, fish eggs etc… And so it is when you go to kaiseki restautants. In particular it is always a fixed seasonal menu, and it kind of doesn’t really make sense to go to a high end kaiseki restaurant and pass on the half of the courses, or ask for a special menu. But hopefully there is Shojin cuisine! You may think of Shojin cuisine as the rustic vegetarian they serve at Mount Koya, but actually there are several places where it is treated as kaiseki and this is just awesome. I know I can eat everything without worrying and it shows the potential of vegetarian or vegan cooking to be super high cuisine. Shojin cuisine is related to Zen Budhism and is meat-fish free, while being very ingenious in using gluten, soya beans etc.., it is also a seasonal food, so somehow the precursor of Japanese macrobiotic eating in its original meaning. I’ve planning to learn Shojin cuisine for a few years but my lab kept me to busy. I’m hoping that I can start this spring.

Example of seasonal dish served at Daigo (from Daigo wesite)
Example of seasonal dish served at Daigo (from Daigo wesite)
Our dessert last night and the view to the garden
Our dessert last night and the view to the garden

In the meantime while we were looking for a place to celebrate our anniversary I suggested we could try a kaiseki Shojin cuisine restaurant that I randomly found while looking for vegan places in Tokyo. So we booked at Daigo (http://www.atago-daigo.jp), near Atago shrine in Tokyo. The place has something a bit magical, since it is a little Japanese heaven in a high rise with the service expected from any high standard ryotei. The food was amazing as expected (and as usual I won’t show you badly taken pictures of this deliciously and beautifully designed food, you’d rather try yourself) and once back home we realized it is actually a 2-star Michelin restaurant. I can only but recommend the experience when visiting Tokyo! 

The most impressive dish from our menu is hard to choose but I was impressed by the bamboo shoots with kinome dressing (or for the fashionable word “pesto”), which take both ingredient to perfection. Something I will definitely try my way very soon!!! 

Individual dining room at Daigo (from Daigo website)
Individual dining room at Daigo (from Daigo website)

Oups! I made some ravioli again!

“Yahhari”  as we say in Japanese, I made some ravioli again! We love ravioli so much I could have some every day! This time spinach ricotta with some spinach in the pasta for a green finish. I just over-steamed some spinach and add some off the green leaves in the dough. For the filling chopped steamed spinaches with 1 large spoon of fresh ricotta, salt and pepper. Boiled and served with olive oil, salt and pepper, as simple can be! 

Lucky day!

Yesterday my undergraduate students presented their research in the department and this marked the end on the year since masters already presented last week. I was particularly pleased with my students, their research results and the way I can see how much they improved their hard and soft skills during their stay in the lab. It’s a very nice feeling and it is very motivating. So this morning I am full of positive energy, and with the beautful blue winter sky, the crispy air And I need to take time to think. There are so many things I need to think about and I am usually too busy when seated in my office to take the necessary time for that. I find that walking outside in the city is a great way for me to sort my ideas (I think I also miss working in the city). I would usually do that when I have meetings in town or more often when I go to practice kyudo, walking there is about 40 min and it’s perfect to arrive in a calm and rested mind, but recently for too many reasons I haven’t practiced, the first one being unable to find the proper time and the proper calmness, the second being all this muscles and joints ache I have had since the beginning of January, that was definitely related to work and forced me to slow down a bit and is getting slowly better. Yet I didn’t take the time to walk.

And I am very lucky because the train was not working properly this morning, if working at all. I know it sounds strange to say that, because usually it’s when I’m in a hurry for class, or appointment, or when it’s pouring and there’s no taxi to be found. But not today. No meetings scheduled, perfect winter weather, no heels so perfectly equipped for a walk, so I decided to skip the Sobu line and walk to my next transfer. Probably nothing more than 30min at my pace. And that was so great. Tokyo is not of of these European old and beautiful city that you just watch, it’s a city beautiful from the small things going on there everyday, and it’s humility. Feeling the city moving around, people going to work, many walking because of the stopped trains, the shops preparing to open, the homeless sleeping like cats in the sun, the tourists in Akihabara waiting for the shop to open… It just boosted me and gave me an opportunity not only to think properly, but also to reconnect with this city I love but I haven’t enjoyed properly recently, and it just confirmed my feeling that I need to take more time to walk outside! 

Valentine drive in Tokyo ;)

View of Tokyo bay from the dino bridge  

After a rainy and windy morning.  The sun finally showed up, it was incredibly warm, so we decided to go for a (Valentine) drive ;). You know like they do in the Japanese drama… Ahahah! Except that ours was a little twisted, we always love to visit industrial areas!! So this time we picked a scenic route through the city that leads us to the “dinosaur” bridge, a bridge that was opened a few years ago in the bay and that we’ve never taken so far. Eventually the route we took was a (romantic) garbage and waste collection route since we’ve passed all Tokyo dumpsters that happen to all be on the newer islands in the sea front with a beautiful view all with names that try to conceal the hideousness of their finction: Yumenoshima (Dream island), Wakashu (Young land)…!! Actually Yumenoshima-夢の島 is worth a trip for itself for its little museum on nuclear tests in the Pacific and the sadly famous wreck of the Daigofukuryu-第五福竜. The route we took was passing also right next to Haneda airport, so planes were just flying over ours heads at low altitude! Kind of love that! Finally we crossed the bay arrived in Heiwajima and Shinagawa’s warehouses and containers warf, for the industrial part of the ride, passed the water sewage and recycling plant and drove to Tokyo tower, before heading to Mitsukoshi to buy ourselves some little Japanese sweets: plum jelly and sakura manju and watch the sunset from home. Happy Valentine! Hope your Sunday was a good one!!!

PS: I also prepared the classic  chocolate truffles for Valentine!

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