Colorful as a Swiss chard

In France we have chards and they are green, with beautiful leafy greens and rather stiff whites. Both are delicious and I have always liked when my mother was making some. Compared to spinach they have a distinctive earthy flavor that I love. It took me a long long time to find chards in Japan. I only found some once we started to shop at local farmers’ markets in Isumi or once in a while at Mitsukoshi Nihonbashi. I think not because of the location but because they are just becoming more popular now and are not originally a green from Asia (we have so many already there…).

What surprised me the most was that instead of being the classic white and green vegetables I knew, they came in various bright and beautiful colors. Vibrant pinks, bright yellows… and the colors stay rather well even after cooking. The other funny fact is that the fibery white part (now colorful part) is a lot less fibery and stiff.

Actually growing some is also not too difficult so we had a try at it last year, and we enjoyed the very young ones not even cooked, just row and they make beautiful salads!

Last weekend on our way to visit some plots of land, we stopped at a local farmer that was selling some. And he gave us a real lot of colorful Swiss chards, and some new onions too. So Swiss chards and new onions have been on our plates pretty much every day. First with some simple pasta and olive oil, then I started to think about other possible recipes. My top 3 of the things I cooked with New onions and Swiss chards is as follow:
1. Steamed buns
2. With coconut milk and cashew nuts, served with spicy Basmati rice
3. With paprika and served with buckwheat pancakes

So here are my recipes. They are all vegan and super easy to make. I hope you’ll enjoy them!

Steamed buns with Swiss chards and new onions (makes 4 large ones)

  • a bundle of Swiss chard
  • 2 new onions
  • a pinch of cumin
  • salt and pepper
  • 1tbs of olive sesame oil
  • 200g of flour
  • 1tsp of baking soda
  • a pinch of salt
  • water

In a bowl mix the flour, baking soda and salt, add water little by little and knead until the dough is soft and smooth. (If you have time, replace the baking soda by sourdough and wait 12h after kneading).

Wash and chop the chards, peal and chop the onion. In a frypan, put the sesame oil, and the chopped vegetables and cook at medium-low heat until they are soft. Add the cumin and salt and pepper and stir well.

Cut the dough in 4, make balls, and roll them into an 18cm disc. Split the filling into 4 portions and put in each disc. Form the buns and steam for 20min. Enjoy with a bit of soya sauce or without!

Swiss chards in coconut milk with super fragrant rice (2 servings)

  • a bundle of Swiss chard
  • 2 new onions
  • 200ml of coconut cream or coconut
  • 1 handful of cashew nuts (shelled)
  • salt and pepper
  • 100g of Basmati rice
  • a pinch of cinnamon, of cardamom and coriander, 2 star anises
  • A bit of butter if you don’t mind

First, steam the rice with the spices, and the butter if you use some. Then, while it is cooking, wash and cut in chunks the onions and chards. In a pan put the vegetables, the coconut milk and the cashew nuts roughly broken. Cook for 10minutes at medium heat, while stirring once in a while. Then serve with the warm rice and enjoy.

Buckwheat pancakes and Swiss chards and new onion stew (2 servings)

  • a bundle of Swiss chard
  • 2 new onions
  • 1tsp of olive oil
  • 1tsp of paprika
  • a pinch of turmeric
  • salt and paper
  • 120g of buckwheat flour
  • 1tsp of baking powder
  • water
  • a bit of oil for cooking the pancakes

In a bowl, mix the buckwheat flour, the baking soda a pinch of salt and add water until the dough is creamy, but not liquid.

Wash and chop the vegetables and cook them in a pan with olive oil while stirring once in a while. Add the turmeric and paprika, salt and pepper and stir again.

In a greased pan cook the pancakes (size is up to you) on both sides. Serve with the vegetables and enjoy.

Et voila, three really easy and delicious recipes with Swiss chard and new onions!

The endless discoveries

There is no need to go far to discover new things and in particular when it comes to food, there is always something new and curious to discover at the farmers market. You just need to look around and you’ll surely find something you haven’t seen before. This time I found negibosu 葱坊主 leek’s flower buds. You can often spot the beautiful flowers in kitchen gardens in the spring, they are amazing ornaments. But I never guessed that would be edible, and that even you would be able to buy them in the bud version at the farmers market. But it is!

So here I am with my negibosu… I thoughts immediately that tempura would be an appropriate recipe. For some reasons, tempura always work well with any green, even with strong flavors: fukinoto is a good example. But what else… and would actually negibosu be strong in flavors? So I browsed a bit the net. Nothing came out neither in French nor in English but for the fully blossomed leek flowers. It was of no help, so I turned to Japanese and bingo! Negibosu have a significant number of entries in cookpad, more than half of them being…

Tempura of course… hum… not helping much either… digging a bit more I finally found the other classic Japanese recipe to accommodate greens: miso ae. Miso ae, in my opinion, works better with creamy miso, the one I have, that I make, is more granular and won’t work as good… one recipe in the end attracted my attention: a goma ae one. So I decided to go for this one, well, my way though. (and the tempura… just in case!!)

So here’s my recipe of goma ae. Suri goma すり胡麻 is ground sesame powder. It’s very easy to make from the sesame seeds, or to buy already powdered.

Making ground sesame: suri goma

Negibosu goma ae (2 servings)

  • A dozen of leek flower buds
  • 1tbs of sesame seeds
  • 1tbs of soya sauce
  • 1tsp of brown sugar

Wash the negibosu, remove the hard part if any, and blanche for a few minutes. Drain and pat dry.

Blanching negibosu

Once cool enough, cut in tiny bite size.

In a mortar, crush the sesame seeds with a pillar to obtain a paste. Add the sugar and soya sauce and stir. Add to the negibosu, stir and that’s ready!! Yes, it’s that simple and you’ll see it’s delicious!!!! Enjoy!

Final result!!!

Always the same, never the same

Since we’ve been working from home, I cook three to four meals a day (we wouldn’t miss a good tea time!) and a whole new routine of recipes slowly replaced old habits. More meals to cook = more chances to explore. I cook more quiche as we spend more time in Ohara, I also cook more steam buns and gyoza, also one dish that has been an almost weekly thing is brown rice and spicy vegetables. As much I love Japanese brown rice, it takes too much time to cook it after coming back from work and have it ready for dinner (about 2 to 3h) so I would almost never make any. Working from home as this perk that starting a recipe is really simple, squeezed between two meetings.

For some reason Thursday is the day we most often have brown rice. And one thing I really love is to have it with some seasonal vegetables and a light spicy sauce. Versions are endless. And with the spring coming and the new vegetables I prepared a very simple and ultra full of flavors version. A few chick peas remaining from the hummus I made the other day, a bit of coconut cream, and a lot of new and fresh onions that our friends gave us. Add some super ripe tomatoes and, because winter is still not completely gone, a sweet potato, you have a great base. Normally I would have added curry to the mixture, but curry powder is on my shopping list and I didn’t have time to go grocery shopping this week. And actually it was good that way. It forced me to explore other spice combination and I realize that curry is not necessary. So if you want a very mild and very tasty recipe for your new onions and your brown rice, just read below and enjoy!

New onions with spice and coconut milk

  • 2-3 new onions
  • 1 sweet potato (one carrot could do, nothing could do too)
  • 1 large and ripe tomato (if you can’t find one just do without)
  • 200ml of coconut cream or coconut milk
  • 1 cup of chick peas, boiled and drained
  • 1tsp of ground cardamom
  • 1tsp of turmeric
  • 1/2tsp of all spice
  • 1/2tsp of ground cumin
  • 1/2tsp of salt
  • ground black pepper

Remove one layer of onion skin and cut them in 8. Wash and cut the vegetables in bite size.
In a greased pan, on medium heat, put all the vegetables, and the chick peas, and cook for 10min while stirring regularly.
Add the coconut cream, the spices and stir well. Cook under cover for 5min. And that’s ready. Serve with brown rice, but I bet it is also a killer with flat breads or basmati rice.

Hassaku – 八朔

Two weeks without a post is a grand premiere here… For the past 7 years I have been posting a few times a week and at most every 10 days when I was busy at work and on travel. So why 2 weeks this time? Well… travel is definitely not what is taking any of my time, even though we had a failed attempt to go back to France back in November, and the planning took a lot of our time, only to cancel everything 5 days prior departure because the situation was not looking too good in France then… but that’s a long time ago! I can tell you that work has been busy but nothing out of the ordinary. So what? Have I quit cooking??? For sure not! But what did I cook then? Well, first a lot of things that were delicious but definitely not photogenic. Then a lot of cruising dishes: quiches, bread and scones but I bet you don’t need another recipe of any of these…

Then we harvested all our hassaku and I went into a little plan of making several recipes…

But in the end we love the raw fruits so much, plain and simple, that apart from a little batch of marmelade, but I’m no good to teach anyone how to make it, rather I should learn myself, I made a lot of candied peels after we’ve eaten the flesh. Though we eat little sugar, I love candied fruits and citrus peels of sorts candied. At that, I think I can proudly say that I am not bad! I have learned patience and it is paying off! So here’s my recipe, but if you don’t have hasaku, it works with any other citrus fruits. I personally like the thick skin of hassaku, but lemon, orange, yuzu… they all can work perfectly too. You just need to be sure that your fruits are untreated before and after harvest, that’s why I only candy peels of fruits I am sure about.

Citrus fruits candied peel

  • Untreated citrus fruits of your choice
  • Sugar ( I use only untreated brown cane sugar)
  • Water
  • Patience
  • Dark chocolate (optional)

Candied peels work in any batch size. Wash and dry your fruits. Peel them being careful to be as close to the flesh as possible. Remove any possible fibers layer. Cut the size you like. I like thick ones so that they are almost a square section.

In a pan set the peels. Pour water in a measure cup. From that cup pour into the pan to cover the peels. Check how much you poured in. Add the same volume of sugar to the preparation. Bring to a boil, let on low heat for 15 min. Let cool down in the pan for two hours at least, longer is good. The peel will start to loose their opacity. Bring to a boil again, and cook at low heat for 10 min again. If the liquid is to little add just a bit of water. Let cool down again, and repeat the heating/cooling until the peels are translucent adding just a bit of water not to burn them and such that the syrup doesn’t turn into caramel. When perfectly translucent, heat a last time and move the peels from the pan to a clean surface. I use cooking paper. Let cool down. Now they are ready. You can store them or dip them in chocolate, roll them in cristal sugar (but really, they don’t need anymore sugar!)… I love them just the way they are, A. likes them coated with chocolate…

Total improvisation of a thin leek tart

Some days are just like these… you have an idea in mind and it just doesn’t get away… it sticks in your head and even though work is busy the idea keeps lingering until satisfied. This is exactly what happened with this giant bundle of leek I had sitting on the kitchen table. I pictured them nicely cooked and golden and set on a dough… but what kind of dough??? A puff pastry would have been good but then that would postpone eating the leeks… a pizza dough would be the same… a regular sable or short crust pastry would be too crispy…

That’s when I remembered about a leftover of brown rice I had. And I love brown rice dough. It gives texture and a delicious flavor. But that still wouldn’t make it soft as a pizza dough. No problem, I added a bit of baking powder, resulting in a new texture for the dough rolled 2mm thin. The rice gave a granular texture as plan, the baking powder a fluffy one as plan too. This totally improvised recipe was a total hit! And we were so curious about trying it that I didn’t even took a good shot of it! 🙁 but I surely will make some again soon, before the leeks are gone for good, because spring is just around the corner. The red plum tree is in full blossom and the other plum trees are in full bud ready to burst at anytime now!

Leek tart (4 servings)

  • 1cup of brown rice, cooked
  • 100g of flour
  • 4tbsp of oil (or butter)
  • a bit of water
  • 1tsp of baling powder
  • Salt and pepper
  • 5 large leeks

Attention the brown rice needs to be cooked prior to starting the recipe!!!

Wash and cut in strips the leeks. In a pan grease cook then at low heat until soft and golden. If you want to make the process a bit faster add a bit of water now and then.

While the leeks are cooking, pre-heat your oven to 200deg, and in a bowl mix the flour, oil, brown rice. Add the baking powder and a bit of water. Knead until the down is homogeneous. You can water if you fill it is too stiff. Roll the dough to the shape you want about 2-3mm thick. Top with the golden leaks, and set in the oven for 15-20min. Enjoy!

Winter favorite

A., and I too, are big fans of Brussels sprouts. Anytime there are some at the farmers market I would bug some even ic sometimes there are sold in tiny portions of 5 or 6! A few years ago we tried growing some in our kitchen garden, hoping for a consistent harvest, but once again the slugs and caterpillars were too quick at first and since then the plants grow leaves every year but never sprouts… I keep them thought, just in case!

Another winter favorite is turnips. The small and firm turnips of all possible shades from white to purple. That we never tried to grow yet… but they are easy to find by rather big bundles.

With these two in my basket I came up with a super delicious recipe, perfect for a side or starter. that can be eaten at room temperature or just warm: a beautiful and colorful plate of Brussels sprouts and tiny pink turnips. I dressed them in olive oil only bug you could easily think about adding a few drops of yuzu juice, or even more Japanese, a white miso and yuzu light sauce. So let me share my recipe.

Turnips and Brussels sprouts salad (2 servings)

  • 6 Brussels sprouts
  • 6 little turnips
  • 1tsp of olive oil
  • Salt and pepper
  • Optional: a few drops of yuzu juice or grated yuzu peel, 1 tea spoon of white miso

Wash carefully the vegetables. Slice the Brussels sprouts in 4 or 5. Cut the turnips in 4. If you can’t find tiny turnips then slice them. In a heated pan add the olive oil and the vegetables. Cook while stirring gently for 5 minutes. Add salt and pepper. at this stage you can serve. Add if you want to use them, the yuzu juice and/or the grated yuzu peels. If you use white miso, stir well the yuzu juice with the miso and too the vegetables.

Voila! Really not difficult and soooo scrumptious.

Snowy day gets bright with the warmth of golden rice

Many of you may be familiar with golden milk, this Indian drink with turmeric and milk, rooted in Ayurveda. Not that I am a fan of it, but borrowing the idea, I prepared myself a warming and bright lunch on a snowy day. Snow doesn’t fall often in Tokyo. Usually once or twice a year in January and March. It is very sudden, it snows a lot for a few hours to cover everything under a beautiful white blanket, and then the next minute is sunny and the blanket melts into a mess of mud and ice. But for a few hours it is magic. The city becomes suddenly quiet.

So before going outside for a walk, what best then having a warm lunch? A what if it is not only warm, it is also bright and full of flavors? That’s how I came up with this golden sautéed rice recipe.

Golden rice (2 servings as main dish)

  • 1 cup of brown rice
  • 1 or 2 leaks
  • 3 little turnips or 1 large
  • 1 little lotus root
  • 1tsp pf curry powder
  • 2tsp of ground turmeric
  • Ground black pepper
  • A punch of salt
  • 1tsp of vegetal oil
  • 6 rakkyo (optional)

Cook the rice. Wash and cut the vegetables. In a pan large enough, heat the oil, add the vegetables and cook while steering. Add the rice, the spices and pepper and steer very well. Serve and top with the rakkyo. Eat while watching the cold outside!!

Mochi – 餅

If you have read Natsume Soseki’s novel the cat, watched Juzo Itami’s Tampopo or check the Japanese news today, you may not think highly of this Japanese new year specialty that is eaten widely, but kills about 300 people every year!!! No kidding! Despite the caution announcement every year before new year. And if you are more than 65 the risk maybe high that you suffocate eating mochi if you are not careful! But being careful is easy, and mochi is delicious. So let’s get passed the first bad impression, talk about mochi and let me share with you a few delicious ways to eat mochi.

First thing first, you may have heard about mochi but what is it exactly? In most places it is translated as rice cake, but I think it is a bit misleading. Mochi is made of mochigome 餅米 a round rice, slightly more glutinous than the rice you would eat normally, it is cooked them crushed into a paste, the paste is then shaped into a ball of various sizes (smaller are less dangerous to choke on). Making mochi for new year is a tradition and there are plenty of opportunities to go to mochi-dsuki 餅つき events in local communities. We went to our first one in January 2005 with our Japanese teacher. That was fun to pound the rice in a large wooden standing bowl called usu 臼, carved in a trunk, with a huge wooden mallet or pestel called kine 杵.

Me on the left pounding mochi with I. on the day we met for the very first time. (January 2005)

Of course we were scared to try eating it (for the above reasons ;)), but in the end we enjoyed it very much in many many ways: in soup (ozoni), with nori and soya sauce, with kinako, with red beans etc…
Not everyone is equipped with a set to make mochi at home and not everyone makes at least 2kg of mochi at once, so there are other ways to get your hand on mochi and to try this very special Japanese specialty. Here are some options I recommend: steamed mochi rice hand crushed and pound in a mortar, fresh mochi in grocery shops (not so easy to find in the city, easier in the countryside) but it doesn’t keep for long, kirimochi 切り餅, it is basically dried mochi that is very easy to use and keeps much longer and is nice for also making grilled mochi (if you want some let me know I can arrange shipment wherever you are, DM me on Instagram or Facebook). Some websites offers to make mochi with a mixer, but it seems that without a powerful one all you may do is burn your motor, so I wouldn’t actually recommend it. Some others propose to make it from mochi rice flour, I have never tried and I guess it is OK but it will lack the slightly granulous texture that you can have with pounded rice.

Once you have your mochi ready it is really easy to prepare in one of the many possible versions savory or sweet. If you use kirimochi you may need to return it to softness by simply putting in a pan cover with water and boil it a few minutes on both sides until tender. Today I introduce two recipes, one savory ozoni, in a version with only clear broth inspired by a picture I saw on Instagram, but reinterpreted, but you can also add white miso to it to make it more Kyoto-style! and one sweet kinako mochi, but there are many others. Actually one I love is mochi with soya sauce, very simple but so delicious and perfect as a side for a piece of grilled fish or with some vegetables.

Kinako mochi

  • soft mochi (if you use kirimochi it needs to be returned to softness)
  • kinako (torrefied soya bean powder)
  • brown sugar

I a bowl mix 4/1 kinako/sugar (for example 4tsp of kinako and 1tsp of sugar). Cut the mochi into bite sizes. Dip the mochi in water and roll in the kinako mix, set in a bowl. You can make as much as you want it is very easy to eat and really delicious!!! The picture below is what I made for two for a tea-time snack. There was about 8-10 small bites.

kinako mochi

Ozoni (without miso) (2 servings)

  • 500ml of dashi ( I use ichiban dashi (konbu & katsuo) but you can also do with konbu & shiitake dashi for a vegan version)
  • 2 pieces of kirimochi
  • 2 umeboshi
  • a few seasonal vegetables: 1 carrot, a few spinach leaves or 1 small bok choy…, 2 little turnips…
  • optional a zest of yuzu

In a pan, prepare the dashi. In another pan, return the kirimochi until soft. Prepare the vegetables (I used a cookie cutter to make the carrot in plum shapes). Cook them in the pan with the dashi, until just tender. In a bowl of your choice set the mochi, dress the vegetables, add the umeboshi, the yuzu peel and cover with the dashi. Enjoy while it’s hot.

Again send me a message on Instagram or Facebook if you want dashi, kinako or kirimochi.

The magic of the pain d’épices

A few weeks ago I started to think about how much I love the French gingerbread called pain d’épices, that I don’t recall seeing any in Japan and that I never made some… It is heavy in the hand, yet light when eaten, with a beautiful golden color and flavors and aromas that sparkle in the mouth, and the texture is a very melting one. One of my favorite pain d’ épices of all time is that of my horse ridding teacher. She has a gift not only for gardening but also for cooking sweets. In summer during intensive training camps, she would bake while we would play around with the horses, and make fruits charlottes with the fruits from the orchard. In the fall or winter she would make pain d’épices. I was so found of it that I remember asking her the recipe, and she told me she just mixes 1kg of flour with 1kg of honey. I was probably 12 when I asked but I still remember this recipe because it didn’t make sense for me at the time, honey and flour, that’s it, really??? and I never tried, too scared of wasting 1kg of honey!

But when I started to look at how to make pain d’épices how surprised was I to see that, this is indeed the recipe for classic pain d’épices from Reims. What I didn’t know then was that the mix, with spices added, should be kept days or weeks to start the fermentation that will guarantee the fluffiness. Last year I would probably have been very skeptical trying such an attempt, as I was not very sure how all this fermentation worked, but since I made my sourdough Lois I feel a lot more confident to do flour base fermentation. Finally, last week I decided to start the experiment and prepared a mix of 600g of flour and 600g of honey together, some said that adding the spices at that stage would increase the development of aromas, so I added them too. I left the preparation in a container under a lid the whole week at home (with the winter temperatures settling in, the house temperature is about 5 to 9 now, so no big risk of seeing things rotting, or mold developing!!!!) And today I just found my mixture, it hasn’t changed much but it is not looking bad at all so I prepared it and baked it. The result???

A perfect pain d’épices! The look, the color, the texture, the smell… Exactly as you would find on in France, a happy A. and a happy me, eaten it with a cup of Christmas tea at tea-time or for breakfast. We even used it for toasts with cheese for me and some pork paté for A. and we were very satisfied. The recipe is very simple and except for the one week wait it is very simple to make. Definitely a must do again one. This recipe is will become a new classic like my pompe a l’huile.

Pain d’ épices (1 big loaf or 2 smaller)

  • 600g of flour
  • 600g of pure honey (liquid is easier but creamy can work too)
  • 1tsp of ground cardamom
  • 1tsp of ground cloves
  • 2tsp of cinnamon
  • 1 ping pong size piece of fresh ginger, pealed, grated or chopped thinly (I use fresh ginger because it is easy to find and I just chopped it roughly but you may use ground ginger, then 1/2tsp should be good enough)
  • water
  • additional 1/2tsp of baking soda (if your rise time is short)

About 5days to two weeks before you want to bake your pain d’epices prepare the dough. For that, in a container with a lid mix the honey the flour and the spice. If your honey is really to creamy and hard too work you can melt it in a pan at very low heat to liquify it. Stir to incorporate all ingredients. I used a spatula to do that as the mix is way to sticky to put hands in. One everything is well incorporated put the lid on the container, and let rest for as long as you want, but at least a few days.

After a few days, the spices may have start to color the dough a bit but it may not have changed much otherwise. When you want to bake your pain d’epices, pre-heat your oven to 150deg, just add a little of tepid water to the mix to soften it and knead. The dough is sticky but not terribly sticky. If you think your rise time is rather short (just a few days), you may want to add a little of baking soda now, to ensure perfect fluffiness. Knead and add water to obtain a compact yet smooth dough. Using parchment paper set in a cake dish or split in two and make two, or more. And bake for about 2h if you make a big one (check with a knife or stick if the dough is well cooked inside), for 2 smaller, about 1h should be enough.

I made a very large one and baked about 2h at 150deg, but wasn’t sure it was perfectly baked so I finished with 10 min at 180deg just to be sure. Let cool down before cutting and eating.

Pain d’epices normally keeps well, this is tone he purpose of the original recipe. But in our house, we didn’t had time to see how long it can keep!!! We’ve eaten it in a snap!!!

Look at this beautiful color and perfectly dense but bubbly texture!!!

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