Category: Vegan

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.

Vegan patties and cumin baby spinach

I got a nice bunch of fresh baby spinach at the farmers market and wasn’t sure about what to do about it. A salad of course, but lately evenings have been chilly and I wanted to eat something warm. Yet not completly ruined them: like in a tart or in an omelet. So I just washed them and steam them for a few minutes, add some cumin piwder and cumin seeds, that’s it!  I served it with some ripe and sweet tomatoes diced and some grilled cereals patties. Here I use a vegan burger mix. I usually don’t use these kind of products and I should work on my own mix but really this vegan burger mix, slightly spicy is really good, I just don’t look at what are the ingredients inside for once!!

I didn’t use any seasoning with the tomatoes because they are ripe, juicy and swwet, just on the side a bit of curcuma powder and salt and pepper.

Vegan pizza

Rucola instaneously makes feel like eating a pizza, so I prepared a dough and a vegan pizza with just one fresh new onion, 3 fresh tomatoes and plenty of fresh little rucola. A slightly different version of last year vegan, the new onions bringing some creamy texture, perfect with the crisp of the fough. (http://www.tokyoparissisters.com/4hands/2015/4/27/yudgf7c5merf96p9hv0l2f4ajirwid), nonetheless delicious.

An other dinner at home

What to cook for your friends visiting Japan when you are back from work past 21:00 and everyone is starving? A soba salad with spring veggies of course!!! Spring veggies: asparagus, snap peas, green peas, are very easy to prepare and require very little cooking, just blanching them for 2min. Soba are also quick to cook, so in 15min I can have a dinner plate ready for 4 people. To the spring veggies I’ve added some cucumbers and a bit of brocoli sprout, as for the dressing, I mixed a bit of soy sauce with vegetal oil and just add a bit to prevent the soba for getting too sticky. You can also top the plate with some Japanese salmon, shredded nori…

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!

Asparagus risotto

Yes! Spring is here for sure and aspargus start to be seen on the market stands. Nothing simpler and more classic then an asparagus risotto, and still so delicious, I never miss to make one. I used a new onion for the base, for sweetness and melty texture, that I chopped roughly and slightly cook in olive oil. Then I added the rice, and rolled it in the oil until almost golden. Finally added water or vegetables bouillon if you have one. Once almost all the water has been absorbed by the rice, I added the asparagus chopped. And cooked until bright and shiny green to keep then perfectly crunchy. Served right away.

Radish top soup

Super fresh radish with beautiful green tops call for a simple vegan soup, simply boiling and then blending the tops in water, adding salt pepper and soya milk. Ready and delicious. 

Quinoa soup

What if suddenly the temperature drops again and it feels like winter again?
Nothing as simple as a making a quinoa soup! I’ve spotted the recipe the very first time I was browsing my vegetarian cookbook received for Xmas, and didn’t had a chance to make it before: no quinoa, not the proper veggies, to warm… But last night was perfect. The recipe is extremely simple, and it takes very little time to prepare because quinoa cooks really quick, so that makes a perfect option for days at work. Of course I slightly changed the original recipe because I didn’t have potatoes and i found anyway that potatoes+quinoa was a little to much, so I replaced the potatoes by lotus root. 
For this quinoa soup for a full dinner for 2 you need: 90g of quinoa; 1 tomato; 1 little leek or half onion; a handful of fresh spinach; 2 potatoes or the equivalent of lotus root; salt, pepper.
In a pan heat a bit of oil, chop the onion or the leek and throw them in the pan, add the tomato diced, then the spinach washed and roughly cut and finally the potato or lotus root, cut in big chunks. Finish with the quinoa. add water to cover the whole ingredients and add an other 2cm. Add a bit of salt and pepper, and cook for 20min under cover.
Serve while hot. I thought about adding an egg at the end of the cooking, but then realized that it was already well enough energetic, so finally didn’t.

Saturday alone in Tokyo = soup day

A. had a company outing so I spent part of the week end alone in Tokyo. A cold and grey weekend so I went only for a long walk, did some shopping and took the opportunity to prepare our apartment for the arrival of a new sofa in our living room, just the third one!!! I also add a party with students and former students, but usually I just have one drink a these kind of parties and don’t touch the food. I found it was a perfect time to have a little monodiet for the day and made some super simple fresh veggies soup with one leek and three little carrots diced thinely and only boiled in water (no stock, no broth, nothing) to which I added, for the energy, a few little Sicilian pasta. Just added a bit of thyme and a drop of olive oil. It was both lunch and dinner and After eating out so often it was perfect!!!

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