Category: Vegan

Bamboo shoot

The short season of this delicious and subtle vegetable has started and it’s time to enjoy it now!!! Usually I would only cook it on the weekend because it requires a very long boiling, but thanks to telework this is something I can cook any day now! That’s the one good thing of working from home! Though with my new rythme since January I was already able to prepare recipes that require a longer cooking time, now I can take it to the next level: bread, Japanese brown rice, slow cooking, and bamboo shoots!!!

To celebrate that I came up with a new recipe: sautéed bamboo shoots and potatoes with olive oil and sansho. Sansho and bamboo shoot are a Japanese classic assortment, olive oil and potatoes more of a south-east French one. I mixed the two ideas. After boiling your bamboo shoot until tender, slice it. Boil a few potatoes, cut them and toss them in a pan with olive oil. Add the bamboo shoot slices and cook at high heat while stirring gently once in a while. Add a bit of salt, serve and top with fresh sansho leaves. Enjoy spring in your plate!!!
If you don’t have sansho you can use katsuobushi flakes… that’s also a great match to both potatoes and bamboo shoots!
Have a great day!

Magic ingredients

While many places in the world now have braced for the virus impact, life in Japan has been pretty good and simple for what concerns me. I can totally live without attraction parks, without stadiums, and for a certain extent without concert halls, jazz bars etc… I barely go shopping as well… So, so far, except for a few days a week of remote work for A. things haven’t changed much for me. Of course, there has been a lot of fuss with foreign students supposed to come to the lab and local students to go abroad, but once I realized the situation was way to dynamic to make plans I just decided to take it easy and try to minimize the impact to the student and our activities, and because this is the spring break I have no teaching for the moment and fewer students in the lab. We’ll see how things turn out in April with the new term… Well, in the meantime many friends in many countries are now fully locked down, and that’s for them that I am making this post today. Among all products they could have at home or needed to pack I recommend flour. I bake a lot so I almost always have 5kg of flour at least at home if not 20 (I buy it on internet in 5kg bags). Flour and water are two ingredients that can make magic when you’re in short supply of everything else and work even better if you have a bit of time!

With these two sole ingredients you can make a dough for vegan pasta, dumpling skin, ravioli skin, biscuits, flat breads, batter for tempura, you can even make sourdough… once you have sourdough you can make bread… If you have a bit of baking powder, add it to water and flour and make pancakes… If it’s olive oil you can make a dough for a quiche or simple crackers… if it’s butter how about baking sablés and cookies… if you have both sourdough and olive oil a focaccia or a fougasse. With an egg even better pasta! Oh! If you have milk with the egg, crepes, add a bit of sugar and you have a clafoutis or a far… and I am sure I am missing quite a lot of things we can do with these simple ingredients… such as boiling potatoes and making gnocchi!

So wear your nicest apron and rush to the kitchen!!! I must admit that I’m a bit envious of those locked down now, as for us life is just business as usual… if I were stuck at home for a few days I would so much enjoy myself with all the things I don’t have time for!!!

The last kabocha

While spring is definitely in the air, and I am craving for spring greens which are not yet quite there (the one available come from the far away south of Japan), I was thinking that before entering that green season, eating a last kabocha would be great. Indeed since December I cooked cauliflowers, romanescos, broccolis, and many carrots and sweet potatoes and shiitake as well, but no kabocha. So before the season ends I decided to take that last opportunity to eat some. I use kabocha in many places: pot of vegetables, curry rice…

Grilled kabocha with curry-rice

There are two things I really love, at least, and I wanted to prepare with kabocha. One was kabocha pasta, the other is sui gyoza with kabocha. But I made a variation of the recipe I proposed in December, a vegan version. And it was so delicious that I can’t wait to share this new ultra simple recipe!!!

Super easy kabocha pasta (1 serving)

– 60g of dry penne

– 100g of kabocha (a 3cm thick slice)

– a little handful of nuts (I use a mix of almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts, cashews, pecan) so it’s basically 2-3 of each

– a flavorful olive oil

– salt and pepper

Start boiling the pasta, in the meantime wash and cut the kabocha. 4min before the pasta are ready add the kabocha. When pasta are cooked drain well. In the pan used to boil the pasta start roasting the nuts and crush them roughly.

Add olive oil generously and put back the drained pasta and kabocha. Stir well to have an homogeneous mix and add salt and pepper. Serve immediately and eat. Delicious also prepared in advance and re-heat in the pan until the nuts and kabocha caramelize a bit…

That’s it!!!

Over excited…

not about the fuss about this damn virus, nor about my duty as exam supervisor at the university entrance exams… but there are many things going on around me that have gotten me very excited recently. First, spring is coming and with it the new greens are on their way for sure. Then, it is time to start preparing seeds for the kitchen garden. The potatoes are on their way, sprouting, and I have started to prepare the kitchen garden soil. Now, I need to see what I will grow this year, with the lessons learnt last year: fennel, beat, peas, chick peas…

After a long pause in my sewing activities I am back at it, and discovered mistakes I made in my last yukata so now fixing them to have it ready for the warm days. I am thinking of sewing a obi myself this time, but right now with the stupid virus, I still prefer not to see my 89yo teacher.

Last year we started to use bamboo we cut with our neighbors, and I really loved it. This year A. has decided to take it to the next level. Equipped with a bamboo cutter, we are now making our own slats and then the possibilities have expended. We have started with a simple fence…

OK! All this may not be too exciting for most people but for me it is! Spending the day outside cutting, sawing, arranging the slats… was really fun and I can’t wait to do the other fences!!!

I got excited last night when after a few days if minimal cooking I finally decided to do something for our dinner: the spicy noodles soup I made for myself sometime ago and that A. hadn’t had a chance to try.

I replaced in the former recipe the coriander seeds by some fresh coriander as they start selling some at the farmers market and I made the noodles with 120g of flour for the two of us. And I had a bit of broccoli I wanted to use so I cut it in small bites. That was a big success and A. liked it as much as I did!

Oh… and there’s a final reason I am quite excited… it’s our forthcoming moving… more coming soon about that… but this is one of the thing on top of work that has kept me pretty busy!!! And now it’s getting real!

Why I love Instagram… inspiration…

There are few social media I really like or use… I joined facebook a longtime ago to try and as an alternative to my first blog, but never get too convinced except that my professional community is very active there and it helps to get the hot news quickly… Twitter never attracted me, and I only created an account when forced at work as part of my role of publicity committee member… this account is now closed… Pinterest was great when we were refurbishing our house to make idea boards… until the next house (maybe sooner than I think!) I probably won’t use it anymore… The rest… not even tried… my bad… but only Instagram won my heart and I have a steady instagrammer for now a little more than 7 years. Posting 1 picture a day has been my routine since I opened my account. But more than sharing my daily life and food recipes, it has been a tremendous source of inspiration. I love to browse the pictures of seasonal food that echoed to what I have in my fridge or in the garden; from the picture to guess how it could prepared, or plated and how I could recreate or adjust it to our liking… sometimes it just creates a craving… seeing 3 or 4 pictures in a row of beautifully golden quiche, or replete ravioli and dinner is all decided! Sometimes it takes more time to mature and after I thought it over for a few days I test something… That’s how I tested handkerchief pasta, stuffed bread etc…

Yesterday while going to work, after my usual morning post I was scrolling down my IG feed and got captured by a sweet potato and coconut milk soup (don’t ask me which account… I can’t remember :()… and miracle, I just had a large sweet potato waiting to be cooked in the very bottom of my fridge and bought coconut cream the day before… stars were aligned! So what did I do when I came home last night????

I prepared a fragrant sweet potato soup, and here is the recipe, perfect for a cold day like we have right now in Tokyo.

Sweet potato & coconut fragrant soup (for two, as main dish)

– a large sweet potato

– 200ml of coconut cream

– a large pinch of salt

– 1tsp of turmeric

– 1/2tsp of chili powder

– 1/2tsp of ground black pepper

Peel and boil until very mushy the sweet potato in enough water. Add salt. In a blender add the potato and cover with the cooking water. Blend. Add the coconut cream and blend. If too thick add more of the cooking water. Move to a large pan, heat again and add the spices. Serve very very warm.

How do you get your inspiration for your new recipes? Does a picture only inspires you like me? Or do you prefer a full story/recipe?

Has anyone tested Feedpost or is a user??? I just realized and was surprised they ranked In Gentiane’s kitchen in their ranking of top 100 home cooking blogs!!! And I was wondering if I should also use it for further inspiration…

Noodles

Last time I made gyoza A. complained because I didn’t make the wrappers. And I totally agreed with him. The homemade ones are thiner, tastier and so simple to make that I kind of felt a bit ashamed of it… When I cook in the evening on week days I usually like to prepare things I am sure about and won’t mess because I am too busy to mess. So I felt I needed to practice dough making.

What does it have to do with noodles???

Well the gyoza wrappers and the noodles I made are basically the same recipe: flour and water… and it takes literally 5min to make the dough for each. And for the noodles just 2min to roll and cut them. Perfect to enhance a simple vegetables soup! So here is my recipe for a quick, simple, energizing and warming soup.

Noodles soup (1 serving)

– 1 carrot

– 1 leek

– a pinch of turmeric

– a pinch of chilly pepper

– 4-5 coriander seeds

– a pinch of sesame seeds

– a pinch of salt

– a bit of ground pepper

– 40g of flour

– water

In a pan with 500ml of water, add the carrot and leek cut in the shape you like. Add the spices and condiments. Bring to a boil. And keep boiling at low heat under cover.

In a small bowl mix the flour with a little of water to obtain a soft dough, silky not sticky. Knead a bit. Roll with a pin onto a floured top to a flat 1mm or less sheet. Cut 5mm wide noodles, add to the soup and boil while sometimes stirring for 5min.

Serve and eat while hot!!!

Have a good weekend!

Indian cooking

A while ago, one of my former student from India offered me a set of Indian spices… It took me a while to know what to do, and finally, upon recommendation of a Canadian friend who cooked for me an amazing Indian curry some years ago, I asked for Vij’s at Home: Relax, Honey: The Warmth and Ease of Indian Cooking as a xmas present. I browsed it several times, looking for inspiration, and was overwhelmed by the abundance of recipes I wanted to test, not knowing where to start. But when I saw beautiful cauliflowers at the farmers market on Saturday, I remembered that cauliflower recipe I saw and rush for one. We are lucky that in Chiba they also grow tomatoes that in winter are perfect for tomato sauce: large, very ripe and sweet.

So back home in front of the pantry full of bins with so many spices I don’t know about yet… I started to cook following the recipe, more or less… oups I don’t have coriander seeds… nor fresh ginger…

So here is my version of Vij’s cauliflower steak, that I served with Japanese rice, like a vegetable curry-rice. It was super delicious, so I imagine that with the two missing ingredients it is probably even better… but now who cares!

Spicy cauliflower (for 2)

– 1/2 cauliflower

– 1 large ripe tomato

– 1/2tsp of salt

– 1/2tsp of ground tumeric

– 1/2tsp of ground chilly pepper

– 1tsp of ground cumin

– 4 cloves

– 1 stick of cinnamon

– a bit of oil (I used olive oil and rice oil)

In a bit of oil I first reduce the tomato to tomato sauce. Then add all the other ingredients but the cauliflower and stir well. When it’s all creamy, I add the cauliflower cut in 4 pieces. Cook at low heat under cover until tender but not mushy.

Serve and eat immediately!!!

Steamed gyoza – 水餃子

As I was saying in my previous post, I’m a big fan of dumplings of all kind. But recently I have a crush for sui gyoza-水餃子 which are simply steamed gyoza. And because I want to make some more often, last time we went to Kappabashi (to buy bowls for my sister xmas present) A. offered me a set of bamboo steamers: two levels, that would allow preparing dinner for two in one batch. And I have been longing to test them. It’s been three weeks now that I have been on my new schedule but as A. was traveling last week, I waited for him to come back. So finally I did make steamed gyoza, and tested my new bamboo steamer. Well, it’s super easy to use and works very well, and it gives a slightly fancier look to the table to serve the gyoza directly in. It also keeps them warm. I am not a fan of cooking goodies at all and have very very few (a blender, a pasta machine, a mandoline, and two bamboo steamers) but I must admit that those steamers are not just goodies, they are actually perfect. Not only the are made just of bamboo, but they adjust easily on a pan and work like charms. Well, of course if you make steamed food only once in a while and steam in small quantities you don’t need one and a foldable stainless steamer is surely enough, but I am planning to make a lot more often sui gyoza with all the seasonal vegetables, so it is worth the investment and the space it takes. So back to sui gyoza, I opted for sweet potato for some, and shiitake/carrot for the others. A great winter vegetables option. Here is my recipe for 20 pieces.

Vegetables sui gyoza

– 20 pieces of gyoza skin ( making your own is so much better, I’ll share this next time!)

– 1/2 sweet potato

– 4 carrots

– 1 large shiitake

– soya sauce

Steam and purée the sweet potato. Add a bit of soya sauce. Keep.

Boil the carrots and puree. Dice thinly the shiitake and add to the puree.

Fill each skin with a tea spoon of filling and close tightly.

Cut kitchen paper to the steamer inner diameter and set in the bottom of each layer. Steam for 10-15 min or until the skin is translucent. Serve.

Artichokes

One of the food I miss much in Japan as you already know, is artichoke. For some reason it is something that reminds me my childhood. From the simply boiled large ones that one of my grand mother would prepare to eat one leave after the other dipped in mustard vinaigrette, or the tiny purple artichokes barigoule of my mother or a recipe from my other grand mother “greek style artichokes” I love them all. When we lived in Paris I used to prepare some quite often and the greek style artichokes were always a good pick for casual dinners. When we go back home, my mother always prepare artichokes for me, usually for the very first day when we arrive, since they can be made in advance, and they are very good warm or cold it means lunch or dinner is always ready for us to eat anytime. Yesterday for a family lunch she made artichokes greek style. I thought I’d share that recipe today.

Artichoke greek style (for 2)

– 10 large artichokes (in worst case artichokes heart preserves)

– 10 bell onions

– 1 tbs of coriander seeds

– 2 leaves of laurel

– a branch of thyme

– 3 tbs of olive oil

– 3tbs of white wine (optional)

Boil the artichokes and extract the hearts.

Clean the bell onion by peeling one layer.

In a large pan put the olive oil, the wine, the artichokes hearts, the onions, the coriander, thyme, laurel. Add just a bit of salt and pepper, cover with water and cook at low heat under cover for 40min.

Perfect eaten with fresh rustic bread to enjoy all the delicious juice.

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