I was away for one week for work, in Krakow, Poland, with a very very intense schedule that gave me little time to do anything else but work. Hopefully, with the jet lag I woke up early enough to have breakfast out before work and test a few cafes (see instagram about that!). Now I an back in rainy Japan, and to my beloved kitchens. But no time to take a break with a mountain of work to do before Monday… so the rain is more than welcome… Kion (barking deers) are taking care of the garden, eating the fallen strawberry tree fruits, and the grass. The rest will have to wait for better days.
The first thing I did when I arrived in Tokyo was a quick refill of the fridge and to prepare myself something go eat (I usually don’t eat in the plane or very little). I was craving for a toast with emmental cheese, and an egg, and when I went shopping and saw this beautifully ripped mangos coming from Taiwan (which is much more “local” than those coming from Philippines or Mexico) I couldn’t help but starting to crave for a mango “lassi”, or rather a mango latte. I first discovered mango lassi 20years ago when we were in Berlin, eating at a Thai restaurant, and since then, I’ve prepared. Not proper ones, rather my way. The best recipe is super simple, 3 ingredients only, no added sugar and is the following.
Mango lassi (one large glass)
– 1/2 mango very ripe
– 4tbs of yogurt
– 100ml of milk
Peel the half mango without the seed, put all the ingredients in a blender, blend until smooth and serve!!!
Creamy and summer don’t necessarily get along well together I reckon, but it’s not like we’re in Europe and temperatures are very high for the moment in Japan. It’s still the rainy season and the “real” summer will only start in 2 weeks (hopefully not later!!). While in the meantime the summer vegetables and fruits are not to be seen everywhere: tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers, melons, peaches, apricots… So how resisting in preparing some summer dishes?
Two years ago I felt in love with malabar spinach and really starting preparing many last year. So when I started seeing some at the farmers market I was really happy. This year, at the Blind Donkey, I discovered korinky コリンキー, this summer pumpkin also called サラダカボチャ which can be eaten raw. I tested it in the potatoes and cucumber salad I served to my guests last Friday. But with still quite a bit to eat I decided to cook it and mash it roughly, to eat with pasta. And because once in a while I like to eat light creamy pasta, I added cream and malabar spinach to obtain a delicious topping. Below follows my recipe.
Enjoy the rainy season if your in Japan!
Raw korinky in salad
Korinky creamy pasta (for 2 servings)
– 1/2 korinky
– 4 branches of malabar spinach
– 150ml of cream 45
– salt and pepper
– 125g of pasta of your preference or gnocchi
While boiling pasta. Peel the korinky and remove the seeds. Steam. When sift enough mash roughly in a pan with a fork or a wooden spoon. Add cream, salt and pepper and mash again. Cook at low heat for five minutes. Wash the malabar spinach and chop roughly. Add to the mixture. Cook an other 5 minutes. The cream should reduce by half. Add the pasta drained to the mixture and stir well. Serve and eat immediately or wait until it has cooled down and eat at room temperature.
If there is one combination I love it’s potatoes and greens: green peas, green beans, broad beans… usually I would prepare them with new onions blanched and olive oil. Today I decided to try for new sauce, a lazy mayonnaise. Mayonnaise requires that you emulsion the oil, the egg yolk and the mustard together. It requires a lot of beating, and a lot of oil. A lighter and lazier option actually exists, and plus you use a whole egg so no wondering what to do with the remaining white. Here is my recipe. I hope you’ll enjoy it.
Oh! We’ve also eaten up all the potatoes I’ve harvested last week. I’ll harvest some more tomorrow if the weather is not as bad as today… so there’s gonna be potatoes recipe coming again very likely…
Potatoes, green beans and lazy mayonnaise
– 3 new potatoes (billiard ball size) per person if a main dish, less if a side
– a handful of green beans
– 1 egg
– 2tsp of mustard
– olive oil
– pepper
Wash the vegetables. Boil the potatoes until just soft. Boil the egg for 6min. Blanche the green beans. Peel the egg.
In a bowl, crush the egg, the mustard and the oil until the mixture is creamy. It’s ok if the white is roughly crushed. Dressing is ready!
Cut the potatoes in four, cut the bean in two if they are long. Add the dressing, stir well and it’s all ready. It warm, at room temperature or refrigerated.
That is not much of a recipe I reckon!!! Who needs a cook book to make sautéed new potatoes honestly??? But in the meantime, as I cook to enjoy the ingredients I have around me and to sustain our bodies, not just to make pictures on instagram, I believed it was cheating not to mention sautéed new potatoes as they are one of my favorite ways of eating new potatoes, even though I prefer them tiny tiny, but I failed in growing my potatoes properly for that.
To twist them just a bit I added green sweet pepper or shishito -シシトウ in Japanese. And because I didn’t have much, I served them with scrambled eggs. It could be breakfast, lunch or dinner, you have the choice!
Tonight we have guests at home so I not sure I’ll have a new recipe for you, but I’ll for sure serve some of my kitchen garden potatoes!!!
Continuing the week with a recipe that this time uses only purple ratte potatoes, that is simple, delicious and beautiful: a cold creamy soup.
All you need is a few purple potatoes, some fresh cream or milk, salt and pepper. Yes! That’s the only ingredients in my recipe.
Cold potatoes soup
– 3 purple ratte potatoes (vitellote)
– 150ml of cream or cream
– salt and pepper
Wash the potatoes and boil them until very soft (actually if you do it a couple of hours before it is even better as the potatoes will cool down naturally and you won’t have to cool them under excessive water or in the fridge!).
Blend the potatoes with 300ml the cooking water, or just water, add the cream or milk, blend again. If too thick add a bit of water and blend again. Repeat until it has a creamy texture. Serve, top with salt and pepper.
There are recipe stories that are longer than others and that reflect how “agile” I manage my cooking!!! Last week I was telling you how much I love new onions and that you will see more recipes with them because I had in mind to prepare some ravioli filled with new onion. Everything was clear in my head and I knew exactly what I wanted to do. Sunday late afternoon taking a break from work I went to my kitchen to prepare the pasta dough. Not the classic one, my ravioli would be infused with Japanese flavors. So I made a soya sauce pasta base. Then I started thinking of the filling and boiled a potato to smooth the filling that would consist in chopped new onion slightly cooked in a pan with katsuobushi flakes. And while the potato was boiling I went back to work and worked worked worked, with our new stray cat all cuddled on my laps… and I forgot the potato, time and preparing dinner. At almost 21:00 A. reminded me that we should actually go back to Tokyo… oups… nothing was ready and it was too late to start making ravioli. So we ate the potato, I packed my pasta dough, my new onions and we drove back to the city.
Monday night I came back home around 22:00 and it was really not a descent hour to make ravioli… I knew it… so I decided to roll my pasta manually and make tagliatelle and use the onion just as a topping. The result was so awesome that I am now thinking of making it a new entry to the Soya sauce contest…
Here is what I did:
Soya sauce pasta
– 1egg
– 120g of flour
– 3tbs of soya sauce
– 1 new onion
– 2-3 shiitake
In a bowl knead the flour, soya sauce and egg together to make the pasta dough. Keep for 1h.
Roll the pasta, and make tagliatelle.
Wash the vegetables and slice them. In a pan greased with a bit of oil, throw the vegetables and cook at low heat. Boil the pasta and drain them. Add to the vegetables, stir well, serve and eat immediately. You can add a bit of grilled pork to the vegetables…
Spring and fall are the perfect seasons for hiking in Japan. The temperatures are just right not to get a sweat but not to freeze or die of over heat, bugs are fewer and either the flowers and tender greens, or the crimson colors of fall make a picturesque scenery. There are plenty of options to go hiking in Chiba and I won’t overview them here. There are few things I take in consideration when searching for a hike: the path needs to mainly be a non drivable road. What’s the point walking on the road side?? The path should be a loop or as much as possible not use twice the same route. There are very few hiking trail in Isumi to my knowledge, and one of our favorite is now impracticable as bamboos grew all over the path. So our favorite options are in Otaki and Katsuura. We’ve been to Yorokeikoku 養老渓谷 in the fall many times, for the maple trees, the monkeys… and for the spring we could never find something that was satisfying. I usually like the sight of the ocean in the spring as a remembrance that the swimming and bodyboarding season will start soon for me (though some people surf all year round, I find it hard to get in the water when it’s freezing cold outside). Actually Katsuura, about 20-30min drive south of Isumi, has quite a few hiking options, and this time we found a scenic short hike I thought was really worth mentioning.
South of Katsuura is the small town Ubara 鵜原 mainly a fishing port and a nice little hike called Ubara utopia 鵜原理想郷 that takes you up the hills with a stunning view of the ocean and the cliffs and down the beaches and tiny fishing harbors in coves.
The hike is rather short, count 1h maximum, but is really worth. It takes you through tunnels carved in the very soft rocks and going up and downs in a beautiful vegetation and to scenic views. Everything is very well indicated so no headache about which way to go, and the parking space at the starting point is large enough and easy to find (other parking options are also possible on the beach side). We came by scooter so it was even easier for us to park.
If you plan to come for the weekend, there is a small ryokan just at the beginning of the hike: Ubarakan 鵜原館 which seems to have a nice rotenburo (outdoor bath) and a few bathes in the carved stone caves and room with ocean view!!! We haven’t tried it yet so I have no idea how good it is…
Starting point of the hike
On top of one of the cliffs
After the hike we rode back home and it was time for tea and a little snack, so I decided to make one-bite scones. I am recently testing a new scone recipe and I think now I have the perfect balance to share with you. And with all the spring greens around I prepared a seasonal classic: macha white chocolate. Here is this version but it works with anything.
Scones
– 150g of flour
– 30-40g of sugar (depending on what you use for flavoring, for white chocolate use 30)
– 1tsp of baking powder
– a pinch of salt
– 40g of butter at room temperature
– milk (quantity will slightly depend)
– 2tsp of macha powder
– 2 handfuls of white chocolate chips
In a bowl mix the flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, add the butter and knead to mix everything together. Add the milk slowly while kneading. If you want a uniform green color add macha now, otherwise wait until the end. Stop adding milk when the dough is moist but not sticky. If you’ve added to much milk just add a bit of flour!!!
I wanted a non uniform green color so I added the macha at the end and the white chocolate. Shape the scones and bake at 180deg for 10-15min depending on the size of your scones.
As soon as the first new onions appear I have to cook some! The season just started and will last a few weeks, hopefully 6 or 10, and you will see a lot of new onion recipes, even maybe a whole week if work give me the time to post that often. New onions are soft, melting in the mouth, with a very sweet taste. Incomparable and inimitable. I love to cook them in spring vegetables mix, in Japanese style, in quiche… But to start simply, I used my new onions in a simply pasta sauce together with ashitaba. I simply remove the external layer, cut in quarters and cook in a bit of olive oil. Add chopped fresh ashitaba, add some more olive oil, salt and pepper and serve with pasta. Top or not with fresh Parmigiano. Wasn’t that recipe too simple?
It is really not something that I cook often… maybe it’s been 5 or 10 years since I last baked a proper chocolate cake… Usually for A.’s birthday I bake a strawberry tart but as I already baked one two weeks ago, I decided to surprise him with very very rich brownies. So for the first time in a while I went through the recipe without actually reducing the amount of sugar or butter. I chose a recipe that was using cocoa powder as it is easier to find organic cocoa powder rather than delicious chocolate to cook here in Japan. The result was a nice piece of brownies, but you know what, I thought they would be even richer (may be the baking powder was too powerful, or it could be my oven that bakes too quick and I slightly overcooked it, or using cocoa powder rather than creamy melted chocolate…)… I topped them with a sugar and cocoa frosting. A. was really happy with the surprise cake, and it was even better the following day.
So the recipe went that way:
Chocolate brownies
– 2 eggs
– 1/2 cup of flour
– 1/2 cup of melted butter
– 1 cup of sugar
– 1/3 cup of cocoa powder
– 1/4 tsp of baking powder
– 1/4 tsp of salt
– vanilla
Melt the butter in a large pan. Off the heat, add the sugar, the eggs, the vanilla. Stir and add the cocoa, the flour, salt and baking powder. Pour in a greased rectangular pie dish or squared pan.
Bake at 170 for 25min.
For the frosting I used cocoa powder, confectioner’s sugar (ice sugar) and a bit of water, to obtain a kind of cream. I spread on the cake while it is still hot, it helps a lot, and let cool down before removing from the pan.
