Apricot tartelets

Well, I had in mind to finish this zucchini week with a vegan zucchini tart but the weather has been playing against me, it’s the rainy season here in Japan and this year we had very few rain until this week. It’s been raining or rather pouring for the last 5 days so I have trouble finding vegetables at my local shops. On top of that we’ve decided to spend the week-end in Tokyo (museum frenzy and shopping spree) so no local farmers product from Isumi neither. All this to say that I’ve ran out of zucchini without even noticing! So instead of zucchini tart it’s gonna be apricot tart (luckily found some beautiful apricots from Nagano prefecture).

A simple homemade sable dough, an almond puree and vanilla custard, topped with fresh apricots, and blackberry all baked in the oven for 20min. Et voila!

For the zucchini tart, I hope next week I’ll find all I need to prepare it and give you my recipe! Have a nice Sunday!

Vegetarian stuffed zucchini

Here is an other recipe of stuffed zucchini, but vegetarian this time. For me it’s a classic because my mother has been preparing it for decades and I find this recipe perfect for hot summer days. In her original recipe my mother was using “brousse” or “bruccio” a white fresh cheese from the south of France or from Corsica, since I cannot find easily this cheese in Japan I replaced It by ricotta and it works very well. This recipe is lovely also in small round zucchini, but I couldn’t find any today.

The stuffing is really simple: it’s a mix of ricotta cheese, egg, fresh mint, salt and pepper. Stir the ricotta with an egg, chop the mint and add it to the mixture, season with salt and pepper, stir well. Cut the zucchini, remove a little of the seeds, stuff with the mixture. Line the zucchini in an oven dish and bake at 180deg untill the top is golden. Eat warm or cold. 

It is perfect as starter or to accompany a main dish. Here I served it for dinner in a one-plate with a little omelet, home-made pancakes and greens. 

One-bowl with yellow vegetables

Yellow zucchini again, this time in a yellow combination with yellow sweet pepper and curry, served here with rice and curry meat balls. Again it starts with cutting in small pieces the zucchini, in thin slices the sweet pepper, and having them sauteed in a bit of olive oil at low eat to cook well without frying. Then adding a bit of curry powder to the whole, salt and pepper. The rice is Japanese rice cooked Japanese style. I served it with curry-flavored pork meat balls that are totally optional. An other simple way to prepare zucchinis, with a twisted oriental taste.

My grand-mother stuffed zucchini’s recipe

My grand mother had this wonderful way of making “farcis provencaux” or Provence style stuffed vegetables. This is a traditional summer preparation using the best of summer vegetables, stuffed with meat. Among the vegetables is the zucchini of course, and with it my grand mother would prepare tomatoes, potatoes and onions. What made hers special is the stuffing. Where a lot of people use sausage meat or just plain minced pork meat, my grand mother used a lot of more delicious things, and always non fatty meat: her stuffing is composed of grilled pork filet left over, ham, boneless pork cutlet… all minced together, and then she would add greens (see on the picture how green is the stuffing): tons of fresh parsley, the big green leaves of a lettuce, and finish with one egg, a bit of gratted gruyere, salt and pepper. Actually this base can also be used for cannelloni and hachis parmentier, two other preparations she was masterizing. I’ve seen her preparing that many times, she tought me and I’ve helped her many times too, but I can never reach that taste her stuffing for farcis had. But I keep trying. So this time I prepared stuffed zucchini, actually, usually she would use long zucchini, but I found these lovely round zucchini anc decided to try again, this won’t affect much the taste of the stuffing. So once the suffing is ready you just need to remove the seeds of the zucchini and stuff them, bake them in the oven for at least 90min. Farcis can be eaten hot or cold, you can keep them about 2 or 3 days in the fridge, and are always better the days after being cooked! Enjoy!

Just out the oven
Just out the oven

Buckwheat pancake and vegetables

This recipe with zucchini was invented on the spot. I wanted to eat my yellow zucchini with some green beans and purple asparagus, but didn’t want to eat pasta or risotto, so I prepared a batter with buckwheat flour, baking powder, salt, 2 eggs and water (makes two large pancake). In a pan I sauteed in olive oil the green beans, the yellow zucchini cut in small pieces, and the purple asparagus, then I baked it in a small greased pan at low eat the batter and topped it right away with the vegetables and baked only on one side under cover. The vegetables sink a bit in the dough and it resembles something in between a crepe, a pizza and an omelet. I topped it when done with a bit of salt and olive oil. Simply delicious!

Zucchini cold soup

Zucchni are delicious in soup hot or cold. In summer I prepare a cold soup with mint. For two I just boil a large zucchini with the skin (the skin gives a nicer color to the soup and it is full of nutriments, but only do that if you know your vegetables are grown without chemicals or organic). Then I smash the boiled zucchini with a fork until it looks like a puree (you can blend it too), add chopped fresh mint leaves, salt, pepper and olive oil. For a creamy taste you can add some greek style yogurt or some fromage blancBut I usually don’t. Keep in the fridge before serving with freshly grinded pepper and mint leaves. 

Zucchini week!

Summer is here and so is the zucchini season. In the first few years we were living in Tokyo I found that it was not easy to find nice zucchini in Tokyo but then I realized that if in supermarket you have pretty much always the same little zucchini in local farmers market and in the country it’s much easier to find some delicious ones. It started with our friend living in Niigata prefecture and growing their own delicious zucchini, then in Ohara, and now in Koganei. The day before yesterday at Koganei local farmers market (Friday evening at Higashi Koganei station, but I am not sure if it’s every Friday because I usually leave work after the shops have closed) I found beautiful round zucchini yellow and green. The season is short, so we’re eating zucchini almost every day now! (Too bad they don’t sell small zucchini with the flowers, but rather large zucchini) And when it’s not zucchini it’s green beans, since it’s the right season now in Tokyo and around too. 

There are plenty of ways to prepare zucchini and one can never get tired of them. They are nice with rosemary, thyme, basil, mint, curry, roasted, fried, sautéed, stuffed or just steamed. So this week let me introduce a few of my favorite recipes new and classic using zucchini. I hope you like them as much as I do, and if you don’t try s few of my recipes, you may start to like them!

Sunday morning breakfast

The week-end was supposed to be all rainy so I had in mind to do a lot of cooking but in the end it’s a beautiful sunny day ahead!
For breakfast I wanted something new to try, and since I bought nice ham and free range eggs, I’ve been thinking about English muffins. I love English muffins, but until now I’ve only bought processed ones. So it was time to give it a try. When cooking British (scones, crumpets…) the BBC website is always my best resource and I found there a recipe for English muffins. It is incredibly simple and the result is just stunning!

Of course I had to adjust a bit the recipe to my taste and the available ingredients in my cupboard. So I changed the white flour for whole wheat flour, and prepared without the finish with semolina. The recipe is vegetarian: milk-egg-butter are needed. I love the fact that it is baked on a hot plate or in a pan, in summer I like not to have to lit the oven. The preparation is also quite quick because it needs only 1h proving and 30min rest. So basically in 2h you can have your muffins ready. For breakfast I served them with egg and ham, or butter and jam but there are so many ways to serve them! And to complete a fresh fruit salad with seasonal fruits. The perfect start for a Sunday in the garden trimming trees.

Recipe:
– 300g of whole wheat flour
– 6g of instant yeast
– 6g of salt
-1 egg
– 15g of butter
– 15g of brown sugar
– 150ml of milk
– a little bit of oil
In a bowl set the flour, and in the middle the yeast, the sugar, the milk, the egg, the salt and the butter. Knead until soft and smooth. Move the dough in an oiled bowl and leave for prove for 1h. When the dough has doubled volume, of a dusted surface roll-out the dough on a 2cm thick rectangle. with a 8cm to 11cm circle cut-out the muffins and leave for prove an other 30 min. Pre-heat a hot plate or a pan at very low heat and set the muffin, bake until golden (5~7min) and flip on the other side and bake again until golden. It’s ready to eat!

Flounder and veggies sauteed with basil

There was again nice fresh flounder for sashimi at the market, so I decided to pick one piece for our weekly big animal proteine source. Indeed, most of the time I only shop meat and fish at our local farmers in Ohara and none in Tokyo, where we eat mainly vegetarian or vegan except for some San Daniele prosciuto or some pancetta and bacon. With such a beautiful filet of flounder I only wanted to have it sauted in a bit of olive oil and served with fresh vegetables sauted too. Just a few new potatoes, green peas, purple asparagus, mini tomatoes seasonned with a few fresh basil leaves chopped. And finished with salt and olive oil. A table!

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