Fresh home-made food every day
As spring fades away and summer approaches (and with it the rainy season) I’ve started to prepare a lot more dishes that look like ratatouille or at least that use the vegetables of the ratatouille.
I prepared a sauted dish in olive oil of new onion, paprika, zucchini and tomatoes, added some dices tofu and topped it with some fresh cresson and a mix of linen, poppy, sesame seeds. Very fresh, the vegetables don’t need to be cooked long, so this can be ready in no time.
Super busy with work, finishing late every day and trying to still watch one movie every night, the one-plate dinner is really handy. I am also finishing the last spring vegetables as we’re moving towards summer, so I had a few new carrots and new onions to use. I like to prepare carrots with cumin and find it suits also very well chick peas. I was about to add some chick peas to the carrots and onions that I cooked rapidly in olive oil and finished them in their own steam, to prepare some kind of raggu when I remember having a pack of vegan fallafel mix waiting on the shelf for months. Yes, I sometime buy vegan burger mix and vegan fallafel mix but if I don’t use them right away, I usually forget them prefering fresh food or making my own mix. So I decided to use that poor mix, but instead of making real fallafel I used the mix to make some kind of grilled chick pea croquettes to serve with the vegetables. Nothing too fancy but delicious!
My experience of making croissants was great but not perfect, so before I manage to make the best croissants in town, I am still looking for the best you can buy. You know, the one that are light and buttery, crispy outside and melty inside, well… THE perfect croissant. Hunting truly delicious croissants in Tokyo is as difficult as in Paris and I must admit. There are really a lot of bakeries that make croissants, and I’ve tried quite a lot of places already. In many places the taste of butter is not present, in others they top the croissant with some sirup making them too sweet, and sometimes they just have the appearance but nothing for the tate. Here is my list of bakeries in Tokyo making “real” croissants with hopefully a permanent address (a lot of shops move, open, close in a short time so it’s hard to track them):
1. Johan (in Mitsukoshi Nihonbashi, but there are some other places for sure)
2. Le grenier a pain near Hanzomon
3. Kobeya kitchen at Hiroo crossing
4. Vie de France (pretty much everywhere near a train station)
There might be some local stores I haven’t tried yet, so if you have a good address let me know!!!
There are a few big names in the bakery market but for croissant you can forget about Paul (never liked them, even in Paris), Viron (too dry and crispy, baked too long it seems), Kayser, Le pain quotidien (not fresh enough, and buttery enough)…
I’ll keep you updated if I find anything to add to that ranking, but you can send your addresses too and I’ll try!
Soba is the Japanese word for buckwheat and by extension buckwheat noodles. You can find soba-ya: restaurants serving soba pretty much everywhere and there are several places accross the country famous for the production of soba that it makes them something really common. I wanted badly to mske my own noodles but on that day I realized I had no buckwheat flour, and couldn’t find some around. So I bought dried soba noodles, which are basically like dried pasta. And I prepared a cold buckwheat noodles salad with seasonal vegetables: snap peas, green peas and cucumber and served with some pork meat balls.
I just boiled the noodles, quickly boiled the peas, sliced the cucumber.
For the additional balls it can be made out of tofu or okara for a vegan dish. This time I promised some meaty dish to my husband, so I mixed some pork meat with and egg and bread crust, salt pepper and then cooked them in a frying pan under cover until golden.
For the overall seasoning I mixed a little of ponzu and sunflower oil.
With all the new vegetables and the sunny days I’m preparing more and more cold salads this year. This one is really taking advantage of spring green peas, little radish, lettuce, cucumber, tofu and spelt, all with a little of olive oil, sesame seeds and sunflower seeds. Fresh, colorful, tasty, perfect!
A few days ago you may have seen a picture of a boule bread that I prepared for our breakfast. Actually this bread itokyos one of the simplest bread to prepare.
Here is the recipe for a 20cm diameter bread: mix 250g of flour (T60), 125g of water, 12g of dry sourdough, 1g of yeast, 5g of salt. Mix all the ingredients together and malax until the dough is smooth and soft. Then keep under a humid cloth for 90 minutes. Then make a ball of the dough after flatening it and folding it. The folding marks on top. Wait an other 90 minutes. Pre-heat the oven at 230 degrees celsius. Return the dough (folding marks below) and incise the dough with the square pattern. Put in the oven, and bake for about 40 minutes. (If necessary you may need to add water to moist the air in the oven)
A donburi in Japan is basically a rice bowl topped with something, anything. I really like the concept and you’ve seen a few of my original recipes yet. With each time changing in what I top it with depending on the market and time available.
This time it’s a 100% green topping with avocado, cucumber, cresson and lettuce. A bit of sesame oil and sesame seeds and lunch is ready in just the time to cook the rice!
Recently a lot of my lunches at work look like this! I really love whole grain bread or bagels, I spread cream cheese or cottage cheese, then top with sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, leaf of salad, rucolla, sprouts, and my lunch is ready! When it’s not cream cheese it’s avocado slices. Super simple, tasty, crunchy-creamy and easy to make and eat in a very short time.
I think I have finally found the spot!!!
The other day I was introducing some locally produced cheese by Komagata cheese factory in Ohara, the problem is that it’s not easy to find and so far I’ve seen it only at one of the local product retailer Na no hana. So that’s quite limiting.
Sunday morning we went to Ohara market on the harbour. I thought it would be fish-only market but in fact it is a quite big (for Japanese standards) farmers market, selling also fresh vegetables and many other things than fishes. That’s where I found the stand for Takahide cheese factory. A farm higher inland in Isumi, near Kuniyoshi. Their cheeses look a lot like the ones from Komagata, with a little variation. I picked the Isumi white moon (いすみの白い月) and did not regret that choice. It is perfect!!!
Very much pleased with that choice, we decided to go and check out the farm directly. It’s a short drive from our house and a nice one among rice paddies and traditional farms. The Takahide farm is up a hill in a kind of group of dairy farms. There is a little shop where they sell directly, but the stock is not big and I recommend giving them a call before if you are looking for something specific because it seems they don’t hold stock very long and depending on the time not every thing is ready yet. They also sell fresh milk and seems to organize some events.
Where it is interesting for you, if you live in Japan and looking for delicious cheeses is that you don’t necessarily have to go to a big department stores or an import stores to buy some cheese from France or Italy anymore! Takahide cheese factory has an online shop where they sell their cheeses and fromage blanc!!! It’s not cheap but it’s really worth the try and it’s local at least.
Since cheese cannot be dissociated from bread for me, at least the cheese that you eat, right not the one to top pastas etc… I prepared a plain fougasse with just a little of salt to eat with the Isumi no shiroi tsuki cheese, a very good match. And I tried their reblochon style cheese: Makiba no taiyo まきばの太陽 with a whole wheat bread. It’s just insanely good!
Information:
Takahide farm in Isumi 高秀チーズ工房: http://www.takahide-cheese.com
Ohara farmers market 大原朝市: every first and third Sunday morning of the month, plus some extra days during holidays, on Ohara harbour.
Kutani yaki 九谷焼: http://kaburaki.jp
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