The very last of the summer

After a day of rain this week the weather as turned from end summer to early autumn. The cicadas voice is getting harder to hear and the wind gets chilly in the evening. Even though I am slowly shifting to autumn vegetables, tomatoes and eggplants have my favors to hold the summer a little bit… Continue Reading →

Wax gourd – 冬瓜

A few years ago (or in an other life… when I was managing time differently) I used to go to 茶懐石 chakaiseki cooking classes once a month. I learned a lot there, about classic Japanese cooking techniques, about Japanese sweets and about some ingredients I was never cooking. Wax gourd is one of them. It… Continue Reading →

Bamboo shoots – 筍

The season for bamboo shoots has started for sure and it goes together with the season for Japanese pepper or sansho 山椒 fresh leaves also called kinome. The sansho shrub in our garden is actually growing steadily after I thought it might be dying last summer and there are plenty of new leaves and soon… Continue Reading →

Glossary

Since I use a mixture of Japanese words and French words, here you’ll find some explanations and/or translations for the most common terms. If you have a doubt and want some more detail, contact me or leave a comment, I will be happy to disambiguate! And click on the link to see related recipes. A… Continue Reading →

Canola flowers – 菜の花

In a flash we went from cabbages and sweet potatoes to fukinoto and canola flowers. It’s almost spring already, and the vegetables at the farmers market let you know that! Of course it’s only the beginning, and it is nice and interesting to mix winter and early spring ingredients. Canola flowers are versatile and I… Continue Reading →

Spinach and miso

Last week I had a food shopping spree at Wakuwaku in Otaki, and I bought different types of miso. I love miso, in soup of course, but also as a dip, or in many recipes as an ingredient. This time I used it in two spinach recipes. White miso with spinach and chrysanthemum and regular granulous… Continue Reading →

Japanese delight

I finally tested a recipe inspired by the cooking book I bought last week on my way home at a bouquinist in Jimbocho. It’s an old book from the 1970’s or 1980’s and it has a lot of very beautifully presented food. Plating changes with time and they certainly had some nice one at that… Continue Reading →

Shiitake week! Day 4!

Some time ago I was writing about my worst culinary failure ever when I made my first miso eggplants. The recipe came from the very Japanese cooking book I bought. And this book has been very precious for us when we started to live in Tokyo. “Simple & delicious Japanese cooking” by Keiko Hayashi has been… Continue Reading →

Two simple Japanese recipes

With some guests from France at home this weekend I cooked some simple Japanese recipes that they could reproduce back home. And because the weather was really terrible I could take all the time needed to chop thinly the vegetables and prepare recipes I usually don’t. The two recipes I prepared were daikon and miso,… Continue Reading →

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