Better love eggplants!!!

While the summer plays hide and seek, the summer vegetables are still around and should be for a few more weeks.

The great star of the summer in my kitchen this year is eggplant 🍆. We always eat a lot of eggplants in the summer, but this year it looks really like we are eating even more. Last week recipe was a great example but there is much more to do. And today I share with you another Japanese eggplant recipe, vegan this time, as simple as the previous one but with a different set of flavors.

Sautéed eggplants Japanese style

2 Japanese eggplants
1 aburage pad (thin fried tofu sheets)
1 tsp of sesame seeds
1tsp of soya sauce
1tsp of cooking oil, I usually use olive oil no matter what but sunflower or rice oil are OK too

Wash the eggplants and dice them. In a pan set the cooking oil snd heat. When hot add the eggplant and cook at high heat while stirring often. Slice thinly the aburage. Add to the eggplants. Cook and stir until the eggplants are creamy. Add the sesame and soya sauce, stir and serve.

While the base is the same as the perfect eggplant recipe, the flavors are very different. I actually recommend to cook both and compare. It’s perfect to understand umami.

August 19, 2021

Lentil curry

Well well well, it’s getting cold and gloomy today in Tokyo and rain and snow are on the forecast for tonight after weeks of dry and sunny weather… I guess that’s it… every year is basically the same… after the brilliant days of January cold, the gloomier days arrive, colder even… To warm the mind and the body, there is nothing nicer than a hot plate of slightly spicy curry with plenty of vegetables, and to make it a little fancier, replace the rice by lentils. So I made a big pot of it, and used the leftovers for another version with even more vegetables inside and a brighter note of anis seeds. Here are both recipes. Enjoy and keep warm!!!

Lentil curry (2 servings+leftovers for the next recipe )

– 150-200g of brown or green lentils

– 1/3 cabbage

– 2-3 carrots

– 1.5tsp of curry powder

– 3 pieces of thin aburage

Boil the lentils until just soft, but not too much. Drain them. Wash and chop the cabbage and the carrots. Chop the aburage. In a frypan greased slightly and heated start cooking the vegetables. Stir regularly. Add 2cup of water and cook at high heat. When half of the water has evaporated add the curry powder, stir well, and add the aburage. When the water is almost all gone add the lentils, a bit of salt and stir. Serve and eat immediately.

Spinach and potato curry (2 servings)

– leftovers of the above recipe

– 2 potatoes

– a small bundle of spinach

– 1tsp of curry powder

– 1tsp of anis seeds

– 2 pieces of fresh cod (optional)

Peel the potatoes and slice them. Wash and chop the spinach. Chop the cod in bite size and remove bones and skin if any.

In a grease wok or large pan star by cooking the potatoes. When they start to golden add the fish and the lentil curry leftovers. Stir well. Add 1/2 cup of water, the curry powder, the anis seeds, the spinach. Cook at medium to high heat until most of the water is gone. Serve and eat immediately.

A soup version is also possible by adding more water and stopping when the water level is just at the vegetables level.

January 31, 2019

Moyashi – soya sprouts

Soya sprouts (or moyashi) are one of these things I love but I hardly buy and cook because it’s hard to find some that are made properly. I remember reading about how they were made and stopped eating some. So last night when We went shopping after flying back from France, and I found organic moyashi at our local Seijo Ishi supermarket I couldn’t help buying them. Moyashi is a super food: easy to prepare, packed on protein and nutrients, and also it is very very cheap!!!! One of my favorite combination is moyashi and fried tofu. I love the mix of the crunchy and watery moyashi, with the soft oily tofu. This goes super well with simple rice or in chahan (fried rice). Here is one version of my recipe, it’s a vegetarian option that can be turned in a vegan one by removing the eggs or turned into a plain one if adding thinly cut chicken breast or pork slices.

Sautéed moyashi (for 3 small portions or 2 large portions)

– a bag of organic moyashi

– 2 slices of aburage

– 1tbs of sesame oil

– 1tsp of sesame seeds

– 2tbs of soya sauce (light colored recommended)

Optional: 2 eggs, 1 chicken breast or 5 thin slices of pork meat

Wash and drain the moyashi. In a pan greased with the sesame oil and heated add the moyashi. Cut the tofu in thin strips, add to the pan. Stir and cook at medium heat until l the moyashi is getting softer. Add the eggs or the meat if you want, and stir very well. Finish with the sesame seeds. Serve warm with rice.

December 26, 2018

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 time too!! Though a few a bit crazy… bubble time… The recipes that attracted me much were the miso soup and other clear bouillons. I mean I didn’t actually read much of the recipes, rather I enjoyed reading the explanations about how to choose a good rice and how to cook it very interesting. But the soup section pictures inspired me a lot. One recipe I wanted to try was daikon miso soup. Actually, after years of living in Japan, I finally start to really enjoy cooking daikon. May be because the most often we find is gratted daikon, which I find extremely boring, or simmered and over cooked, but there is so much to do with it. I could now totally go with a daikon week of recipes!!! Would you like that??? Let me know and I’ll be happy to share my favorite classic Japanese recipes and my invented ones!

Today, I’ll just share a simple white miso soup with both radish and daikon, but daikon only, or radish only, works very well too. It is extremely simple and delicious and warm form a chilly evening. You need for 4 serving, 1.5L of dashi (I used simple katsuobushi), a 7cm cut of daikon, 3 large pink radishes, 4 small leaves from the radishes tops (optional), 3tbs of white miso. In a large pan, prepare the dashi. Peel the daikon, cut the piece in half in the lenght to obtain half circle shapes. Cut slices of 1mm in the width. Add to the dashi and cook for 10min. Wash the radishes and slice them. Add to the soup and cook for 4min. Add the washed tops, the miso, stir and serve immediately. If you want to prepare ahead, reduce the cooking time to 7min and 2min. Add the tops and miso after reheating the soup, and serve immediately. I served it with grilles sanma, and briwn rice with fried tofu and gingko nuts.

November 24, 2017

Sweet potato and aburage rice

I know, this not a recipe for laye August usually but this year, it definitely is!!! And this recipe of 炊き込み御飯 (takikomi gohan) is so simple and delicious that it could be eaten anytime actually! Prepare 1cup of rice (wash and add cooking water) , cut one sweet potato in pieces, slice finely half a sheet of aburage (thin fried tofu), finish with a table spoon of soya sauce and cook. Serve while hot and enjoy the melting potato with the rice and the subtle taste and consistency of aburage! All vegan! Perfect with a clear soup with fresh vegetables such as okra.

August 30, 2016