Tag: autumn

Chestnut risotto

Last winter I trimmed our chestnut tree to try to improve its production, because we usually have very few chestnuts, despite it being a rather large tree. And it work perfectly, we had plenty of chestnuts, I could enjoy seeing them growing slowly, and I was already thinking about all I would do with them, and give away. But in early August with the drought (since July 10 it’s been 32deg at least every day and it rained may be twice or thrice just a little), most of the beautiful chestnuts felt when they were still small. In the end I only collected 10 chestnuts 🌰…. Basically the same amount as usual… just enough for one or two meals.

Instead of the classic Japanese kuri gohan, I prepared a western version with Carnaroli rice, olive oil, and a bit of kale. I replaced the Parmigiano by fresh grated comté cheese. Super easy, and very delicious! Here is my recipe.

Chestnuts risotto (2 servings main dish)

  • 10 fresh raw chestnuts
  • 1 go of carnaroli rice, or other risotto rice you like
  • 2 leaves of kale (tender is better)
  • 1tbs of olive oil
  • Salt and pepper
  • Comté cheese (optional)
  • Water

Boil the chestnuts for 50min. Let cool and peel them.

In a large pan heat the olive oil, add the rice and stir until the rice is translucent. Cover amply with water, add salt and pepper and the chestnuts roughly broken into bite size. Let cook under cover for 15min. Wash and chop the kale, removing the hard parts. Add to the pan. The liquid must have almost all reduced, and the rice should be almost cooked. If that’s not the case: if the rice doesn’t seem cooked yet and there is no liquid anymore, add a bit of water and cook under cover. If there us still too much liquid and the rice seems cooked, remove the cover, and slightly increase the heat.

In the end, the rice should start grilling in the bottom of the pan. That’s when you want to serve, with just a bit of crisp in the bottom.

Serve, add grater comté cheese if you like and enjoy.

Goes well also with prosciutto or better with Speck. Unfortunately recently Japan has a ban on Italian cured meat so that’s not an option…

The disappointing fruit: akebi

Every day brings surprises, those you’ve worked hard for, those you were dreaming of and those that the cherry on the top, but also its share of disappointments. For example, after almost 3 years since our stray cat Holly disappeared and the little Ephy very brief passage, what a surprise to see that stray cats are back and we have three coming now. They are very shy and still scared of us, but one now arrives when hearing us parking home for the weekend and waits to be fed… It took us 6 months to be able to approach and touch Pablo, so I am expecting not less for these ones too… though Pablo was more interested by company than food… time will tell us…

Other surprises are often in the small things of daily routine… and when the other day at a local products store I found a fruit I never saw before but knew about and immediately identified; akebi あけび, chocolate vine. I couldn’t help remembering Little Forest when they put so much efforts in trying to harvest akebi and then delightfully eat them (watch here!!)… so I grabbed the bag of fruits and went to the cashier, and back to A. who was waiting outside, so proud of my finding!!!

It was the first time ever to see akebi for real, so I did my homework and studied how to eat it and possibly cook it. I also searched a bit why it is bot so common in Chiba… then opened the first fruit. the skin was not too thick and the inside less white than I imagined it would. And the first fruit was really tedious to eat, so tedious that A. said he would not eat a second akebi in his life ever!!!!! I persisted and became more fluent at eating them, but the promised sweetness etc… was definitely not here. So over all it is a huge disappointing experience.

Recipe book also said that the skin is good in tempura, but looking at the one of my fruits, I lost confidence and decided I wouldn’t try further…

So overall, akebi is a beautiful fruit, but not as delicious I expected it would be, so either the fruits from Chiba are very much less good than those from Yamagata, or Someone is lying about akebi deliciousness!!!

In any case have a very good weekend!!!!

Cruising in the kitchen

Not that I have been more busy than usual, nor that I have less inspiration these days… but I’ve been cruising in the kitchen… probably because of the season sudden change and this in between moment when you don’t want to shit to the new seasonal staples too quick, but yet you have explored enough with the past season ones… eggplants, okras and cucumbers are slowly making way to pumpkins, carrots and lotus roots.

And by cruising I mean Saturday ravioli, Sunday quiche, Monday chocolate cream, Wednesday steam buns etc… etc… hopefully Sunday was rainy, so after a nice bodyboarding session in a rough ocean I spent the afternoon browsing some of my very old cookbooks that were left in Paris 20years ago, and that I just received with our cargo…

The Reboul, a must for Provencal cooking, the first edition dating back to the 19th century, that I have been using to check basic recipes when my grandmother or mother were not available… I read it with a new eye and learned many many things!

Les recettes faciles, also plenty of basic ressources that help a lot for remembering how to make a good roux, or a creamy sauce… it’s nice to go back to the basics again once in a while.

Les recettes de la table franc-comtoise is probably the most alien to me. It was a gift from A. grand mother who was from Franche-Comte, a place in France I have never stepped foot, and where cooking is based on cream… but there are some great recipes and inspirations to gather from there too and the food A. grand mother would prepare for us!

In the meantime, Japanese seasonal cooking has never been more attractive to me and I have been thinking about how to level up… while I don’t feel like going to in-person cooking class yet, I still think about Shojin cuisine…

I tested new ways of using Koyadofu, I mean new may not be the right word, but at least without any cookbook nor guidelines and made this soya sauce based stew of vegetables and koyadofu that was just a hit! The recipe yet needs a bit of polishing before I can share it with you.

The other big hit this week was my classic persimmon and cucumber tofuae. A. often complains about all these persimmons we have in our garden… and doesn’t seem too happy when I serve one for dessert, but with the less ripe ones when I make this simple dish I learned at my Chakaiseki classes, he surprisingly always asks for more!!!

I’m hopping to be able to share a few new recipes in the coming days/weeks and in the meantime I’ll continue to cruise in the kitchen with all the classic recipes and the new ones that’ll pop in my head!

See you soon!

Myoga!!!

This little wild flower bud is really too delicious and its distinctive flavor quite unique. As you know, from all previous posts, I love it!!!

We are lucky to have some growing wildly in the garden, and it’s quite easy to find some when going for a walk in the woods. Apparently there are two seasons for it, one in spring and one right now in the early fall. Our garden has more of the latter and for me myoga is a fall flavor!

There are many many ways of preparing it and eating it (again, check my previous posts on the topic!). Raw or pickled would be the most common and my favorite. Raw particularly. It is so simple and it goes well with so many things!

Today two super simple recipes with myoga, one is a classic, the second is more one of my classic.

Eggplant with myoga

  • 2 myoga
  • 2 eggplants
  • 1/3 tsp of salt
  • 1tsp of sesame seeds or a handful of katsuobushi

Normally for this you could do it with raw eggplants like I suggested here. But to male it faster, instead of waiting for the salt to slightly pickle the eggplants, I cook them.

Wash and cut the eggplants in their length, then in 4-5mm slices. In a tiny pan start cooking the eggplants, add the salt and stir often. I do not add water nor oil. When the eggplants have softened add the myoga washed and thinly sliced. Stir well. Add the sesame or the katsuobushi. Stir again. Serve and eat now or chilled.

Myoga potato salad

  • 2-3 myoga
  • 1 Japanese cucumber
  • 8 small potatoes
  • 2 eggs
  • 1tsp of mustard
  • 2tbs of olive oil
  • pepper

Boil the potatoes with the skin and the eggs. When done let them cool down. Wash the myoga and cucumber. Slice them thinly. Peel the potatoes and the eggs.

In a bowl, cut roughly the potatoes and the eggs, add the cucumber and myoga, the mustard and oil. Stir well and serve.

That’s really as simple as that!

Little forest’s walnut rice

It is rare enough for me to talk about what I read (except cook books) or watch here, but once in a while I stumble on something that I find inspiring (cooking wise I mean).

Every evening while we enjoy a simple meal we watch a movie (or more often half of one, as we just collapse on the sofa, exhausted of our day). Finding a good movie that matches our mood is not always easy and after a bad match with an American movie two days ago, and a British movie the day before, we opted for a Japanese movie. While I was cooking dinner, A. told me let’s watch “little forest”, I said “yes, why not” without any clue about what it would be about. I trusted his judgment. So we sat with a hot plate of potatoes and cabbage, flavored with thyme and bacon and got on a trip in time with the movie: summer in the Japanese countryside. The sounds, the color… but what caught my attention was in the opening title credits a mention to “food presentation”. Then I understood that this will not be just a movie… and it is not at al, no plot, no story. It is organized around a few seasonal recipes (there are two movies: summer/autumn and winter/spring) based on local products mostly from the garden or foraged in the nearby woods. Amazake, gumi jam, simmered wild vegetables, kuri no shibukawa ni (I was mentioning in my previous post)… and this recipe of 胡桃ご飯 kurumi gohan walnut rice. When I heard the word I wasn’t sure I got it right, but I did indeed. And the recipe seemed really lovely so I had to try it! Of course I didn’t go to Iwate countryside (where the movie was shot) to forage walnuts, the season has past anyway, but I just wanted to give it a try as it is something I had never heard about, so I used the walnuts I had.

Walnut rice 胡桃ご飯

  • 1 go of Japanese rice (I always use Isumi grown Koshihikari)
  • 1 large handful of shelled walnuts
  • 3tbs of soya sauce
  • 2tbs of sake
  • 1tbs of sugar

In a mortar (ideally a suribachi) crush the walnuts until you obtain a mix of coarse and fine parts (in the movie she crushed them to a paste, but I prefer having some coarse pieces left). Wash the rice and set in your cooking recipient with the normal amount of water for cooking Japanese rice (rice cooker, pan with lid, donabe…). Add the walnuts, the soya sauce, the sake, the sugar and cook as usual. That’s it. Serve warm or keep to eat at room temperature.

I served it with spinach and pork sautéed, it is rather easy to accommodate with anything seasonal too: pumpkin, cauliflower…

If you want to watch the movies, I recommend the first one (summer/autumn) much more than the second (winter/spring). There is no story, just a slice of life, and many recipes. The movie is inspired from a manga which I haven’t read. Not a big fan of mangas…

There is a Korean remake as well…

Autumn warmth and color

As the summer fades away, autumn days are slowly settling in. Autumn in Japan does not mean yet fallen leaves, cold mornings etc… we’ll have to wait at least another month for that! October is usually a fair month with warm days and just chilly enough evening and mornings to enjoy a walk or a bicycle ride. The food stalls start changing in colors and products too. The new rice harvested in August, the pumpkins and kabocha, the lotus roots… of course some of the summer food will still be around for a while: the super ripe tomatoes, the last crunchy cucumbers…

Combined together late summer and early fool ingredients are perfect such as in this pasta recipe below: tomatoes, butternut, lotus root… simple but delicious.

With the more chilly evenings, it is nice to curl under a little blanket and eat a warming dish, warming by its color and flavors. So I prepared a slightly spicy soup with fresh vegetables and chicken meat-balls, in a bouillon of spices and fresh lemongrass. Here is my recipe, it’s super simple!! Hope you’ll like it!

Spicy soup (2 servings)

  • 1 carrot
  • 1 2cm slice of butternut squash
  • A handful of green beans
  • 100-150g of chicken breast grounded
  • 1 tsp of potato starch
  • 1 pinch of turmeric
  • 1 pinch of chilly pepper
  • 1 pinch of coriander
  • 1 pinch of salt and pepper
  • 1 leave of fresh lemongrass
  • 100g of vermicelli or thin noodles (optional)

Actually you can adjust the vegetables to what you have around… I sliced the carrot with the peeler to obtain very thin slices, but you can also do a julienne or small stick… it’s up to you…

So in in a large pan I heat 1L if water, add the vegetables and the spices. Then in a bowl I mix the meat and the starch. Make small balls (1.5-2cm diameter) and toss them in the boiling bouillon. After 10min all is ready. 5min before eating I add the noodles. They cook very quickly and you don’t want them to become thick and too soft. Serve immediately. Yes… that’s it!!!

Have a good day!

Yuzu!!!

Japan has hundreds of different citrus fruits, strangely few oranges but surely many types of tangerines, lemons, natsumikan, kinkan, kabosu, sudachi, shikwasa… and of course yuzu. Yuzu 柚子 is used either non ripe in September and becomes ripe in the end of October or the beginning of November. It is used a lot in Japanese cuisine, in particular for its skin and its juice, which are both very fragrant and typical.

In our garden we have two tall and big natsumikan trees that took me some time to understand how to eat them, a fairly nice tangerine tree as well. Last year we decided to plant a yuzu tree and a lemon tree to expand our citrus fruit collection with trees that would produce fruits I love to cook. The lemon tree gave some lemons last winter, but it’s only this year that we harvested many yuzus.

I personally like to use the fresh yuzu from my garden squeezed in hot water with honey. And I really like to use the juice and the skin in savory recipes. There many options but to really enjoy the flavor simple preparations are the best. This time its some black Tuscan rice riso nero venere simply steamed, served with a grilled piece of swordfish, the whole topped with olive oil and yuzu peel chopped very thinly. A bit of salt and that’s it!!!!

How do you like to prepare your yuzu???

Persimmons

When the season for persimmons comes it means that autumn is clearly here and with shorter days, the chilly evenings will be coming soon. And here they are. Not cold enough to tuen the heater on yet, but it’s coming.

While we are not big fans of raw persimmons, like pretty much everyone in Chiba Sotoboso, we have persimmon trees in our garden, two that give sweet persimmons and one that gives bitter ones. Persimmons are like plums in June, impossible to give away!!! Most people don’t even harvest them and their leave-less branches are decorated with beautiful orange fruits. I our gardens the fruits don’t last long as birds happily eat them and that is great. Still I always harvest a few fruits for us as there is one recipe that is my total preferred way of eating persimmons: tofu ae with cucumber.

So here it is:

Persimmon, cucumber and tofu ae: 

– 1 persimmon not too soft

– 1 Japanese cucumber  

– 1 small block of drained tofu

– 2tbs of sesame seeds

– a bit of salt

Peel and dice the persimmon, slice the cucumber. Grind the sesame seeds, drain very well the tofu* and mix with the salt. Add the persimmon and the cucumber. Stir well and it is ready to serve.

Oh! By the way, I’m testing new mini videos to explain the recipe… checkout below and on IG!!!

* draining tofu is crucial to obtain the perfect creamy consistency. To drain tofu (hard or soft) first press it gently between two boards with a weight on top. Gravity will make it work perfectly for you after 1h. Then in a clean cloth with thin weaving press the tofu to remove the water has shown in the third video below.

http://gentianeetantoine.com/igk/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/video.mov

http://gentianeetantoine.com/igk/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/video-1.mov

http://gentianeetantoine.com/igk/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/video-2.mov

http://gentianeetantoine.com/igk/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/video-3.mov

Pumpkin

At last… the beautiful autumn days have arrived and with them the most typical autumn vegetables (with mushrooms): the pumpkins!!!

While in Tokyo supermarkets you may find only Japanese kabocha, the one with the soft dark green skin and the vibrant orange flesh, that is also found all year round… In the countryside, in farmers markets and local cooperatives you can find many more varieties. Of course the butternut squash is now a classic, but not only. And last week one of our friend gave us a beautiful little pumpkin. It was so cute that I was sad to cut it open, but there are a few recipes I really enjoy and at some point I decided it was time to eat it.

One of my favorite Japanese style to cook kabocha of all kind is to boil them in dashi, add a bit of soya sauce… serve that with rice and I am more than happy. I shared that recipe before but just to make sure, I share it again. It is so simple.

Simmered kabocha in dashi

– a piece of kabocha/pumpkin (200-300g)

– 2 tbs of soya sauce

– a handful of katsuobushi flakes

Wash the pumpkin/kabocha. If it is a Japanese kabocha you don’t need to peel it. Otherwise peel it. Cut in bite size. In a pan put the cut kabocha, cover with water. Add the katsuobushi flakes. Bring to a boil and boil for 5min. When the kabocha is almost soft (use a bamboo toothpick), if there is a lot of water remaining drain. Otherwise just increase the heat for 20sec to make the liquid evaporate.

Add the soya sauce and roll the kabocha in by gently shaking and turning the pan. Don’t be violent or you’ll end with a purée!! Serve warm or cold.

The point in this recipe is that I don’t remove the katsuobushi flakes after using them in the dashi, on the contrary. Mixed with the soya sauce they are delicious.

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