Sushi rice and spring vegetables, the perfect combo!

Harvest from the kitchen garden: plenty of green peas, fava beans and herbs.

Late spring brings in so many vegetables! Our modest kitchen garden produced a beautiful crop of green peas. Not over a long period of time like last year, but a few kilos in a very short time. I also harvested a lot of sansho pods, and while looking at the recipe to prepare them in my book of Shojin cuisine, I just found a recipe that so far curiously never attracted me before but was perfect with what I had in the fridge: bamboo shoot and green peas sushi rice. It took just one second to verify I had all the ingredients I needed and my mind was all set. I don’t eat fish and seafood sushi, but I love sushi rice, slightly vinegary and sweet. It is very easy to prepare but somehow never make any…

It was time to change this!

Here is the recipe I prepared, slightly modified from the original.

Bamboo shoot and green peas sushi (4 servings, side dish)

2 go of rice (or 2 cups but that would be more)
A handful of fresh green peas
1 fresh bamboo shoot
A pinch of salt
2tbs of rice vinegar
3tbs of sugar
1tbs of soya sauce
A few sansho leaves

Cook the rice. In the meantime, peel the bamboo, cut it in 3mm thick slices, and the cut the the slices in 2cm strips and boil it for 15min. Drain. In a pan set the bamboo and the green peas, add 2tbs of water, 1tbs of sugar, 1tbs of soya sauce. Cook at medium heat until almost all the liquid is gone. Mix the vinegar and the 2tbs of sugar with the rice. Stir well, add the vegetables and stir gently. Add the sansho leaves and enjoy!

Do not refrigerate, the rice would become hard and flavors would vanish.

May 13, 2023

Never tired of bamboo shoots

The season for bamboo shoots in Chiba has started just a few weeks ago… juggling between bad weather, and cold days, we went once to search for some with our neighbors but were not lucky enough to find any. Too early for that side of the area. Probably a few wild boar were also quick enough to come before us and dig to pick their own. But it doesn’t matter, we have friends who have friends who have bamboo shoots. And so I ended up with 2 beautiful shoots. I didn’t have time to prepare them in The country, so I took them with us to Tokyo. What a mess to prepare them in my pocket kitchen! But what a reward to eat them!!! I never regret!

This year, after a classic bamboo shoots rice, back then when my parents were visiting, I decided to go with a few different and more creative recipes. I prepared two different recipes. One is a simple sautéed version. So delicious I had to do a second batch! The second is a recipe of steamed buns. Last year I made eagle fern and bamboos shoot ones, but as I am getting better at making buns, I felt it is worth sharing this one!

Both recipes assume that you have a parboiled bamboo shoot. For picking and parboiling look at my earlier post here.

Sautéed bamboo shoots

1 bamboo shoot fresh and parboiled
1tsp of cooking oil
salt and pepper as you like

Cut the bamboo shoot in 4 vertically. Slice each quarter. In a fry pan heat the oil. The add the shoots sliced. Cook until golden, flip on the other side, cook until golden. Sprinkle salt and ground pepper and serve immediately.

Steamed buns (make 8 small, perfect for 2 people as main)

150g of flour
1tsp of baking soda
1 pinch of salt
Water
1/2 bamboo shoot
100g of pork fillet (leftover are perfect)
Soya sauce
Mustard

First prepare the dough by mixing the flour, baking soda, salt and add water little by little until obtaining a smooth dough. Put under a wet cloth and let it rest at least 30min. More is better.

Cook the pork filet if not yet cooked. Simply, in a pan with pepper. Then chop finely.

Chop the bamboo shoot in coarse manner. You want chunks to remain as it will bring the contrast between the smooth dough and meat and the crunchy bamboo. However, if too coarse, filling the buns will be hell. So 3-8mm is a good target.

In a bowl mix the chopped bamboo shoot, the pork, add 1tsp of soya sauce and stir well.

Back to the dough now. Cut in 8 pieces. Make balls and roll with a rolling pin into 12-15cm diameter circle. Put a large spoon if filling in and close the dough. I don’t have a very good technique, but it works well when I first fold in two then fold in the orthogonal direction, then I add fold in each quadrant. For this specific recipe instead of cooking them folds up, I flipped them to hold the folds under. Then steam for 15min. Serve with soya sauce and mustard and enjoy!

April 22, 2022

Eagle fern x bamboo shoot

Well well, the two main protagonists of these past two weeks in the kitchen, are not only delicious alone, but also prepared together. A classic Japanese recipe would be to simmer them individually and then combine them with a bit of red pepper 🌶 and soya sauce. I personally usually pass on the red pepper but this recipe is simple and delicious. Here with brown rice, scrambled eggs and salad.

But really from the start I had something in mind using both combined… something that I love making with whatever is in season: steamed dumplings, of course!!!!

With the beginning of the new fiscal year, school term and the abundance of work in the garden, the surf season… I’ve been pretty busy! But dumplings don’t require that much time to make and they are always a feast. My idea was to combine chopped warabi and takenoko, with coarse ground pork filet, soya sauce and fill some sourdough dough with it, and steam. So that’s exactly what I did and it was soooo delicious I regretted it was our last takenoko!!! So if you still have a chance to get fresh takenoko and warabi I can only but recommend you try! I need mote practice to fold my dumplings beautifully but the taste is here!!!

April 14, 2021

Picking bamboo shoots

Here we are, spring is here, cherry trees are finishing blooming in a snap. Last week it was pink all over, now it’s new green 新緑 shinryoku everywhere. Everything is so early this year that it feels like it took me by surprise. And spring means not only flowers everywhere in the garden, the jonquils, the snowdrops, the peach trees, and all the others, it means also the spring vegetables and with them the incomparable bamboo shoots or takenoko 筍.

Cooking them is fun and I love creating new recipe with bamboo shoots. I have already posted many recipes in the past and love rediscovering them or testing some others. But beware, the season is short so it’s not like you can take all the time you want. They’re here and in a snap they are way too high and big and no longer good to eat.

What is fun with bamboo shoots is to go and pick them. Bamboos grow pretty much anywhere and in abundance so picking bamboo shoots is rather easy. The point is that you want fresh and soft ones that have pointed out so it looks like a little green/brownish plant so eyes need to get used to spot them, but them accommodate really quickly. Once spotted with pickaxe and a shovel you need to clean around to uncover the hidden part until the very first red spots on the root. And then cut with a firm and clean cut. Return the soil in place and search for the next one.

Of course said that way it’s rather simple, but you compete in finding bamboo shoots with wild boars and they are really greedy! So they only leave those hard to find, under monticules of earth and fallen leaves, on the steep sides etc… Then the bamboo shoots are often entangled with other roots that you don’t want to damage making it really a puzzle to find where to dig and cut. But that’s part of the fun!

Once you have a nice bamboo shoot to prepare in the kitchen, the first thing to do is to remove the many layers of the soft and furry skin that wrap delicately the shoot. It’s a bit tedious but still important. Then boil your shoot in ample water added with rice first wash water or nuka. Boil at low heat until soft… it can take up to 2 or 3 hours. Pick with a tooth pick to test. And then only you have a bamboo shoot you can prepare for the many recipes. I am working on a few new and a few classic recipes right now, so hopefully in the coming days you should discover some!!!

April 2, 2021

Bamboo shoot

The short season of this delicious and subtle vegetable has started and it’s time to enjoy it now!!! Usually I would only cook it on the weekend because it requires a very long boiling, but thanks to telework this is something I can cook any day now! That’s the one good thing of working from home! Though with my new rythme since January I was already able to prepare recipes that require a longer cooking time, now I can take it to the next level: bread, Japanese brown rice, slow cooking, and bamboo shoots!!!

To celebrate that I came up with a new recipe: sautéed bamboo shoots and potatoes with olive oil and sansho. Sansho and bamboo shoot are a Japanese classic assortment, olive oil and potatoes more of a south-east French one. I mixed the two ideas. After boiling your bamboo shoot until tender, slice it. Boil a few potatoes, cut them and toss them in a pan with olive oil. Add the bamboo shoot slices and cook at high heat while stirring gently once in a while. Add a bit of salt, serve and top with fresh sansho leaves. Enjoy spring in your plate!!!
If you don’t have sansho you can use katsuobushi flakes… that’s also a great match to both potatoes and bamboo shoots!
Have a great day!

April 8, 2020

Spring is here!

After the fukinoto and the canola which both announce the arrival of spring and the cold unstable weather that usually accompany the plum blossom end, the next step is the real arrival of spring in late March or early April with the famous cherry blossoms of course, Mole’s quince and the jonquils putting beautiful colors in the garden but also the bamboo shoots (takenoko 筍)and the other wild vegetables: fern (kogomi こごみ), horsetail (tsukushi つくし), angelica tree buds (tara no me タラの芽)…

We don’t have kogomi and tara no me in our garden, or not that I know of yet (I discover new things each year!), I found a few tsukushi in the past but never enough or at the right time to harvest them. This year I found really plenty, enough to consider cooking some. Tsukushi are a bit of a delicate plant and their pollen is not very good so it’s better to harvest them early. The one on the picture below is for example a bit too old, this can be seen by the dark color of the head: the pollen is already about to go out! The pollen of tsukushi is blue to black, and looks like mold!!! I have never seen tsukushi in supermarkets, I assume they are too delicate for transport and shelf time. Their flavor is very subtle so I like simple preparations: quickly sautéed, or simply blanched in dashi. To prepare them, simply wash them and remove the corollas parts using your thumb by simply rolling the stem with the corolla on top of your nail. Then cook them in a pan with a bit of butter or as said above blanched them in a regular dashi. Serve them right away with rice, scrambled eggs… nothing too strong.

I my case I made a simple fried takenoko rice with sesame oil, scrambled eggs season with a few drops of soya sauce. That’s it!

March 25, 2019

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 plenty of fruits. Bamboo shoots and sansho leaves are a very classic mix in Japanese cuisine and it indeed matches very well. I already introduced the recipe two years ago after we tried an amazing version at the shojin cuisine restaurant Daigo. My recipe is not exactly the classic one since I use simply olive oil and kinome. Nothing else. It is really simple and very tasty. It makes a perfect starter. Bamboo shoots are always a little long to prepare because they need two cooking. The first boiling to make them tender and remove any bitterness, the second for the final preparation, but they are definitely worse trying. Remember that to remove the bitterness it is good to cook bamboo shoots in rice water (the first rinse of white rice) or in rice nuka, but honestly rice water is much simpler and cleaner!!! This time I used katsuobushi dashi for the second cooking. Then cut in thin slices and added chopped kinome with olive oil.

April 16, 2018

Golden week(end)

The golden week in Japan is this blessed moment in spring when there are several bank holidays and when usually the weather is perfectly warm but not hot and the nature is full of dpring greens, flowers and days are getting longer with a beautiful light. This is a time when we usually have msny friends coming to our country house and I can cook a lot of different things for them. This weekend was the beginning of the golden week. Ot was just a normal weekend for us since we are working Mondayand Tuesday, but it was a wonderful lively weekend with friends.

For our friends visiting on Sunday I prepared a mix of Japanese food and French food with all the seasonal and local ingredients. I prepared my classic bamboo shoot and capers salad, some spelt bulgur salad, some olive fougasse with olives my mother has made, and a big cocotte of new onion with zucchini and rosemary. The new onions are so sweet and soft that I cook them as whole, with just olive oil, salt and pepper, then later I had the zucchini which required much less cooking. For the meat eaters, some porc slices are nice to add. And after a long lunch in the garden, what best than going to the empty beach at sunset watch some surfers and play with our friends dog?

I wish you an excellent week!

May 1, 2017

Double luck!

I was thinking that these days I don’t cook much and in particular I haven’t created new recipes as often as I usually do. Indeed, I am busy with work, handling a lot of things at the same time, and the beginning of the new term at the university, with new students in the lab, teaching and budgeting is always a period with a lot of pressure. On top of which, because more is better, I have taken the lead for an exhibition at the science museum of the university and the opening is in just one month, so there is a lot to do and prepare. Of course I have an amazing group, with great people that are always ready to challenge themselves. But in the end of the day I have little energy left to think about creating a new recipe, as I also concentrate on this recipe/cooking contest entry. So last night when I stepped in the kitchen at 21:00 past the first great news was a package from Poland from our friend who knows how much I love the Polish traditional potteries which I find suits very well Japanese food, and every once in a while sends us one. I now have a pretty collection!!!

Then I started to cook some vegetables sautéed for our dinner, and I was thinking that it was really not enough as a meal and A. would complain I don’t feed him enough!!! 😉 And just at this perfect moment (timing couldn’t be better), the doorbell rang and after a short time A. came back to the kitchen with a warm dish of bamboos shoot rice prepared by our neighbor who has been to the country to pick bamboo shoots. Isn’t that lovely! And here the perfect dinner was ready! Thanks a lot I. and Mrs W.!!!!!

My collection of Polish crafted potteries

April 27, 2017