Welcome 2019!

How are you starting this new year? I am welcoming the new year as a normal day in our country house, with a garden harvest of lemons, natsu-mikan, daffodils, camellia flowers and maple leaves… and a lot of cooking and baking. I also started learning cutting and sewing with my old neighbor. Regarding baking, this week I am trying some recipes from my new baking book: bread in 5, that my parents offered me for my birthday, and the new flours I bought at Cuoca in Mitsukoshi Nihonbashi.

I was indeed interested by the book when I first read about it from Giulia @ Julskitchen IG. I thought how wonderful it could be sometimes to have fancier breads than regular French breads, and to be able to prepare them faster. I also got fresh yeast which makes bread so much better, fluffier and they have less the taste of yeast. So far both the book and the ingredients have delivered amazing results. I’ll talk about that in detail in a later post, after I have tried a little more recipes. But simply the introduction and the tips page were full of teachings!

For this first morning of the year, I wanted something rich, sweet and fancy, as A. loves them. In winter I really love cinnamon rolls so I was first going to make some when I found the recipe of this Swedish tea ring in the Christmas bread sections. Indeed, Christmas was just last week!! The recipe uses a brioche dough as base and I was really intrigued by how to shorten the extremely long hand kneading time of the brioche and what it would give. To shorten kneading the recipe uses melted butter, smart indeed. And it worked perfectly for the ring (I need to work on my shaping!!). I modified slightly the recipe of the rolls, and didn’t use neither the egg wash or the icing as I thought it was rich enough that way for breakfast. This for sure was a hit! A. was very pleased with the result and so did I!

I wish you a beautiful year 2019 from my kitchen!

January 1, 2019

First bread of 2018

While in my parents’ place I baked many pompes a l’huile for Christmas, but I didn’t bake any bread. There are a few nice organic bread shops and bakeries around. But now that we are back to Isumi, it was mandatory to bake some bread. I started this year with a very simple bread: rye and whole wheat, with a handful of flaxseeds. And since the house is rather cold, I kept the bread all night in the room with us for it to rise, and only baked it much later. It has risen very slowly but the result was a very soft yet dense bread. With jam, honey, butter, or whatever, it’s delicious for breakfast. And it goes together with the book I am reading about Roland Feuillas, a guy who has been working for the last 12 years in making bread with traditional wheats grown traditionaly too. This reading has revived in me this idea that I should grow my own sourdough, but I still don’t know how to manage the trips between Isumi and Tokyo every weekends, and the longer one abroad and to keep it alive properly… If you have some experience in raising sourdough I’ll be happy to learn from you!!!

January 3, 2018

New cookbooks

For Christmas I had a few new cookbooks from Europe that I am now reading (yes, they are this kind of cookbooks that you read) before trying any of the recipes. The first one is a vegetarian encyclopedia cookbook in French with a lot of inspiration to take such as quinoa soup. As the name suggests it’s quite a big book. It’s the same series as my beloved Italian cookbook so I’m quite familiar with the structure and the way it reads. The book as many pictures and most of the recipes are quite simple, the one that just need a little “gentiane” touch to be done for dinner in a really short time. The one that one can easily use. So there’s plenty to extract from it very quickly. If not already done!

The second one is a completely different approach, not exactly the kind of book you actually bring to the kitchen (even thicker than the previous one!!!), but the one you read and mature. It presents extensively the Nordic cooking from of course Northern Europe but also Iceland and Greenland and covers all the possible ingredients from herbs to whale (yes you read well), and I reckon that there are some recipes that will never make their way to my kitchen! But they retain some interesting historical components just like we also have in France “boudin noir”, blood sausage… It is richly documented, with beautiful few pictures and really interesting because I see many common things with Japanese cooking tough the climate is completely different. It is half a cooking book half a research paper so I really enjoy reading it. I think if I were to write a book on food that’d be something like that!

In any case both are very refreshing and different than Japanese super practical and thin cookbooks! What are your recent cookbok pick?

January 15, 2016

Macrobiotic dry curry

As I was mentioning earlier, we found close to our home in Ohara, a macrobiotic local kind of small community where they have a cafe and a tiny shop. We had lunch there and it was delicious, and after we went to check out the little shop and I found this book: “whole rice & veggies on plate meals”, which was written by people from the community, and which presents seasonal recipes all gegan and somehow macrobiotic, or what they call “soft macrobi”. Perfect for me who enjoy the vegan food but don’t becessarily adhere to macrobiotics: I hate imposed rules in particular when it comes to food. I have my own, I like them and I think they suit me well. Well, this book is a treasure trive of midern Japanese recipes and I really enjoy looking at all the recipes and in particular the ones using ingredients I seldom use or buy. Coincidently, some time ago, a friend traveling to Koya brang us back some Koyadofu, a kind if dry tofu that can be rehydrated and used in several preparations. So I jumped on the occasion to prepare the first recipe I found with Koyadofu: vegetables dry curry. Dry curry mesns that there is no thick sauce like in regular Japanese curry.

The recipe is awfully simple, I had most of the ingredients but not all, so I replaced them and interpreted my way. For 2 You need 2 blocks of Koyadofu, 1 green pepper, 1 potato, 1/2 onion (I used a red onion), 1 tomato, curry powder, carvi seeds, cinnamon powder, salt, pepper, 1 tbs of miso, 1 tbs of apricot jam (I used kaki jam), a bit of soya sauce and s bit of oil. First cut all the veggies in 5mm cubes, the tomato can be cut in large chuncks. Rehydrate the tofu in hot water, drain roughly. In a pan with oil, cook atlow heat the veggies, but the tomato, add the carvi seeds and the curry powder, the cinnamon. In a mixer, mix the tofu, the jam, the miso, salt pepper, soya sauce. Add the mixture to the veggies, cook until almost dry. Serve with rice. I serve with a mixture I made of whole rice, black rice, red rice, barley and white rice. Super delicious, but not very picturesque I reckon!!!!

October 26, 2015

Italian taralli

A few years ago I received this amazing book for my birthday. It is a real jewel to cook Italian with the very basic pasta and classic recipes in the first half and some more elaborated recipes presented by chefs and by regions, that utilize the classic ingredients of the first half. I like that book very much and it’s been of great help when preparing pasta, gnocchi but it is so thick that Even if I have tested and noted a few recipes there’s a lot more to do. And each time I open it I find a new recipe I want to try.

With all this rain I had the time to browse this massive book and test a few recipes. The first one is taralli from Puglia. It’s a simple recipe a bit like gressini but much simpler and really delicious.

To prepare 6 little taralli, which is a good number for 2 people snacks, I used 100g of flour, 25ml of water and 25ml of olive oil, and a bit of salt. Originally taralli seem to be flavored with fennel seeds, black pepper, olives… Since I had none of these I used caraway (carvi) seeds and that was working real well. I have the impression that just salt might be good too. So, in a bowl you mix all the ingredients well. Then wait about 30min.

Prepare a saucer with boiling water, and preheat your oven at 220deg. Roll the dough in a long and thin lace shape of about 1cm diameter. Cut the lace each 6cm and have the two extremities overlap to make like a ribbon shape. Lightly squeeze the overlapping to close the shape. Dip them in the boiling water form 1min. Dry them on a clothe, line them on a cooking paper sheet or on a oven dish greased with olive oil and bake until golden (15min~). It’s ready to eat, warm or cold.

July 6, 2015

Showa style

Yesterday was Showa day. Showa was the governing emperor from 1926 to 1989. Of course it covers WWII events, but what is really interesting for me is the postwar development of culture and style during and after the American occupation, after Japan’s been defeated. This period has been marked by a lot of movies, a radical modern style, the development of large housing complexes in the suburbs: danchi. This is very well depicted in a few movies I love: elegant beast (1962) by Yuzo Kawashima, Tokyo drifter (1966) by Seijun Suzuki, Good morning (1959) and Tokyo twilight by Yasujiro Ozu. It is also permisible from the works of Kenzaburo Oe. For a real taste of it, it is possible to visit a reconstructed danchi unit in Matsudo museum in Chiba prefecture and a few of this kind of units are still standing. After a trend for demolishig them (the beautiful Asagaya housing complex…) there is a trend now to refurbish these units and use them as community housing where young people and old people would share space and benefit from the proximity of each other, hipster housing…

Asagaya housing complex in 2011 when we visited it, before it was demolished

And just yesterday I found this amazing photo book that covers a lot of Showa style. The pictures are really nice and gives a good idea about what it was. More than just covering architecture it really covers style and a bit of fashion and habits.

April 30, 2015

Sunday breakfast

For Sunday morning breakfast I like to eat homemade freshly baked bread, pancakes, crumpets, or anything alike, and fresh fruits in salad or smoothie. It’s a good start before spending the day out.

This weekend I prepared sugar bread, the recipe comes from Erik Kayser’s book, my reference for bread making (in French).

It’s basically bread base in which a little sugar has been added, and the final shaping is slightly different. After baking it it is also finished with sugar sirup.

Perfect with butter, jam or just nothing.

February 15, 2015

Taisho style

At first when we came to Japan I couldn’t get used to these Japanese-Western (wa-yo) style things: buildings, clothes, food… Everything looked like a pale copy of something we have in Europe or there is in the US, but with something wrong. The most significant period of that style is probably the Taisho era (around 1910-1925), after the many trials in the Meiji period, when the style started to be more stable and much established.

It took me some time to really understand this style. Now I think this is my favorite period for Japanese art, architecture, design and clothing and even literature. Strangely, probably one of my favorite period in Western style too!
In terms of food my favorite is probably om-rice (オムライス), even it started in late Meiji. I’ll give you my recipe very soon!
There are fewer and fewer examples of Taisho architecture in Tokyo now because of a total lack of consciousness of these jewels (or maybe trying to ignore them for profits) and they are replaced one by one by ugly plastic prehab houses. But in areas such as Taito-ku north of Ueno, Ya-Ne-Sen between Taito-ku and Bunkyo-ku, or in Arakawa-ku around Senju and Kita-Senju it is still possible to see some along with some early Showa buildings.


Ukiyoe by Yumeji Takehisa present of the shamisen group

Dentist office in Ueno established in 1900,
and re- built in Showa 3/1928

An other excellent example is the Yasuda mansion near Sendagi (unfortunately rarely open to public) where it is possible to also enjoy interior design and original furnitures. More accessible yet less typical is the Asakura Chosho museum in Yanaka. Other options for a condensed viewing are open air museums where such houses have been moved to. There are two excellent places, the first is Meiji Mura near Nagoya in Inuyama, the other is the Tokyo Oedo Museum of Architecture in Koganei. It has a few exemplars that have been moved there for preservation.

Probably I came to understand and like this period through literature. It is widely covered in the work by Yukio Mishima and by Junichiro Tanizaki, where the mo-ga (modern girl) is well represented and that I massively read after starting to live in Tokyo. Probably “Naomi” is an excellent start.
The music that I’ve had the chance to be introduce to by my husband shamisen group of ha-uta has also given an interesting insight about customs and women liberalization at that time.

Regarding graphic arts, I really like ukiyoe from Yumeji Takehisa and Goyo Hashiguchi, and paintings from Kunitaro Suda for example. The museum of modern art in Hayama, besides being ideally located on Hayama beach, hosts many exhibitions during the year of Japanese painters covering that period and each is worth seeing.

But it is only very recently that I came across a fabulous book: Taisho chic, about the aesthetic of Taisho period that summarizes very well the trends at that time (architecture is not covered though) and I really recommend it if you want to understand this period of Japanese history.

January 30, 2015