Japanese flavors meet mum’s classic recipe

In the late spring and early summer, back then when we lived in France, my mother would often cook a potatoes salad with green beans or broad beans and new onion. Or she would prepare broad beans with tomatoes. Broad beans, or Morocco ingen モロッコインゲン, are very easy to find in Japan. In Isumi they seems to be growing quite easily, it’s on the farmers market stall from early June. (Oh! By the way, it seems that the name “ingen” comes from the name of a monk that imported green beans to Japan a few centuries ago!!)

Like my mother, I like to prepare broad beans, and a potato salad is always handy because it can be prepared ahead of time and doesn’t need to be refrigerated. Perfect lunch for a busy day. Though I live the dressing my mother prepare for this salad – her classic recipe is here – I wanted to test the new katsuo flakes from Katsuura I bought recently and I am also trying to finish the last umeboshi from last uear to make space for the new ones that will be arriving in a few weeks. The dressing for my potatoes and broad beans salad was all set. The mixture of flavors, familiar yet newly combined made this recipe really super easy and delicious. So here it is.

Japanese flavors potatoes and broad beans salad (serves 2)

150g of new potatoes
200g of broad beans
1 large umeboshi
A handful of katsuo flakes
1tbs of soya sauce
1tbs of olive oil

Boil the potatoes and broad beans. Do not over cook the broad beans. Drain. In a bowl add the vegetables, extract the flesh of the plum, scatter it on the vegetables. Add the olive oil, the soya sauce, top with the katsuobushi. Serve at room temperature or cold.

July 2, 2020

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 longer, and when I saw these broad beans I couldn’t help taking them and prepare a meal that would still feels like summer. I chose for that a Japanese classic preparation boiling them in a dashi of konbu, just enough so that when they were cooked the liquid was alsmost gone (katsuobushi, or a mix of both is also perfect) and added okra sliced and jute mallow. I finished with light colored shoyu. Served it with rice and umeboshi and an omelette with finely chopped green shiso.

The Indian summer can start now!

September 12, 2018

Having fun with broad beans

I had a few broad beans left and had this idea of making soup with them, so I boiled them, peeled them and blend them and instead of water I used some cream. What happened is that it became a broad bean whipped cream! Oh oh! What a nice thing! So I really made broad beans whipped cream, adding a little more cream and a little salt. And decided to serve it with an asparagus and an asparagus risotto with Parmegiano. This was probably the simplest and funniest dis to prepare, and taste wise it was awesome. The very subtle taste of broad beans in the cream goes perfectly with both the rice and the just blanched jumbo green asparagus. I’m not very good at plating because I don’t like to waste food, but the cream thing, I must admit helped a lot to give texture, color and fixation.

May 18, 2016

Tomato and broad beans in broth

In Isumi they grow tomatoes that are super delicious and can easily compete with Mediterranean tomatoes. They just start to be in season and they are perfect for any kind of preparations, raw, cooked, grilled because they are well ripen, sweet and juicy.

One thing I love to do with this tomatoes is to peel them and serve them in a broth made with dashi and a bit of soya sauce, sugar and vinegar. And because it is still spring, I added a few blanched and peeled broad beans. Served with delicious brown rice.

May 16, 2016

Spring energy

With super fresh green beans and broad beans it is really easy to prepare anything. They just need to be blanched and can be eaten with everything: risotto, pasta, quinoa… I prepared some quinoa the other day, so today it is whole wheat penne. A bit of olive oil, salt and pepper, and you have the perfect dinner ready in 10min!!! Full of energy and good things to survive this week!!!

May 11, 2016

Spring veggies quiche

Too happy with last week Japanese style quiche I’ve continued for our guests this week with a spring version. I’ve made the dough with buckwheat flour which makes it really crispy and for the veggies I used new onion, broad beans, snap peas and broccoli.

April 29, 2016

An other brown rice bowl

Every year the week before the golden week is always crazy. Indeed it’s the season for research reports, the lectures have take. A steady pace and the students start to have many questions about their research. So before the long break it is slways crazy and days are too short to squeeze in all I want to do. Dinner thus become simpler and lighter with fresh dpring veggies bowls with pasta or rice. This year it’s rice, brown rice. A simple bowl with asparagus, broad beans, sprouts and yuzu miso!

April 28, 2016

Hectic week

This all week has been pretty crazy. I knew I would be very busy at work and that I’ll have to go early to the lab too, but what I didn’t expect is that the train to commute would let me down so many times. Usually trains are super reliable in Japan, but once in a while there are incidents, and usually they happen all at the same moment. Spending more time to commute then usual I didn’t have so much time left to spend in my kitchen and still needed to indulged with some simple food to keep : rice with sesame seeds, and greens with soya sauce, and since I knew that wouldn’t be enough for my husband, I stopped by Saboten and added some pork filet katsu to the menu.

August 23, 2015

Farro penne salada

Recently there’s been a lot of green beans and broad beans, it is just the pick season here in Japan and I can’t resist buying some several times a week, so our dinner have been based on these greens quite often. Recently I also found okra from Okinawa (usually they come from the Philippines), but not yet local okra. I find the one from Okinawa particularly delicious. It’s funny because I never ate okra before coming to Japan, at first I found it was a strange vegetable, but little by little I started to really enjoy them. When eaten raw they are a bit slimy which might be discussing for some people, but as soon as you boil them for a few seconds they’re not slimy anymore and they keep this beautiful intense green color.
This time I prepared for dinner a farro penne salada. I boiled the pasta al-dente, and boil the broad beans and green beans together, in the last 30seconds I just added the okra.
I served that with olive oil, salt and pepper, as usual, and added some wild smoked salmon (I don’t why I mention “wild”, because I only eat wild fish from specific areas, like all the vegetables I use are either organic or locally grown without chemicals).
And dinner was ready in less than 15min! Perfect after a long day at work!

July 9, 2015