Tag: chick pea

Always the same, never the same

Since we’ve been working from home, I cook three to four meals a day (we wouldn’t miss a good tea time!) and a whole new routine of recipes slowly replaced old habits. More meals to cook = more chances to explore. I cook more quiche as we spend more time in Ohara, I also cook more steam buns and gyoza, also one dish that has been an almost weekly thing is brown rice and spicy vegetables. As much I love Japanese brown rice, it takes too much time to cook it after coming back from work and have it ready for dinner (about 2 to 3h) so I would almost never make any. Working from home as this perk that starting a recipe is really simple, squeezed between two meetings.

For some reason Thursday is the day we most often have brown rice. And one thing I really love is to have it with some seasonal vegetables and a light spicy sauce. Versions are endless. And with the spring coming and the new vegetables I prepared a very simple and ultra full of flavors version. A few chick peas remaining from the hummus I made the other day, a bit of coconut cream, and a lot of new and fresh onions that our friends gave us. Add some super ripe tomatoes and, because winter is still not completely gone, a sweet potato, you have a great base. Normally I would have added curry to the mixture, but curry powder is on my shopping list and I didn’t have time to go grocery shopping this week. And actually it was good that way. It forced me to explore other spice combination and I realize that curry is not necessary. So if you want a very mild and very tasty recipe for your new onions and your brown rice, just read below and enjoy!

New onions with spice and coconut milk

  • 2-3 new onions
  • 1 sweet potato (one carrot could do, nothing could do too)
  • 1 large and ripe tomato (if you can’t find one just do without)
  • 200ml of coconut cream or coconut milk
  • 1 cup of chick peas, boiled and drained
  • 1tsp of ground cardamom
  • 1tsp of turmeric
  • 1/2tsp of all spice
  • 1/2tsp of ground cumin
  • 1/2tsp of salt
  • ground black pepper

Remove one layer of onion skin and cut them in 8. Wash and cut the vegetables in bite size.
In a greased pan, on medium heat, put all the vegetables, and the chick peas, and cook for 10min while stirring regularly.
Add the coconut cream, the spices and stir well. Cook under cover for 5min. And that’s ready. Serve with brown rice, but I bet it is also a killer with flat breads or basmati rice.

Chickpeas and orrecchiete, an heresy?

There are culinary rules I grew up with that are long lived… Such that we don’t eat bread with pasta, potatoes or rice, or we don’t potatoes with pasta or rice, or rice with pasta… basically one and only one source of carbs is enough for one meal. A. would confirm that pasta and rice are definitely not a good mix, despite the famous dish called Turk(o) rice from Nagasaki, that to be honest seems more like a terrible mix… Indeed, a long long time ago, I was working on the weekend and really busy and I didn’t have much time to prepare A. a lunch. At that time, probably the last time after the incident, I was using a bit the freezer to freeze some leftovers to use in cases of emergency, and I was sure I had a bit of pork ground meat there, so I told him to boil himself some pasta, add the meat and enjoy! But the meat wasn’t meat, it was brown rice, and apparently spaghetti with brown rice was a terrible mix (more so when you’re a meat eater and you think you will have pork…!!!)

Sorry mum, but there are rules that I discovered can be broken and lead to delicious preparations such as having potatoes in curry rice, or sweet potato rice, or potato ravioli. And that’s how mixing chickpeas and pasta came to my mind… But not all pasta would work the same and I found that Orecchiette would be great for their little cup shape would be the perfect size for that of chickpeas. I knew they would made a great pair and they did. Perfect for a nutritious lunch after 2 hours in the ocean surfing and body boarding and before another 2-3 hours in the garden trimming trees. Yes, weekend in the country are very active and warm and comforting food is much necessary to face the elements.

For the recipe I used a Mediterranean variation of flavors, I used some greens (I used turnip tops, but it can be anything green and leafy: spinach, chard…), a fragrant Italian olive oil and a few chopped Maltese dried tomatoes, ample pepper. So here is the detailed recipe, I hope you’ll enjoy it.

Orecchiette and chickpeas (for 2 servings)

  • 125g of dried orecchiette, boiled
  • 70-90g of boiled chickpeas (a small cup)
  • a nice bundle of green of your choice and in season: spinach, radish tops, turnip tops, chard or whatever you like
  • 2-4 dried tomatoes depending on the size. Mine are giant sun dried tomatoes I brought back from Malta
  • deliciously fragrant olive oil as much as you like
  • black pepper freshly ground

Prepare you chickpeas the day before if they are dry. and boil them until tender. If your pasta aren’t boiled yet boil them.

Wash and chop roughly the green. In a large pan or wok, put a bit of olive oil, and at low to medium heat soften the greens in the oil. when soft enough and brightly colored, add the pasta and the peas and stir well. to obtain a well balance mix of all the ingredients. Chop the dry tomatoes, and stir again, still cooking at medium heat. Add a last splash of olive oil, ground black pepper and serve. That’s it! Simple isn’t it?

Variations around flat breads

I am always amazed by all you can do with just flour and water… and recently I’m getting addicted to flat breads… Remember when I first tried here? Well… the same person that makes the dried chickpeas that triggered my wish for flat bread to eat with falafels, well, also makes chickpeas flour… I use a lot chickpeas flour for socca, but I wanted a change so I decided to explore possibilities with flat breads.

First, I made a trial by replacing 3/4 of the flour by chickpeas flour and that worked perfectly… served with zucchini and basil.

Then, another possibility I thought of was to replace half of the flour by whole wheat flour… and that’s all the same delicious.

Finally, I decided to add seeds to the dough. Caraway or cumin seeds are perfect.

As for cooking I tried two options. One is in the dry thick frypan. To obtain a soft bread, flexible and light. The other way, I added vegetal oil in the pan and fried them. It gives a crispy golden bread. Both were equally delicious but I have a preference for the dry soft ones, in particular when used to eat vegetables such as eggplants or zucchinis…

One thing is sure is that making flat breads is super simple, fast and requires no complex ingredients. They are delicious and fit super well summer vegetables or curry. They will be on our table often!!

Chickpeas flour flat breads

Bamboo shoot again!

We are moving in our new apartment tomorrow, but getting everything ready and working doesn’t mean not cooking, we have to eat 😉 Luckily we are only moving vertically so it’s quite easy to go and meet with the workers in between two online meetings, and anyway we decided not to do a lot of renovations first rather wait to see how we live in that new place. Our main idea was that since we spend most of our week days at work and most of our weekends in the countryside, our Tokyo apartment was oversized, so we wanted a downsizing. Few people want to move to a smaller place but we did. So we found a smaller version without a guest room we decided to move… well that was before Corona and simultaneous telework, so maybe not the most judicious timing… but one has to take opportunities when they come!

What does moving has to do with bamboo shoots??? Nothing… it’s spring, the soft pink of the sakura season is over and made way to the bright pink and fuchsia azaleas, and bamboos are growing growing growing. I even saw some in Kitanomaru park during one of my daily walks. But as I said before, the season is very short, so it’s better to enjoy them without delay.

I presented in the past some bamboo shoot recipes but this week I came with a few more ideas and wanted to share them with you. Both recipe today are mixing Mediterranean and Japanese cuisine, and the key is a fragrant olive oil. The first one is a chickpeas and tomatoes ragu, the second is more of a leftover type of recipe. Indeed, because we’re moving I decided to empty the fridge and the pantry as much as I could. And because we’re moving also and our view won’t be as dramatic as the actual one I shoot a few more times my lunch plate with a view…

Chickpeas and bamboo shoots ragu

– 1/2 bamboo shoot

– 2 cups of boiled chickpeas

– 1 large ripe tomato

– a few capers

– fragrant olive oil

– salt and pepper

Prepare the bamboo shoot as usual by boiling it in rice water fir as long as it needs to be soft (a tooth pick should easily enter.

Boil the chickpeas.

Wash the tomato. In a large pan generously oiled with a good olive oil add the tomato roughly cut. Cook until you obtain a smooth tomato sauce. Add salt and pepper and the capers, the chickpeas, and the sliced bamboo shoots. Stir and add a bit if olive oil, serve and eat warm or cold. That’s it!!!

Leftover bamboo salad

– 1/4 of bamboo shoot boiled

– a handful of boiled chickpeas

– 2 large boiled potatoes

– 1/2 new onion blanched

– a handful of boiled green beans

– fragrant olive oil

– 1tbs of soya sauce

Cut the bamboo, the potatoes, the onion and the green beans, dress in a bowl. Add the chickpeas, the soya sauce, sone olive oil, stir gently and eat!!!

Isn’t that super easy???

Flat breads

My parents were supposed to come from France to Japan to visit us last week, but things had obviously to be postponed. But they insisted in still sending a parcel with some essential staples I cannot find in Japan with the quality I want. In particular, I love to cook with the chickpeas one of their relatives make, until I manage to produce my own… one day…

So I was very happy to have some in my parcel and start preparing them almost right away. Since they are dried natural chickpeas you need first to soak them into water for at least 24h before starting anything cooking or sprouting… So you can’t really improvised until you’ve done that… but while they soak you have all the time to consider options though… and this time I set my mind on falafels. I know A. loves them, and so do I!! Yet when I told A. we’ll have falafels, he asked if we’ll have also pita bread… I didn’t expect that and didn’t have time to prepare for a proper pita bread, but I recalled seeing recipes of flat breads that didn’t need yeast and raising and could be made in less than 30min. So I decided to make my first flat breads. I used the first tutorial I found that looked simple a quick and it was perfect and it takes only 5min to knead, 20min rest (time I ised to make the falafels) and 2min per flat bread to cook, in a pan, so you don’t even need to turn on your oven!!

For the falafels, I simply mashed the chickpeas, added some potato starch for the crispness, chopped fresh mint and parsley, cumin powdered, coriander powdered, a bit of chili pepper powdered and salt and pepper. And fried them in a small pan. I served all with some fresh vegetables, fresh cheese, and chopped coriander… simple and really delicious!!!

Have a good week!

Lemongrass

With the terrible summer the garden hasn’t produced much since August. My eggplants are having a hard time growing, same for the celeriac, and the ukon. The beets have disappeared… only the peanuts, the celery branch, and the herbs are doing fine. Regarding the fruits… the jujube are few and very tiny, the persimmons are very small too, I have no lemons and a dozen of yuzu that are not yet mature so will see how this ends up. But little is not nothing so let’s enjoy what we got! And among the harvested products I kind of enjoyed a lot the lemongrass. It was my first year planting some and it easily picked up and produce quite a bit. Well for a plant that loves water must have been satisfied this summer!!!!

I have not a lot of experience cooking with lemongrass and my favorite preparation it definitely herb tea. I found it simple to harvest and dry lemongrass naturally. I just cut in 3cm long the leaves and they dried in 2 days. I use a pinch for a large mug of drink.

In food, I remembered using quite a lot lemongrass back then when we lived in Paris and also getting tired with the too strong flavor. But a few things I remember loving it for was in clear soups and in vegetables preparations. Remembering that last one I prepared us a very simple meal with simmered chickpeas, carrots, kabocha and I using lemongrass to give a nice fresh flavor to eat. Served with a fresh leaves salad, and a bit of olive oil… it was very nice!

Enjoy the autumn, it’s official now!

Miso

Remember last March? I made miso with our friends… and I had to wait about a year before being able to try it… actually our friends came home the other day and we talked miso, and they said that their miso was ready and 9month were sufficient… so I couldn’t wait to open my bucket and check what was under the big stone and the bamboo leaves… I totally didn’t sneak peek in during the whole time, worried that could prevent it from fermenting correctly.

First there was a bit of beautiful blue mold on the edges of the bamboo leaves, but that is normal. Under the bamboo leaves there was a beautiful, clean and fresh miso waiting!!!

Just uncovered miso

Without any delay I moved the miso from the plastic jar (I like better the old pottery for pickles… but mine was too small…) into bins and started using it right away. First of all with daikon and carrot sticks. It’s always the best way to test the real raw taste of miso. Then of course in miso soup, and with spinach and finally a simple recipe with chickpeas, spinach, and an egg. The miso I made is really nice. It has a texture where you can easily see the crushed beans and I love this texture for classic miso. Of course you don’t find this in white and red miso, which are much creamier. I found it a bit salty when I first tasted it, but now I don’t feel that anymore. I will definitely make miso again this year!!!

Miso soup and spinach with miso for our friends visiting. Picture from @Chinoshot

Chickpeas, spinach and miso

– 150g of boiled chickpeas

– 1 bundle of spinach

– 2tbs of miso

– 2 eggs (optional)

Wash and chop the spinach. Blanche them in very little water. Drain them. In a slightly olive oil greased pan put the chickpeas, the spinach and stir well, when the chickpeas are warm, in a small bowl dilute the miso in 2tbs of water and add to the pan and stir well. Cook a sunny side egg if you want. Serve the chickpeas and top (or not) with the egg. Enjoy and stay warm!!!

Chickpea pasta

When we traveled to Australia last May, I’ve totally fallen in love with lentil pasta and chickpea pasta found in an organic vegan shop. I’m not particularly interested in gluten-free food but taste wise it was really very interesting. So I decided to try to make my own ones from chickpea flour. I knew it wouldn’t have the consistency of regular wheat pasta because it is gluten-free, so I was expecting something hard to roll, but in fact it wasn’t as bad as I imagined. I was first thinking of making farfalle, but I ran out of time, so I just rolled it manually and made some short tagliatelle. Again I new that long pasta wouldn’t hold together and that the pasta machine wouldn’t help here. The result was amazingly delicious. Probably even better with a stronger olive oil and cold. I served them with bacon, zucchini and mallow jute.

Definitely a recommendation and much easier to make than I thought!

Chickpea pasta

– 150g of chickpea flour, plus some for rolling

– water

In a bowl ready with the chickpea flour, a water little by little to obtain a nice mix, not too sticky. Set for rest for 1h.

Then knead a bit shain and on a floured top rolle the dough, cut the pasta.

Boil them and enjoy!!!

New kitchen!

We moved in our new apartment this weekend and we have just finished emptying the last boxes. Now it starts to like home! I’m still not used to it and in particular to the kitchen. It was very difficult to find a place that checked all the boxes of our list of “must”  given the very long list and the very short time we had: the moving was motivated by A.  new job starting next week and by the fact that there is a highrise under construction right in front of our former place which would have blocked seriously our beautiful view of Mount Fuji and Nihombashi skyline. Anyway… it was time to move… after 8 years in the same place, the longuest we’ve ever been. So, I had to give away my precious terraces, the large window in the kitchen, the all white and bright interior, the 3 sides orientation and natural lighting, the no neighbors around… but we kept the view, or got even better! I got a kind of boudoir/dressing room, and a slightly larger kitchen, a new oven, but not much larger… I also kept the gaz cooking range, which is a must!!! And finding mansions where they have gaz cooking range is getting much more difficult. So I am ver very pleased with that! Would you imagine cooking on an electric range???? 

The thing I didn’t expect was a much better lighting in the kitchen to take pictures at night with much less reflections!!! So, while I’m slowly getting used to this new place, I prepared some very simple food, because when I come back to work we worked on boxes, hanging frames etc… And I prepared this a bit weird combination but really delicious dish with chickpeas, bunashimeji, butternut squash and tofu. Seasoned with papeika, salt and pepper. Each ingredient is diced (but the chickpeas) and all are pan cooked in a little of olive oil. I had the spices in the end and served right away.

oh! Yes... there's also a dishwasher... A. is so excited about it!!! 
oh! Yes… there’s also a dishwasher… A. is so excited about it!!! 

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