Saturday, it’s cold and one of the stray cat in the garden has woken us quite early this morning. Damned stray cat (not our little Pablo, a different one)!
So after playing tennis 2 hours in the cold we needed a lunch full of energy and tasty. So I boiled some spelt and served it with 3min sauteed cauliflower chunks and mushrooms, and made some chicken koloke or croquette or balls or whatever you call them, with just some chicken breast minced rolled in panko, and cooked in a bit of oil in a pan. All in A bowl. Yummy, full of energy!! Have a good weekend!
Back to our routine, lot of work and week end in the country. Saturday morning tennis and one-bowl lunch.
Today the market was really good, edamame, green beans, lots of fruits… So the lunch bowl was really simple: chick peas, edamame, green beans, cucumber, sesame seeds, with lemon juice and olive oil; and for the proteines chicken and black pepper balls. Simple, delicious.
As usual, after our two hours tennis game in the morning we’re just starving and we need a good source of carb and proteins. I love the Japanese combo rice and meat balls. This time sweet potato rice, chicken and soua sauce balls, and pickled myoga in plum vinegar. Perfect!
I bake the rice in a regular pot, add the potatoes sliced at mid time; mix the chicken meat with rice flour and a bit of soya sauce and cook in a fry pan with a bit of vegetal oil. Simple. I got the picled myoga from our local farmers market.
When the temperature exceeds 30deg day and night I only can eat very simple food. Japanese rice is really delicious when it’s hot, and it suits very well simple preparations, without any fat nor dressing. Donburi is always a good and simple way to prepare a rice based perfect meal. This time you can’t imagine something simpler: plain white Japanese rice, fresh cucumber, grilled chicken breast chopped, and a lot of shiso leaves finelly cut, a few sesame seeds for perfection. Served with a glass of cold green tea. How do you cook when it’s hot?
When we have visitors from Europe for dinner and it’s there first time in Japan I usually cook Japanese for them, but I cook what I call “soft Japaanese”. I don’t try to impress them with my skills in cha-kaiseki cuisine with elaborated tofu mixes, plain white rice and strongly miso tasting fish and Japanese sweets for example. I prefer to introduce them to flavors their palate can identify and distinguish if they don’t. And if they come on week day, since I don’t have the luxury to spend more than 2h for grocery shopping+cooking, I need to be very organized.
This time our guests have been in Tokyo for a few days already, and travelling the world before arriving there so I crafted a menu where they can enjoy Japanese food while still feeling the casual home made touch:
somen with a chicken meat ball as a starter, ginger grilled pork (buta shoga yaki) with white and whole rice, miso soup with silky tofu and mitsuba. for dessert, just fresh summer fruits in salad: Japanese grape, Japanese plums and Japanese green melon.
If the main dish and dessert are quite common, for the starter I composed a recipe from cha-kaiseki and adjusted it to the market. The original recipe is using snapper and togan, a kind of summer gourd; but I couldn’t find neither so I replaced the fish with chicken meat balls made out of grinded chicken breast and startch, boiled in konbu dashi, and the togan was replaced by thinly sliced cucumber. The whole thing seasoned with a few drops of soya sauce. And I added two slices of dried shiitake. Since it is almost summer I chosed somen and served the whole refregirated. Bonus: since It is refrigirated you can prepare the bowls and just take them out of the fridge to serve!
The starter: somen with chicken meat ball and cucumber
