Tag: dill

Ravioli again!

After this busy week at work and several dinners out, a little bit of slow cooking was more than welcome! But it was so cold that I didn’t even dare trying to make bread. Indeed, when we arrived Saturday morning it was 2-3 degrees in the house, it slowly went up to 15-17 by the time it was bed time, and again it was 3 degrees when we woke up the next morning. These old Japanese houses are really not meant to be warmed, they are wind breakers, just to live in wearing many warm layers of clothes. And it totally works. But to make bread in such conditions is really hard (oh! Maybe that’s one reason why bread and alike are not traditional to Japan!). The bread takes forever to rise and it’s never long enough! Instead, I simply kneaded some pasta dough to make ravioli. There was some beautiful salmon from Miyagi, some baby komatsuna, and I had some dill on the verge of drying. The recipe was all set. I put the dill chopped directly in the pasta. I made filling by first grilling the salmon and blanching the komatsuna, then put the two in the blender to obtain an almost creamy texture. Rolled the dough in my pasta machine (with the dill I found it hard to roll it to extra thin) and made the ravioli. I served with some more blanched komatsuna, butter for me, olive oil for A. and it was simply delicious!

I wish a good very week, it might snow again in Tokyo!

Late night dinner

There are days (quite many recently) like that… when I start cooking past 23:00 for our dinner. We’re obviously starving after a long day at work, but nonetheless we want something fresh and tasty. I found that’s often when I get the most creative, in particular when the ingredients are limited as in winter (in summer tomato-eggplant-zucchini would just work fine…), I focus on herbs and flavors. Pasta would often be the base, while they boil I would of course prepare the topping. Last night I add a great inspiration and the result was sooooo great that I really want to share my recipe with you!

Celery pasta  (for 2 people)

– 125g of pasta (I used whole wheat penne)

– 3 branches of celery

– 1 or 2 mizuna bundles

– 3 branches of fresh dill

– olive oil, salt and pepper  

Boil water for the pasta and boil them while you prepare the vegetables. Wash and chop the celery, up to the leaves. Wash and chop the mizuna, same for the dill. In a heated pan add some olive oil, toss the celery, and stir  a bit. Then add the dill and finally the mizuna, salt and pepper. The vegetables don’t actually need to be cooked, so the time they spend in the pan shouldn’t exceed 7-8 minutes. They need to be just warm and rolled over in olive oil. Drain the pasta when cooked and serve. Top with the vegetables. Add a final olive oil touch, and ground pepper. Actually you can add some gratted Parmigiano, it is the perfect final touch!

How do you like your pasta?? I’ll be happy to try new ideas and recipes!

Oven grilled salmon

There are days when the market offers a new recipe ideas instantaneously: beautiful salmon filet for sashimi + fennel + red onion + new potatoes (I’ve decided to buy more potatoes). Finding fennel is quite rare in Tokyo and usually the only place you can get some imported is Nissin or National Azabu. Local one? Never seen any. But this time at the local farmers cooperative they were having fennels from Isumi! I jumped on the occasion. And then when looking at my purchased back home the combination of red onion, new potatoes, fennel and salmon all cooked in the oven together came instantenously.

The raw ingredients ready to be cooked
The raw ingredients ready to be cooked

So I finely sliced one red onion, two new potatoes, one fennel, the salmon filet then added dill, pepper, salt and olive oil and cooked 30min in the oven. And the result was just as expected, perfectly juicy and tasty, perfect for a casual diner.

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