Tag: drink

Ginger

For most people outside of Asia, ginger is this wrinkled beige root that can be found all the time, but in Asia, even if you can find more or less fresh ginger all year round in supermarket, there is still a season for harvesting fresh new ginger, and it’s now!

Ginger is often use as condiment in cooking, with tofu, pork… or even more often pickled or candied in a savory preparation. In Japan contrarily to other Asian countries it is rarely used in sweets: not savory candied ginger is not so easy to find. I made some, quite a long time ago and plan to make some again this weekend. There is one thing I particularly love ginger for it’s for preparing drinks. Remember the apple ginger cider? And the honey ginger? Well these are some classics and honey ginger is so easy to make. Well this time I mage a variation of it. It’s ginger milk and honey. It’s of course richer then the herb tea but it has something less stringent and more comforting. For making it, it’s simple. You need a piece of juicy fresh ginger, milk and honey. Wash the ginger and slice it thinly. New ginger skin is so thin you can keep it. In a pan pour the milk and add the ginger. Let sit for one hour. Then boil the milk, serve and add honey. You can serve without filtering and enjoy the ginger while drinking.

One other way to do it is to extract the juice of the ginger by grinding it, add to the milk and boil immediately. This method is faster but I find that extracting the juice of ginger is quite messy… or maybe it’s just me!

And did you know that ginger is good for sore throat and when you are tired too?

Fresh ginger!

It is now the season for fresh ginger. Fresh ginger looks very much like “old” ginger that is commonly found in supermarkets all over the world, but instead of a dry and thick skin and a very rooty aspect, fresh ginger has a whitish-pinkish color with a very thin skin and a much softer structure with much less fibers in it. It is quite juicy and slightly less spicy in taste. Ideal for any recipe involving ginger, perfect just sliced or grated for the juice. And since the weather is getting chillier these days a hot honey-ginger or ginger-tangerine drink is perfect!!!! 

Making these drinks is very easy, you need a piece of ginger, honey and/or 1 or 2 tangerines. Boil water, peel and cut the ginger in slices, squeeze the tangerines for juice. In a tea pot put the sliced ginger, the tangerine juice, 2 tsp of honey, add the water. Let infuse 5 to 10min depending on your taste and drink while hot! Perfect to prevent colds and season fatigue.

Apple ginger cider

The other day we went to Aoyama to pick up our new car and we stopped for lunch on our way in a little passage in Aoyama dori with food trucks and cafe barracks celebrating the chia seed week. Don’t ask me what it is, I didn’t really get the point, none of of the food served was using chia, probably some promotional event… 

Still, they serve some decent vegan food and serve some drink, this is where we tried the apple-ginger cider. It was made out of French sparkling apple juice and ginger syrup, and quite good, though a little too sweet, so I decided to try making some today and invented my own recipe.

I had some fresh ginger root, so I made a syrup out of it by cutting into small bits one large root. I boiled it into 1/3L of water where I added some block sugar, once the syrup was ready I just let it cool down. For the apple juice, I don’t have a juicer, so I couldn’t make my own apple juice, so I bought some natural basic apple juice. And same for the sparkling water, just soda water. I mixed then in the following proportions: 1/4L of ginger syrup where I left the cubes of gingers for a better taste, but you can filter; 1/3L of apple juice and 1/3L of soda water.  If you like you can serve with ice cube, I like it at room temperature.

梅酒 – umeshu

One of the plum tree in the garden, covered with plum
One of the plum tree in the garden, covered with plum

Prunellia’s post on her favorite Japanese drink is timely because it is just the season to harvest plums and to prepare umeshu. In our garden we have a lot of plum trees and each year they produce a lot of fruits. Last year for the first time the fruits were harvested and used to prepare umeshu. As Prunellia mentioned, Umeshu is prepared from still green plums and usually with shochu (a white traditional alcoholic drink made of rice, potato, sweet potato…). The recipe used here to prepare the Umeshu uses nihonshu, which is regular Japanese sake or rice wine and gives a milder taste to the preparation. I’ve got the recipe from a  lady living nearby. Actually last year she prepared the umeshu with our fruits, but this year I was very much tempted to prepare some myself, so she gave me her recipe and helped me out for my first time.

Umeshu from 2014 harvested plum just ready! 
Umeshu from 2014 harvested plum just ready! 

The recipe is really simple, but be aware unlike a lot of alcoholic  preparations that are ready in 60 or 90 days (peach wine, verbena liquor… that I used to prepare according to my grand mother recipes), this one takes a whole year (you can try earlier but one year guaranties the best taste/color). 

You need Japanese hard plums, rock sugar, sake or shochu, and a large jar (usually plastic or glass) with a tight lid and a big mouth to fit the plums in. First wash the plum and remove the stems, then wash again and dry them properly. Weight the plums that can fit 3/4 of the jar, weight the half amount of rock sugar. Clean and dry perfectly the jar and then pick the plums with a fork a few times around and make layers of plum and rock sugar until the 3/4 has been reached. Cover with the sake or shochu up to 2-3cm higher than the level of fruits and sugar. Close the lid tightly, store in a cool and dark place for almost a year. Once in a while you can shake the jar to help the sugar melt.

Prunellia, I’m counting on you to come next spring or summer to try my homemade umeshu with the plums from the garden! 

Wait about a year before tasting! 
Wait about a year before tasting! 

Tea time

OK we’re talking a lot about food, but what about drinks?

I’ve always been a heavy tea drinker may be because in my teenage years I wanted to be British for the pony rides in Hide Park and the tea-time at the Brown’s, the check pants and the Dc Martens boots for Carneby street, and the cabriolet as soon as the sun is out! I have had all of it, but my overall favorite drink is still definitely Earl Grey tea. My taste varies with years and seasons but it is always what I go back to. I had a post earlier about one of my favorite Earl Grey from Marks and Spencer, but I also like very much the Clipper organic Earl Grey, and the Mariage Freres Imperial Earl Grey. The Tazo Earl Grey is nice but never in a paper cup and it has to be lightly infused and is better with milk.

Loose leaf new green tea-新茶 from Miyazaki prefecture
Loose leaf new green tea-新茶 from Miyazaki prefecture

Of course being in Japan my taste for green tea as developped a lot and I am quite picky with it too.  If black tea works well for me all year round, I find green tea much better in warmer days. Because the water should only be around 60deg, and it has a fresh taste I find it less warming and comforting in winter. In Japan buying green tea is really simple. There’s already a lot of loose leaf tea in supermarkets, but tea shops offer a greater variety in quality. One delicious tea is “new tea” (新茶=shincha) the tea freshly collected, it’s much sweeter and soft than regular tea and can only be bought in spring and needs to be quickly used. There are many regions in Japan producing tea: Shizuoka, Uji, Miyazaki to cite only a few. Luckily we have friends with family everywhere in Japan and receive gifts from them often. This time it’s delicious shincha from Miyazaki that I enjoy every morning! But if you don’t have this chance I really love the tea from Mikuniya Zengoro which original shop is from Fukui prefecture.

What is your favorite tea? 

 

Freshly prepared new green tea (tray from a flea market, the teapot from Kappabashi dori, the tea bowl a present from our Japanese teacher)
Freshly prepared new green tea (tray from a flea market, the teapot from Kappabashi dori, the tea bowl a present from our Japanese teacher)

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