Tag: fresh food

Typhoons

It’s the second weekend with a typhoon this month and the third all day rain weekend. Busy with a lot of work, we decided to stay in Tokyo to see some friends, go to the movies, see an exhibition and … work… It was also a good opportunity for me to get familiar with my new oven. So I baked scones Saturday morning and tarts/quiches on Sunday. And I start to get use to it!  Since I had some leftover brown rice I made a new version on my brown rice quiche. Also with leek, but this time I simply chopped thinly 3 Japanese leeks and cooked them in a bit of butter at very low heat, until they were all creamy and topped the pie crust baked simply without nothing. Perfect match of crispy/creamy texture. I served it with a cresson soup. Simply boiled the cresson with some stock of your choice. Blend, add some cream, and serve. That’s it!

Have a beautiful week!! 

Baking scones
Baking scones

Yuzu season: start!

The autumn is here for sure now, and despite the lot of rain, the typhoons etc… there are a few very beautiful sunny days like today. And it is great to enjoy yuzu in the recipes with the fruits starting to appear at the farmers market. I love to use the skin of the yuzu in many recipes and this uear I have been totally in love with Malabar spinach (ツルムラサキ) and I’ve been cooking some a lot. The yuzu goes very well with it and so dowa the lorus root. So naturally I prepared this little dish with grilled lotus roots, blanched Malabar spinach and fresh yuzu peels. A perfect combination to eat with rice of course. And stay dry in Tokyo since the rain is back again!

Two simple Japanese recipes

With some guests from France at home this weekend I cooked some simple Japanese recipes that they could reproduce back home. And because the weather was really terrible I could take all the time needed to chop thinly the vegetables and prepare recipes I usually don’t.

The two recipes I prepared were daikon and miso, and some kinpira gobo (without the red pepper). 

Daikon and miso: 

– 1/2 daikon

– 2 tbs of miso of your choice

– 1/2L of dashi of your choice: konbu, katsuo, niboshi… 

Cut the daikon in 3cm slices, peel them. Prepare the dashi and when boiling cook the daikon. It is ready when a toothpick enters smoothly. In a small bowl put the miso, add 2 or 3 tbs of dashi and stir to obtain a creamy paste. At this stage you can add yuzu peels… for a slightly enhanced version of the recipe. One the daikon is cooked, drain and top with the miso preparation. Eat while still warm.

Kinpira gobo :

 – 1 burdock

– 1 carrot

– a small piece of lotus root (optional) 

– 300ml of dashi of your choice

– 1tbs of soya sauce

– 1tbs of sake

– 1tsp of sugar

– 1 red pepper  

Peel the vegetables. Cut the burdock and gobo in thin matches sticks. Cut the lotus root and the red pepper in thin slices. In a pan boil the vegetables in the dashi. When reduced, add the sake, the red pepper, the sugar, and the soya sauce. Cook until almost dry. Add a few sesame seeds to decorate eventually.

Simple food

There is one thing that I always think about cooking when in a rush to prepare our meals and want to eat some Japanese food, it’s simple seasonal vegetables sautéed, deglazed in a bit of soya sauce, served with rice and pickles. It is so very simple and yet so delicious that it beats any other recipe. It requires no thinking, a very short preparation for the vegetables and then everything in a pan with a few drops of oil, under cover, just stir once in a while. Which frees the hands to do something else! Perfect when the week is super busy with many deadline at work, friends and family visiting, a weekend away in preparation and A. leaving for Europe for 10 very long days…

Autumn version of sautéed vegetables (one plate dish for 2 people)

– 1 Japanese sweet potato

– 3 shiitake

– 2 little turnips (long or round) 

– any other seasonal vegetables: a little piece of kabocha, a few green beans, gingko nuts, shishito, eringi…

– 2tbs of soya sauce

– some vinegared pickles: I love rakkyo (Chinese onions) which are served with curry.

– 1 cup of Japanese rice

Star cooking the rice. Wash and cut the vegetables. In a pan greased with a bit of oil add all the vegetables (except if some have very short cooking time like green beans) cook at high heat for two minutes and stir. Lower the heat and cover. Cook for 12min and stir once in a while. Add the soya sauce, and stir for one minute. Serve all together.

Persimmons harvest

Together with the gingko nuts, the season for persimmons has also started, and our two trees in the garden are literally covered with fruits this year. Since this is way to much to eat them all, that pretty much everyone has a persimmon tree in their garden, contrarily to gingko nuts, they are difficult to give away. I tried jam but it was not a huge success, and I run out of ideas on how to preserve them. These are not really persimmons you would dry, like shibui kaki… So I harvest a few, give a few to friends who don’t have a garden, and usually offer the rest to the birds, bees and butterflies who seems to be loving their sweetness and juiciness. 

One of my favorite recipe with persimmons is in salad with cucumber, turnip, sesame and tofu. This time I had no turnip so it was just persimmon and cucumber. 

Persimmon, cucumber and tofu salad: 

– 1 persimmon still a bit hard

– 1 Japanese cucumber  

– 1 small block of drained hard tofu

– 1tbs of sesame seeds, or sesame powder

– a bit of salt

Peel and dice the persimmon, sluce the cucumber. Grind the sesame seeds, mix with the tofu and the salt. Add the persimmon and the cucumber. Stir well and it is ready to serve.

persimmons on the tree, with giant bee and tiny frog!
persimmons on the tree, with giant bee and tiny frog!

All mixed inspirations

Sometimes that’s what happens… you have a fresh piece of sashimi red snapper, fresh baby leaf salad, homemade umeboshi and you want to eat them altogether. Now what would be the simplest carb to go with would be obviously Japanese rice. But when it’s late and hungry mouths are begging for food… rice is not such a good option: too long to cook. Pasta wouldn’t really fit, but quinoa would definitely! And yes it was a perfect match despite the very various inspirations. Here is what I did:

I simply cooked (boil/steam) a 3-color quinoa mix; I pan grilled the snapper; dressed the salad with olive oil; added an umeboshi on top. That’s it! That’s really not cooking actually but it’s a good way for me to get familiar with my new kitchen!!! 

Where is “home”?

It’s a bit of a weird week, with travel, changes, so I’m getting a bit lost!

We went to Shanghai for two days, where A. was working, abd I took this opportunity as a writing retreat when I was not disturbed abd could focus on my work. It was very productive, the weather very helpful to forced me inside with almost constant pouring rain. Just 30min of swimming in the morning and a rapid tour of the food corner of the nearby department store where it was funny to see so many Japanese products as luxury ones! We came back to Tokyo last night, this morning we received the keys of our new apartment and we are moving tomorrow within Tokyo and Sunday to Ohara. I also have quite some work to do at the lab with the students preparing some key presentations for their graduation. But, nothing’s better than a home cooked meal to get plenty of good energy and I prepared some very simple Japanese things: multigrain mixed with rice, eggplant and miso, scrambled eggs, and jumbo umeboshi. A good reason to take a little break!

staple food of grains and beans at Shanghai department store's food corner
staple food of grains and beans at Shanghai department store’s food corner

Green beans salad

For very hot and humid days like it was today, I like to prepare extremely simple, fresh meals with mainly vegetables. A green beans salad is a classic for me, but instead of preparing it with potatoes like I would usually do I prepared it with hard boiled eggs and fresh ginger and myoga thinely chopped. It gives a very interesting twist to the whole recipe. I guess adding potatoes is still possible.

Cold soup

How is your summer? In Tokyo these days summer looks like the rainy season… and it’s even not too hot! Which is perfect for this first week back to work, except that I was expecting having dinner on the terrace (maybe for the last season since we might move to a new place without a terrace) with our guests but rain didn’t stop for the last week more than just a few minutes. Anyway, this doesn’t affect much my cooking! And after eating out in so many cafes I really enjoyed having a little soup to start with and a cold one for the summer. So for our guests last night (one allergic to lactose) I prepared a potato-leek soup. You know this all-time classic that is so warming in winter… but in a cold version. The only problem with cold soup os that you need to prepare them at least 6h before eating so that they really are really cold when eating. 

Vegan cold leek-potato soup:  (4 servings)

 – 1 leek

– 2-5 potatoes depending on the size

– olive oil, salt, pepper

Wash and chop the leek. In a pan, heat some olive oil and add the leek. Peel the potatoes and cut them. Add to the pan and cook at medium heat until slightly golden, stir every once in a while. Cover with 1L of water and cook until the potatoes are really soft. Blend to obtain a creamy soup (add first the vegetables and then the water little by little in the blender to be sure to have the right consistency. It must slightly more liquid than desired since the cooling will densify the mixture). Add olive oil, salt, pepper. Cool in the fridge for a few hours. Stir the mix before serving to make it homogeneous. Enjoy!

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