Special guest: cooking in Tsunan

We are back to our friends’ place in Tsunan for a few days and as usual having fun cooking with K. the local products and vegetables from their kitchen garden. In the summer they grow a lot of tomatoes that are always super delicious, a lot of eggplants and cucumbers too. K. is very good at cooking, she knows a lot of different inspirations from their travels and she mixes it quite well to Japanese traditional cooking and Japanese ingredients. Cooking with her is always very inspiring for me, and I learn a lot helping her in the kitchen. But I also cook for them some dishes, this time a blueberry tart.

Even if there is often some meat in many of her recipes, she uses a lot of fresh vegetables from their garden and she always make a twist to Japanese traditional recipes. This time she prepared shabu shabu, but served it with celery, fresh lettuce, sprouts, mizuna, pickled cucumbers, snap peas and soya sprouts… the vegetables only where so delicious. And of course there was as always, one of her wonderful tomatoes salad. K. always peels her tomatoes for the salad and serves them with many different dressings: sometimes just black pepper and salt, or just green shiso (perilla) sometimes with more complex preparations. This time she prepared a sesame dressing with roasted and grinded sesame (about 4tbs), soya sauce (3tbs), rice oil (3tbs).

July 31, 2017

Fresh quinoa salad

If my weeks are busy with work my weekends are none the less busy with other activities: going swimming in the ocean in the morning and in the evening, working on some of my sewing/embroidery projects, gardening, baking, playing tennis, socializing… and when it’s hot outside I feel like eating nothing else than super fresh simple food: tomatoes, cucumbers, okra, melons… so for a boost of energy, adding red quinoa to a simple tomato/cucumber salad and making a dressing with olive oil, yogurt and fresh basil is exactly the kind of lunch that I love. It takes 5min to prepare (and just 10min to boil the quinoa, but if you’re smart you can boil it before) and it’s fresh and light, which is perfect before 2h of tennis playing.

What is is your favorite summer food?

July 22, 2017

Blueberry tart

This year I have the impression that there are more blueberries than in the past, and I bake more more fruits tart where I make a simple dough with a little of sugar for the pie crust and then just add fruits on top. I bake that for 20min at 190-200. It makes perfect simple desserts, tea-time sweets or breakfast. With blueberries I was worried that not adding sugar to the fruits might be a bit too sour, but the fruits are so ripe that actually sugar is not needed. Actually I have noticed recently using less and less added sugar and salt to all my recipes and enjoying very much the result.

July 18, 2017

La rue du supplice

When we moved to Tokyo in 2004, during the first few months every evening on my way back home I was taking one of the small residential street around Tokyo university, and every evening from one of the house in that street a delicious smell was tempting me, a smell that was the promise of a delicious Japanese dinner. It could be the smell of dashi, the smell of soya sauce, the smell of tempura, or the smell of sesame oil. At that time it was a smell that I really envied because we were unable to cook it at home, even just to find the ingredients was hard, cooking them was just impossible, and because we had no money to afford wasting food by trying silly recipes (an habit that I have kept actually, I only try recipes that I know will work for me). I called this street the “rue du supplice” because I always took it when I was very hungry and when I knew dinner would be some somen with ketchup and fried or scrambled eggs (what we lived on for a few months before being adventurous with the Japanese cook book!). It was a real ordeal and a real pleasure to take that street, the fantastic smell… only later once home emphasized the monotony of our dinner.

Last night, I had this very same feeling again passing one of the house nearby the university when I smelled the sesame oil… it made me craving for some real Japanese food. But since we have some guests I cooked some traditional summer recipes from Provence: oven grilled summer veggies, soupe au pistou, fougasse etc… so this all Japanese food craving is still waiting… soon probably..,

July 15, 2017

Japanese summer noodles

In the summer, it is very common to eat chilled or cold noodles in Japan. Cold soba, cold udon… but one of the most popular is probably cold somen. These are thin wheat noodles that are very quick to boil, and very quick to cool down. They are served with a lot of different items and dressed with some soya sauce based tsuyu. Now that it is hot in Tokyo, making somen is a really perfect idea for a rapid dinner preparation. I didn’t use the classic soya sauce base dressing, rather olive oil and a few drops of soya sauce. And I served them with simply grilled fresh bonito and okra, cucumber and lettuce. Light, fresh and well-balanced for a hot summer evening.

July 11, 2017

Simple food

I have the impression that recently I have further decreased our intake of meat and fish without A. complaining much about it. Only after 5 or 6 days would he start asking for some. So once in a while I buy a pork filet or some ham, or some nice fish in Isumi. This weekend there was not much fish, probably with the rainy weather and the winds, so we went to our old little butcher shop and got some ham (the cat is crazy with the fat so I like to give him some!!!) and some pork filet (where there is stricly nothing to trash). Pork filet in a cocotte with some vegetables is such a treat that I simply cooked it that way. A bit of olive oil, a few new potatoes from our neighbors kitchen garden, some locally grown new carrots (yellow and orange) and a handful of green beans, the pork filet from Isumi, everything together at low heat and just stirring every 10-15min. You can add herb, salt, pepper, but I didn’t. Why would you make more complicated when it is perfect as it is?

July 4, 2017

Tiny new potatoes

When I was a kid my grandfather had a terraced kitchen garden where he would grow in the summer green beans, tomatoes, salads, radishes, strawberries, raspberries, red currants, herbs, there was also a fig tree, a verbena tree etc… I have vivid memories of eating the tomatoes on the plant while warm from the sun and full of the smells of the tomato leaves, of picking red currants and eating half of them before they even reach the basket… one thing that I really loved was picking potatoes with him, not only because it was fun picking them, but because of the promise of one of my favorite dish at that time: new potatoes sautéed. The main difference with new potatoes you can find on the farmers market is the size pf the potatoes. My grandfather never waited until the potatoes where big to harvest them, he harvested them whem most where still very tiny, and the tiniest was always in my plate. Today, I went to visit our old neighbor. Since her dog has passed she doesn’t come mear our place as often as she used too so I meet her much less. And she was in her kitchen garden harvesting potatoes. She offered to give me some and while discussing she told me that most people criticize her for harvesting also tiny potatoes but I told they were my favorite so she gave me plenty and I was very happy. It is rare to find tiny new potatoes and they are really delicious. I washed and brushed them and cooked them with some pork belly slices and rosemary. A very simple meal, very nostalgic. Thanks Mrs. K. For the tiny potatoes!!!!

June 24, 2017

Fresh corn

Yesterday one of my students at the university brang some fresh corn he has received from his family and he gave me one. Corn for me immediately calls for Tex-Mex food, why I don’t know… and when I say Tex-Mex it is a bit of an extrapolation. It just mean tomatoes, spices and sometimes avocado and beans. So back home with my corn I first boiled it, then separated all the grains and in a pan I cooked the corn with fresh tomatoes and pork for A., added chilly pepper, all spice and salt; and for me I cooked the corn with tomatoes, hard tofu drained and cheese and the same spices. Just before serving both I added a bit of olive oil. Served with a few nacho chips just for the fun (I didn’t have corn flour to make some)

June 13, 2017

Japanese style quiche

Today we were invited at our neighbors places for a group session of Vipassana meditation and a dinner aftewards. I was busy all afternoon harvesting plums and didn’t see time flying, but absolutely wanted to prepare some food to bring rather than simply buying drinks. So in a rush, the thing I am the best at is making quiches. So I prepared a Japanese style quiche. Japanese style meaning that I used buckwheat flour, katsuo bushi flakes and soya sauce. For the topping I used tomatoes and red onions, with a egg base of soya milk and soya sauce, making it taste a bit like chawanmushi, this Japanese egg-base preparation that is steamed. It was simple to prepare and cooked in 30min in the oven, which is hand-free to continue doing what I was busy with.

As for the meditation, it was my first group meditation and I was curious to see what it was, even if I am a total novice and know very little about the different methods except for a bit of Zazen, so trying Vipassana was interesting, but I guess it requires a steady practice to feel any benefit from it and I not sure I am ready for that… we’ll see. Yet discovering it and discussing with some steady practitioners was very interesting. A great experience!

June 10, 2017