Tag: fresh food

Potato salad

For those that have been to Japan they know that potato salad ポテトサラダ is a quite important dish in Japanese cuisine. It is probably one of this japanized version of western food that is so popular it looks like genuine Japanese food!! You can find potato salad on the table at every party and it is so common that it can be found in combini as well. While the idea of a potatoes base salad with vegetables all creamy and mushy is very nice, just like the kabocha salad. But the problem with most potato salad is the abundance of mayonnaise that just makes it fatty and taste like mayonnaise, nothing else. I do like fresh homemade mayonnaise once in a while but I am not such a fan to bother making some in particular if I have no plan for the egg white. But I love homemade potato salad, so I just replace the mayonnaise with a simple soft boiled egg with olive oil. That’s it! It’s faster, more digest and none the less tasty! Because fast is an important condition for preparing lunch when we are back from the ocean.

So here is my potato salad recipe with all ingredients from Isumi except the olive oil from Tuscany and the salt and pepper.

Potato salad (2 servings)

  • 3 mid size potatoes that becomes mushy when boiled
  • 1 Japanese cucumber
  • 5 Japanese sausages
  • 1 egg
  • 1tbs of olive oil
  • Salt and pepper

In a pan boil some water. In the meantime peel and cut the potatoes. Add to the boiling water, add the sausages, and later the egg. Boil until the potatoes are soft. The egg shouldn’t be boiled longer than 5min to keep the yolk creamy. Cut the cucumber in thin slices. Drain the potatoes and the sausages. In a bowl, set the cucumber, the potatoes. Cut the sausages in 1cm long pieces, add to the bowl, stir. The potatoes should start mushing and mix well with all the other ingredients. Add the olive oil, salt and pepper. Finally, add the egg cut roughly. Stir well again. Eat right away or later!

Have a good day!

Edamame ravioli

Every week, I am hoping for a more quieter week and every week day is getting busier and I end up with very very little time to cook… for example today my lunch was some raw carrots, a piece of Comte cheese and some nuts… as I rushed between meetings and things to do. It is also often a bowl of rice topped with something rapidly cooked (more coming about that soon). So when I manage to have just a little more time to cook I jump on the occasion and I cook some more fancy things. “Fancy” being almost exaggerated!!
The season for edamame is starting now and I got some from the farmers market, which I was thinking I would just boil for a quick use in salad or with rice but then I had this little window of time for cooking and I was all set for making edamame gyoza, but then thought that as delicious it seems, it would be almost too conventional in traditional Japanese flavors, so I decided to opt for the Italian version: ravioli!!!

While making ravioli takes a little bit more time, it is so rewarding and we love them so much that it is always worth eating a bit late!!! For this edamame ravioli, I mixed in the filling the edamame and some pork meat and I dressed them simply with olive oil, salt and pepper. Here is my recipe.

Edamame ravioli

  • 100g of flour (I used whole wheat here)
  • 1 egg
  • a bit of water
  • 100g of ground pork meat
  • 200g of edamame
  • Salt, pepper olive oil

Prepare the pasta by mixing, as usual, the flour, the egg and a bit of water. Knead well and keep for 30min.

Boil the edamame. Once cooled down, shell them and remove the skin as much as possible. In a mortar puree them roughly (as on the above picture). In a frypan cook the pork meat then mix with the edamame. Add salt and pepper. Keep the frypan as it is.

Roll the pasta. Fill the ravioli and close them. Boil a large pan of water and boil the ravioli. When they float move them to the frypan with half a ladle of cooking water. Add olive oil a bit and cook 2min before serving and enjoying immediately.

Edamame fougasse

Ohoh! Exploring new possibilities with edamame will last the whole season!!! This recipe of fougasse came naturally to my mind as I love to bale fougasse for summer evenings drinks or summer lunches when I need something quick.

In Japanese bread shops you can sometimes find edamame and gouda breads, and I like them very much, but the idea of a simpler version (without the gouda for A.) and with olive oil and salt tempted me a lot, that the last batch of edamame I had was used to that purpose.

The result is really nice but my recipe needs a little improvements to emphasize more the edamame. So I am sharing with you the improved version but not tested yet… but I am sure it will be delicious.

Edamame fougasse (makes 1 bread)

  • 200g of flour
  • 3g of yeast
  • 7g of salt
  • Water
  • Olive oil
  • A handful of boiled, shelled and peeled edamame

I only use fresh edamame, so the recipe starts by boiling the pods in salted water. Once boiled and cool, shell and peel them. Add a bit of salt.

Prepare the dough of the fougasse: mix the flour, 5g of salt, the yeast, add 2tbs of olive oil, and water to obtain a soft, silky and smooth dough. Add the edamame and knead a bit. Let rest for it to rise. Once is has started to rise you can work it in the shape of the fougasse, and let rest about 30-60min depending on your room temperature.

Bake at 230deg until golden. When out of the oven spread a thin layer of olive oil and sprinkle a bit of salt. That’s it!!!

Variations around flat breads

I am always amazed by all you can do with just flour and water… and recently I’m getting addicted to flat breads… Remember when I first tried here? Well… the same person that makes the dried chickpeas that triggered my wish for flat bread to eat with falafels, well, also makes chickpeas flour… I use a lot chickpeas flour for socca, but I wanted a change so I decided to explore possibilities with flat breads.

First, I made a trial by replacing 3/4 of the flour by chickpeas flour and that worked perfectly… served with zucchini and basil.

Then, another possibility I thought of was to replace half of the flour by whole wheat flour… and that’s all the same delicious.

Finally, I decided to add seeds to the dough. Caraway or cumin seeds are perfect.

As for cooking I tried two options. One is in the dry thick frypan. To obtain a soft bread, flexible and light. The other way, I added vegetal oil in the pan and fried them. It gives a crispy golden bread. Both were equally delicious but I have a preference for the dry soft ones, in particular when used to eat vegetables such as eggplants or zucchinis…

One thing is sure is that making flat breads is super simple, fast and requires no complex ingredients. They are delicious and fit super well summer vegetables or curry. They will be on our table often!!

Chickpeas flour flat breads

Japanese flavors meet mum’s classic recipe

In the late spring and early summer, back then when we lived in France, my mother would often cook a potatoes salad with green beans or broad beans and new onion. Or she would prepare broad beans with tomatoes. Broad beans, or Morocco ingen モロッコインゲン, are very easy to find in Japan. In Isumi they seems to be growing quite easily, it’s on the farmers market stall from early June. (Oh! By the way, it seems that the name “ingen” comes from the name of a monk that imported green beans to Japan a few centuries ago!!)

Like my mother, I like to prepare broad beans, and a potato salad is always handy because it can be prepared ahead of time and doesn’t need to be refrigerated. Perfect lunch for a busy day. Though I live the dressing my mother prepare for this salad – her classic recipe is here – I wanted to test the new katsuo flakes from Katsuura I bought recently and I am also trying to finish the last umeboshi from last uear to make space for the new ones that will be arriving in a few weeks. The dressing for my potatoes and broad beans salad was all set. The mixture of flavors, familiar yet newly combined made this recipe really super easy and delicious. So here it is.

Japanese flavors potatoes and broad beans salad (serves 2)

  • 150g of new potatoes
  • 200g of broad beans
  • 1 large umeboshi
  • A handful of katsuo flakes
  • 1tbs of soya sauce
  • 1tbs of olive oil

Boil the potatoes and broad beans. Do not over cook the broad beans. Drain. In a bowl add the vegetables, extract the flesh of the plum, scatter it on the vegetables. Add the olive oil, the soya sauce, top with the katsuobushi. Serve at room temperature or cold.

Eggs are my best friends…

I’m a big fan of cooked eggs and always have been. I recall the soft boiled eggs with bread and butter of my childhood, the omelettes, with cheese, potatoes or wild asparagus or wild mushrooms… going to the chicken farm near my grand parents home to get fresh eggs… this love for eggs hasn’t changed a bit over time, now I still love eggs. Poached, sunny side, scrambled… every mean is great. But recently I rediscovered home made hard boiled eggs. In Japan they can easily be bought in convenience store and I’ve been eating one, once in a while, as an afternoon snack for a long day, but I rarely if not never boiled my eggs… I don’t know why… hard boiled eggs are super convenient: they keep easily, transport easily and are delicious… but the recipes now I love the most with hard boiled eggs is in a dressing for vegetables or pasta.

Chopped thinly, mixed with olive oil and mustard this a must to dress a potato salad for example. Or like in today’s recipe, with basil and olive oil, to dress some pasta and green beans. The variations are infinite as eggs accommodate well with so many things: parsley, basil, olive oil, mustard, mayonnaise, curry…

Count one egg for 2 servings, and have a good week!!!

Bread in a pan…

Who would do that honestly???

I never thought I would… until we moved to our new apartment where the kitchen doesn’t have an oven yet and we are still not sure about the renovations we want to do and given the circumstances we prefer to wait a bit… I don’t see myself stopping telework, I’ve always loved it… and always hated train commute. Nor spending the whole week in the country, it would be too tempting to go surfing and work in the garden instead during the day… and I would start working at night…

So, no oven… I’ve tried to bake bigger breads on Sunday but they are so good that they barely last until Wednesday morning in the best of the best scenario… the rest of the week, I make pancakes… but I get board of plain pancakes, and nothing is better than bread (but croissants and pains au chocolat… but honestly they are just air and they feed us enough to not starve 2h later… and lunch is usually more 4 or 5h later…

Bread is the only option and I remember seeing recipe of breads in crockpot, in cocotte… so I was tempted to try. In Tokyo I have neither crockpot nor cocotte. I have a pan with a more less fitting cover… more less because my pan once felt and since then it is more an ovaloid than a perfect circle!!!!

The bread making and kneading is just the same as usual. The rest time also for the first rise. For the second I read that it can be done while the pot is heating, and I tested the first time, but for me it didn’t work, so I just shaped my bread as a ball, laid it on kitchen paper in the pan and waited 1h. Then turn on the gaz rather high and covered and cooked until the bottom was golden. Then I flipped the bread and cooked on the other side. It avoids the thick crusty bottom and the risk of heart of bread not well cooked, and that’s what made my second pan bread perfect.

Cooking bread in a pot may not seems straightforward but it works very well… and I was surprised about it!!!

Sansho – 山椒

This shrub looks like nothing particular in the garden, yet it bears fragrant leaves and fruits. It is sansho -山椒 or Japanese pepper.

I planted the tree the very first spring we started our kitchen garden, and without failure it has produced the fragrant leaves we often eat during early spring with bamboo shoots, and later in June the little tiny fruits that are so recognizable in Japanese cuisine. The shrub grows steadily and the fruits are very fertile meaning you have sansho in the garden and don’t harvest the fruits, they will quickly sprout everywhere! So I devoutly harvest them for our own usage and to give away.

I particularly love one recipe of sansho that comes from shojin cuisine. It just blends the typical Japanese flavors or soya sauce, sake and konbu with sansho. It is very simple to prepare and can keep forever in the fridge. Which means you can harvest your sansho, prepare this recipe and eat sansho all year round until the next harvest. So here is the recipe. I love it with plain white Japanese rice and dry chirimen.

Sansho preserve

  • 1/2 cup of fresh sansho seeds
  • 1/4 cup of soya sauce
  • 1/4 cup of sake
  • 8 pieces of konbu of 1.5×1.5cm

Wash the sansho and remove the stems. Put all the ingredients in a small pan and cook at low heat under cover until the liquid is just enough to keep everything moist. Let cool down. Put in a clean jar and keep refrigerated. Use whenever you want. Isn’t that sinple!

Loquat – 枇杷

Among the many trees in our garden we have in the very back of it a loquat tree. Loquats-枇杷-biwa are quite common in Japan and have been there around for long enough such that a music instrument bears the same name but writes differently 琵琶.

The location of the tree in our garden was very unfortunate, it is near where we have a space designed to burn garden green trash, and it was in the shadows of the edge trees of our neighbors. While we have stopped burning garden trash and now compost them or dispose them, our neighbors also cut the edge trees last year, and our garden is now benefiting for a lot more sun light than it used to. This two factors combined, our loquat tree has produced numerous large sweet fruits this year, which compared from the tiny sour fruits it used to produce was a big surprise. I used to give the fruits to birds, now I decided to harvest quite a few.

Loquat are good eaten raw in fruit salad, with yogurt or fromage blanc. They are just a bit tedious to prepare. The peal comes of easily, so do the seeds, but there is this harder part between the flesh and the seeds that I don’t like and prefer to remove. So when it comes to preparing loquats, I like to prepare several at the same time. Having my hands all covered in juice… unfortunately they oxyde very quickly so you can’t prepare them to long ahead before eating. Not that it alters the taste, but the bright orange color turns quickly in a brownish, not very appealing.

My all time favorite for eating biwa is definitely in a tart. Like you would do for apricots, with a sable pie crust and an almond powder and egg base. Not too sweet, as the fruit is very mild in taste, you don’t want to overwhelm it with sweetness. I used also no sugar in the pie crust. Just butter and flour, and a bit of water.

And since I had a few cherries left from the clafoutis I made, I added a few. Very good balance in flavor, juiciness, sweetness and sourness. After baking until golden, eat rapidly as the loquat oxydation continues even cooked…

Now is the season of loquat in most north hemisphere countries, so enjoy them as you can and have a good week!

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