Tag: from the garden

Spring greens

My kitchen garden seems to be doing ok! Every week I harvest something, and recently it’s been focused on snap peas and herbs. Two plants of peas actually have been producing a handful of snap peas every week, which is just the perfect amount for us so far, as I used them mixed with other vegetables. The mint and coriander are doing good and I’ve harvesting quite some too for daily use, same with some kind of salads my neighbor gave me (we exchange crops). I like the idea to just walk down in the garden and pick what is needed for preparing a meal. I’ve also checked that potatoes are coming, though I am worried the soil may be too rich… we’ll see… it’s not easy to be a beginner gardener and not to be able to check every day!!! I’ll learn from my mistakes and successes I guess and do better next year!

With all this greens, not only from my kitchen garden but also from the farmers market I was thinking of new recipes and inspired by Giula’s zucchini and saffron pasta recipe (that was super delicious) I prepared a fava beans and greens pasta sauce. The kind that is so delicious that you want more!!! Here’s my recipe.

Fava beans pasta (for two servings)

– 125g of dry penne or macaroni or some similar pasta

– a handful of fresh fave beans shelled

– a handful of fresh snap peas

– a handful of green beans

– a handful of shelled greens peas if you have some (I couldn’t wait and already had eaten up all mine!!)

– 5-10 leaves of fresh mint

– olive oil, salt and pepper

Boil the pasta. When al dente drain and keep.

In the meantime, blanche the fava beans and peel them. Blanche the green beans, the green beans and the snap peas. Puree the fava beans, add olive oil generously, salt and pepper. In a large pan at low heat, heat the fava beans purée and then add the pasta, and the other vegetables, stir well, add the mint washed and chopped. Serve and eat immediately!!

Have a great week!!

Spring is here!

After the fukinoto and the canola which both announce the arrival of spring and the cold unstable weather that usually accompany the plum blossom end, the next step is the real arrival of spring in late March or early April with the famous cherry blossoms of course, Mole’s quince and the jonquils putting beautiful colors in the garden but also the bamboo shoots (takenoko 筍)and the other wild vegetables: fern (kogomi こごみ), horsetail (tsukushi つくし), angelica tree buds (tara no me タラの芽)…

We don’t have kogomi and tara no me in our garden, or not that I know of yet (I discover new things each year!), I found a few tsukushi in the past but never enough or at the right time to harvest them. This year I found really plenty, enough to consider cooking some. Tsukushi are a bit of a delicate plant and their pollen is not very good so it’s better to harvest them early. The one on the picture below is for example a bit too old, this can be seen by the dark color of the head: the pollen is already about to go out! The pollen of tsukushi is blue to black, and looks like mold!!! I have never seen tsukushi in supermarkets, I assume they are too delicate for transport and shelf time. Their flavor is very subtle so I like simple preparations: quickly sautéed, or simply blanched in dashi. To prepare them, simply wash them and remove the corollas parts using your thumb by simply rolling the stem with the corolla on top of your nail. Then cook them in a pan with a bit of butter or as said above blanched them in a regular dashi. Serve them right away with rice, scrambled eggs… nothing too strong.

I my case I made a simple fried takenoko rice with sesame oil, scrambled eggs season with a few drops of soya sauce. That’s it!

When I fail… 🚮

Once in a while I make a cooking failure… recently it hasn’t happened much because I master better my kitchen and the products I cook, and I have gained in skills a lot. But when it happens it is always very sad… and last night was one of this saddening moment when you have to face that what you have made with patience and love should end in the trash and nowhere else…

As often of Sunday evening I wanted to bake a quiche. Something I master but it was without counting on one ingredient… I had spinach and kabocha and wanted to use both. I thought that with this cold outside, a warming chestnut flour pie crust would be perfect. So I reached for the bin in the fridge in which I store chestnut flour. I keep most of my flours in the fridge and more particularly this fragile flour that is sensitive to pest infestation and that I cannot find easily in Japan. I usually get my chestnut flour from my parents when they travel to Corsica, or to the country house in the Cevennes.

I was a bit startled by the smell when I opened the bin, but I was just thinking it’s been a while I haven’t smelled chestnut flour and it smells strong… while preparing the dough with olive oil and love things were doing good, the dough was smooth and easy to roll, perfect! I prepared the vegetables and put everything in the oven… and then only I really understood what I feared… the flour was rancid… I didn’t know it could happen but there was no doubt and a quick check on the internet confirmed my diagnosis. I waited until the whole quiche was baked to taste the pie crust. No doubt. The rancid flavor stay in the mouth long, almost disgusting. A. was also trying and same conclusion. Now what… would we die eating rancid baked chestnut flour? Probably not… would we get sick? Maybe… for sure taste wise it was bad. I first decided to save the vegetables and remove the pie crust but the task was tedious, and the result not conclusive. So I had to take this horrible decision to trash the whole thing. I was sad after. All these nice products, the effort to prepare it, and the expected pleasure of eating it once back to Tokyo… and instead we had a very quickly fixed dinner made of whole-wheat spaghetti with grilled swordfish and lemon zest and olive oil dressing. Hopefully there are still a few lemons in the garden and I harvested some before going and I had bought some nice local swordfish Saturday…

I simply grilled the fish in a frypan without any fat, then added the zest of 1/2 lemon topped with olive oil. Boiled the whole wheat spaghetti and served the whole together.

Lemon cake

For my birthday for the past 6 or 7 years, when possible, A. bakes me a birthday cake of my choice. The season is such that it involves often lemon or apple. This year the tradition went on and he prepared on my request a lemon cake. With the lemon just harvested in the garden. These lemons I have seen slowly growing and are totally free of pesticides, wax and other things that make you think twice before using the zest. The cake he made was super delicious, on of the best I have had! I wonder why he doesn’t bake more often!! And because he used the recipe he found online and didn’t want to halve the quantities, we obtained 2 cakes of perfect size for tea and breakfast for two. I slightly ask him to modify the recipe to be less buttery, so here is the actual recipe he used:

Lemon cake

– 200g of flour

– 120g of brown sugar

– 80g of butter

– 4eggs

– 1tbs of baking powder

– 1 lemon (free of chemical)

Melt the butter. Wash the lemon and extract both the zests and the juice.

In a bowl, mix the flour, the baking powder, the sugar, add the eggs, the butter and end with the lemon juice and the zest. Pour in a cake dish (one 30cm or two 20 or less).

Bake in a pre-heated oven at 180deg for 35min to 45min

When ready eat right away or once is has cooled down.

Have a beautiful end of 2018!!

Japanese pepper – 山椒

Back in June I was posting about the making of Japanese pepper in saumure after harvesting the delicious little seeds in the garden. Now that more than three months have past it is time to eat the little beads! One classic recipe would just to had a few to Japanese white rice, and this is delicious. But since I have quite a few I wanted to try something different and explore with which fall vegetables it would work well. Though cauliflower looks like a winter vegetable actually fall is the peak season, and the farmers market starts to have beautiful small ones. Sansho is a strongly flavored little seed so it has to go with something that is both typically flavored but without being overwhelming. I thought that roasted cauliflower would be great, together with chicken breast. So in a slightly greased pan I roasted chicken breast cut in bites and then added the cauliflower. When all golden I added a tea spoon drained of sansho, stirred a little and served with new rice and a little salad.

Very simple and a really nice match with a Japanese x Western combination.

Myoga

Now is the season for harvesting myoga, this little very fragrant plant, delicious eaten with silky tofu and soya sauce or in miso soup. Two weeks ago when I met with our old neighbor she told me that their used to be plenty of myoga in our garden, but I never found any. So after identifying the leaves I went and browsed the garden and found indeed quite a few spots with similar leaves, but nothing like the edible part of the myoga, though I dug around. I was quite disappointed… So when she came again this morning I asked her to show me how to pick myoga. And what I discovered is that myoga plants are gendered and in our garden now we have mainly only male plants… so we found only one myoga with an edible part. The part that is edible is actually the flower, or rather the bud or the stem of the flower. But it doesn’t grow on the plant, it grows independently on the ground about 15cm away from the leafy part. And it has a lovely flower with very thin petals.

Myoga has a very typical flavor that is one of the important flavor in Japanese food. I love eating it in miso soup or with tofu, but also pickled and in vegetables mixes. That’s what it has served for today. A pot of autumn veggies roasted in a pan and with a bit of white soya sauce and thin slice of aburage, and served with rice. Here onigiri filled with red shiso miso.

Really simple and very tasty!

Osmanthus fragrans syrup

In the garden, blooming in September we have about 5 or 6 osmanthus fragans or 金木犀 kinmokusei in Japanese . First I didn’t know what it was and I was just charmed by the lovely smell coming from these very tiny orange flowers. It blooms when crape myrtle サルスベリ sarusuberi flowers start to finish, and before the beginning of camelia 椿 tsubaki, or fall colors. Last year I heard from a friend the name of the tree and that it is possible to eat the flowers. But when I learned about that the flowers had already faded and I couldn’t try. But this year I didn’t miss it! When the smell started in the garden I prepared the ingredients and gears for making syrup and finally today I harvested the flowers. It is really nice to harvest these small flowers. It’s quite easy and it smells so good! Collecting 100g like the recipe requires took about 1h. Because we have so many trees we didn’t need a ladder, just reaching for flowers at our height on several trees.

Then making the syrup is quite easy though a little tedious.

Osmanthus frangans flowers syrup (1L)

– 100g of flowers of Osmanthus fragans

– 600g of sugar (I used brown cane sugar)

– 600ml of water (for the syrup)

– 150ml of Cointreau or other Grand Marnier (it’s for washing the flowers, so no alcohol remains in the final product)

The first thing and most tedious step is to clean the flowers. Remove the stems of the flower as much as possible, to keep only the petals. In a metal net or strainer, 20g by 20g of petal, shake gently to remove dirt and small undesirable parts. Then in a large bowl of water add the flowers and 75ml of Cointreau or Grand Marnier and move gently the flowers in to clean them further and remove small bugs… strain in the metal net and do it a second time with again 75ml of Cointreau or Grand Marnier. Keep the flowers in the strainer for 20 to 30min to drain.

In a large pan add the water and the sugar and bring to boil, add then the cleaned flowers, and once it boils again lower the heat and gently stir for 5minutes. And stop the fire and let cool down naturally. Prepare the containers by sterilizing them. Once the syrup has cooled down bring to a boil a second time, and stop the fire right away and pour in the containers. It’s ready!

My lovely neighbors

The fun part of living in the countryside and having a great garden that produces plenty of things independently is to exchange crops with neighbors, friends and colleagues and these past few days we’ve been exchanging a lot! It all started with plums… like last year I harvested about 20kg of plums and left the rest on the trees. I pickled 2kg, made syrup with an other 3 and gave away the rest, to our pottery teacher, to friends, to my secretary and other colleagues at the university. I also harvested fuki, Japanese plums or sumomo (スモモ) and strawberry tree fruits today and gave away plenty around too. When you give away crops, usually you receive other crops or the result of what you have given after a preparation. It’s a kind of barter. So we received plenty of fruits and vegetables. Plenty of potatoes… and my favorite neighbor knows how much I love them tiny, so she kept me the smallest ones just like my grandfather would do. She also gave me cucumbers, parsley and flowers to plant that were growing rogue in her garden.

From some other neighbors we received jam and fresh fruits, which I used to make a version of the almond sable with jam in large version (picture) and in tiny bites. A real treat!!!

We also received big potatoes from another neighbor… I’m thinking of making gnocchi with these ones or just mash them, you’ll see soon enough. And finally we received pickled plums and pickled ginger from my colleagues. Super delicious with rice!!!

I really love this! It makes the effort to harvest more, give away around very fun and entertaining, without any expectations… but then sometimes you receive something unexpected, sometimes nothing but that’s fine also since it’s giving away… it just makes people happy!

Sansho

One of the first thing I planted in the garden 6 years ago was herbs: rosemary, mint, sage, parsley, basil and a sansho shrub. I wanted to be able to go down the garden when I was cooking and puck whatever herb I needed. The rosemary and mint did really well, and they are still there, growing and spreading! The basil and the parsley never survive the winter so I replant some every year. The sage survives the the mild winters but not the cold ones. The sansho? It grows at a pace I didn’t imagine! Actually after a while I realized there was already a sansho shrub in the garden but at a very inconvenient place so I took it and gave it to our neighbor. Sansho is great because you can use both the fruits and the leaves.

After trying a few recipes of simmered sansho with konbu… I decided to prepare them in a manner that will allow to keep them longer and eat them all year round. Indeed, the shrub is growing and the number of fruits too, but it is difficult eating more than four of five grains at the time because it is really very fragrant. I found a recipe of saumure for sansho so I have decided to try it. It was awfully simple to prepare but it needs to be kept 3 months before eating… so we’ll see in September…

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