Tag: ginger

Fresh ginger

Just after myoga, fresh ginger season is starting. Both plants may look very similar, but in ginger we eat the root mainly. Unfortunately we don’t have ginger growing in our garden yet, so I usually buy fresh ginger at the farmers market. I’m big fan of candied ginger, and prepared some sometimes, but so far I didn’t get time. Work has been really busy, and everyday is full from morning to evening, if not with work, with surfing, gardening and trying to get familiar with Pistache. Progresses in any of the above are really slow: I’m getting better at spinning but it’s not quite yet very nice… the new garden soil is slowly shaping up, very slowly… and the cat… hum she’s around a lot but it is still too early to get anywhere close…

Pistache

All that to say that I didn’t make candied ginger, but instead used the fragrant roots for honey drinks, and for a delicious brioche. The drinks are easy, I just peel and slice thinly the root. Add a tablespoon of honey and top with hot water. For the brioche, the recipe is below.

Hot ginger

Ginger and lemon brioche

  • 400g of flour
  • 3 eggs
  • 100g of butter
  • 50g of brown sugar
  • 100g of fresh sourdough
  • 1 root of fresh ginger grated with its juice too or ginger powder
  • The zest and juice of one lemon or lemon extract

Mix all ingredients in a bowl and knead until smooth and soft. Leave for as much as it needs to grow. That will depends on the room temperature. Once the sourdough has clearly worked, flatten the dough, wait 15min and shape (I used a cake dish). Leave for another 1h or 2 before baking at 200deg for 40min or until golden.

Breakfast with the ginger and lemon brioche

Koyadofu simmered with winter vegetables

You may remember that in October I introduced a very Japanese ingredient: Koyadofu-高野豆腐 in a post with a very simple recipe of curry. This was just one of the many examples of using koyadofu. Some may definitely claim that it is spongious and tasteless, I wouldn’t argue much, but I could also say that it is packed with proteins and it adds a very interesting texture to many preparations. The recipe I want to present today is a very simple recipe of Koyadofu first slightly fried and then simmered. It is basically a preparation that could be done with hard tofu as well. The vegetables I chose for the recipe are those I had around but you can also change slightly and add greens or vegetables of your choice. I must admit that lotus root and shiitake are really perfect for this preparation: the fresh shiitake are soft and a bit chewy, the renkon is crunchy, and the koyadofu just perfectly spongy, but the prior frying avoids it from sucking all the juice.

So without further delay, let me share this recipe, that is really simple but holds all the best Japanese flavours.

Simmered Koyadofu (serve 2 people as a side of rice)

  • 5cm of lotus root, a bit big
  • 10 cubes of 1~2cm of koyadofu. If you use large blocks of koyadofu 2 should enough
  • 10 little shiitake, or 5 large
  • a 1cm piece of fresh ginger
  • 3tbs of soya sauce
  • 3tbs of cooking sake
  • 1/2 of water
  • some katakuriko 片栗粉 or potato starch
  • a bit of oil for frying

First of all return the koyadofu to a soft texture by bathing it into water for a few minutes. Drain well by squeezing it like a sponge. If you use large blocks cut them in 1~2 cm cubes. Roll them in the katakuriko. In a oiled and heated frypan fry the cubes until white golden.
Peel the lotus root and cut in 5~10mm slices, cut in 2 if the root is really large. Add to the pan and cook in the remaining oil. Wash the shiitake, remove the stem, cut them in 2 or 4 if large. Add to the pan. Grate the ginger, add to the pan, add the soya sauce, the sake and the water and simmer for 10min or until the liquid is almost gone. Serve with a bowl of rice for example.

Autumn days

With the sudden change in weather, my inspiration is back! Though I’m still tired of the rainy weekends and sunny week days (when at work… when I’d rather be in my garden…), I’ve been busy with some sewing projects, perfect for the weather. A. has challenged me to make a cover for his surfboard, and I think I did something quite great, that needs just the final touch. In the meantime, my neighbor came to me last week with some cotton fabric to make a yukata for A. and I’ve taken up the challenge!! I’ve completed it!!

Cooking-wise, with the almost cool evenings, it’s been really agreeable to cook and knead. And I’ve come up with a new ravioli recipe (coming later this week), salmon croquettes and other delights for the palate!!!

Let’s start today with the salmon croquettes! This is the season for autumn salmon 秋鮭 and I really like it. It goes well with fresh ginger which is also in season. I bought half a salmon and we ate it grilled first, but with so much I could definitely do another meal! So here is my recipe:

Salmon and coriander croquettes

– 150-200g of fresh salmon, better if grilled and leftover

– a handful of fresh coriander leaves

– 1tbs of panko

– 1 egg

Remove the skin and bones of the fish (if not grilled then grill it first). Crumble it in a bowl. Add the egg and panko. Wash and chop the coriander. Add and stir well. In a greased heated pan make small balls with the mix and cook until golden on each side. Serve with grated ginger and with whatever you like!

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?

Shiitake week! Day 1!

After weeks trying to get this new rythm, I think we’ve almost got it… and a weekend in the country with tennis, gardening and cooking, plus the cat and a bit of work was the perfect way to completely get it right. My muscles hacking from the tennis and the gardening: trimming a Japanese pine is quite a demanding task, and I didn’t even manage to get it done… For the cooking I have been enjoying a lot the autumn vegetables, in particular most of my recipes included shiitake lately, I put them every where. So this week is a shiitake recipe week! But if you don’t have shiitake you can replace them by porcini or simple mushrooms. 

Let’s start with this very nice marcrobiotic French Japanese style recipe of Persillade. Traditional persillade is made with garlic, parsley, oil etc… except that I don’t like garlic (one reason why I never use it, despite all the health benefits it may have), so I have invented this new recipe that ressembles persillade but is much more fun and goes perfectly with shiitake! Here is my recipe!

My ginger persillade (for 2) 

– 1 cup of brown rice

– 2 carrot

– 6 shiitake

– 1/2 burdock root

– parsley

– fresh ginger

Cook the rice in a pot, Japanese style, or in a rice cooker. Brown rice requires a little bit more water than white rice. 

Peel the burdock, cut in bites and wash abundantly, same with the carrots. Wash the shiitake and slice them thinly. In a heated pan add a bit of olive oil, then the burdock, later the carrots and finish with the shiitake. Stir once in a while. 

Peel the ginger, cut in thin slices and then dice in 1mm side. Wash the parsley and chop it. Add the ginger and the parsley in the pan, stir regularly. Add a bit of olive oil if necessary. That’s it!  

Serve the rice, the vegetables and enjoy your meal!!! 

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.

Lotus root sushi – 蓮根寿司

When we were in Fuefukigawa, our ryokan had a very nice library where we enjoyed spending some time. It’s very nice to go to someone else library because you can discover many things through others books. That’s how I discovered a little cook book with some inspiring recipes. And I tried one of the inspiration as soon as we got back home. It was a recipe of lotus root sushi. So basically vinegared rice and vinegared lotus roots, served with ginger and sesame.  It’s been many years I haven’t made sushi rice so I was happy to prepare some again. Since it was served with the vinegared lotus root I didn’t make it too sour, and I served it with some ginger-pork sautéed.

So here is the lotus-root sushi recipe. It is quite simple if you can find fresh lotus roots (which in Japan is obviously very easy) and it has a very Japanese flair. 

Lotus-root sushi: 

– 1 cup of Japanese rice (I always use Koshihikari but choose your favorite one) 

– 1 large lotus root, fresh

– a bulb of fresh ginger, not too big

– 2 or 3 myoga

– 3 tbs of golden sesame

– 3 tbs of white vinegar

– 1 tbs of natural sugar

– 1 tsp of salt

– 2 tbs of sake (optional) 

First wash the rice, and cover with 1cup of water, the sake and cook as usual. While the rice is cooking, peel and wash carefully the lotus root. Cut in very thin slices (I used the mandolin for that). Set in a bowl, add some water to almost cover, but don’t put too much. Add most of the sugar, the salt and 2tbs of white vinegar. Stir with the hands, and let rest. Stir once in a while. Peel and cut thinely the ginger and the myoga. In a frypan roast the sesame until it starts to smell. Once the rice is cooked and has cooled down a bit add the remaining 1tbs of vinegar and the remaining sugar, stir well. Add the ginger, the sesame to the rice, stir; add the lotus root drained. Add the myoga. That’s it!!!

Warm soup for cold day

Since I was in France in November when it snowed in Tokyo, today was the first snow of the winter for me. It only snowed to be cold, wet but not white, but I don’t mind because we ste going to the mountains soon and we will have plenty if snow and white there! But damn, how this rainy-snowy weather plus A. Away make me feel cold and gloomy!!! I needed a warm colorful soup to cheer me up before my late night meeting. So after browsing the fridge I decided to prepare a warm soup with some fresh sunny taste. I used coconut oil, fresh ginger and a zest of lemon for the sunny and warm side, together with a red carrot and two leeks for the winter side. And because I’m busy running here and there, I added some green lentil. That’s it! So simple to cook. In a large heated pan I put 1/2tsp of coconut oil,agg the leek cut in small sticks, then add the carrots cut in small sticks too. Then 2 large zest of lemon, and a piece of ginger peele and cut in small pieces. When the water comes to a boil I add 2 small handfuls of green lentils, a pinch of salt. Cook for 10min (the lentils must not be over cooked and too soft, it’s better if they are slightly undercooked). Serve and eat rigt away!!!

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.

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