Tag: healthy

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!!! 

Long weekend

After a series of very rainy weekends, so many that I don’t even count them anymore, a perfect autumn weekend was more than welcome, and even better: it was a long weekend. We spent sometime in Tokyo and most of the time in Ohara with D. and C.. The planning was simple: outdoor activities and delicious healthy local food. And it was easy with such a weather, the garden providing persimmons and herbs, and the farmers market full of autumn vegetables. So basically ocean swimming and hikes, drives and cooking together was our agenda. Among the many things we cooked were black wheat bread, whole wheat fougasse, muesli pancakes, hot pot veggies with snapper for girls and pork filet for guys, and a thin crust mushrooms quiche, vegan and gluten free. Now it’s time to get back to work, with a busy week ahead! Have a beautiful one!

From all we cookedI loved the quiche quite a lot so here is the recipe.

Mushrooms quiche:

– 1.5 cup buckwheat flour

– 1.5 cup rice flour

– 4tbs olive oil

– about 1/2 cup water 

– plenty of different types of mushrooms of your choice (enough to generously cover your pie dish

– rosemary

– salt and pepper  

Mix the buckwheat flour and rice flour, add the olive oil and stir. Add the water little by little while continuing stirring. Stop addind water when the dough is crumbly dry. Since there is no gluten in both flour it is better to keep the dough drier. Knead briefly to obtain a silky dough. 

Roll it thinly and set in a pie dish. Wash and cut thinely the different mushrooms. Toss them in the pie crust, add a bit of olive oil, salt, pepper and fresh rosemary branches. Bake at 180deg in the oven for 30min. 

Curry-rice quiche!

Not enough of the leek tart with some brown rice pie crust, I went further with this curry-rice quiche. All in one dish all in one quiche! Same pie crust as the last post, but this time after half baking it I filled it with a special mix. In a pan I cut roughly a bundle of fresh spinach washed, 2 pieces of chicken breast and cooked at high heat for 5 minutes, then added a block of silky tofu and cooked 10 minutes while stirring, finished with 1tbs of curry powder, some red pepper, nutmeg and salt and pepper, took away from the heat and added 3 eggs. Stirred well and poured everything in the pie crust. Baked for 35min at 180deg, checking regularly after 20min that it wasn’t over cooked but just golden. I served that to friends for dinner with a fresh green salad. Simply delicious and astonishing! 

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!

Butternut squash and pasta

I’ve been posting a lot about butternut squash these days, indeed it’s the pick season now before shifting to kabocha which taste is very different. And since I’ve been living alone in the past weeks, one butternut squash is a lot of food for one, so I’ve cooked it one way, an other, and an other… and tried to find new ones… Last night I came back late from work but at last the rain had stopped so I could walk home using a detour to enjoy being out. But it was really cold. I almost regretted not having a beanie. So I arrived home craving for something hot to eat. And I was pleased to find some leftover butternut squash soup in the fridge. Yet I was starving and it was not enough. So after browsing my cupboard and the fridge I opted for short pasta that I simply threw in the soup that was already boiling and I cooked 10-12 minutes until the pasta were soft and the soup has almost reduced to puree. I generously gratted fresh parmigiano on top and added black pepper. And I was very happy with it!!!

Vegan butternut squash soup (2 or 3 servings)

– 1/2 or 1/3 butternut squash

– 1 cup of soya milk

– salt and pepper

Peel the butternut squash and remove the seeds. Cut in pieces. Boil in 1L of water. Once soft enough, blend everything with the soya milk, salt and pepper. That’s it!  It’s basically the same recipe as the cauliflower soup!

Then you can add the short pasta. I chose stelline. And cook them together in the soup. For a better result use fewer water to cook the butternut squash or as I did, use left over soup.

Simply simpler

No time to fix dinner? Don’t worry, I’ve just found a new preparation for sweet potatoes, and it’s so simple and delicious that it surprised myself. This is a sweet potato soup. But usually sweet potato soup means, that first you cook the potatoes, then blend them, add some cream or whatever and then eat. Last night I didn’t want a soupy soup, but rather something with a mix of textures. So here is what I did and turned superb! 

Sweet potato rough soup   2 servings

– 2 sweet potatoes

– black pepper

– parmegiano (optional) 

I washed 2 sweet potatoes and sliced them. Then in a pan I started to cook them, with just a bit of water to cover. I cooked them at high heat under cover without touching them once until all the water had disappeared and the potatoes started caramelizing in their own juice. Only then I stirred well and started to break them with a wooden spoon. Finally added water again to cover them, and bring to a boil. Add some black pepper, and served. Topped with parmigiano slices.

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.

Kabocha soup

Autumn seems to have arrived. Mornings and evenings are much chillier and days are getting really shorter already. So it’s time to prepare some warm simple soups. After eating so many butternut squash, now I have started to cook kabocha. This little Japanese pumpkin with very green skin that can be eaten too. And making soup with it is really simple and it always make a good starter or a whole meal if accomodated a bit with crouton or grilled bacon. Here is my basic recipe. 

Kabocha soup for 2 or 3 people. 

– 1/2 kabocha

– 1L of water

– 1 little pack of fresh cream

– 1tbs of soya sauce

If you want your soup orange remove the skin, if greenish is ok for you wash the kabocha and keep the skin. Remove the seeds and cut in pieces. Boil in 1L of water under cover. Check the cooking with a toothpick. When very soft stop. With a wood pestle work directly in the pan and purée the kabocha (you can use a blender also if you want!). Add the cream, the soya sauce. Heat before eating. Add black pepper, bacon, parmegiano or whatever you like!!!

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