Tag: home-cooking

Ravioli again!

After this busy week at work and several dinners out, a little bit of slow cooking was more than welcome! But it was so cold that I didn’t even dare trying to make bread. Indeed, when we arrived Saturday morning it was 2-3 degrees in the house, it slowly went up to 15-17 by the time it was bed time, and again it was 3 degrees when we woke up the next morning. These old Japanese houses are really not meant to be warmed, they are wind breakers, just to live in wearing many warm layers of clothes. And it totally works. But to make bread in such conditions is really hard (oh! Maybe that’s one reason why bread and alike are not traditional to Japan!). The bread takes forever to rise and it’s never long enough! Instead, I simply kneaded some pasta dough to make ravioli. There was some beautiful salmon from Miyagi, some baby komatsuna, and I had some dill on the verge of drying. The recipe was all set. I put the dill chopped directly in the pasta. I made filling by first grilling the salmon and blanching the komatsuna, then put the two in the blender to obtain an almost creamy texture. Rolled the dough in my pasta machine (with the dill I found it hard to roll it to extra thin) and made the ravioli. I served with some more blanched komatsuna, butter for me, olive oil for A. and it was simply delicious!

I wish a good very week, it might snow again in Tokyo!

Whaou!

Quite a week, and it’s only Thursday!!!  So let’s get back to when I left you last Saturday… Sunday evening we had 4 guests (mix of French and Japanese) for dinner at home in Tokyo so I cooked some of my half new recipes: creamy cauliflower soup with curried croutons (recipe below), pork cutlet with roasted roots: lotus, taro, sweet potatoes, turnips, deglazed in soya sauce, and for dessert hasaku with spices syrup (ginger, cinnamon and cardamom) served with sesame and kinako biscuits. A. picked many Japanese and French wines to accompany my food. Oh… and I also made some plain and olive fougasse, with the olives from the garden in Aix that my mother prepared! But that was Sunday and it seems ages already!!!

And then Monday it had snowed, quite a lot actually, so I came back home earlier than usual to avoid being stucked with train problems. And I was happy to work from home eating left over sesame-kinako cookies with a hot chaï late. And having nothing to prepare or so for dinner since I hade made too many roasted vegetables! I like to recycle leftovers and do new things with them. So I added fukinoto and topped with sprouts for a perfectly balanced dinner. It was a great flavor experience! Fukinoto bring so much!! They are also the taste of coming spring with plum blossoms! And then there was this workshop I co-organized at the French Embassy. Everything went great, I met amazing people, now I can think about what’s next (and there’s plenty) and go back to the work routine for a short while!!

How is your week doing? 

Cauliflower soup with curried croutons (6 servings as starter)

– 1 cauliflower

– 1 potato

– 150ml of cream

– 4 slices of bread (I used half rye bread I made) 

– 2tsp of curry

– oil for the frying the croutons

– salt, pepper  

In a large pan I boil the cauliflower washed and chopped and the potato, peeled and chopped too. When they are very soft I blend everything. Add water if it’s too thick. Then add the cream.

In a fry pan add oil and the curry, cut the bread in cubes and fry them while turning them regularly. When golden take them out and keep them on cooking paper. When serving heat the soup, add salt and pepper if you lile, serve and top with the croutons. I added a sprinkle of tumeric for adding a bit of color.

Crazy week(s)

I knew January would be a tough and busy month and it is exactly what it is. It is the season for student graduation thesis and I have a pile of them to read before the end of the month. It is also the moment to think about final exams for the course I teach. But also national exam weekend, with some duty, and on top of that, conferences deadline, experiments, lab visits… At this point of the year it is also often that the weather is unstable, and temperatures are on day as low as 0 deg, and the next day are 15 or more… it is hard to adjust… but it is for sure not yet the end of winter, February and March are usually colder than January in my opinion, or may be it’s just because I’m getting tired of the cold, seeing the plum trees and peach trees blooming…

For these kind of times, a comforting food is always welcome. Some simple flavors and colorful meals. Orange in the plate is great when served with white: perfect mixing carrots, lotus roots and salmon. And this time I don’t let myself get disappointed by the color change due to oxydation of the lotus root. Once peeled, washed and sliced I bathed it in a bit of vinegard. Actually it added a little flavor to the final dish that I really enjoyed and countered balance the sweetness of the carrots and the salmon. Here is my recipe.

Roasted vegetables and salmon (2 people) 

– 1 leek

– 1 piece of lotus root

– 1 carrot

– 2 sliced of salted salmon (unsalted is also ok) 

– 2 tbs of sesame oil

– 1 tbs of white vinegar

Peel, wash and slice the lotus root. Put the slices in a plate and add the vinegar. Turn them so that each side has been in contact with the vinegar. This is too keep the beautiful white color of the lotus root when cooking. Cut the leek in chuncks, same for the carrot (if organic just wash, don’t peel) . In a heated pan, add the sesame oil, the leek, cook 2min at medium heat while stirring once in a while. Add the carrot. Drain the lotus roots and add them. Remove the bones and cut also the samon in bite size. Add to the pan. Cook at low heat under cover for 5-8 min. It’s now ready! Serve with a bowl of rice snd enjoy!

 

Vegan pie

You know how much I love to make quiches and tarts, there are so many examples already posted, and there will be this year many more. But when like me you love making dough, kneading and having flour on your hands, better than quiches and tarts, there are pies, for which you need twice more pie crust and I won’t complain about that!!! Pies are also great when you don’t want to use an egg base, and simply use vegetables and some tofu or some miso etc… I also love them in winter because they seems to be much warming, keeping the vegetables in their heat and steam and preventing them fir getting dry. I plan to make more pies this year and to try new recipes, I have already ideas flowing in my head, so maybe something like a pie a week or will be a good rythm, let’s try what I can do!!!

This first pie is a pure vegan delight with an olive oil base pie crust, with half flour half oat bran, and a filling of spinach, radish tops blanched and silky tofu. Everything is said! Bake for 30-40min and enjoy!!!!

Winter rolls

In winter, when it’s cold in the morning and we want to have something rich and hot to eat, I like to prepare cinnamon rolls or cinnamon buns. I find them super delicious when made with the recipe from the Nordic cookbook that I’ve slightly modified, but so rich that I actually don’t cook them too often, maybe once or twice a year when it’s really cold. I This time I found that I actually had a very good kneading, the dough was really shiny, smooth and elastic and the rises were really great despite the cold temperatures of the house, the dough actually almost doubled twice, and the result was a very fluffy yet rich cinnamon roll. I didn’t do the egg wash nor the sugar frosting, but they were golden all the same, sweet enough and perfect for a cold Sunday morning breakfast before spending time outdoor gardening. One thing I love in that recipe, is the cardamom. Indeed, in the dough Magnus Nilsson recommend to add some cardamom, and I find it adds some lightness to the preparation. How do you like your buns?

Home-made tagliatelle

As planned there will be a lot of pasta in 2018, and it has already started! For Xmas I received a motor for my pasta machine!!! Not that I am a big fan of going mechanical, I prefer to knead manually, to chop manually, to ground coffee manually… but I must admit that with the pasta machine three hands rather than two were neededto hold the pasta in, hold the pasta out and manipulate the handle, so it was really tricky and to get things done by myself I was flouring generously the whole top and I was making a real mess actually! The motor makes things much cleaner, and the pasta is great: thin and not too floury. I’m starting to be really good at making pasta!

For a change I didn’t make ravioli though I was quite tempted to, instead I made tagliatelle, and simply prepared them with buttered leek and shiitake.  I used the same preparation steps that for the ravioli. I prepared the leek and shiitake in a large pan with a bit of butter and at low heat and used the boiling water to keep the mix moisten, and when the pasta were ready I just drained them and added them to the vegetables, added a little of olive oil and pepper and stirred well just before serving. So simple and delicious, invigorating before going back to work!!!

First bread of 2018

While in my parents’ place I baked many pompes a l’huile for Christmas, but I didn’t bake any bread. There are a few nice organic bread shops and bakeries around. But now that we are back to Isumi, it was mandatory to bake some bread. I started this year with a very simple bread: rye and whole wheat, with a handful of flaxseeds. And since the house is rather cold, I kept the bread all night in the room with us for it to rise, and only baked it much later. It has risen very slowly but the result was a very soft yet dense bread. With jam, honey, butter, or whatever, it’s delicious for breakfast. And it goes together with the book I am reading about Roland Feuillas, a guy who has been working for the last 12 years in making bread with traditional wheats grown traditionaly too. This reading has revived in me this idea that I should grow my own sourdough, but I still don’t know how to manage the trips between Isumi and Tokyo every weekends, and the longer one abroad  and to keep it alive properly… If you have some experience in raising sourdough I’ll be happy to learn from you!!!

Mezzelune

For those who’ve been following us, they know that I love to make fresh pasta, and even more stuffed pasta like ravioli (all my recipes are here!). I’ve been testing many options and yet I was satisfied but never fully satisfied by the result, in particular the pasta itself, but not only, though the taste was always really delicious. So while in Florence and A. too busy with work, I decided it would be a great opportunity for me to learn from a real Italian “Mama” or a real chef. My first idea was to go to Giula’s cooking classes at Juls’ kitchen, but it’s too far away from the city for this time, I’ll go later in the spring… I wanted something that wouldn’t take more than 2h. So when I found the cooking classes at the mercato centrale (again mercato centrale… which in the end I’ve been visiting every day!), and that they just had a vegetarian mezzelune class at the perfect timing for me, I had to go!
And I didn’t regret it, I made some of the best pasta ever I think, because thanks to the chefs I’ve finally learned the tricks that where missing to me:
1. it’s OK to knead a lot the pasta and really use the palm of the hand to squeeze it;
2. let the pasta dough rest before rolling it so that the glutinous structure has time to develop;
3. roll and fold once first before rolling for real;
4. and that’s the most crucial, get the sauce moisten (with some of the boiling water for the pasta) and after boiling the pasta add them to the sauce pan at medium-high heat, shaking regularly, so that they roll over in the sauce and it becomes just creamy, neither to watery nor too dry. Serve and it right away!
So now I feel really equipped to prepare more stuffed pasta!!! And I can’t wait to have my new motor for my pasta machine!!!

And because this something I would have never prepared, but it was really delicious, here is the recipe of the mezzelune I made.

Potato and chestnut mezzelune (for 2, makes 8-10 mezzelune)

For the pasta:

same recipe as usual: 100g of flour, 1 egg, olive oil (or not)

For the filling:

– 2 small potatoes

– 1 handful of boiled chestnuts

– a bit of parsley

– 10g of butter

– 20g of grated parmigiano

For the sauce:

– 5 mushrooms

– 1 little handful of dried porcini

– olive oil

– 15 g of butter

– 4-6 leaves of sage

– 30g of grated parmegiano

Start boiling the whole potatoes with the skin, simply washed and add the chestnut to soften them.
Re-hydrate the porcini.
Prepare the dough for the pasta , wrap it and keep it on the side.
Clean and peel the mushrooms, chop them, chop  the sage. Drain the porcini and chop them. In a pan heated, add half of the butter for the sauce,  a splash of olive oil, then the mushrooms, the porcini, the sage, cook at high heat until it start to golden, then lower the heat, add some hot water and keep cooking all along, while keeping it moisten.
By now the potatoes should be ready, so peel them and chopped them roughly. Mash them with the chestnut (a blender may be welcome here), add the parsley, the parmigiano and stir well to obtain a creamy-dry paste. Roll the pasta, cut out circles and start filling with the filling. close well.
Boil the pasta for about 4-5 minutes, then drain and add them to the sauce pan directly, add the rest of the butter and shake in the pan at high heat, until the pasta has rolled over in the sauce and the sauce has reduced to a creamy texture (look at the top picture at it looks like!). Serve, top with a bit of parmigiano, and enjoy!

Life in Florence

So, it’s been four days we’ve been in Florence, except for Sunday that we spent walking around the city as described here, it’s been a rather studious time. A. leaves early in the morning while it’s all dark and comes back late at night, and this gives me more than plenty of time to work, write and spend a little hour or two outside walking around the city in the cold and shopping for lunches and dinners.

I’ve now explored both the San’Ambroggio market and the San Lorenzo market, got to see everything twice or thrice to decide what to buy choosing between all the delicious cheeses, fresh pasta and all the fruits and vegetables that are alien to Japan. I must say that I passed on fish, not being fully satisfied with the stands and on meat as there was too many options and I am not good with meat too much… but I guess that I will have to try some for A.. For the moment I’m sticking to speck and San Daniele and it’s been perfect. I also got my tea from La Via del Te as recommended by Giula from the beautiful Juls’ kitchen. And really I am more than happy with my little kitchen and the simple cooking I can do!

So far the things I have really been enjoying are the greens: I packed on lamb’s lettuce, rucola, zucchini, fennel and artichokes and I have been using them in many various preparation. My best being this delicious dish of pasta with olive oil roasted fennels and zucchini and topped with rucola. It is so simple and so fresh, and so easy to make, that here is my recipe:

Pasta with zucchini, fennel and rucola (for 2)

– 125g of pasta

– 1 zucchini

– 1/2 fennel

-1 handful of rucola

– olive oil, salt and pepper

– additionally some fresh parmigiano or some other cheese

Boil the water for the pasta and the pasta. In the mean time, wash and cut the fennel and the zucchini, and in an olive oil greased frypan cook them, but not overcook them! Add the drained pasta, salt, pepper, and olive oil, top with rucola and stir, serve immediately. Add cheese if you like!

And have a great Wednesday! 

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