Tag: home-cooking

Shojin cuisine inspiration

Since I got my Shojin cuisine book I only tried one recipe but many others are really simple and delicious. So I’ve decided to try (and slightly adapt) two other recipes. One is a classic, the otherone is rather new for me. But even the classic I gave it a little twist. I really love green beans salad, alone, with potatoes or with tomatoes. It’s a real simple dish perfect with thin little green beans or flat beans that my mother cooked very often in season. I used the recipe of miso green beans as a base and mixed it with my childhood memories. So I added small ripe tomatoes. So it’s just blanching the green beans, just a few minutes, they should remain vivid green and crisp, mixing with miso of you choice, adding the tomatoes in quarters (bottom left of the picture).

The second recipe is eggplant and edamame. The colors and mix of textures and tates really attracted me and I was very happy with the result. The recipe apparently used fava beans or broad beans but the season is over and the season for eamame just started so I replaced them. Also in the recipe the beans were sweetened with sugar, but I didn’t find it necesary, the edamame being already super sweet. So you need half little eggplant per person and a handfull of shelled edamame for two. Halve the eggplants, in a frypan greased with oil cook the eggplants, skin size first, the turn them. They must be soft but not overcooked. Keep to cool on kitchen paper skin up. Boil the edamame, when ready shell them and peel them. The thin skin over the beans must be removed for a smooth preparation, and is actually super easy to remove. Place the beans in a mortar and crush them but not too much. Cut the eggplnt in bites and top them with the edamame. 

Both recipes are perfect served at room temperature. 

Red cabbage salad Japanese style

A red cabbage is a pretty big thing to eat for two and I’m trying to find new recipes that change from my usual ones. Recently I’m searching new ideas to change from my routine cooking, not that I don’t like what I cook but it’s became somehow too easy. Of course I don’t necessarily have the time for very complex recipes, but I am sure there other simple manners to prepare some ingredients that I use, and I’ve just forgotten about it or don’t know  about. There are many also that use products I don’t use/buy/make for example non seasonnal products, frozen food, canned food (except chickpeas), mayonnaise, deep fried, beef, shellfish, but still many remains. So I slowly trying new mixes and new arrangement and so far it’s working good. So here is one recipe for a Japanese version of a red cabbage salad: shaved red cabbage, boiled new potatoes, okara, and Japanese salted salmon. Dressing with a little of rice oil, soya sauce and black sesame.

Rainy season – 梅雨

梅雨 literally the plum rain is the perfect word for the Japanese rainy season. In June it’s getting hot and humid and this is the season for harvesting plums. So everywhere it’s about ume-everything: umeshu, umeboshi, ume jam… We have several plum trees in the garden producing every year dozens of kilos of fruits. Unfortunately in the past we haven’t been there in June for the harvest season. Only last and this year we managed to be in Japan and harvest our plums. Last year with the help of Mrs I. I made some umeshu that I’ve just bottled, and is apparently delicious (I can only enjoy its beautiful smell since I don’t drink alcohol anymore). It was actually more simple to do than I expected only it takes a whole year to wait to start drinking it.

This year I decided to make umeboshi with our 85year old neighbor. She promised me this winter to teach me and since then I’ve looking forward to it. The day finally came! I harvested some of our plums Saturday, washed them and had then bath in a lot of water for a whole night and yesterday I prepared my first umeboshi. Here again it was much simpler than I expected. It’s only salt and plums. And time. Bonus before I can enjoy our umeboshi obasan gave me 25year old umeboshi. Something I’m looking forward to try too very soon!! I’ll keep you updated!

One more thing I love about this season too, this is also the season for vibrant greens and colorful hydrangeas blooming under grey skies, giving this special and beautiful rainy season light and colors to the country.

Saturday lunch

Baguettes, farcis and pissaladiere in the oven
Baguettes, farcis and pissaladiere in the oven

Tonight we had the I. For dinner. It was a dinner to thank them for all they are doing to help us with the house, and in particular with the cats and the kittens. I wanted to cook for them French familial food, things that they wouldn’t have in restaurants. And the market was perfectly in sync with what I had in mind. So I spent a large part of the afternoon cooking: baguettes of course, a pissaladiere, stuffed vegetables my grandmother’s way, capsicum and tume my mother’s way, and neroli sable to accompany some fresh fruits. So the lunch was rather simple: chicken balls, cucumber and radish with miso and rice.

Back to the basics

There is one thing I like but almost never cook because it takes to long to prepare for most of my evenings, and I don’t have the special gear required to make it look really good: it’s Japanese dashi-rolled omelette だし卵焼き(dashitamagoyaki). The preparation is really easy it’s just that to roll it correctly you need to cook one thin layer of eggs after the other and roll in between. So in the end this omelette takes 30min to cook and needs regular attention. But last night I was having a little more time than usual, A. being in a late meeting. You can find dashitamagoyaki in supermarket and most izakaya, and in bento but it’s too often sweet and the taste of the dashi that bring a delicate flavor is too often imperceptible because of the sweetness. My dashitamagoyaki only uses katsuobushi dashi and a little of soya sauce, I find that the dashi brings enough umami not to sweetnen additionally. So first thing is to prepare dashi with katsuobushi. Then in a bowl mix 1cup of dashi with 5 eggs, add a tbs ofsoya sauce, stir well. In a greased heated pan pour a thin layer of the egg mix, just like if you were making a crepe. Wait until the bottom is well cooked and almost golden. Then roll it tightly. Take it of the pan, grease a little and make an other “crepe”, add the one you just did before and roll the new one around the first one tightly. Repeat until all the egg mix has been used, or make 2 smaller ones. You can clearly guess that with a round pan the rolling is a pain, that’s why Japaneses have rectangular oan for that. Except that I don’t really have cooking goodies that have only one purpose so I keep using the round pan!!!

Coconut oil curry

I am not too much in food trends and I am not too keen in trying new fashionable products. I see them on the shelves of super market: hemp, egoma… but never or rarely buy any. Three months ago when our friends from Germany visited us and we went food shopping for organic rice and Japanese products for them to bring back home, they convinced me that coconut oil was nice, and before that I read that it has many virtues so I bought some. And then I kept it in the fridge since then. Open it once or twice, but the smell rebutted me and I continued cooking with olive oil as usual. Last night I decided it was time to try. So I come up with a recipe where I could as well have used a little coconut milk: a spicy vegetables mix to serve with grilled snapper and black quinoa. I used 1 onion, 1 potato, 1 capsicum, 1eggplant and 1yellow zucchini all cut in bites. In a big pan I heated one large teaspoon of coconut oil and added the vegetables: onion first then potato, eggplant, then the rest a little while after. And cooked under cover. I added 1tsp of curry powder a little of cumin powder, a tsp of anise seeds and a very little of nutmeg powder. Added 10cl of water and stir. Cooked an additional 5 minutes without cover. The curry is ready!

In the meantime I prepared the black quinoa and grilled the fish. Prepared the plates and served immediately. 

Then what about the coconut oil? The smell is quite strong and the taste persistent in the food, which for my preparation was perfect but it can be slightly repelling in some dishes or may be one needs to get used to it. It is vey nice for golden brown veggies, I obtained a very beautiful color and texture. So yes it’s nice, but for me it is going to take a little more brain to find recipes where to use it. Any suggestion to start with?

And a last one!

Yup! I’m done with this grant application and with many other things that were bothering me and keeping me too busy at work. So here is the last one-plate of this series, the last just before finishing the grant things. From tomorrow I will be back to some more elaborate cooking and trsting new products that I have on the shelf for a while but wasn’t decided to try yet. 

So on the plate today: raw radish and cucumber, bamboo shoots, fried tofu, rice with sesame and grilled carrots. 

And an other one

Indeed, I am still crazy busy at work with this grant application, but hopefully it should be all done today. In the meantime we still need to sustain ourselves and the Japanese one-plate is on the menu again with an unexpected variation. Indeed, I prepared the green beans with miso and the pickled onions, but we have some fresh simmered small bamboo shoot on the plate now, that I didn’t prepare! 

There exist two types of bamboo shoots, the big one I’ve been cooking quite often because you can find them everywhere and the small one that are more let’s say “wild” and that one needs to pick in the forest. Picking bamboo shoot is a real fun sport, basically it’s hiking and them crawling in bamboo groves. We’ve had the chance to go bamboo shoots picking with our friends from Tsunan once and it was really awesome. Like wild mushrooms picking it takes some time to figure what to pick and to know the good spots. Unfortunately in Isumi we don’t know yet these spots and people keep them secret, like everywhere!! But one of the guy we met on the tennis court came to bring us some small bamboo shoot simmered with sesame oil. There is something here quite unique with Japanese, is that they love to offer us food they make and local products. I think it goes together with this tradition of food souvenir etc… I need to do some research about that! 

Anyway that’s how we ended with a perfect Japanese one-plate, with only fresh and delicious local products.

An other Japanese one-plate

Brown rice is really often on the menu and with the summer slowly coming in, together with the rainy season I crave for simple Japanese tastes: miso, pickled vegetables… And because I spent a lot of time working on a big grant proposal this weekend I needed to cook simple things that I could eventually reuse for another meal. That’s how I prepared a bowl of green beans with miso and some 1min pickled red new onion. These two accomodate vey well with Japanese rice, brown or white and other Japanese tastes (you’ll see that tomorrow for a 100% vegan version).  

For the onion it’s really simple I simple slice them thinely and cooked them in a little of water until soft and the water has disappeared. Then I added a table spoon of brown sugar and a table spoon of rakyosu (らっきょう酢) and if you don’t have any you can use rice vinegar or any vinegar without a strong taste. Then I cooked under cover 3min and keep to cool. 

For the green beans I simply blanched them and then add a large table spoon of miso snd stir well. Super easy to prepare and perfect eaten cold. 

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