Tag: Home-made

Eggs are my best friends…

I’m a big fan of cooked eggs and always have been. I recall the soft boiled eggs with bread and butter of my childhood, the omelettes, with cheese, potatoes or wild asparagus or wild mushrooms… going to the chicken farm near my grand parents home to get fresh eggs… this love for eggs hasn’t changed a bit over time, now I still love eggs. Poached, sunny side, scrambled… every mean is great. But recently I rediscovered home made hard boiled eggs. In Japan they can easily be bought in convenience store and I’ve been eating one, once in a while, as an afternoon snack for a long day, but I rarely if not never boiled my eggs… I don’t know why… hard boiled eggs are super convenient: they keep easily, transport easily and are delicious… but the recipes now I love the most with hard boiled eggs is in a dressing for vegetables or pasta.

Chopped thinly, mixed with olive oil and mustard this a must to dress a potato salad for example. Or like in today’s recipe, with basil and olive oil, to dress some pasta and green beans. The variations are infinite as eggs accommodate well with so many things: parsley, basil, olive oil, mustard, mayonnaise, curry…

Count one egg for 2 servings, and have a good week!!!

D-4 – snap peas

Oh my god! In 4 days my lab at the university is moving and things have gotten a little bit out of control. I’m very lucky to have a great crowd of researchers and students to help prepare this big change. But the moving is just one thing among many many others that I have to handle. There are so many things going on at the same time and days are so short… that these past few days cooking has unfortunately not been a priority. Hopefully the weekend gives a better chance to cook some more elaborated food… just a bit more. So this week has been all about rice/pasta/gnocchi with sautéed vegetables, in particular snap peas, lotus roots, fava beans and green peas. I also bought a few things that I haven’t bought in a long long time, in particular kamaboko. Kamaboko is a kind of fish paste made with white fish, egg and steamed on a wooden plate. It ressembles in some sense to surimi (I’m not talking about the horrible thing you can buy in supermarkets, right! But of homemade surimi (recipe to come any time soon!)). It is very convenient to use kamaboko in rapid recipes and it adds a bit of protein and a nice texture with crunchy spring greens.

So last night I simply cooked some rice, and in a pan greased with a bit of vegetal oil I simply sliced a pice of kamaboko and added plenty of snap peas. And dinner was ready!!!

And as I said this week was really all about simple food, so here are a few other plates with snap peas that I cooked for dinner recently. This spring is all about snap peas!!! What about yours?

Recurring failure

I’m usually pretty confident in what I do, and in cooking more than anything else. I can try new recipes or invent new ones on the fly with quite some easiness and usually I obtain very very good results (it was one if the motivations for me to start this culinary journal, to keep track of my inventions).

That said (a little bit of self flattering never hurts!!!), I am not super human and there are things that I can never manage to master. Croissants are a great fancy for me and I love the idea of freshly baked croissants, buttery and fluffy, with a perfect puff to start a great Sunday. Despite having tried 4 or 5 times, having checked different recipes, watch videos and read books… I failed poorly in reaching my goal every single time. The taste is always great but the result is never a puff pastry croissants, it is a bread-ish, brioche-ish, milk bread-ish thing but never puffed. I don’t know what’s wrong with what I do or use. I’m incriminating the floor, the yeast, the kneading, the rolling and the folding… tried to improve each but didn’t succeed. If you are a successful croissants maker I’ll be more than happy to receive first hand feedbacks and hints to succeed next time. I’m also considering finding a class, if you know any I’ll be happy to learn about it…

Please help me make puffy croissants for Sunday morning breakfast !!!

Yuzu-choco cookies

Sudden rainy and chilly days, after some really warm and sunny weeks call for some sweetness… and since we’ve recently planted a yuzu (and also a lemon) tree in the garden, to broaden our range of homemade citrus fruits, I’ve started to harvest a few yuzu fruits. It’s late for the yuzu season but they are none the less delicious and juicy. That’s how the idea of making yuzu cookies came from. The recipe I used for my cookies is rater simple, and you can add whatever pleases you inside.

So here is my yuzu-cholate cookies recipe. If you cannot find fresh yuzu, you can replace by dry yuzu peels rehydrated, or orange.

Yuzu-chocolate cookies

– 110g of butter (at room temperature)

– 150g of flour

– 40g of sugar

– 1 tea spoon of baking powder

– the juice of 1/2 yuzu and the peel of 1/4 yuzu

– 50g of dark cooking chocolate

– a pinch of salt

Mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, add the butter and knead well. Add the yuzu juice, cut the peel in tiny pieces and add. Knead a little more. With a knife cut roughly the chocolate in chunks, add and knead. Keep refrigerated for 20min (or 10min in the freezer). Preheat the oven to 180deg. Make small balls of dough and squeeze them flat on baking paper. Bake until golden or hard enough. Cooking time should ne around 10min but it depends on the actual size and thickness of the cookies.

After baking the cookies until golden at 180 degrees I kept them in a cool dry place before eating them.

Bamboo shoots – 筍

The season for bamboo shoots has started for sure and it goes together with the season for Japanese pepper or sansho 山椒 fresh leaves also called kinome. The sansho shrub in our garden is actually growing steadily after I thought it might be dying last summer and there are plenty of new leaves and soon plenty of fruits. Bamboo shoots and sansho leaves are a very classic mix in Japanese cuisine and it indeed matches very well. I already introduced the recipe two years ago after we tried an amazing version at the shojin cuisine restaurant Daigo. My recipe is not exactly the classic one since I use simply olive oil and kinome. Nothing else. It is really simple and very tasty. It makes a perfect starter. Bamboo shoots are always a little long to prepare because they need two cooking. The first boiling to make them tender and remove any bitterness, the second for the final preparation, but they are definitely worse trying. Remember that to remove the bitterness it is good to cook bamboo shoots in rice water (the first rinse of white rice) or in rice nuka, but honestly rice water is much simpler and cleaner!!! This time I used katsuobushi dashi for the second cooking. Then cut in thin slices and added chopped kinome with olive oil.

Cresson quiche

To conclude this series of watercress recipe I would like to present you a simple quiche recipe where I have added some watercress to the egg base. For the pie crust I used an olive oil base because I was short on time and I find that kneading with olive oil is much faster than with butter that is just out of the fridge. For the rest it is just a regular quiche, the watercress brings some nice flavor and a nice texture to the creamy egg base.

Enjoy your Friday!

Watercress quiche

For the pie crust:

– 120g of flour of your choice

– olive oil or butter

– a bit of water

For the filling:

– a bundle of watercress

– ham (optional)

– 4 eggs

– 150ml of milk or cream

– salt and pepper

Start with the pie crust. In a bowl mix all the ingredients and knead until the dough is smooth. If you have doubt about the amount of butter/oil and water, add little by little until the right consistency is reached. Roll and set in a pie dish.

For the filling, wash the watercress and remove the hardest parts. In a bowl mix the eggs and the milk, add the watercress and the ham cut in bites, salt and pepper to taste. Pour in the pie crust. Cook in the oven for 30min at 200. If the pie is thick, cooking time may be longer.

Spring savory delights

Nothing to do with the recipe I am presenting today, but the other night we went to check the newly opened Tokyo midtown Hibiya. A new building with many shops, a large Toho cinema and a terrace garden with a view on Hibiya park and the imperial palace. The place just opened so it was very crowded in apparence but the overall place was quiet and walking around was smooth and nice. Shops are for the most the same as elsewhere. Brand names, big and small, chains. Nothing really to impressive. The only thing that I found fun and interesting was the retro corner on the 3rd floor, with some craft, a barber, a book store and some sculptural clothes.

There is one trend tough that I find quite interesting. 15 years ago when we arrived in Tokyo there a few cinemas, mainly old, that little by little were closing down, until it was a real pain to find one. Recently many of the new shopping places downtown have a large dedicated cinema. Toho cinemas are really spreading and now it is really easy to find a screening in original version too. Yet movies release is still super delayed compared to other countries and we usually watch the “new” movies on the international itunes store before they are available in Japanese theaters!!! And what to eat with a good movie? Pasta or a good and simple Japanese vegan meal with rice and sautéed vegetables. To celebrate spring I really like snap peas, for the crunchy texture, the little tart and sweet taste, and the brillant green. And I also love the salted sakura flowers with rice in particular, but not only ( I made some sable last weekend and it was great!). And since I still have some lotus root (I bought a giant one!) I cooked the all thing to be served together. Sautéed in a little of oil for the lotus root, then add a little of water to steam the snap peas on top, finish with soys sauce. For the sakura, I wash the salt in water and add them to the cooked and hot rice. Serve all and eat happily while watching a movie!!

Your kitchen is mine!

Kitchen take-over in Waterloo.

I’ve been in Canada for 10 days now and I really missed cooking, so when D. and C. offered me to take-over there kitchen I couldn’t resist and I had to say Yes!!!!! Please let me cook!!! So all set, on our way back from work D. and I stopped grocery shopping. Given the season (temperatures vary basically between -10 and 2) there is not a lot of local products available but we managed to find a few simple ingredients: spinach, mushrooms, potatoes, pears. The menu was all decided: I would cook vegan for D., some spinach and mushrooms ravioli. And for dessert she wanted spicy pears. So then I went to there place and while we were chatting I took their kitchen and prepared the promised menu. It was so nice and relaxing to be in a kitchen, to touch the food, the knives and to cook for dear friends. We after that sat for a nice dinner, my last one, tomorrow I’m flying back to Tokyo!

French toast

Could you imagine that! I have never eaten French toast!!! Not even once! And never made any either! So today I decided to try to make some with some bread leftover… Everyone knows how to make French toast, even me, I knew!!! It is ultimately easy and rapid: some milk (I used almond milk), an egg, a bit of brown sugar, spices (cinnamon and cardamom, my favorite). Bit the egg with the milk, the sugar and the spices. Soak the bread in it, the cook in butter greased frypan until golden… that’s it. And well I must admit that the taste of spices was good but really, French toast are not in my top list… I prefer to use leftover bread for croutons or give it to the birds… I probably won’t make any a second time… I think the idea of soaking old bread is actually quite not something I like, a main reason why I was never tempted by French toast before (neither English pudding). Now I can say I tried, and won’t again!!! But there’s always a good thing in tring recipes, it’s that it gives some new ideas or chances to test new combinations. And with the milk and egg batter left, I added a bit of flour, some more milk and obtained a spicy crepe mix. And I made a few crepes, served just with butter or sugar, and they were super delicious. The spices added a little teist that was simply perfect! That I will definitely do again!!!

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