Tag: Home-made

Shopping spree!

With our new work schedule, we finish work quite late on Friday evening and leaving for the country at 23:00, in the cold evening, empty stomachs and drained from the week is not too tempting, so we prefer to wake early on Saturday morning and leave quickly. In the winter fewer people go surfing and golfing that early so it’s not jammed. It is great to drive by day to enjoy the scenery, and we also can stop on the way at local shops we usually don’t go too often. Saturday we stopped at Wakuwaku in Otaki, a shop selling a lot of local products and fresh veggies and fruits, as well as some fish and local pork. Actually we haven’t been for the whole summer, and since we last went they had a total refurbishment and new branding with more organic products too. And it was just crazy! On top of the regular fresh fruits and vegetables I regularly buy, I also bought different types of miso, dry fish, block ham, sausages and locally made rice pasta. They also had tones of preparations such as small fish or shrimp cooked in soya sauce, with walnuts… pickles, tofu… and they had a lottery where I won an other bag full of dried sweet potatoes, rice crackers…

The thing I was the most tempted to try right away was the rice pasta from Isumi. I decided to cook them in a wok of vegetables, with chrysanthemum and sausages. So I boiled and drained the pasta, and kept in cold water. In a wok slightly greased I added 4 little sausages chopped, one red carrot cut in rectangles, a handful of brocoli, a handful of cherry tomatoes, and the petals of two yellow chrysanthemum flowers. Once the sausage were ready, I added one table spoon of soya sauce, then added the drained pasta and stirred well. Served immediately with an other chrysanthemum flower for decor. Simple and delicious!

Have a great week! 

Shiitake week! Day 5!

And here is the last recipe of this shiitake week! I could have added many more like shiitake quiche, shiitake soup… But weekend is for new creative cooking… we’ll see tomorrow what the farmers market will inspire us… though I am craving for homemade gnocchi, rich quiche and more takikomi gohan… and I have a new cookbook to browse and some older to look at again (I thinking about my Sicilian cookbook and Shojin cuisine cookbook in particular and some older Japanese cookbooks I haven’t touch in years…) . So this last shiitake recipe is basically using shiitake as substitute for porcini. Of course they have a very different taste but in some preparations they can have a very similar texture. And since there is no porcini in Japan, that finding really delicious matsutake that actually come from Japan (they are usually from Canada, US, Korea or China) has become a challenge, regardless of the price you are eager to pay them, using shiitake is a very straightforwardly simple option. I used them with tomato, to serve with polenta and grilled marlin. I simply sliced them, cooked them in olive oil and add the tomatoes. Cooked until it’s all soft and almost dry. Served with the fish sliced and grilled in a pan, and some polenta. That’s it, and it was delicious! 

Have a good weekend! 

Shiitake week! Day 3!

It’ been quite sometime I didn’t make ravioli right?! And I couldn’t wait any longer to train again… in prevision of my visit to Tuscany next month… And with beautiful shiitake, kabocha season and delicious Isumi pork, it was easy to decide what the fillingwould be: it will be all or nothing!  Indeed kabocha and shiitake are a great match, the pork is optional but it had really the perfect balance: sweet and savory! So the recipe is rather simple:

Kabocha and shiitake ravioli:

– 1/4 of kabocha

– 6 shiitake

– 100g of ground pork meat

– 1 egg

– 150g of flour

– olive oil

– water

– salt and pepper  

Steam the kabocha and puréed it. Dice the shiitake and roast them in a very little bit of olive oil or nothing. Add them to the kabocha purée. For the pork meat, just cook it in a pan until golden, and add to the mix. Salt, pepper and that’s it. For the pasta I used 150g of flour and 1egg, a little of olive oil and water. It made about 35 large ravioli. I also prepared a little mix of olive oil and parsley to top them and it was really de-li-cious… I’m really crazy about Italian food! And when it is mixed with Japanese… 

New rythm

Pfou… it’s not easy to find a mew rythm when days at work are 13h and one day you start early, the other you finish late… even less easy when A. has meetings until quite late… Cooking dinner past 22:30 when lunch is that far away and you’re starving requires food that can be prepared quite rapidly… but I still want to eat fresh, seasonal, local food. There are a few tricks to do that:

– trick No 1: stock on daikon radish, carrots and miso. It takes 2minutes to peel and cut daikon sticks (even faster than carrots!!) and 3minutes for a carrot or two. Dipped in miso they are the perfect snack!

– trick No 2: pack on food that can be prepared in hot simple pot and don’t need to much time to prepare (no peeling…): kabocha, sweet potatoes, carrots… in 10min they can be cooked and preparing them is simple: wash & cut! 

– trick No 3: prepare your rice cooker in the morning and schedule cooking or cook rice in a thick pan on gaz directly (it reduces cooking time to a mere 20min)

And while you eat you veggies with miso and you smell the veggies roasting and the rice boiling you can open your mail, chat about your day and admire the result of your first experience of making pottery on a wheel!

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!

Two simple Japanese recipes

With some guests from France at home this weekend I cooked some simple Japanese recipes that they could reproduce back home. And because the weather was really terrible I could take all the time needed to chop thinly the vegetables and prepare recipes I usually don’t.

The two recipes I prepared were daikon and miso, and some kinpira gobo (without the red pepper). 

Daikon and miso: 

– 1/2 daikon

– 2 tbs of miso of your choice

– 1/2L of dashi of your choice: konbu, katsuo, niboshi… 

Cut the daikon in 3cm slices, peel them. Prepare the dashi and when boiling cook the daikon. It is ready when a toothpick enters smoothly. In a small bowl put the miso, add 2 or 3 tbs of dashi and stir to obtain a creamy paste. At this stage you can add yuzu peels… for a slightly enhanced version of the recipe. One the daikon is cooked, drain and top with the miso preparation. Eat while still warm.

Kinpira gobo :

 – 1 burdock

– 1 carrot

– a small piece of lotus root (optional) 

– 300ml of dashi of your choice

– 1tbs of soya sauce

– 1tbs of sake

– 1tsp of sugar

– 1 red pepper  

Peel the vegetables. Cut the burdock and gobo in thin matches sticks. Cut the lotus root and the red pepper in thin slices. In a pan boil the vegetables in the dashi. When reduced, add the sake, the red pepper, the sugar, and the soya sauce. Cook until almost dry. Add a few sesame seeds to decorate eventually.

Cold corn soup

As I was mentioning in my earlier post, I didn’t grow in a family where eating corn or cooking corn is a tradition.  I am still quite unable to cook it in many ways, and I usually limit myself to boiled corn, rice & corn, or corn soup. Since the weather is very hot and humid these days in Tokyo I really like to prepare cold soups. And since the corn season is going to end soon, I bought a few more corn and prepared some cold soup. Similarly to the hot one it is simple and very nice as a starter. The only “problem” with cold soups made from ingredients that must be cooked (contrarily to gaspacho) is that you have to plan a bit ahead (2-3h) to have time to cool it.

Cold corn soup (for 2 bowls)

– 2 corns

– soya milk

– salt and pepper  

First remove the leaves and hairs from the corn and boil until soft. Wash under running cold water to cool them. Take all the grains out and blend until smooth (adding no other liquid help obtaining a really smooth texture), add salt and pepper. Add soya milk to obtain the desired texture. Again, when cooled the texture will be slightly thicker, so think about it to obtain the texture you really want. Blend a little longer. Cool in the fridge or the freezer before serving.

Have a nice week! 

Clafoutis

Yes! The season for clafoutis is coming again! I love summer and summer fruits simple recipes like clafoutis, tarts and simply poached fruits with herbs or spices. The clafoutis recipe is really simple: 4 ingredients only: flour-eggs-milk-sugar, but you can easily make some variations by changing the balance between the ingredients, or using vegetal milk rather than cow milk. Recently I’ve been using quite a lot of a new organic non-modified soya milk and again I used it this time. I wanted also a rather thick consistency so I used more flour than usual and fewer eggs (only 3). And since cherries are really sweet, and I had plenty, and I prepared the clafoutis for breakfast I used very little untreated natural sugar. Nothing new here, just that the season has arrived again and many clafoutis will be made this summer too I guess!!!

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