Tag: homemade

Cold soup

How is your summer? In Tokyo these days summer looks like the rainy season… and it’s even not too hot! Which is perfect for this first week back to work, except that I was expecting having dinner on the terrace (maybe for the last season since we might move to a new place without a terrace) with our guests but rain didn’t stop for the last week more than just a few minutes. Anyway, this doesn’t affect much my cooking! And after eating out in so many cafes I really enjoyed having a little soup to start with and a cold one for the summer. So for our guests last night (one allergic to lactose) I prepared a potato-leek soup. You know this all-time classic that is so warming in winter… but in a cold version. The only problem with cold soup os that you need to prepare them at least 6h before eating so that they really are really cold when eating. 

Vegan cold leek-potato soup:  (4 servings)

 – 1 leek

– 2-5 potatoes depending on the size

– olive oil, salt, pepper

Wash and chop the leek. In a pan, heat some olive oil and add the leek. Peel the potatoes and cut them. Add to the pan and cook at medium heat until slightly golden, stir every once in a while. Cover with 1L of water and cook until the potatoes are really soft. Blend to obtain a creamy soup (add first the vegetables and then the water little by little in the blender to be sure to have the right consistency. It must slightly more liquid than desired since the cooling will densify the mixture). Add olive oil, salt, pepper. Cool in the fridge for a few hours. Stir the mix before serving to make it homogeneous. Enjoy!

Lotus root sushi – 蓮根寿司

When we were in Fuefukigawa, our ryokan had a very nice library where we enjoyed spending some time. It’s very nice to go to someone else library because you can discover many things through others books. That’s how I discovered a little cook book with some inspiring recipes. And I tried one of the inspiration as soon as we got back home. It was a recipe of lotus root sushi. So basically vinegared rice and vinegared lotus roots, served with ginger and sesame.  It’s been many years I haven’t made sushi rice so I was happy to prepare some again. Since it was served with the vinegared lotus root I didn’t make it too sour, and I served it with some ginger-pork sautéed.

So here is the lotus-root sushi recipe. It is quite simple if you can find fresh lotus roots (which in Japan is obviously very easy) and it has a very Japanese flair. 

Lotus-root sushi: 

– 1 cup of Japanese rice (I always use Koshihikari but choose your favorite one) 

– 1 large lotus root, fresh

– a bulb of fresh ginger, not too big

– 2 or 3 myoga

– 3 tbs of golden sesame

– 3 tbs of white vinegar

– 1 tbs of natural sugar

– 1 tsp of salt

– 2 tbs of sake (optional) 

First wash the rice, and cover with 1cup of water, the sake and cook as usual. While the rice is cooking, peel and wash carefully the lotus root. Cut in very thin slices (I used the mandolin for that). Set in a bowl, add some water to almost cover, but don’t put too much. Add most of the sugar, the salt and 2tbs of white vinegar. Stir with the hands, and let rest. Stir once in a while. Peel and cut thinely the ginger and the myoga. In a frypan roast the sesame until it starts to smell. Once the rice is cooked and has cooled down a bit add the remaining 1tbs of vinegar and the remaining sugar, stir well. Add the ginger, the sesame to the rice, stir; add the lotus root drained. Add the myoga. That’s it!!!

Socca lunch

Once in a while I like to prepare traditional socca as a base for a lunch one plates. It’s very quick to prepare and easy to serve with fresh vegetables. Since I’ve found huge eggplants at the farmers market I decided to make some basil (I have plenty in my herb garden) eggplant caviar and I made a big batch. I used very little olive oil in so that it can be eaten endlessly! I found it matches very well the socca and was a good dip. So I simply dresses the plates adding a few pan fried eggplant slices, some tomato and okra.

Eggplant caviar: 

For a big bowl. 

– 3 eggplants (not the small Japanese ones, the big ones! Otherwise you may make a small bowl!) 

– a bit of olive oil

– salt, pepper

– fresh basil leaves, or carvi seeds, or sesame seeds… 

Preheat the oven to 200. Set the eggplants on a cooking paper shit and put in the oven. Bake until it feels soft inside. Let them cool. Then peel them. Remove the extra water if any by just squeezing them.  Put all the peeled eggplants in the bowl of a blender, add salt and pepper, a bit of olive oil and blend to a smooth purée. Add the chopped basil, or the carvi seeds or the sesame seeds. Ready to eat, with bread, in a dish…

The recipe fir the socca is available here 

Blueberry tart

This year I have the impression that there are more blueberries than in the past, and I bake more more fruits tart where I make a simple dough with a little of sugar for the pie crust and then just add fruits on top. I bake that for 20min at 190-200. It makes perfect simple desserts, tea-time sweets or breakfast. With blueberries I was worried that not adding sugar to the fruits might be a bit too sour, but the fruits are so ripe that actually sugar is not needed.  Actually I have noticed recently using less and less added sugar and salt to all my recipes and enjoying very much the result.

La rue du supplice

When we moved to Tokyo in 2004, during the first few months every evening on my way back home I was taking one of the small residential street around Tokyo university, and every evening from one of the house in that street a delicious smell was tempting me, a smell that was the promise of a delicious Japanese dinner. It could be the smell of dashi, the smell of soya sauce, the smell of tempura, or the smell of sesame oil. At that time it was a smell that I really envied because we were unable to cook it at home, even just to find the ingredients was hard, cooking them was just impossible, and because we had no money to afford wasting food by trying silly recipes (an habit that I have kept actually, I only try recipes that I know will work for me). I called this street the “rue du supplice” because I always took it when I was very hungry and when I knew dinner would be some somen with ketchup and fried or scrambled eggs (what we lived on for a few months before being adventurous with the Japanese cook book!). It was a real ordeal and a real pleasure to take that street, the fantastic smell… only later once home emphasized the monotony of our dinner.

Last night, I had this very same feeling again passing one of the house nearby the university when I smelled the sesame oil… it made me craving for some real Japanese food. But since we have some guests I cooked some traditional summer recipes from Provence: oven grilled summer veggies, soupe au pistou, fougasse etc… so this all Japanese food craving is still waiting… soon probably.., 

Japanese summer noodles

In the summer, it is very common to eat chilled or cold noodles in Japan. Cold soba, cold udon… but one of the most popular is probably cold somen. These are thin wheat noodles that are very quick to boil, and very quick to cool down. They are served with a lot of different items and dressed with some soya sauce based tsuyu. Now that it is hot in Tokyo, making somen is a really perfect idea for a rapid dinner preparation. I didn’t use the classic soya sauce base dressing, rather olive oil and a few drops of soya sauce. And I served them with simply grilled fresh bonito and okra, cucumber and lettuce. Light, fresh and well-balanced for a hot summer evening.

Plum syrup

When I harvested the plums this year I used them mainly for umeshu for my family and plum syrup for me. Indeed, I love to prepare myself some fancy drinks using homemade syrups. They are so much better than anything that can be found of the shelf. Last year I made some strawberry tree (bay berry) syrup and it worked very well. And our neighbor gave us some plum syrup last year and I totally loved it, so it was not an option not to try making some. Since we harvested a real lot of plums this year (30 or 40kg may be… and I didn’t harvest 2 trees because we had too many already!!) I made plenty of syrup and I could try it finally. It’s funny with the syrup making how the plum shriveled which does not happen with the umeshu making. The taste is perfectly sweet and sour. Perfect with sparkling water and ice for a chill out drink, and with just tap water for a light energy drink after workout.

Fruits syrup: 

– 1kg of fruits

– 1kg of candy sugar  

Wash thoroughly the fruits and dry them well with a clothe. For fruits with stem, remove the stems. For fruits that may have tiny bugs, dip them in salted water for 2h before preparing the syrup. In a large bin that is much bigger than the volume of fruits+sugar, lay the washed fruits, add a layer of sugar than fruits, sugar, and finish with a thick layer of sugar. Close the bin tight and wait for a few weeks. That’s all!

Summer salad

Well well summer is really here and it’s just the beginning, temperature are going to rise even further I guess. So preparing simple fresh food is really my main cooking focus, yet each time I want to prepare something different, new, even if most of the basic ingredients are the same: new potatoes, green beans, zucchini, cucumber, okra, tomatoes… 

So for this simple salad I pan fried a few new potatoes, then added some boiled green beans, a cucumber, some beautiful tomatoes and, finished with hard boiled eggs and sesame seeds. Dressed with some olive oil and sesame oil. That’s it!!!

Today I am going to Ngoya for work where it’s going to be even hotter!

Simple food

I have the impression that recently I have further decreased our intake of meat and fish without A. complaining much about it. Only after 5 or 6 days would he start asking for some. So once in a while I buy a pork filet or some ham, or some nice fish in Isumi. This weekend there was not much fish, probably with the rainy weather and the winds, so we went to our old little butcher shop and got some ham (the cat is crazy with the fat so I like to give him some!!!) and some pork filet (where there is stricly nothing to trash). Pork filet in a cocotte with some vegetables is such a treat that I simply cooked it that way. A bit of olive oil, a few new potatoes from our neighbors kitchen garden, some locally grown new carrots (yellow and orange) and a handful of green beans, the pork filet from Isumi, everything together at low heat and just stirring every 10-15min. You can add herb, salt, pepper, but I didn’t. Why would you make more complicated when it is perfect as it is?

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