Tag: homemade

Cauliflower soup

With all these beautiful green cauliflowers everywhere in town, sold at every shop, seen at every street corner, and in the fields, they seem to be one of Sicilian winter must eat! So it was impossible not to buy some and prepare something with. Our mother is really good with preparing soup and we prepared a cauliflower soup. The cauliflower is just boiled in little water, then blended with a little cream, salt and pepper. Served with some freshly made croutons: just old bread cut in chunks and slightly pan fried in oil. Thanks Mum for this homy-yummy soup.

Risotto with radichio and Italian sausage

Continuing our Sicilan food exploration, we bought in Castelvetrano some beautiful round radichio and decided to use it for a risotto. Cooking 6 hands now with the TPS and their mother, this recipe is really simple and delicious, always taking advantage of the quality of the ingredients. So, for that recipe for 8 people we used 2 onions, 1 round radichio, 6 cup of riso for risotto, 1 Italian sausage (chicken and parsley sausage), a good amount of olive oil, salt, pepper and some freshly gratted Parmegiano for those who like.

Gnocchi

Here we are in Sicily and the first dinner I cooked for the family wath plain gnocchi. We’ve found these beautiful potatoes in Menfi and some greens (something they said was between spinach and rucolla) so it was just simply boil and mixed with some olive oil. Of course served with some delicious Parmegiano. It was fun actually preparing gnocchi for 8 persons, usually my sizing is 2, eventually 4, so it took quite an other dimension! 

The TPS in Menfi, Sicily

On Saturday the Tokyo-Paris sisters flew to Roma and then straight to Palermo where they are spending some time with their families in a big villa in the south of Sicily, in Menfi. The weather is amazing, the landscape is just as expected, and so are the people. The Mediterranean sea is beautiful and swimming in December is really nice without going to a tropical destination! A lot of time spent outside, walking and visiting. The food is also amazing:  cauliflowers, artichokes, fennels, oranges, tangerines, olives… So far it’s perfect.

So let’s start with a perfect “Sicilian” salad with fresh fennels, tomatoes, lettuce, artichokes in vinegar and oil, and a bit of olive oil, served with Italian sesame bread, and eventually speck, and topped with fresh parmegiano.

Flounder and spinach

Most of our diet is made of simply delicious fresh organic products and mainly local. My recipes are usually trying to take the best of these ingredients while being everyday cooking recipes, so something that can be prepared in less than 15min and ready to eat in less than 30min. The other thing is that I almost never cook twice the very exact same thing.  So when I found this beautiful flounder prepared for sashimi, and this big bag of little spinach I immediately thought of a slightly fried fish with just steamed and buttered spinach, for a simple and delicious dinner. I just cut the piece of fish in two, floured it and fried it in a little oil. To enjoy the taste and texture I decided to add nothing: no salt, no pepper, no yuzu, no nothing! 

Looking for the perfect madeleine recipe: may be I’ve found it!!!

Well, an other rainy Sunday to test some madeleine recipe and I think this time it’s the right one. At first I was a bit reluctant in trying it because it has a lot more butter in it, but so far it’s the one that guarantees the best bumps and the perfect consistency. So, too bad for the butter outage that we still have in Japan, this is the recipe I will adopt as a base for my madeleines from now on!

I found it on the blog Piroulie (http://piroulie.canalblog.com/archives/2008/12/03/10442707.html) and it’s a Lenotre recipe. I always do smaller amounts so I used: 100g of flour, 85g of butter, 40g of brown caster sugar, 2 eggs, 3g of baking powder, a pinch of salt, a large table spoon of honey, then whatever you want for flavoring. This time I used neroli. I first melt the butter in a little pan. Then in a bowl I mix the eggs, the sugar, the salt and the honey, and batter well until a foam starts forming. Then I add the flour, the baking powder and continue to mix. Finally I add the butter and the flavoring and refrigirated for 30min. The oven is preheated at 230deg and as soon as I insert the madeleines I drop the temperature to 200deg as Piroulie recommended. After about 5-7min I again lower to 180deg, then the bumps appear nice and big! I bake until almost all golden, and remove from the mold as soon as I take it out. Quite simple and really delicious!!

Baking bread again!

I’ve the impression that I haven’t baked bread too often recently, and I was happy to kneal again this weekend. Because I wanted both a bread for breakfast and to accompany our lunch I decided to prepare a half-half rye-white flour. I ise now a pretty simple and standard procedure for my bread: 250g of flour (whatever you like or mix), 14g of dry sourdough, 3g of natural yeast, 6g of salt, 150g of water. Though my bread don’t have giant bubbles forming, probably of a too low temperature, I love them for the delicious taste, the crunchy and soft combination, and the smell in the house!

Mushrooms, yuzu pasta

Sorry for this little break from TPS. Work has been really busy in the past weeks, often coming back home pretty late and I’ve also had some end of the year parties, and dinner out with friends, so these last days have been pretty low on cooking. I’m happy to spend the weekend in the country and to have time to cook. So today, for our post tennis game I prepared these nice fusilli with grilled mushrooms: shimeji and shiitake with fresh yuzu peel and yuzu juice, dressed with a little of olive oil, sea salt and pepper. A perfect lunch to continue with a few hours in the garden trimming trees and preparing for winter. Have a good weekend!!

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