Curry-rice

One of the easiest Japanese dish to cook is curry-rice (pronunce “karey-rayiss”). I like because it is quick to prepare, and it’s a warm dish you can make with whatever you have in the fridge: perfect for a Sunday lunch after spending hours in the cold treaming trees in the garden. You can use only vegetables, meat, fish or mix vegetables with meat or fish. The variety of ingredients has only the limit of your imagination! So once decided what to put inside it is super easy. I always start with an onion or a leek that I cook with a bit of oil (olive or not) or butter. Once almost brown I add carrots, sweet potatoes, potatoes, meat if any… And half cook them. Then I add a spoon of curry spice, the quantity depends on how strong you like your curry, I like mine tasty but not hot.

Then add some grinded black pepper, a bit of Japanese 7 spices (shichimi). Now it’s time to prepare the roux. For that add flour and stir well the vegetables. Finally add water. In Japan there are all kinds of curry-rice, some very liquid, some quite compact. This just depends how you like it and how long you cook the roux, anyway, you can add water anytime if you find yours too thick.
In the last few minutes of cooking I sometimes add a few other veggetables tgat need short cooking time: brocoli, cauliflower, green peas… 
Ready to serve with some white Japanese rice (for some reason I find it much better than with briwn rice). Japanese eat that dish with a spoon!

Classic ravioli

I love ravioli and in Japan it is not easy to find good ones. So the best option I’ve found is to make my own.

Using my pasta machine things have become much easier.

For the filling, since my husband doesn’t eat cheese I use a traditional filling with porc meat. And for the accompanying sauce a fresh tomato, olive oil and oregano. 
The result was very nice, though I think I still can improve it a little.

Another quick dinner fix

An other evening when I needed a quick fix for dinner (to be honest it’s almost every day!!), thus a “one plate” and a happy husband!
In these situation quinoa is particularly adequate because you can cook it very quickly, it’s full of proteines, so perfect for my almost veggan diet.
I quickly cooked red quinoa, and added a bit of raw avocado, a slice of wild smoke salmon (not mandatory, it can go veggan), some sprout and young leafs, and a few brocoli that were just 2min in steam (you can steam them on top of the quinoa). For seasoning a bit of lemon juice, olive oil (olives from Provence), salt and pepper. Always simple, always delicious. Plates ready to eat in less then 10 min for 2 (the quinoa os basically what takes the longest but you’re free handed in the mean time!).
 

Special fish dinner

Last night I was invited at one of the university senior professor’s place for dinner. It was mainly for business purposes, but it’s not so often that Japenese invite you home. After 10 years there, hundreds of dinners at home, I can still count on the fingers the number of houses we’ve visited as guests!! Most people prefer to invite you at the restaurant.

Last night host’s hobby is fishing and he offered us a selection of unique fishes he fished on Tuesday for dinner. Something really delicious and fresh!
The first one was slowly oven grilled sabre fish served with a little of soya sauce and rice. This fish has a very fine white flesh, juicy and it’s shape and color make an simple beautiful plate.

The other one, more exceptional is scorpion fish. A quite rare and difficult to catch fish. This very muscly fish has a very firm flesh very similar to the monkfish was served in a shabu-shabu style. Something like a hot-pot where you dip the slices of fish to cook it. 

Everything was home-made and delicious! Thanks for letting me discover these fishes!

Fruits from the garden in various forms

We’re lucky to have a garden full of trees and flowers that grow without too
many difficulties. Every year at every season there is something to pick
in the garden. Last week I just picked the last tangerine, now we have
plenty of a sort of grapefruit (a little more sour). This year they are
particularly soft and sweet so they are delicious in juices and hot
lemonade.
This morning I just picked one for some fresh squeezed juice.



Yet, there are so many of them that marmalade is always a good way to enjoy them all year long.

For the recipe I use a British one of course (from the Guardian) a little modified since the fruits from the garden are not oranges, 1kg of brown sugar, 700g of fruits, 1.25L of water. Depending on how it sets I usually add some apple pips, this time it was not necessary. It made 7 jars. Can’t wait to try it with some good home-made bread!



Whole-wheat baguette viennoise

Still running out of regular white flour, I prepared a whole-wheat baguette viennoise for breakfast (regular recipe from Kayser’s book). Despite the granulous texture due to the whole-wheat it was perfectly soft and tender. I replaced the yolk egg batter with a whole egg batter and the color and crisp of the shell was much better too.

Spelt baguette

I wanted to make some baguette but realized I was running out of white flour, so I replaced it by spelt flour. The result was really tasty and I managed, despite the cold temperature in the house in that season, to obtain a very soft crumb in a relatively short time. 

Saturday market

Every Saturday we spend in Ohara, the first thing we do is to go to the local JA cooperative to shop for vegetables, fruits, eggs… Every thing is locally grown in very little farms or by old folks, using no chemical, it’s super fresh, super tasty and super cheap. We’re lucky because Chiba prefecture is famous for growing a lot of things and our area is known for strawberries, nashi, tangerines in particular. There is also an amazing variety of tomatoes and cabbages. Nearby, they also produce eggs, pork and milk, and Ohara fishing port has great fresh fishes and spiny lobsters (and s fish market on Sunday once a month). It’s just fresh food heaven.

The seven herbs rice

On January 7th, there is a tradition in Japan to eat a seven spring herbs rice porridge (七草がゆ). The seven herbs consist in fact in 5 sorts of greens an 2 sorts of little radishes. You don’t even have to worry gathering the proper seven products they are sold as a set pretty much everywhere.

I particularly love these seven spring herbs, and because it’s a one-year chance I usually cook the traditional rice porridge or a variation.

This year I went for a very simple rice-omelette with seven spring herbs.

I just steamed for 1min the seven herbs on top of a juicy omelette and served with Japanese rice. Instead of the sauce for the rice-omelette, I’ve just added a bit of salt. Et voila!

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