Tag: inspiration

Rice salad Japanese style

Japanese purists would hang me for that recipe!!! In the edamame gohan I’ve added boiled chick peas, and served this “mame gohan” with blanched green beans, cherry tomatoes and hard boiled egg. A sort of “salade de riz” as we call it in France, (so 70’s tupperware cooking!!!) but with a Japanese touch. Of course for the dressing it’s just a little of soya sauce if the green beans and tomatoes, the sacrilege doesn’t go that far!

Speaking of soya sauce, I’ve been selected as a finalist for a cooking contest organized by the soya sauce association! The finale is on August 20th… Let’s see what I can do. It’s my first cooking contest. I have no idea how it is gonna look like… 

Simmered plums

When I harvested the garden plums I had in mind to try one recipe of simmered plum from my Shojin cuisine book. So I kept 6 of the largest and greenest plums for that recipe. But busy with other things I didn’t prepare them right away and the plum have turned from green to a beautiful orange, and were ripening very quickly. So I decided to go for an other manner to cook them, simply preparing some kind of compote. I put the plums in ample water and boiled them at low heat for 2h under cover; then I drained most of the water and kept only 5 to 10mm in the pan, added 2tbs of brown sugar and simmered at low heat again for 30min without cover, or until almost all the syrup is gone. Instead I obtained a thick jelly (the brown paste in between the plum on the picture).

You can serve the plums warm, at room temperature or cold. 

Nordic inspiration

This winter I talked a little about the cooking books I got for Christmas and I tried several recipes from them. I also use them as source of inspiration. Recently I was attracted by the Nordic cookbook and in particular by salmon recipes. I wanted to prepared cured salmon. So finally I bought a nice salmon filet and was about to prepare it when A. told me that he rather have it right away than wait for 48h for the cured fish… Well.. I left the cured fish for an other time and opted for a butter grilled one. And just blanched the beautiful baby colorful Swiss chard I found at the farmers market and baked some 100% buckwheat pancakes. Added some pickled cucumbers and served all together. Simply delicious. For a Nordic experience I guess that cream and dill would have been on the plate too, but I didn’t have any!

About plating

Cooking is about ingredients, taste and visual for me, yet plating is still an art that I don’t masterize at all. There are few reasons that can explain that, yet I would like to improve my skills. The reasons why my plating is sloppy are simple: First TIME, 99% of the meal I cook are prepared in less than 30min, 80% are prepared in less than 15min. Second QUANTITY, I don’t serve for our daily dinner a 5-course meal, it’s more or less a one-plate or one bowl with just the necessary amount, not a cherry tomato and a snap pea with s slice of carrot and a spoon of quinoa!!! Third WASTE, beautiful plating require a lot more than you actually eat just to make the plate perfect: just the head of this beautiful asparagus but we don’t need the rest, so what shall I do with the rest????

Yet I still want to have a nicer plating, and I find that Instagram is a great source of inspiration for that, from super chefs to amateurs there’s a variety of option and ideas to work with. I like @gourmetartistry for the amazing plates they show almost every day. But I also some Japanese pages with perfect musubi or onigiri that look just too delicious. What are you favorite plates? How do you serve your food everyday?

Red lentils patties

There are days when I am desperate to find something new to prepare with what I have in the fridge and in my cupboards that goes beyond the usual vegetable tart, the fresh vegetables salad or the pasta with sauteed vegetables. And there are days when you find instantaneous inspiration, when ideas just flow naturally. Today was the former. But hopefully there is instagram and some of the people I follow gave me the perfect inspiration I needed to use these red lentils I had. So thanks a lot cearaskitchen for your post and the delicious idea! Of course I hate to follow recipes so I had to change it and adapt it to what I wanted to eat and it ended up with these delicious 99% red lentils patties, that I accompanied with a tomato-cucumber-ocra salad with no dressing and a little black pepper drip yogurt. For the patties I just boiled the red lentils then drained them, add a little curry powder, a little rice flour to form them and then baked them in a pan with a little of olive oil. So easy! Thanks again cearaskitchen!

Proudly powered by WordPress | Theme: Baskerville 2 by Anders Noren.

Up ↑

Verified by MonsterInsights