Tag: Isumi

New local cheeses 🧀

On rainy days when we can be outside in the garden, in the ocean or elsewhere there are a few things we like to do. One of them is to look at real estate agencies websites (that’s actually how we found our house), and simultaneously look at google map satellite view and see the properties, the local terrain… and usually find new things around, hiking spots or roads to explore by bicycle. That’s exactly what happened the other day. While we were searching for woods to acquire (without success) we found the cheese factory called Ikagawa that is just 8km away from home on a nice small road, so a perfect short ride by bicycle. Not that Ikagawa farm is new. They’ve been around for at least 10 years. Just we never found out before…

As soon as the weather got better we took out bicycles, went up and down the hills inland and found the place. From the website it seemed tiny, but it looked like the cows were there. They weren’t, they are in the farm 10min ride away, and as it was late and getting dark we didn’t go. We only saw a very friendly dog and a goat. And the tiniest “shop” that is barely a counter. We were nicely welcomed and presented with the cheeses. A few varieties, but the ones I came for were the hard cheeses 🧀. They have two varieties of hard cheese. I got both.

I baked a sourdough bread back home. Oh! Yes! Sourdough… you read well. I cook everything sourdough now and I am very pleased with it. I start to get things well now!!! And breakfast for the next day was all set! Both cheese were delicious and we’ll be back for sure! We are so lucky that Isumi has such delicious cheeses factories and it is really great to see that there are many farms doing different cheeses. If you come around Isumi, I recommend you get a cheese factory tour!!!

Potato salad

For those that have been to Japan they know that potato salad ポテトサラダ is a quite important dish in Japanese cuisine. It is probably one of this japanized version of western food that is so popular it looks like genuine Japanese food!! You can find potato salad on the table at every party and it is so common that it can be found in combini as well. While the idea of a potatoes base salad with vegetables all creamy and mushy is very nice, just like the kabocha salad. But the problem with most potato salad is the abundance of mayonnaise that just makes it fatty and taste like mayonnaise, nothing else. I do like fresh homemade mayonnaise once in a while but I am not such a fan to bother making some in particular if I have no plan for the egg white. But I love homemade potato salad, so I just replace the mayonnaise with a simple soft boiled egg with olive oil. That’s it! It’s faster, more digest and none the less tasty! Because fast is an important condition for preparing lunch when we are back from the ocean.

So here is my potato salad recipe with all ingredients from Isumi except the olive oil from Tuscany and the salt and pepper.

Potato salad (2 servings)

  • 3 mid size potatoes that becomes mushy when boiled
  • 1 Japanese cucumber
  • 5 Japanese sausages
  • 1 egg
  • 1tbs of olive oil
  • Salt and pepper

In a pan boil some water. In the meantime peel and cut the potatoes. Add to the boiling water, add the sausages, and later the egg. Boil until the potatoes are soft. The egg shouldn’t be boiled longer than 5min to keep the yolk creamy. Cut the cucumber in thin slices. Drain the potatoes and the sausages. In a bowl, set the cucumber, the potatoes. Cut the sausages in 1cm long pieces, add to the bowl, stir. The potatoes should start mushing and mix well with all the other ingredients. Add the olive oil, salt and pepper. Finally, add the egg cut roughly. Stir well again. Eat right away or later!

Have a good day!

Cheese, cheese, cheese…

In these kind of gloomy days of grey skies and new Corona virus outbreak, even very recently with the pick of new cases in Japan that starts to impede our work activities: events I was invited to got canceled, events I have been working hard to organize are going to be canceled as well… a bit of slowness, time shared with the loved one and delicious cheese was more than welcome.

Saturday morning, after a few days separated for work, it was high time for having breakfast together again for real. So we headed to cafe No. 4 in Yonbancho for breakfast. Indeed after trying croissant at Factory the other day, and finding way too salty, we tried the avocado toasts from No. 4 and they were really delicious! The kale and fresh fruits salad that accompanied them was also great! A very good place to start the day and honestly there are not so many in Tokyo that open early enough.

Avocado toast for breakfast at No. 4

But that that’s not the point of today’s post to review early breakfast spots in Tokyo, though I should make one, one day…

The point is this little gem we found on our way to the countryside later that morning. A few kilometers before arriving home A. wanted a coffee. So we stopped at the one opened on the way: Haru. A small place I knew was making galettes and crepes, but, I don’t go out to eat crepes and galettes, that’s what I cook when we’re in a rush and starving!!! That’s why we’ve never been before… what I didn’t know is that they are also making cheese!!! What a surprise! Indeed, the owner used to work at Takahide farm, a place I really love, and he had spin of, but still uses the milk from Takahide farm. He learned one year in Auvergne, France. He makes a few different types of cheeses, different from Takahide, great! A good reason to shop at both. I bought the “souple” cheese which is a semi-hard cheese that has a very soft taste. Loved it, with some freshly baked bread, or just like this… I didn’t try the blue cheese but knowing that he studied in Auvergne I am guessing it should be nice for blue cheese lovers (which is not really my case).

Homemade bread and cheese “souple”

But the best of the best was their fromage blanc. They sell it in 350g pack which is a great size for making several servings, it reminded that in France we buy fromage blanc by 1kg!!! Haru fromage blanc is light and creamy, very mild in taste and melty in the mouth… scrumptious. And with the strawberry season starting in Chiba it’s the promise of many delicious breakfasts and desserts! And many visits at Haru! And when there you can try the Houji cha latte… really good too!!!

So you can bookmark the address as I did! I am sure there a few more remarkable cheese makers in the region, just need to find them… and by chance is surely the best!

Fromage blanc and strawberries

Top picture of the cheese is from Haru website.

Pizza!!!

I don’t know why, but quiche and pizza are two things I could eat anytime. Winter, summer, with fresh seasonal vegetables, it’s always happiness in my plate!!!

Recently I haven’t kneaded much… week days are all too busy and weekends none the less but with different activities and more to come as our construction is almost finished and now I will have fun thinking about the new garden. 24h is way too short to do all I want to do!

I love to prepare pizza with the local products from Isumi, with all the cheese farms around making mozzarella, the local tomatoes and the variety of fresh vegetables, there is always something to put on your pizza to make it fancy. In the full summer heat now, okra are a nice option and they are particularly good when baked. Adding some fresh radish tops as the rucola season is over and you have a perfect summer pizza.

For the dough I always use the recipe from the Kayser bread book. But now that I know that I can speed up the kneading without affecting too much the result, I cam prepare pizza dough in no time. It’s simple, never fails and with the room temperature at 27-28 now it rises in 45min, so no need to plan too long ahead… so there will be more pizza coming soon I’m pretty sure!

What do you like on your pizza??

Cheeses from Chiba

When we first settled in Isumi, and I found a cheese factory right down our valley I was really happy! Soon after that At Ohara harbor market I found Takahide farm and another Yojuemon cheese factory. This was more than enough in a country that doesn’t have a strong milk and cheese culture and I was fully satisfied. To be honest the closest cheese factory: Komagata, was good enough when I knew only that one, but as soon as I found Takahide, I stopped buying cheese there, as Takahide cheeses are so much better. Takahide has three delicious original cheeses: a reblochon style, a small creamy one that recently comes in different maturity (the more matured one on the picture below is just perfect) and a blue cheese, that is so perfectly made that even I who don’t really like blue cheese I love! The plus with Takahide is that they have also mozzarella and fromage blanc, and for those who like ice creams, and what for me is really important, they have their own milk farm. So when going to the cheese shop you can see the cows and how well treated they are. Takahide cheeses won several international awards and have attracted a lot of media attention a few years ago and the shop, which use to be a small counter inside the cheese factory is now a little cafe space where you can drink a delicious coffee and eat a pizza made with fresh mozzarella while looking at the cows.

Yojuemon makes ricotta mainly, or at least that’s what I always buy from them. And it’s a really good one. I usually buy at Ohara harbor market on Sunday morning.

But the whole point of this post is not to review what I already more or less said before… it’s to introduce a new cheese factory. This one is not in Isumi, but in Otaki, on the way to Yorokeikoku. It is called Sen 千. I discovered it thanks to some people I follow on IG. Sen is open only the first Sunday of the month, but luckily we had no plan but to go to Katsuura to see the Hina matsuri last Sunday, and with the terrible rain we thought that a drive in the country to see plum trees blossoming and early sakura would be great. So we headed up to Sen. The place is really cute, old houses, polish garden on top of a hill. Picturesque.

We were warmly welcome, and the cheese shop offer several varieties of cheese, even raclette cheese!!! I bought one small cheese but when the owner realized we were French we start chatting (in French) about her stay in France to study French cheeses, and the cheese she makes, and she offered me one of her award winning hash cheese. We also took a tour of the old buildings.

Once back home I prepared breads: fougasse with walnuts, and campagne bread and couldn’t wait to try them. Well to be honest, you don’t need bread. They were delicious just like that. It is very interesting because they are very different than Takahide cheeses, with probably stronger milk and cheeses flavors (probably due from her training in France!). The maturity also was great, with a creamy side below the crust. It was a great discovery!!

Now I have one favorite cheese farm and one favorite cheese factory!!!!

Crepes or cookies

I wanted to talk about one or the other in my post today but I decided to do otherwise because my cookies recipe is great but the baking time wasn’t good (I slightly over baked them) so it needs another trial before being shared. And crepes… well… it was Chandeleur on Saturday and I thought about making crepes, but I didn’t have buckwheat flour anymore to make savory crepes so I made a few sweet crepes for tea time, but that’s not something special as I probably make crepes once a month or more. So today I wanted to talk cheese and pizza! Indeed, after all the beautiful sunny days I found some tomatoes at the farmers market. I assume they grew in a green house heated by the winter sun only. They were a beautiful red full of ripeness. I couldn’t resist… after all the winter vegetables, that would be different! They also had a little of rucola too, so instantly the idea of eating an homemade pizza came to my mind. And for that I needed some nice cheese, so we drove up to Takahide farm to buy some mozzarella.

We stayed to see the cows and the heifers, and we came back not only with mozzarella but with a new version of one of my favorite cheese there, in an aged version… simply delicious!!

Oh! For the pizza dough I use always the same recipe as here. It always works perfectly.

Rice, umeboshi and diy

Recently it’s been pretty busy both at work and at home. A new job for A. some new challenges and experiments for me, our days in Tokyo pass through without noticing. And when in the countryside it’s very much the same… when we are not working we have a lot of projects inside and outside the house, some waves to catch, the garden to prepare for the autumn and the winter (there are so many trees to trim!), some landscaping I would like to do and some renovations I had in mind that needed to be done. In the end little time for cooking, or only access to some rudimentary gears (I decided to redo our kitchen top… which I’ll explain later). So cooking wasn’t my priority these last few days and it’s been a lot of simple meals, and a lot of rice and umeboshi, the one I made in June-July this year. I live that simple combination because either you eat it with a nice warm plate of roasted vegetables or with a fresh salad of tomatoes and chopped fresh shiso and soya sauce, it is always good, easy to prepare and quite quick! Rather than using a rice cooker, when in a rush just cook in a normal pan, it takes only 15min and requires no care, which leaves the hands free for doing something else. The problem I realize now is that if we continue like that we will not have enough umeboshi to finish the month!!

Now about kitchen top… when we did our kitchen 6 years ago I wanted a wooden kitchen top. At that time the only thing available and that our kitchen maker would be ok to use (it’s been complicated to deal with Japanese workers because there are things they do and some they don’t want too) was an ikea wooden kitchen top. I was ok with it, it was simple to use, just a bit of oil once in a while. And it was ok until last winter… then suddenly it started to get really sticky… like really very sticky… and to mark when cleaning, and actually not being able to clean it properly. So I was tired of it and after a lot of thinking decided that I would wax it instead with a vegetal natural wax. So I sticked some sand paper and waited for a rainy day to start. My plan: start right after breakfast and finish by noon… Optimistic! it was without counting that this stupid oil would not go with just a bit of sand paper, it would for a glue in a second and polishing would not work… I had to strip it off… putty knife in hand I started to strip… but it didn’t work well until I realized that the oil would go easily if the surface was moisten. Things got much easier but still I under estimated the work for removing all the oil… in the end it took the whole morning and part of the afternoon and A. helped me when I got really to tired. The result with the wax is really nice, super smooth and not too shiny, but better equipped we could have done a much better finish… Anytime soon when we can borrow a hand sander!!

Friday already!

The week has been incredibly busy with many various things going on at work: the book I was mentioning, the organization of a workshop in January, classes, experiments… drinks with friends, party and MarioKarting with the lab, skipping lunch for tennis… and without even noticing it is the last night before the departure, it’s getting winter cold and days are at their shortest! So now I need to shop for some presents to bring to family and friends and pack everything!!! And I also need to cook!!! These days, as often before traveling, I have cooked a lot of very simple and light meals, with pasta, tortellini or risotto, but for the last night it can only be Japanese of course! So I’m thinking of rice, umeboshi, and some colorful vegetables (broccoli?) and may be some half dried salmon. Which reminded me of that excellent simple dinner I cooked last weekend with some roasted vegetables, pork cutlet from Isumi, plenty of pickles and rice. It was colorful with the fancy pink pickled daikon, the roasted carrots and the pure white of the rice. It was tasty with the sour salty umeboshi, the sweetness of the sweet potato and the carrots, and the caramelized pork… It was one perfect dinner for a cold evening!

Next time I’ll write I will be in Florence, hopefully with some Italian surprises! Have a beautiful weekend!

Hadaka matsuri – はだか祭り

Some time ago I wrote about Ohara main event: Hadaka matsuri, when dozens of mikoshi enter the sea and it’s a very festive and lively event on the beach. Actually, the event lasts two days, the mikoshi travel around and enter the sea on the first day, and on the second day they parade in the city and they all gather at dusk on the elementary school ground for a great final parade, where they run and throw the mikoshi up in the air. The all parade is lit up with traditional paper lanterns and candles. It’s a very beautiful moment, with each mikoshi team wearing different colors. This year I found that there were really a lot of girls in the teams and their white closes and colorful towels and haramaki were very beautiful in simplicity. I recommend anyone in the area to come to that beautiful matsuri for the two days to enjoy the full event!

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