Tag: Japanese food

Shiso fruits in miso

Shiso or perilla, is this little green plant which vibrant green leave you usually would see served with sashimi. In Japan it is used in many more than that and it’s not just about the leaves, it’s also about the flowers and the fruits. It is not a small tiny plant too, it can be the size of a small bush and it grows like weed, you have one or two the first year and by the next it already triples, and soon you will have to remove half of it!!! Shiso grows easily in the garden but you can also grow it in a planter on your balcony. Leaves are good raw chopped in salads, in omelette, with rice… in tempura too. The flowers are purple and great to decorate and are edible. And the fruits then?

They look like very very tiny fresh hazelnuts and grow on the branch after the flowers. They are in season in September and the best ways to eat them are either tempura, omelette just like the leaves, or in miso (by far my favorite). It is very very easy to prepare. But you won’t be able to eat your preparation until January of the following year!

Shiso in miso:

– shiso in branch with fruits (probably not on sales anywhere so you may need to grow your own shiso)

– regular natural miso

In terms of proportion you need in volume a ratio of 2/1 for shiso fruits and miso.

Pull the fruits from the branch (use gloves otherwise you’ll have brown fingers hard to wash out!!). Wash them and dry them with a kitchen clothe. In a bowl stir the miso and the fruit well to obtain an homogeneous paste. Put in a jar, close the lid and keep refrigerated until January, then you can eat! Perfect to eat with plain onigiri, daikon sticks… to bring a bit of the warm taste in the cold winter!!

Orange risotto

Sometimes the weather feels like eating something warm and with vibrant colors… this weather is just now! Rainy, getting chilly and tired… a bright orange risotto was just what I needed!!!

Carrots for the crunch, butternut for the soft, salmon for the salt and kabosu for the fresh and acid taste. That’s as simple as this! I cut the vegetables in rather small pieces to obtain a good mix and balance of texture in the mouth. I used olive oil as a base and a little of pepper. Nothing else. No broth, no salt. And just the time to have a call meeting and it’s ready to eat.

Have a great Friday!

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!!

Swordfish

When the season for swordfish starts I am always pleased to start eating some, in particular because it often arrives after several typhoons and fish options have been more than scarce in Isumi. After the long months of bonito, it is time for a change. And if I love sanma, which also marks the beginning of the autumn, I rarely cook some because of the smell. But swordfish is perfect for me. I like the consistency of the meat even better than that of snapper and sea bass, and it has not shape at all (I gave trouble eating fishes that have fish shapes in the plate… maybe another reason why I don’t eat sanma much!).

So, the swordfish (メカジキ mekajiki) season is starting and I found some beautiful pieces of Kesennuma swordfish. Kesennuma is a fishing port up north in Miyagi famous for tunas and swordfishes, and that was badly hut in 2011. They kind of made a brand of it, and the swordfish is actually really delicious.

I like to grill or pan grill my pieces of swordfish, with or with marinating it. Now sudachi, the small green citrus fruits ate in season, and swordfish marinated with the juice of 2 and some soya sauce and then grilled was a great and simple recipe!!!

How do you cook your swordfish???

The very last of the summer

After a day of rain this week the weather as turned from end summer to early autumn. The cicadas voice is getting harder to hear and the wind gets chilly in the evening. Even though I am slowly shifting to autumn vegetables, tomatoes and eggplants have my favors to hold the summer a little bit longer, and when I saw these broad beans I couldn’t help taking them and prepare a meal that would still feels like summer. I chose for that a Japanese classic preparation boiling them in a dashi of konbu, just enough so that when they were cooked the liquid was alsmost gone (katsuobushi, or a mix of both is also perfect) and added okra sliced and jute mallow. I finished with light colored shoyu. Served it with rice and umeboshi and an omelette with finely chopped green shiso.

The Indian summer can start now!

Mushrooms already…

Though it’s still hot in Tokyo, evenings are getting chillier and mushrooms are proliferating on the market shelves… impossible to resist to the temptation and difficult anyway to shop something else as the summer vegetables are finished and there is little transition between the summer vegetables and the autumn ones. It’s either okra and tomatoes or mushrooms and pumpkins or other orange squashes. So mushrooms are a way to slowly enter the new season.

I love the classic chicken and mushroom takikomi gohan and always tale the opportunity to cook some when I miss Japanese food. It is so simple. And it is good hot or cold, so it makes the perfect content for a lunch box.

But mushrooms are also delicious with pasta! And to try the delicious pine nuts from Pisa I decidedly to make a JapanesexItalian recipe with linguine. And because mushroom only may be boring, I added burdock for it has a little bit the taste of artichokes and makes a rather nice replacement (though it doesn’t have the tenderness). So here is my new recipe!

Linguine for the early autumn (for 2 people as main)

– 120g of dry linguine

– 4 shiitake

– 4 white mushrooms

– 1/2 burdock

– 1 handful of pine nuts

– olive oil

Wash and cut the mushrooms. I like to cut the different types in different shape for a nice texture and taste experience. Peel and cut in small sticks the burdock. In a heated pan with olive oil cook all the vegetables. Add the pine nuts. Boil the pasta as you like them, drain and add in the pan, add a little olive, salt and pepper if you like and stir well before serving. Enjoy!

Wax gourd – 冬瓜

A few years ago (or in an other life… when I was managing time differently) I used to go to 茶懐石 chakaiseki cooking classes once a month. I learned a lot there, about classic Japanese cooking techniques, about Japanese sweets and about some ingredients I was never cooking. Wax gourd is one of them. It is a very delicious vegetable but when you don’t know what to do with it… you just don’t buy it… until this class of July where I was in charge of cooking some, to be served with somen (thin noodles eaten in the summer) and red snapper. And I lived that dish so much that I remember preparing it for friends coming over for dinner.

The season for wax gourd has come again and I bought some. I was fancying preparing the same recipe but the heat and our busy schedule changed the plans and I decided to invent a new recipe using the same base. No somen (too heavy for the very hot days) and instead of red snapper (no big one found) I decided to prepare Isumin pork meat balls. Still served with a great dashi. It was super delicious. Here is the detailed recipe.

Wax gourd and meat balls (for 2 people)

– 1/2 wax gourd or 冬瓜

– 100g of pork ground meat

– 40g of potato starch or katagiriko

– 1/2L of katsuobushi dashi

– 2tbs of soya sauce

– 2tbs of sake

– cooking oil

Cut and peel the wax gourd and cook in the dashi with the soya sauce and the sake until a toothpick enters smoothly.

Heat the oil in a frypan. In a bowl mix the meat and the potato starch. Form small balls and fry them until golden.

In bowls serve the wax gourd, the meat balls, then add some of the wax gourd cooking liquid. Top with a few sesame seeds. Enjoy!

Goya chanpuru

In Okinawa cuisine they use a lot of pork meat and of goya, a bitter melon. Goya in Okinawa is delicious, but goya is a vegetable I never buy in Tokyo, because the ones you find in supermarkets are usually horribly bitter and hard (I did try a few times a long time ago…). There are a few tricks to remove the bitterness but normally you shouldn’t even need it… When someone give me one from their garden they are usually very delicious and not bitter at all, then I am more than happy to cook it. And one of the most classic recipe is goya chapuru ゴヤチャンプル. A traditional recipe from Okinawa with goya, tofu, pork meat and eggs. Sometimes moyashi (sprouted soya beans) are added… the pork meat is usually thin slices of pork belly or ribs, or in cheap version Spam. And it is seasoned with sesame oil usually but not always.

Since I received a beautiful goya And it’s been a really long time I haven’t I was really happy to cook it. With the heat and beautiful weather an Okinawa style preparation was perfectly adequate. Except that I didn’t have tofu and wanted some carbs to make the meal nourishing. I opted for a version of whole wheat penne with a goya, sausage and eggs preparation very similar to goya chanpuru. I used olive oil though rather than sesame oil. I simply cut the sausages in bites, grilled them in a frypan slightly greased, then added the goya, halved and sliced (and the seeds removed) and once they have soften with the heat I had 4 eggs beaten and stir regularly. I served it on top of the boiled penne and added olive oil, salt and pepper to finish.

Wafu pasta

The way of preparing pasta is unlimited and using Japanese ingredients with pasta may be really strange at first but it is not at all so strange in the end, it’s actually rather good. They are called wafu pasta (和風パスタ) and are actually quite common in Japan, they are regular pasta (most often spaghetti) with a dressing that uses Japanese typical ingredients such as meitaiko, nori… At first I didn’t like this mix too much, probably because it is often served in old not so nice cafe places, but I slowly got used to the idea and actually now enjoy preparing some.

I prepared a summer wafu pasta recipe with crushed edamame, jute mallow and tomatoes with olive oil. It is so simple but so fresh and summer like that I’m thinking I will prepare more wafu pasta in the future!

In the mean a typhoon is coming to Tokyo, keep dry and safe and have a nice weekend!

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