Tag: Japanese food

Red cabbage salad Japanese style

A red cabbage is a pretty big thing to eat for two and I’m trying to find new recipes that change from my usual ones. Recently I’m searching new ideas to change from my routine cooking, not that I don’t like what I cook but it’s became somehow too easy. Of course I don’t necessarily have the time for very complex recipes, but I am sure there other simple manners to prepare some ingredients that I use, and I’ve just forgotten about it or don’t know  about. There are many also that use products I don’t use/buy/make for example non seasonnal products, frozen food, canned food (except chickpeas), mayonnaise, deep fried, beef, shellfish, but still many remains. So I slowly trying new mixes and new arrangement and so far it’s working good. So here is one recipe for a Japanese version of a red cabbage salad: shaved red cabbage, boiled new potatoes, okara, and Japanese salted salmon. Dressing with a little of rice oil, soya sauce and black sesame.

25year old umeboshi

I must say that when our neighbor told me she would give me some 25year old umeboshi, like if it were a very special gift, I was a bit suspicious. Who keeps food for that long? I mean we can keep alcohol but pickles? Then I did my homework and found out that 100 year old umeboshi do exist and are still edible so what’s 25 years?! And then she bring me a little bag of the treasured plums. And finally we tried them. I wanted something really simple to try them to actually enjoy the taste so I simply prepared gomadofu (sesame flavored tofu), a red cabbage salad with jakko, and rice, plain white rice. I was worried they might salty, or sour but actually they weren’t. The flesh is rather dry compared to umeboshi of the year, but the taste was really amazing. Rather sweet with a strong plum taste, not sour at all. I guess they would be perfect for ochazuke when the plum flesh can get a little more moisture. But they were worth trying! And since she gave me quite many actually you’ll see umeboshi a little bit more in the future!

Rainy season – 梅雨

梅雨 literally the plum rain is the perfect word for the Japanese rainy season. In June it’s getting hot and humid and this is the season for harvesting plums. So everywhere it’s about ume-everything: umeshu, umeboshi, ume jam… We have several plum trees in the garden producing every year dozens of kilos of fruits. Unfortunately in the past we haven’t been there in June for the harvest season. Only last and this year we managed to be in Japan and harvest our plums. Last year with the help of Mrs I. I made some umeshu that I’ve just bottled, and is apparently delicious (I can only enjoy its beautiful smell since I don’t drink alcohol anymore). It was actually more simple to do than I expected only it takes a whole year to wait to start drinking it.

This year I decided to make umeboshi with our 85year old neighbor. She promised me this winter to teach me and since then I’ve looking forward to it. The day finally came! I harvested some of our plums Saturday, washed them and had then bath in a lot of water for a whole night and yesterday I prepared my first umeboshi. Here again it was much simpler than I expected. It’s only salt and plums. And time. Bonus before I can enjoy our umeboshi obasan gave me 25year old umeboshi. Something I’m looking forward to try too very soon!! I’ll keep you updated!

One more thing I love about this season too, this is also the season for vibrant greens and colorful hydrangeas blooming under grey skies, giving this special and beautiful rainy season light and colors to the country.

Back to the basics

There is one thing I like but almost never cook because it takes to long to prepare for most of my evenings, and I don’t have the special gear required to make it look really good: it’s Japanese dashi-rolled omelette だし卵焼き(dashitamagoyaki). The preparation is really easy it’s just that to roll it correctly you need to cook one thin layer of eggs after the other and roll in between. So in the end this omelette takes 30min to cook and needs regular attention. But last night I was having a little more time than usual, A. being in a late meeting. You can find dashitamagoyaki in supermarket and most izakaya, and in bento but it’s too often sweet and the taste of the dashi that bring a delicate flavor is too often imperceptible because of the sweetness. My dashitamagoyaki only uses katsuobushi dashi and a little of soya sauce, I find that the dashi brings enough umami not to sweetnen additionally. So first thing is to prepare dashi with katsuobushi. Then in a bowl mix 1cup of dashi with 5 eggs, add a tbs ofsoya sauce, stir well. In a greased heated pan pour a thin layer of the egg mix, just like if you were making a crepe. Wait until the bottom is well cooked and almost golden. Then roll it tightly. Take it of the pan, grease a little and make an other “crepe”, add the one you just did before and roll the new one around the first one tightly. Repeat until all the egg mix has been used, or make 2 smaller ones. You can clearly guess that with a round pan the rolling is a pain, that’s why Japaneses have rectangular oan for that. Except that I don’t really have cooking goodies that have only one purpose so I keep using the round pan!!!

And a last one!

Yup! I’m done with this grant application and with many other things that were bothering me and keeping me too busy at work. So here is the last one-plate of this series, the last just before finishing the grant things. From tomorrow I will be back to some more elaborate cooking and trsting new products that I have on the shelf for a while but wasn’t decided to try yet. 

So on the plate today: raw radish and cucumber, bamboo shoots, fried tofu, rice with sesame and grilled carrots. 

And an other one

Indeed, I am still crazy busy at work with this grant application, but hopefully it should be all done today. In the meantime we still need to sustain ourselves and the Japanese one-plate is on the menu again with an unexpected variation. Indeed, I prepared the green beans with miso and the pickled onions, but we have some fresh simmered small bamboo shoot on the plate now, that I didn’t prepare! 

There exist two types of bamboo shoots, the big one I’ve been cooking quite often because you can find them everywhere and the small one that are more let’s say “wild” and that one needs to pick in the forest. Picking bamboo shoot is a real fun sport, basically it’s hiking and them crawling in bamboo groves. We’ve had the chance to go bamboo shoots picking with our friends from Tsunan once and it was really awesome. Like wild mushrooms picking it takes some time to figure what to pick and to know the good spots. Unfortunately in Isumi we don’t know yet these spots and people keep them secret, like everywhere!! But one of the guy we met on the tennis court came to bring us some small bamboo shoot simmered with sesame oil. There is something here quite unique with Japanese, is that they love to offer us food they make and local products. I think it goes together with this tradition of food souvenir etc… I need to do some research about that! 

Anyway that’s how we ended with a perfect Japanese one-plate, with only fresh and delicious local products.

An other Japanese one-plate

Brown rice is really often on the menu and with the summer slowly coming in, together with the rainy season I crave for simple Japanese tastes: miso, pickled vegetables… And because I spent a lot of time working on a big grant proposal this weekend I needed to cook simple things that I could eventually reuse for another meal. That’s how I prepared a bowl of green beans with miso and some 1min pickled red new onion. These two accomodate vey well with Japanese rice, brown or white and other Japanese tastes (you’ll see that tomorrow for a 100% vegan version).  

For the onion it’s really simple I simple slice them thinely and cooked them in a little of water until soft and the water has disappeared. Then I added a table spoon of brown sugar and a table spoon of rakyosu (らっきょう酢) and if you don’t have any you can use rice vinegar or any vinegar without a strong taste. Then I cooked under cover 3min and keep to cool. 

For the green beans I simply blanched them and then add a large table spoon of miso snd stir well. Super easy to prepare and perfect eaten cold. 

Japanese one plate

It looks
a lot like a French dish or an anywhere dish: seasonal vegetables slightly
sautéed and oven grilled cod. But I gave it a Japanese twist by glazing the
vegetables in soya sauce, a bit of sugar and mirin, and by covering the fresh
cod with a thin layer of red miso. It doesn’t take more time to prepare and it
definitely change from the olive oil sautéed. In particular the taste of red
miso is perfect with all the vegetables. How to cook Japanese without cooking
Japanese!!!

Sansho and konbu Shojin style

Sansho, or Japanese pepper  
Sansho, or Japanese pepper  

Here we are with the first recipe I tried in my Shojin cuisine cookbook. Because we had plenty of sansho in the garden I decided to try this super simple recipe, that was perfect to eat with plain white rice and some raw vegetables and miso.  Usually I use the leaves of sansho or kinome a lot but so far I never used the fruits. I buy them. But we had many fruits and I thought it was really time for me to use them since that was the all point of having a sansho shrub in our garden. And this recipe literally took 5 min to prepare and 15min to cook, which makes it perfect for a busy day at work.
All you need is dry konbu that you cut in little squares, fresh sansho (the seeds not the leaves) if possible but canned or packed one can do, soya sauce and sake. In a pan you put the konbu and sansho, add 1 tbs of sake and one of soya sauce, and one of water if you have fresh sansho (to remove the bitterness it’s better), then simmer under cover at low heat until most of the liquid has disappeared. It’s ready! You can serve hot or cold, perfect with rice or as a snack with a drink.. The taste is quite strong so it’s not a main dish, right!?

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