Fresh home-made food every day
While in search for new recipes and tastes to change my routine cooking I’m testing cooking ideas, one at a time. Some very simple like these okara croquettes served simply with pickled vegetables (nukatsuke) and rice. The recipe for the croquettes is just so simple: I mix one egg with half a little bag of okara, add flavoring: this time I used shichimi (7 spices – 七味) and stir well. In a slightly greased pan I cook at low heat on both sides until golden.
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.
When I have guests from abroad I try to cook Japanese as much as possible except for breakfast. So when we decided to take a walk to the beach and picnic there I decided to prepare some bamboo shoots onigiri or o musubi. This is just the end of the season of bamboo shoots, so I wanted to take the most of it. It is extremely easy to prepare and super fresh and delicious. I prepared the bamboo shoot as usual, first boiled in rice water, then in a light dashi: konbu, katsuo, iwashi… Cook some Japanese rice too, all white, or half brown. Add a bit of salt once cooked, some kinome leaves. Chop the bamboo shoot in dice of less than 5mm. Insert in the rice and stir well, then start preping for the balls. Finish with a little branch of kinome, or a thin alice of bamboo shoot. Have a nice golden week!!!
And here is the second recipe with bamboo shoots, the one that I really wanted to try. It is inspired from a dish we had at Daigo in February and since then I’ve been thinking/dreaming of it. It’s a very Japanese dish with taste of spring. It requires some fresh bamboo shoot boiled and cooled down, a table spoon of olive oil and 10 branches of kinome (the small leaves of the sansho tree, we have one in the garden so I just had to go and pick some!). I cut the bamboo shoot in dice, chopped the kinome leaves and add then to the bamboo, then add the oil and stir well. Ready to serve ready to eat.
Simple to prepare, all served at once, colorful and super delicious, I wonder why I don’t prepare some more often! With fresh green peas and snap peas, a bit of pork from Isumi and some Koshiikari from Isumi too, nothing much simple than preparing a delicious spring donburi. For the seasonning just a few drops of soya sauce and some golden sesame seeds. In order to keep the greens soft and tender, yet crunchy at the same time I only washed them and then cook them with a really little bit of water in the same pan with the pork. No additional fat, no salt nothing. For the pork I just cut slices in little bites and cook in a pan until golden and crispy. I serve the rice cooked alone, top with the pork and veggies, add a spoon of golden sesame and only 5 drops of soya sauce just to enhance the taste but not spoil it. One must be careful in using soya sauce because it has a tendency to cover all other tastes,
It’s always the same. There are weeks when we are just busy and then there are weeks when we are busy and we have friends visiting in Tokyo, colleagues from abroad, party and outing with work all at the same time. This means a lot of dining out and much less sleep than usual and less workout, it also means a more or less empty fridge. And then my body gets crazy and crave for even more simple food. So today I decided to prepare a simple Japanese meal. I started by preparing rice of course and some ichiban dashi (konbu and katsuobushi). Then I use the dashi to cook daikon and to serve it with some yuzu miso, as I did before. I just love it. But then I was wondering what to prepare with. I found tomatoes in the fridge and remember about these delicious dashi-tomatoes I may have seen somewhere so I prepare some: easy just wash tomatoes and boil them 2 min in dashi, then peel them. and serve with some hot dashi. And finally I found wakame that I got from the country and haven’t used yet, so I added some again in the dashi, added an egg to poach and served all in one plate. All came while I was cooking and that’s my normal cooking process, I create the meal in real time as I am cooking. That’s why I never cook twice quite the same thing and why Tokyo Paris Sister is so important to me, because it is a trace, a diary of the inspiration of the moment and it helps me keep track of all these ideas I had.
It is extremely rare I cook something sweet for dessert, or I cook dessert at all. Unless we have guests for dinner our meals end sometimes with a fruit, sometimes a yogurt but most often with just a little piece of chocolate. In the trading with our neighbor, fruits from our garden in exchange whatever she has, the other day she gave some plum jam and she told me: “you know, it’s sour, but it’s really good in plum jelly!”. OK then, let’s make some plum jelly (梅羊羹-ume youkan)… Well it’s really simple and it works also with any jam you like (I trued also with my natsumikan jam). You need only a flat recipient, some jam, 1/2L of water and a little bag of agar-agar or 寒天-kanten. Boil the water in a pan, add the jam, then the kanten, stir well while still heating for a few minutes. Set in the flat recipient and wait for the liquid to cool down, then refregirate. Before serving cut in pieces of the shape you fancy.
Because fresh rice cakes, or mochi 餅 come in a bundle of 6, I had some to eat so I decided to experiment a little with a vegan curry not served with rice, but with grilled mochi. Something in between a nan and rice! And it worked super well!!! So here’s what I did: in a large pan greased a little I cut 1/2 leek, 1 potato, 2 little purple sweet potatoes, 1 turnip, 1 carrot, 1 red carrot, after it started to get golden I added some water just to cover, and 2 table spoons of curry powder, 1 tea spoon of tumeric (curcuma), 1 tea spoon of carvi seeds, 1 tea spoon of coriander seeds, grinded black pepper, a little piece of cinnamon and cokked until most of the water is gone. In the oven I arranged the rice cakes on a sheet of aluminum foil and baked them until they grown (I love to watch them in the oven, moving, breathing…) and the tip is golden. Then served all together.
At the local farmers market the other day I found beautiful cauliflower, romanesco and broccoli. Having all them together I couldn’t help but cook something mixing it. I love the idea of having ingredients close in shape but different in taste and color, and the first idea that I had was to make a tart with a piece of each. And becauseI really love the idea of mixing Japanese flavors with western ones I decided to add in the base some katsuobushi flakes. For the dough, I opted for a classic sable dough. A perfect balance.
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