Tag: leek

Total improvisation of a thin leek tart

Some days are just like these… you have an idea in mind and it just doesn’t get away… it sticks in your head and even though work is busy the idea keeps lingering until satisfied. This is exactly what happened with this giant bundle of leek I had sitting on the kitchen table. I pictured them nicely cooked and golden and set on a dough… but what kind of dough??? A puff pastry would have been good but then that would postpone eating the leeks… a pizza dough would be the same… a regular sable or short crust pastry would be too crispy…

That’s when I remembered about a leftover of brown rice I had. And I love brown rice dough. It gives texture and a delicious flavor. But that still wouldn’t make it soft as a pizza dough. No problem, I added a bit of baking powder, resulting in a new texture for the dough rolled 2mm thin. The rice gave a granular texture as plan, the baking powder a fluffy one as plan too. This totally improvised recipe was a total hit! And we were so curious about trying it that I didn’t even took a good shot of it! 🙁 but I surely will make some again soon, before the leeks are gone for good, because spring is just around the corner. The red plum tree is in full blossom and the other plum trees are in full bud ready to burst at anytime now!

Leek tart (4 servings)

  • 1cup of brown rice, cooked
  • 100g of flour
  • 4tbsp of oil (or butter)
  • a bit of water
  • 1tsp of baling powder
  • Salt and pepper
  • 5 large leeks

Attention the brown rice needs to be cooked prior to starting the recipe!!!

Wash and cut in strips the leeks. In a pan grease cook then at low heat until soft and golden. If you want to make the process a bit faster add a bit of water now and then.

While the leeks are cooking, pre-heat your oven to 200deg, and in a bowl mix the flour, oil, brown rice. Add the baking powder and a bit of water. Knead until the down is homogeneous. You can water if you fill it is too stiff. Roll the dough to the shape you want about 2-3mm thick. Top with the golden leaks, and set in the oven for 15-20min. Enjoy!

Snowy day gets bright with the warmth of golden rice

Many of you may be familiar with golden milk, this Indian drink with turmeric and milk, rooted in Ayurveda. Not that I am a fan of it, but borrowing the idea, I prepared myself a warming and bright lunch on a snowy day. Snow doesn’t fall often in Tokyo. Usually once or twice a year in January and March. It is very sudden, it snows a lot for a few hours to cover everything under a beautiful white blanket, and then the next minute is sunny and the blanket melts into a mess of mud and ice. But for a few hours it is magic. The city becomes suddenly quiet.

So before going outside for a walk, what best then having a warm lunch? A what if it is not only warm, it is also bright and full of flavors? That’s how I came up with this golden sautéed rice recipe.

Golden rice (2 servings as main dish)

  • 1 cup of brown rice
  • 1 or 2 leaks
  • 3 little turnips or 1 large
  • 1 little lotus root
  • 1tsp pf curry powder
  • 2tsp of ground turmeric
  • Ground black pepper
  • A punch of salt
  • 1tsp of vegetal oil
  • 6 rakkyo (optional)

Cook the rice. Wash and cut the vegetables. In a pan large enough, heat the oil, add the vegetables and cook while steering. Add the rice, the spices and pepper and steer very well. Serve and top with the rakkyo. Eat while watching the cold outside!!

More Wafu pasta

I have a principle that I apply for pretty much anything and even more when I cook or think about cooking, it’s to be always flexible and opened to opportunities, or see change in plans as one. Nothing is definite. A recipe evolves and comes to life as ingredients are mixed together, taking the mood and the time into consideration… This is exactly how this wafu pasta recipe was created. It all started with a bicycle ride to go diy shopping. On the way back, if we take this road, I like to stop at the little stall that sells local fresh vegetables grown right on the spot. Sometimes the shelves are empty, and sometimes they have little treasures. They just had many little treasures this day. In particular a big bundle of tiny sweet leeks appealed me. I just picked it, slid a 100yen coin in the box and off we went.

But what to do with them… I had no plan… until a few days later when time for dinner came and it was decided we would eat pasta. Tagliatelle. A bit of sesame oil was remaining in the pan from some little rice crackers I made, so I decided to use it. Chopped the little sweet leeks, coated them in sesame oil, added a very ripe large tomato (that can easily be replaced by a good tomato sauce or preserved tomatoes), and cooked at low heat until I obtained a creamy tomato sauce with the delicious flavor of the fragrant sesame oil, slightly confit. Added the boiled pasta, stirred well and added a bit of sesame seeds before serving. A new version of the wafu pasta…

How do eat your pasta Japanese-style? Have you ever tried???

Negimiso – ネギ味噌

There are plenty ways of eating miso in Japanese cuisine: miso soup of course but not only! I have quite a lot of miso remaining from the past years I made some and in 2-3 months the miso I made last year will be ready, so it is time to start emptying a few pots.

One thing I like very much is grilled miso, either on onigiri or on vegetables. Turnips and daikon are great for that, and the season is now starting. So when I bought a cute purple daikon at the farmers market, I decided it would be eaten with miso. Normally it would have been plain miso but I happened to have bought also leeks, and it reminded me that there is a nice recipe called negimiso ネギ味噌 of miso with leek, and I decided to make some. Negimiso can be eaten as a dip, or as I did here, to be grilled with rice or vegetables. It is really delicious and easy to prepare. Here is my recipe. You may find others with more ingredients, but this one fit my liking: no uncooked sake, and no mirin.

Negimiso

  • 1/2 leek
  • 2tbs of miso
  • 1tsp of sesame oil or flavorless vegetal oil
  • 1tsp of sugar
  • Optional: a bit of katsuobushi

Cut thinly the leek and cook it at low heat in a pan with the oil until soft bug not golden. In a bowl mix the miso, the sugar and the katsuobushi. Add the leek. Stir well. It’s ready!!!

Now to use like me, you need a piece of daikon and dashi of your choice. Peel the daikon and cut 2-3cm slices. Boil them in dashi until soft. Drain and pat dry, spread negimiso on top and grill until the top starts to become golden brown. Enjoy! Alternatively replace the boiled daikon by plain onigiri.

Gyoza

I cannot hide that I have a thing for stuffed food, for pies and for dumplings… whether they are Italian ravioli, Japanese gyoza, French ravioles, Russian pilmini, Chinese shumai and other little stuffed breads… I simply love them, how the filling is steamed in the little poach and when opened all the captured flavors develop in the mouth. And I enjoy a lot making them with my own prepared filling. You already know how much I love making ravioli, well I also love making gyoza and I want to try other recipes from Asia and eastern Europe. From the scratch, or when I am a little too busy I use gyoza “skin” 皮 that only contains flour and water. Luckily in Japan it is easy to find some (be careful though that most gyoza skin sold in supermarket contains a lot many ingredients to be good, so, as usual look at the label, if there are more than 4 ingredients, pass).

To celebrate the beginning of the cold weather I invented a new filling recipe with seasonal vegetables and that was a very nice try, to reproduce soon.

Here is my recipe!

Early winter gyoza (makes 30 pieces)

– 30 gyoza skins

– 100g of ground pork meat

– 2 sweet potatoes (mine are 15cm long, 3cm wide)

– 2 leeks

Boil the sweet potatoes with the skin. Once very soft, peel them and crush them in a bowl, add the meat. Chop the leeks and add to filling mixture. Stir well. Now it’s time to prepare the gyoza. In a skin set 1tsp of filling and close it. Repeat until all is gone.

To cook the gyoza, grease a fry pan (I used olive oil) and put the gyoza in, add 1cm of water. Cook under cover for some time until the water is gone, flip the gyoza and when they are golden flip again. Serve hot with soya sauce in which a bit of white vinegar has been added. Enjoy!!!

Bacalau – すきみ鱈

Bacalau, salted cod, is something I have been eating for ever. It is part of the traditional aïoli from Provence and also from the French Caribbean islands the Antilles, acra and in féroce d’avocat, a delicious avocado base recipe. Seeing how much cod is a popular fish in Japan, and sun-dried fishes himono-干物, are also very popular, I wasn’t surprised that they also have bacalau. In Japan it is called sukimitara すきみ鱈, and though it is also salted cod, fishes used for that preparation are much smaller than in France, but it is all the same delicious. The best place usually to find some from Hokkaido is Yoshihike-吉池 in Ueno. I wonder how Japanese eat it as so far I have seen no recipe using some and a rapid browsing was rather common ways: grilled, meunière… nothing that had a Japanese flair, but I myself have a few recipes I like to prepare in addition to the above mentioned ones, these recipes are largely inspired by my mother’s cooking and re-crafted a bit. The only “issue” with salted cod is that except is some rare cases like in feroce where the cod is used as it, you need a few hours or more to remove the salt thus recipes cannot be improvised.

Today I made a simple potatoes ragout with fresh tomatoes, the last of the leeks from my neighbor’s garden, new carrots (or not), slightly desalinated cod and plenty of anis seeds. I peeled and cut all the vegetables, in a bit of olive I first reduce the leek, add the potatoes. Stir at high heat a bit, then add the tomato (a large one is enough for two), cover with water, add the cod chopped, some black pepper, and a table spoon full of anis seeds. I cook until the water has reduced and it’s ready to serve!

I love the balance of flavor and texture. The creamy vegetables, the chewy cod, and the crunchy seeds.

You can change the leeks for a new onion, all the same creamy and soft.

Have a good end of the week!

Quiche

I went to pick leekswith my neighbor in her garden. She grew plenty but doesn’t seem to eat as many as she has, so she gave me plenty. I also found some fresh salmon from Miyagi, that I am quite found about, so I decided to prepare a leek and salmon quiche. I revisited this classic quiche with a very simple twist. Indeed leek and salmon quiche, like leek and bacon or spinach and salmon are ultimate classic quiche recipes. They are all delicious but they sometimes need to be revisited with something new.

The something new was really simple. I prepared a brisé dough and rolled it on black sesame. Then grilled the salmon and blanched the leek and prepared the rest as usual. The result was a crispy dough and a golden top. Delicious to finish the weekend. Have a good week!!

Sakura risotto

As I was writing last time, it’s just the peak season for sakura viewing. And therefore I thought of using sakura flowers in some recipes again. The classic would be sakura rice or sakura rice balls, but since my parents are staying with us and my dad was crying for a risotto, in remembrance of the first risotto: porcini risotto, I cooked when I was still in high school… So to please him a risotto I cooked, with carrots, a few shiitake and leeks for the base, some turnip tops for the green, and a sakura broth as seen below. Given how quick the plates were wiped, I guess everyone liked it!!! So here is my recipe (below the picture)

Sakura risotto (4 servings)

– 1 cup of rice, either Japanese or Italian

– 2 or 4 new carrots depending on size, mine were big so I used 2

– 2 small leeks

– 2 shiitake

– 12 sakura flowers in dry salt

– olive oil (not too fruity)

– 10 pink pepper seeds

– a bit of ground pepper

Start with the base: wash and cut the leeks and the shiitake in small pieces. In a heated pan add some olive oil and the vegetables and stir once in a while until slightly golden.

In a cup put the sakura flowers in salt and fill the cup with water to make the broth.

Wash and dice the carrots, add to the vegetables in the pan, and add the rice, roast for some time. Add the sakura broth and cook at low heat until the water is almost gone. Add then 3-4 cups of water, the pink pepper, some ground pepper, 8 of the sakura flowers. Cook at low heat. When the water is almost gone add the turnip tops cut in 2cm long pieces. Cook and stir until all the water is gone, but the whole thing is still moist. Serve immediately and use the remaining flowers to dress the plates.

White miso for the winter

There exists miso for each season and if red miso is for the summer, white miso is the one for the winter. I learned that at my cha-kaiseki cuisine classes a few years ago. And in an attempt to make some vegan pie crust I was tempted to replace butter by the creamy white miso, with a little addition of vegetal oil. The color is unchanged since the miso has almost the color of butter. The kneading is very easy, the rolling too, though it is more like olive oil base pie crust, it breaks easily, but it is easy to repair too!! I was worried it would be salty but it wasn’t (opening to not only savory quiches, but sweet pies and tart too) and it bakes in a very crispy manner. So the vegan pie crust with miso was perfect. Something I will use again for sure as it is sometimes easier to find miso than butter in Japan and the taste of miso was very mild rather that of olive oil.

As for the filling I used leek, spinach and broccoli with tofu and eggs. I haven’t found something to replace the eggs in the quiche yet… If you have ideas, I’ll be happy to try…

Miso pie crust (for a 20cm, thin crust)

– 150g of flour

– 5tbs of white miso

– 1tbs of vegetal oil

– 1tbs of water

Mix all the ingredients together. Roll and bake or fill and bake… that’s it!!!

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