Tag: local product

Sansho – 山椒

This shrub looks like nothing particular in the garden, yet it bears fragrant leaves and fruits. It is sansho -山椒 or Japanese pepper.

I planted the tree the very first spring we started our kitchen garden, and without failure it has produced the fragrant leaves we often eat during early spring with bamboo shoots, and later in June the little tiny fruits that are so recognizable in Japanese cuisine. The shrub grows steadily and the fruits are very fertile meaning you have sansho in the garden and don’t harvest the fruits, they will quickly sprout everywhere! So I devoutly harvest them for our own usage and to give away.

I particularly love one recipe of sansho that comes from shojin cuisine. It just blends the typical Japanese flavors or soya sauce, sake and konbu with sansho. It is very simple to prepare and can keep forever in the fridge. Which means you can harvest your sansho, prepare this recipe and eat sansho all year round until the next harvest. So here is the recipe. I love it with plain white Japanese rice and dry chirimen.

Sansho preserve

  • 1/2 cup of fresh sansho seeds
  • 1/4 cup of soya sauce
  • 1/4 cup of sake
  • 8 pieces of konbu of 1.5×1.5cm

Wash the sansho and remove the stems. Put all the ingredients in a small pan and cook at low heat under cover until the liquid is just enough to keep everything moist. Let cool down. Put in a clean jar and keep refrigerated. Use whenever you want. Isn’t that sinple!

Loquat – 枇杷

Among the many trees in our garden we have in the very back of it a loquat tree. Loquats-枇杷-biwa are quite common in Japan and have been there around for long enough such that a music instrument bears the same name but writes differently 琵琶.

The location of the tree in our garden was very unfortunate, it is near where we have a space designed to burn garden green trash, and it was in the shadows of the edge trees of our neighbors. While we have stopped burning garden trash and now compost them or dispose them, our neighbors also cut the edge trees last year, and our garden is now benefiting for a lot more sun light than it used to. This two factors combined, our loquat tree has produced numerous large sweet fruits this year, which compared from the tiny sour fruits it used to produce was a big surprise. I used to give the fruits to birds, now I decided to harvest quite a few.

Loquat are good eaten raw in fruit salad, with yogurt or fromage blanc. They are just a bit tedious to prepare. The peal comes of easily, so do the seeds, but there is this harder part between the flesh and the seeds that I don’t like and prefer to remove. So when it comes to preparing loquats, I like to prepare several at the same time. Having my hands all covered in juice… unfortunately they oxyde very quickly so you can’t prepare them to long ahead before eating. Not that it alters the taste, but the bright orange color turns quickly in a brownish, not very appealing.

My all time favorite for eating biwa is definitely in a tart. Like you would do for apricots, with a sable pie crust and an almond powder and egg base. Not too sweet, as the fruit is very mild in taste, you don’t want to overwhelm it with sweetness. I used also no sugar in the pie crust. Just butter and flour, and a bit of water.

And since I had a few cherries left from the clafoutis I made, I added a few. Very good balance in flavor, juiciness, sweetness and sourness. After baking until golden, eat rapidly as the loquat oxydation continues even cooked…

Now is the season of loquat in most north hemisphere countries, so enjoy them as you can and have a good week!

Inspiration from mom’s recipe

I call my parents at total random times, depending on my schedule, but because of the time difference it often falls before their lunch time/our dinner time. Often it is when I am on the move. Walking between appointments, walking back home. But it also happen when I’m in the kitchen kneading bread or washing vegetables to prepare dinner… the latter often drives the conversation towards food. We share our new favorite recipes, what is in season here and there (more than often the same things except for those that are specific to each country…)

Last Sunday was mother day in France so I happened to call when I was thinking of preparing dinner, and my mother told me about her new favorite pasta recipe. Something very Sicilian to me, and with all ingredients I had in the fridge or in the garden… well all but the one that was key to her, which for me was optional: the sardines!!! I don’t mind skipping the proteins if the rest of the recipe seems worth. And it was… so here is my recipe largely inspired by the conversation with my mother. I didn’t know how it is called so I called it:

Pasta mom’s way

  • 100g of flour
  • 1 egg (for the pasta)
  • water (for the pasta)
  • 1 fennel fresh
  • 4 little red onions as those on the picture above, can be one large…
  • 1 handful of pine nuts
  • 1 handful of raisins
  • olive oil
  • 2 branches of parsley

Prepare the dough for the pasta by mixing the ingredients. Leave to rest for the time to prepare the sauce.

Peel the onion and wash the fennel. Chop the size you like. Toss in a pan grease with olive oil and cook at low heat until soft.

Crush roughly the pine nuts. Add to the pan. Add the raisin. Cook at low heat and stir sometimes. Chop the parsley, and add. In the meantime roll your pasta. I made tagliatelle but you can make what you like. Boil them. Drain and add to the sauce stir and add salt pepper and a bit more olive oil. Stir and serve to eat right away!

That’s it! Thanks mom for the tip!

June berry ジューンベリー

When I thought I had tried most berries that exist in Japan, our friends challenged me with a new sort!! The other day Y.-san arrived with a cup full of small dark red berries that looked a lot like dark red currant… so when he said in Japanese “we just harvested june berries, so here are some for you” I took a brain short cut and assumed that june berries in Japanese was the name for red currant. And since my oven was turned on to bake some bread and a quiche, I decided to make a tart with the berries. I prepared a thin crust with olive oil and rye flour, rolled it in a small pie dish, added a spoon of sugar (red currant would be sour…), and wash the berries and while admiring their dark red color, I was telling to myself how dark they are for red currant… well I baked until perfectly done and we ate the tart while still warm. You cannot imagine my surprise when we tasted it. Expecting the tart taste of the currants, slightly blurred by the heat and the sugar, I had in mouth a new flavor… sweet as the sweetest cherry but more floral and berry-like. It was the most delicate surprise!!!

So if you are as stupid as me and didn’t know about june berries, ジューンベリー, here is what a quick search told me about them. Apparently they seem to have been widely popular in the middle age in Europe, but they probably come to a disgrace, as I’ve never seen or heard about amelanchier (the proper name) until a few days ago. Too bad because not only the fruit is delicious, the flowers seem to be very pretty. They also seem to be rather popular in north America, and introduced to Japan for quite some time now. I’ve never seems them on market stalls of any kind, so I’m guessing that those who grow them keep them for themselves. And it is so delicious that I don’t blame them! Now I dream of an amelanchier for our garden! And if you know anything about the june berries I’ll be happy to hear more about them. What to do with them expect pies and jam… and thanks S. And Y.-san!!!

The garden doesn’t wait…

I know it, but sometimes nature reminds it violently to me… whether it’s a roof tile broken during a typhoon by a branch we neglected to cut, an overflow of the gutter because it was filled with fallen leaves… I learn my lessons. I also now monitor more closely the plants and trees, can predict and treat ahead of pests to avoid damages, so I’ve been busy… but when I discovered my potatoes were sick I was very disappointed. Last year they grew so easily… so last weekend I took action by making horsetail decoction to treat them and harvesting the most endangered ones. Which ended up beautifully in our plate with plenty of new potatoes to eat!!!

But today when I discovered that two large trees I like particularly have been attacked by pests I was devastated. Seeing them weakening and loosing all their leaves… I again took action immediately… but all nursing my plants and trees I had little time to harvest plums, so tonight, right before the sun went down, I decided to start. Only to realize that I will have to downsize my production of plum syrup, because in this last week the warm weather has turned the green plums into a pinkish orange, and they now will be more appropriate for umeboshi… the garden never waits for you. If you’re in time good for you, if you’re not, too bad… you need to move on, and wait another year…

Hopefully, I still harvested a few green plums to prepare some plum syrup ume shiroppu 梅シロップ. I have something with syrup usually in summer, but not only, I always have had. I have always loved them and I remember my dad bringing me a glass of grenadine syrup, very diluted, in the morning before going to high school… I’ve never been a morning person and for more than 20 years I never had breakfast except something to drink. The plum syrup is really nice because it can be drunken cold or hot, which makes it year round drink, very enjoyable in the winter after a body boarding session or on the tennis court. Indeed, because it is very simply made, not only it tasted great, it is also full of nutrients, highly diluted it makes a good recovery drink after effort. Add to that the salty plum juice umezu 梅酢 from making umeboshi and you have the perfect energy drink sweet and salty, 100% homemade and sweet and salty to your taste! For 500ml of recovery drink I use 2tbs of plum syrup and 1tbs of umezu then add water. When it’s really hot or effort really intense I use 2tbs of each.

Fava beans

Now is the season and it’s always a feast for me!!! Well… it wasn’t always like that, it took me time to enjoy fava beans but now I love them and I was thinking of doing a fava beans week like I did in the past for many of my favorite ingredients: 5-7 days, 5-7 recipes, but by the time I got to actually seat and write a post I realize I published so many pictures of recipes with fava beans on IG that in the end it wasn’t making sense anymore. So once again the fava bean week has been postponed… I decided to go with a summary of my favorite recipes, may in one or two posts.

One thing that took me some time to understand was how delicious fava beans or sora-mame in Japanese そら豆 are when simply blanched and pealed. I use to eat them whole (don’t get me wrong not whole whole right! Just the beans inside the pod!!!)… but after preparing some Shojin cuisine recipes some years ago, I understood the difference between pealed and not pealed fava beans, and I would never not peal anymore.

One of my favorite fava beans combination is with tomatoes. For some reason Isumi produces beautiful and delicious tomatoes. Very large and ripe ones, I love to cook them slowly with olive oil and reduced into a thick tomato sauce. They are sweet and tasty. Add a new onion to the preparation, soften by the long and slow cooking at low heat, and this is perfection!! If you have made tomato sauce last summer, my preparation is probably close to that, even thicker, so if you still cannot find proper tomatoes just use tomato sauce. I just then add blanched and pealed fava beans and use it for accommodating Japanese rice white and brown, or pasta, long and short or just a slice of made bread.

Tomato and fava beans topping brown rice

One other recipe is to use the fava beans as a base for pasta sauce. Instead of just blanching the fava beans I cook them a little longer so that they become creamy when pealed. Then mash them with olive oil, salt and pepper and add to pasta. Here I added a bit of smoked snapper.

Fava beans pasta sauce with smoked snapper

Finally, one of my favorite way of eating quinoa is to start as a soup, but let the liquid evaporate almost entirely and add plenty of vegetables from the start. I usually do this recipe in winter but spring is also good with all the spring vegetables, here a large tomato for the sweetness, a new carrot, and pealed fava beans and green peas. That’s it!

Have a good day!!!

One week…

This week was just like another, but it felt looooong and painful, busy with work (I’ve started a new online robotics course that keeps me busy, among the many other things I work on)… It was also our first week of telework for the both of us together in our new apartment with schedules not necessarily matching very well to have lunch together or go for a walk together. And the first week of really warm weather, summer warm, and of air conditioning. I always have a hard time adjusting to it and I felt little appetite for a few days, rare enough, and even more rare no appetite at all for chocolate. Instead I craved simple food and simple ingredients and in these situations rice, more particularly ochazuke, has been one of my best answer. Since ochazuke with vegetables is seasonal, ochazuke in May is different than ochazuke in December and the recipes I have posted so far, even if the base dashi could be similar. For a spring ochazuke I used a plain dashi of katsuobushi, but ichiban dashi would work as well, and if your vegan or vegetarian you can opt for konbu dashi only or shiitake dashi, in which I cooked some green peas (there will be more green peas recipe coming soon!!!) and some snap peas. I added after serving a bit of sesame seeds.

This dish is perfect eaten not too warm, it provides energy while having greens and liquid with strictly no fat. And it is tasty without being overwhelming.

And in a flash the week was almost over, passing with me not sharing any new recipe as I have cooked a little less or rather very simple food… I promise to do better next week!!

Yama udo

One of the wild spring green I like to cook is udo or rather yama udo ヤマウドウ. It is a kind of long stick that likes to grow on steep road sides and is very easy to prepare, with a distinctive taste but not strong such that of fukinoto. One preparation that is really easy is with miso in miso ae. Usually I would blanched it to soften it a bit and remove its bitterness or tartness, but I realized while doing a bit of reading, that vinegar water would work as well, which for the lemon-miso ae I wanted to make was more than perfect. Indeed, while I am waiting for my lemon tree to bear fruits (I lost all last year in early strong winds and heavy rains), I found some delicious lemons at the local market. Hence, recently there has been a lot of lemon in my recipe, the lemon cake, lemon pancakes, lemon pasta… The vinegar miso ae is taken to a new level of rich flavors with the addition of the lemon. It works the same way as yuzu miso. That said my recipe today is really super simple, and if you can’t go to pick yama udo yourself or find some, you can try with regular udo. Its taste is much milder but that works very nicely too. And if there is no udo where you live, try with wild asparagus or green asparagus, that will work fine as well.

Yama udo with lemon miso ae (2 servings as side)

  • 1 udo
  • 2tsp of miso (I used my homemade miso)
  • 3tsp of vinegar (I used rice vinegar)
  • 1tsp of sugar
  • a little bit of lemon zest
  • a little of lemon juice (about 1tsp)

Peel the udo and cut in 3cm long pieces. Then slice vertically with about 2-3mm thick, then make sticks. Set in a bowl with water and 2tbs of vinegar for 15min.

In the meantime, in a bowl, mix the miso, 1tbs of vinegar and the rest of the ingredients. Stir well.

Drain well the udo and add to the miso mix. Stir well and serve. That’s it, really simple isn’t it?

I served it with grilled sawara (Japanese Spanish mackerel) and plain white rice.

Green peas

I love spring greens and new vegetables, but among them I love green peas more than the others probably. I love the taste and texture, the color and the versatility, but I also love to shell them, I’ve always had. I remember as a child how many times I helped my mother or my grand mother doing it… it’s the season when days become longer and warmer, the approaching end of the school year…

In Japan green peas are not sold by the kilo, rather in tiny amount, and used as a small green touch in rice or here and there. You don’t eat a plate of green peas… so it has always got me a little frustrated to only have a handful of green peas. Japanese prefer them snap peas, which I love too… but it’s not the same.

So when our British friend came to enjoy tea in our garden and arrives with 3 kilos of green peas he just harvested in his garden, I was as happy as could be!!! First because I wanted to eat green peas so badly, may be because the Maltese pastizzi were too good, and I haven’t found any yet at the local farmers, and because now I could play with peas for real!!!

Despite the classic recipes I love to make with green peas, I wanted to test new things… May be pastizzi themself if I manage to make a good puff pastry… but also I had some cornmeal sitting in my fridge (remember I keep most things in my fridge to avoid pest) and I wanted to cook something with it… a bit of digging in recipes with cornmeal made me lean towards croquettes, and adding peas and spices was the next thing that I found would be nice… or here is what I did plus a few recommendations to make them even better…

Cornmeal and green peas spicy croquettes
– 100g of green peas, shelled
– 150g of cornmeal
– water
– ground cumin
– a pinch of ground clove
– salt and pepper
– a bit of oil to cook the croquettes

In a bowl add the cornmeal and a bit of water and let rest while you shell the peas. This will soften the cornmeal and avoid the croquettes to be too dry. Then add the peas and add water a bit to obtain a paste rather sticky and hard. Add the spices, stir well and heat the greased pan. With two tea spoons set the dough in small mounts in the pan and cook until golden, then flip and repeat. You can either eat like this or make a tomato sauce or a yogurt sauce to dip them…


Have a good day!

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