Tag: miso

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!!!

Red miso – 赤味噌

When the weather gets warmer the delicious little cucumbers are back and they are the perfect food to snack while waiting for dinner. I usually just wash them and cut them in sticks, but when I want a little extra I like to prepare a miso paste. There are different types of miso of course and all of them with different taste and features: granulous vs smooth, white vs red etc… Depending on what they are made from and how long they have fermented. At the cha kaiseki class I learned that white miso is used in winter and red in summer, because red miso has fermented longer, it is stronger in taste and saltier, which accomodates perfectly with summer veggies and fishes. So for my little snack paste I use 1 tbsp of red miso that I stir with 1tsp of vegetal (neutral) oil and 1 or 2tsp of water (depending on the consitency you expect: sticky or creamy). I stir until homogenous and serve with my little cucumber sticks. It actually is also delicious with carrots sticks and daikon sticks!

An other brown rice bowl

Every year the week before the golden week is always crazy. Indeed it’s the season for research reports, the lectures have take. A steady pace and the students start to have many questions about their research. So before the long break it is slways crazy and days are too short to squeeze in all I want to do. Dinner thus become simpler and lighter with fresh dpring veggies bowls with pasta or rice. This year it’s rice, brown rice. A simple bowl with asparagus, broad beans, sprouts and yuzu miso!

Bamboo shoot in red miso soup

Spring means greens, but also fresh bamboo shoots. Fresh bamboo is so delicious that I never miss the season and always prepare some. This year I have several ideas of recipe I wanted to try with bamboo shoots, so there might be a dew posts using bamboo shoots. The first one is a red miso soup with simply boiled bamboo shoot sliced and mitsuba. For the dashi I used only katsuobushi. It’s a very simple delicious dish that accomadtes perfectly rice and grilled chicken or grilled fish. 

My cooking process

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.

Weekend one-plate

Sunny weekend, fresh food from the market and the beginning of spring vegetables: na no hana. So I prepared a simple one plate with white and green rice, boiled daikon in dashi with yuzu miso, boiled na no hana in dashi with soya sauce and katsuobushi, grilled fresh bonito, and some little radish. All simple all delicious!

A little Japanese dinner

I love Japanese food but because it always requires several preparation steps: preparing a good dashi, marinating ingredients, multiple cooking… It is rare I prepare a genuine Japanese dinner, unless it is some donburi, like veggies on rice etc… But I really like cooking Japanese and with a bit of organization in 30min it is possible to have someting ready.

First, start with preparing dashi by boiling katsuobushi in water. I put the flakes in a net so that it is simple to use the dashi. Then prepare the rice and start to cook it. Finally start marinating what ever needs too, here for me fish in soya sauce. While everything above is set, prepare the veggies or other ingredients: here wash the spinach, cut the mitsuba, prepare the miso… Once the dashi is ready you can cook the veggies. I picked spinaches because they don’t need much time to cook. I just boiled them in a little dashi and drained them well. Then grill the fish, some fresh cod from Aomori, add the miso to the soup, set the mitsuba in the bowls, and when the rice is ready, serve the miso soup, prepare the spinaches balls, add some delicious yuzu-miso bought in Karuizawa (the whole purpose of this dinner was to try this miso!), served the rice and finish with the fish. Ready!!!

And the miso from Karuizawa was just awesome, sweet tasty and with the perfect yuzu taste. When it possible to buy some of these delicious products locally I see really no reason to try to make some!

Proudly powered by WordPress | Theme: Baskerville 2 by Anders Noren.

Up ↑

Verified by MonsterInsights