Tag: pork

Quick! Quick! A little pie!

This is the time of the year when work gets busy with graduation thesis to read, budget to close, new contracts to search for, and plans for the new term to make. Every year it comes inevitably, together with the excitement of new things in preparation and the sadness of seeing students wrapping up their research before leaving the lab. It also coincides with the short season in Japan when seasonal food variety is at its lowest level (while we can’t complain much because even at its lowest it’s plenty!!): chinese cabbage, leeks, sweet potatoes, burdock, turnips and spinach are the main staple and it has been such for quite a bit now… of course there has been occasionally mizuna, shiitake and a few others but they are scarce and it is a few more weeks before we start having some spring greens. Hopefully on the fruit side, citrus fruits of all kinds, yuzu, lemon… come to light up savory recipes, and hassaku 八朔 from our tree make our breakfasts and desserts bright! Strawberries are also slowly getting towards their pick season.

After having prepared all kind of recipes with spinaches, I was wondering if dinner would be another quiche, another ravioli, when I was reminding myself my last travel, that is now more than a year old… travel Malta, the country of the delicious pastizzi tal pizzeli. Green peas are far from being in season but why not trying something with spinach and a bit of pork meat??? The idea was immediately approved by A. and I started cooking. Time was shirt and puff pastry is not a recipe I master well, so I opted for a rough puff. The overall preparation was quick, cooking not too long and the result was delicious tasty savory pies. I am so pleased with recipe that I can’t help sharing it!!!

Savory spinach pies (6 individual pies)

For the rough puff pastry

  • 120g of flour
  • 100g of butter
  • A bit of water

For the filling

  • 5 bundles of spinach
  • 1 large onion
  • 1tsp of ground cinnamon
  • 1 pinch of ground cloves
  • Salt and pepper
  • 100g of ground pork meat (optional)

Start with the preparation of the filling. Peel and cut the onion, wash and cut the spinach. In a slightly greased pan cook them at low heat. If you use the meat add it also. Cook while stirring once in a while until the vegetables are soft but not golden. Add salt, pepper and the cinnamon and clove. Stir well.

Then make the pastry. Cut the butter in small blocks. Knead very roughly the butter and the flower without incorporating the flour in the butter. The butter should stay in small blocks. Fold and turn 4 times like for puff pastry, but without waiting. Roll to a 2mm layer.

Cut 12 squares in the dough of aout 12cm -15cm. In 6 of them put 1/6 of the filling each. Cut or not the remaining 6 pieces of pastry. And cover the 6 filled parts, seal with a bit of water. Bake at 200deg until golden. Eat right out of the oven!!!

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!!!

Stuffed bread

This all started with a picture that I saw on my IG feed one morning from Jul’s kitchen. I’ve been following her for quite some time now. Her recipes always make me want to be in Tuscany and when two years ago (whoa… It seems like ages ago!!!) we actually were thinking about moving to Florence and went there repeatedly I asked her recommendations about places to shop delicious things in Florence and they were gold. Well, just to say that her blog makes me dream of Tuscany… so… back to that picture I saw very likely on my way to work, last winter I guess… it was a savory stuffed pastry… it looked wonderful and I thought about doing some for a long time, but every strictly new recipe requires to mature in my head and to find the proper timing of ingredients and preparation. It’s only the other day that the winter vegetables started to be back in particular the cabbages, the spinaches and that I bought some pork ribs.

All was finally there to make the stuffed bread. But instead of a pastry dough or a brioche I decided to go with some straight white flour bread dough. The result was a very very delicious and warm meal, perfect for a rainy evening like today. Here is my recipe.

Stuffed bread (2 generous portions)

– 150g of flour

– 10g of salt

– 5 g of yeast

– water

– 1/2 small Chinese cabbage or 1/4 large

– a bundle of spinach

– 150 of pork ribs thinly sliced (豚バラ)

– pepper

– sesame seeds

Prepare the bread dough 1 or 2h before hand: mix the flour, the salt, the yeast, add water little by little and knead until the dough is soft and smooth. Leave to rest in a warm place under a moist cloth for 1 or 2 hours.

In the meantime, in a frypan cook the meat until golden. Wash and pat dry the vegetables.

Roll the dough with a pin, set the meat in the middle, top with the vegetables. Add some pepper. Fold the dough and close it. Flip the bread to have it upside down. Top with sesame seeds. Leave for proving about 30min and then bake at 230deg for 18min. Serve hot!

Harbor market

Every Sunday morning from 8 to 12 there is a “harbor market” at Ohara fishing harbor. We don’t go very often because the main attractions there are fresh shellfish grilled on the spot, and there are more stalls that have ready to eat food than truly food to buy to take home and prepare. But once in a while, in particular in winter when it is much less crowded we like to go and check it out.

This time I had in mind to buy some ricotta from a local cheese farm, not Takahide, because they don’t make ricotta (and they don’t come to the market anymore) to make ravioli for lunch… a simple picture on IG had the instant effect of me wanting ravioli for lunch… craving… and because there is not much to do in the garden right now I can spend more time in my kitchen!

Not only did I find the ricotta I wanted but also some nice konbu and katsuobushi. I will write later about these two once I will start using them. So back to the ravioli: spinach-pork for A. and spinach-pork-ricotta for me. Prepared with whole wheat flour, and served only with olive oil, salt and pepper. We were so hungry and happy to have ravioli that I just forgot to take a decent shot of them. A. took a rapid one when I was about to through the last one in the water…

For the recipe, as usual for the pasta: 1egg, 100g of whole wheat flour, a bit of water. For the filling, I cooked 100g of ground pork meat with chopped spinach, added salt and pepper for A. and for mine added 2tbs of ricotta. That’s it! I rolled the dough manually and made half-moon ravioli for A. and flowers for me so that we knew which is what when serving.

Wax gourd – 冬瓜

A few years ago (or in an other life… when I was managing time differently) I used to go to 茶懐石 chakaiseki cooking classes once a month. I learned a lot there, about classic Japanese cooking techniques, about Japanese sweets and about some ingredients I was never cooking. Wax gourd is one of them. It is a very delicious vegetable but when you don’t know what to do with it… you just don’t buy it… until this class of July where I was in charge of cooking some, to be served with somen (thin noodles eaten in the summer) and red snapper. And I lived that dish so much that I remember preparing it for friends coming over for dinner.

The season for wax gourd has come again and I bought some. I was fancying preparing the same recipe but the heat and our busy schedule changed the plans and I decided to invent a new recipe using the same base. No somen (too heavy for the very hot days) and instead of red snapper (no big one found) I decided to prepare Isumin pork meat balls. Still served with a great dashi. It was super delicious. Here is the detailed recipe.

Wax gourd and meat balls (for 2 people)

– 1/2 wax gourd or 冬瓜

– 100g of pork ground meat

– 40g of potato starch or katagiriko

– 1/2L of katsuobushi dashi

– 2tbs of soya sauce

– 2tbs of sake

– cooking oil

Cut and peel the wax gourd and cook in the dashi with the soya sauce and the sake until a toothpick enters smoothly.

Heat the oil in a frypan. In a bowl mix the meat and the potato starch. Form small balls and fry them until golden.

In bowls serve the wax gourd, the meat balls, then add some of the wax gourd cooking liquid. Top with a few sesame seeds. Enjoy!

Goya chanpuru

In Okinawa cuisine they use a lot of pork meat and of goya, a bitter melon. Goya in Okinawa is delicious, but goya is a vegetable I never buy in Tokyo, because the ones you find in supermarkets are usually horribly bitter and hard (I did try a few times a long time ago…). There are a few tricks to remove the bitterness but normally you shouldn’t even need it… When someone give me one from their garden they are usually very delicious and not bitter at all, then I am more than happy to cook it. And one of the most classic recipe is goya chapuru ゴヤチャンプル. A traditional recipe from Okinawa with goya, tofu, pork meat and eggs. Sometimes moyashi (sprouted soya beans) are added… the pork meat is usually thin slices of pork belly or ribs, or in cheap version Spam. And it is seasoned with sesame oil usually but not always.

Since I received a beautiful goya And it’s been a really long time I haven’t I was really happy to cook it. With the heat and beautiful weather an Okinawa style preparation was perfectly adequate. Except that I didn’t have tofu and wanted some carbs to make the meal nourishing. I opted for a version of whole wheat penne with a goya, sausage and eggs preparation very similar to goya chanpuru. I used olive oil though rather than sesame oil. I simply cut the sausages in bites, grilled them in a frypan slightly greased, then added the goya, halved and sliced (and the seeds removed) and once they have soften with the heat I had 4 eggs beaten and stir regularly. I served it on top of the boiled penne and added olive oil, salt and pepper to finish.

Spring angelica

Oh! These green leaves I love so much and that are so popular in Hachijojima are back at the farmers market!!! Spring is coming and this is one of the great things with it: the massive return of the greens!!! Ashitaba (or angelica) is a great ingredient, easy to cook and that suits very well basic Japanese recipes. This time I prepared some vegetables sautéed with slices of pork and then added ashitaba at the end of the cooking. I also deglazed the whole in a bit of water and soya sauce. A great combination for a scrumptious dinner!

Have a great end of the week! 

Friday already!

The week has been incredibly busy with many various things going on at work: the book I was mentioning, the organization of a workshop in January, classes, experiments… drinks with friends, party and MarioKarting with the lab, skipping lunch for tennis… and without even noticing it is the last night before the departure, it’s getting winter cold and days are at their shortest! So now I need to shop for some presents to bring to family and friends and pack everything!!! And I also need to cook!!! These days, as often before traveling, I have cooked a lot of very simple and light meals, with pasta, tortellini or risotto, but for the last night it can only be Japanese of course! So I’m thinking of rice, umeboshi, and some colorful vegetables (broccoli?) and may be some half dried salmon. Which reminded me of that excellent simple dinner I cooked last weekend with some roasted vegetables, pork cutlet from Isumi, plenty of pickles and rice. It was colorful with the fancy pink pickled daikon, the roasted carrots and the pure white of the rice. It was tasty with the sour salty umeboshi, the sweetness of the sweet potato and the carrots, and the caramelized pork… It was one perfect dinner for a cold evening!

Next time I’ll write I will be in Florence, hopefully with some Italian surprises! Have a beautiful weekend!

Shiitake week! Day 3!

It’ been quite sometime I didn’t make ravioli right?! And I couldn’t wait any longer to train again… in prevision of my visit to Tuscany next month… And with beautiful shiitake, kabocha season and delicious Isumi pork, it was easy to decide what the fillingwould be: it will be all or nothing!  Indeed kabocha and shiitake are a great match, the pork is optional but it had really the perfect balance: sweet and savory! So the recipe is rather simple:

Kabocha and shiitake ravioli:

– 1/4 of kabocha

– 6 shiitake

– 100g of ground pork meat

– 1 egg

– 150g of flour

– olive oil

– water

– salt and pepper  

Steam the kabocha and puréed it. Dice the shiitake and roast them in a very little bit of olive oil or nothing. Add them to the kabocha purée. For the pork meat, just cook it in a pan until golden, and add to the mix. Salt, pepper and that’s it. For the pasta I used 150g of flour and 1egg, a little of olive oil and water. It made about 35 large ravioli. I also prepared a little mix of olive oil and parsley to top them and it was really de-li-cious… I’m really crazy about Italian food! And when it is mixed with Japanese… 

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