Tag: recipe

Salsola

This little herb okahijiki オカヒジキthat I discovered only 2 years ago is definitely one of my summer favorite. I was surprised to see on IG that it is also an Italian classic, though salsola is much of a spring herb there than in Japan where it rather a summer plant. Anyway, one more way to link my love for both Italian and Japanese cooking in one recipe! Though this one is definitely on the western side! Salsola have a very distinctive texture and bring to dishes a beautiful English green color. Yet the flavor is extremely subtle. So I decided to mix them with another vegetable that has a distinctive flavor but less texture, and that would bring in some new color, while keeping the tone. I used yellow bell pepper. But to be sure that they won’t overrule the salsola I cut them quite thinly. The result, with or without parmigiano was really delicious. So here is my recipe.

Salsola and bell pepper pasta

– 1 yellow bell pepper

– 1 large handful of salsola

– 125g of whole wheat spaghetti

– olive oil

– salt and pepper

Boil the pasta. In the meantime wash the vegetables. Cut thinly the bell pepper, cut in 5cm long pieces the salsola. In a pan with olive oil heated low, add the bell pepper, and stir once in a while until they soften. Add the salsola and stir once in a while too for about 5min. Add the cooked pasta, stir. Add salt and pepper, and serve. You can top with grated parmegiano or not…

Hum…

I’m not the kind of person who complains about the weather. I take it as it is and enjoy each day as it comes… I don’t mind the extreme heat, nor the cold, neither the snow, the wind nor the rain… as long as the weather changes regularly… but I think I have had enough of rainy weekends now… honestly since the beginning of June there as not been a single day without rain at some point, and every single weekend has been rainy if not heavily rainy… And usually on rainy weekends we do stupid things (that we never regret! Don’t get me wrong!). 7 years ago we started browsing internet and ended up buying our country house in a flash… sometimes we spend rainy weekends at an arcade and batting center, and last month we browsed internet again and bought a new car…

Oh yes… a car to go to the beach… well now I just wonder when we will go as a typhoon is coming just for the weekend of course. If I had an outdoor job I wouldn’t mind rainy weekends, but my job gets me stuck indoor 12h/day so I miss the rare sunshine…

What else do I do when it rains?

I cook… sweets… of course… to compensate for the lack of activity!!!

I bake and bake and bake… and this time it was coconut milk and white chocolate scones… which were perfect for both breakfast and tea-time! Simple recipes give often the best results: flour, sugar, baking powder, and then coconut milk, coconut oil, and white chocolate chips… that’s it… all mixed together, and baked…

I wish you a happy weekend, stay dry if you are in Japan…

today glimpse of blue sky and sun on my way to work…

Nimono – 煮物

There are things that I love but never cook. I only have them in restaurants or cooked by someone else. One in particular is nimono – 煮物 a simmered Japanese preparation, often used for vegetables and fishes, or at least for those I eat. The base for the simmering is almost always the same: sake, mirin, sugar, soya sauce. As I don’t use mirin I replace it by a mix of rice vinegar and rice oil. This preparation is a classic in most fish restaurants and more particularly on the sea side. Kakui – かくい, near Katsuura was a very good place for that, but there are plenty everywhere they have fresh local fish. The simmered preparation suits many fishes, best when they have skin and bones. You can make a whole fish or large cuts. So when A. told me to buy this beautiful cut olive flounder (ヒラメ) and we ended with it in the fridge as I was at first a bit annoyed with the cutting and how to prepare it… To be frank, I don’t like cutting and preparing fish too much or rather I don’t mind doing it but then I don’t like eating it anymore so I didn’t want to touch the raw fish too much. A. was suggesting to cook it with soya sauce, so I thought grill… but then we both agreed on simmering. I think that’s what A. had in mind from the beginning but he just didn’t know the term… and I never do it because I thought I took much time than it actually does, so it didn’t come to my mind. So here I am preparing my flounder. And because simmered fish goes well with greens, I added some summer vegetables: okahijiki and green bell peppers. Served with or without rice, but honestly the sauce with rice is just divine, and I’ll do it again and again!

So here is my recipe. Ginger is optional but I highly recommend it.

Simmered fish and greens (for 2 servings)

– a fish or a large piece. I used olive flounder.

– some greens: I used okajiki (salsola), green bell pepper, but okra are also a common pairing

For the sauce

– 3tbs of soya sauce

– 3tbs of sake

– 1tsp of rice vinegar

– 1tsp of rice oil

– 1tsp of sugar (optional)

– finely cut fresh ginger (optional)

In a fry pan mix all the ingredients for the sauce, add the fish and cook at low heat under tight cover. After 8min add the vegetables washed and adequately cut. Cook under cover for 5min. Remove the cover and cook at high heat if there is too much liquid until a bit only is left. Serve with a bowl of rice.

Blueberries and blackberries vegan tart

In the summer… yes yes it is supposed to be the summer, even if you haven’t felt the summer heat nor got this beautiful summer tan… I love to bake simple fruits tart: apricots, peaches, plums, berries… so when I bought these blueberries and this blackberries at the farmers market, I knew what I would use them for!

The difference from the past years? The pie crust. As I was using up all my butter to an other trial of croissants (pathetic result… you can read about it here). I decided to save the butter for the croissants and simply replaced it by almond butter our friend Y. bring us from Portland. I am not used to almond butter so I wasn’t sure how to use it, but in replacement of butter in pastries dough it seems perfect. Of course it changes the texture and taste but I find it very well suited for fruits tarts. However because it is drier then normal butter I found it was necessary to add a bit of water to the dough to obtain a suitable texture. As for the rest, I just put it in a pie dish, top with the fruits and a but of sugar and bake.

In the oven you can see some chocolate chips sablés, and mini white chocolate and blueberries tarts made in financier cups.

Have a good day… I can’t wait for the sun to come but I wonder if that will ever happen… it’s been 20days of non stop rain and grey skies…

Handkerchief pasta…

The other day on my instagram feed I got surprised by a beautiful pasta. The art of plating IG feed had this “handkerchief pasta” picture of flowers rolled between two layers of lasagna. The result was for sure beautiful. And since it’s been some time I didn’t roll pasta it was a good time to try. Though fresh flowers surely make a very colorful and elegant plate, usually I find that the flavor is very thin or inexistant, except for chrysanthemums and a few other few flowers. So I wasn’t going to try flowers. Rather leaves. Indeed, I had a bit of jute mallow and I was thinking of making lasagna or cannelloni. I opted for cannelloni as I could use different filling for mine and A.’s. The filling for A’s was jute mallow and grilled salmon, mine had an addition of cream cheese.

But let’s get back to this handkerchief pasta… it all starts like a normal pasta or lasagna, that I rolled with my mercato to the thinest level: 9. I washed the jute mallow, removed the hardest and thickest parts, then set the leaves on on a piece of lasagna, cover with another one and roll two size thicker: 7. The result is quite interesting! The leaves rolled in the pasta machine and trapped between the lasagna extend significantly! The result was really nice, but I made a few mistakes:

  1. I rolled the pasta too thin, 8 would have been better, to have a stronger pasta
  2. Rolling 3 size down rather than 2 would have avoid to stretch the leaves so much and to have the pasta cut along the hardest parts of the leaves.
  3. Put a lot more leaves, and much smaller ones.
  • Otherwise it was quite easy and straightforward to make and the result was really beautiful. I think the lasagna would have been a better choice in the end.
  • Jute mallow and salmon, dressed with olive oil was a great combo!!
  • I’ll try again for sure rolling lasagna with decorations!!
    • Close up on the leaves enclosed in the pasta, and the cut from rolling to thin…

  • Tofu ae – 豆腐和え

    This recipe is a classic from Japanese cuisine and Japanese cha kaiseki cuisine. I’ve eaten it many times when going to typical Japanese restaurants and I learned how to make it properly when I was taking cha kaiseki lessons. I use the same base in a persimmon recipe I created and it’s called tofu ae. It’s a sort of vegan creamy tofu dressing in a sense, that you can accommodate with many different vegetables all year round. In the fall with persimmons, winter with spinach, in the spring with green peas, and now with green beans, edamame… A full version of the recipe would include a bit of dashi, but I prepared a simpler version with only tofu and sesame, and a bit of salt. Here it is

    Tofu ae

    – a piece of hard tofu

    – 4tbs of sesame, white or black depending of color effet wanted

    – a pinch of salt

    Drain the tofu with a weight on top. Once well drained, squeeze in a clothe to remove more water and obtain a paste. Grind the sesame (if you don’t have sesame, or the tools to grind it, just use gomasio)

    Mix the tofu and the sesame, add a pinch of salt.

    Boil a vegetable of your choice: green beans, edamame, broad beans… and mix with the tofu dressing.

    Bonito

    Not far away from our house is Katsuura 勝浦, a city on the ocean with a fishing harbor, a fish market, a few nice street to browse and a sea front further south where we paddle surf (or least try to!!).

    Katsuura is quite famous as a bonito fishing harbor in the area and they indeed have delicious fresh bonito in season, which is basically from spring to mid summer. We’ve eating quite a bit of bonito, and one of my classic way of preparing it is either pan grilled or in a sort of ragù with vegetables. But after a few times eating it that way always, I wanted a new recipe.

    Inspired by the pies and other yummy pictures I saw on IG, I decided to try making a bonito pie. The shape of the filet is perfect to fit in a cake dish and with the season of bell peppers starting, I had a perfect combination. The pie cooking is quite interesting as all the juices and flavors are trapped in the pie and reveals when you cut it, guaranteeing a very interesting tasting experience. Though I could have worked a bit more on how to shape and plate it (as usual), the taste was amazing. Definitely a recipe that will go to my favorite recipes of the moment.

    Bonito pie (2-3 servings)

    For the pie crust

    – 200g of flour (I used whole wheat)

    – 4tbs of olive oil

    – water

    – a pinch of salt

    For the filling

    – 1 bonito filet (for sashimi)

    – 2-3 bell peppers red, yellow, orange… you name it

    – 2 leaves of laurel

    – olive oil, salt and pepper

    Prepared the pue crust. In a bowl, mix the flour, salt and olive oil. Add water little by little and knead until you have a smooth dough. Roll it in a rectangular shape to fit your cake dish, yet twice bigger.

    Set it in the cake dish. Add the laurel leaves in the bottom of the pie, then add the bonito on top. Wash and slice the bell peppers. Arrange them around and on top of the bonito. Add salt, pepper and a bit of olive oil. Close the pie with the dough. Make a small hole on the top and make a small chimney with baking paper. Bake at 180deg for 40min. Or until golden.

    Travel… I’m back

    I was away for one week for work, in Krakow, Poland, with a very very intense schedule that gave me little time to do anything else but work. Hopefully, with the jet lag I woke up early enough to have breakfast out before work and test a few cafes (see instagram about that!). Now I an back in rainy Japan, and to my beloved kitchens. But no time to take a break with a mountain of work to do before Monday… so the rain is more than welcome… Kion (barking deers) are taking care of the garden, eating the fallen strawberry tree fruits, and the grass. The rest will have to wait for better days.

    The first thing I did when I arrived in Tokyo was a quick refill of the fridge and to prepare myself something go eat (I usually don’t eat in the plane or very little). I was craving for a toast with emmental cheese, and an egg, and when I went shopping and saw this beautifully ripped mangos coming from Taiwan (which is much more “local” than those coming from Philippines or Mexico) I couldn’t help but starting to crave for a mango “lassi”, or rather a mango latte. I first discovered mango lassi 20years ago when we were in Berlin, eating at a Thai restaurant, and since then, I’ve prepared. Not proper ones, rather my way. The best recipe is super simple, 3 ingredients only, no added sugar and is the following.

    Mango lassi (one large glass)

    – 1/2 mango very ripe

    – 4tbs of yogurt

    – 100ml of milk

    Peel the half mango without the seed, put all the ingredients in a blender, blend until smooth and serve!!!

    If that is not simple!!!

    Enjoy the rainy season…

    Korinky creamy summer pasta

    Creamy and summer don’t necessarily get along well together I reckon, but it’s not like we’re in Europe and temperatures are very high for the moment in Japan. It’s still the rainy season and the “real” summer will only start in 2 weeks (hopefully not later!!). While in the meantime the summer vegetables and fruits are not to be seen everywhere: tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers, melons, peaches, apricots… So how resisting in preparing some summer dishes?

    Two years ago I felt in love with malabar spinach and really starting preparing many last year. So when I started seeing some at the farmers market I was really happy. This year, at the Blind Donkey, I discovered korinky コリンキー, this summer pumpkin also called サラダカボチャ which can be eaten raw. I tested it in the potatoes and cucumber salad I served to my guests last Friday. But with still quite a bit to eat I decided to cook it and mash it roughly, to eat with pasta. And because once in a while I like to eat light creamy pasta, I added cream and malabar spinach to obtain a delicious topping. Below follows my recipe.

    Enjoy the rainy season if your in Japan!

    Raw korinky in salad

    Korinky creamy pasta (for 2 servings)

    – 1/2 korinky

    – 4 branches of malabar spinach

    – 150ml of cream 45

    – salt and pepper

    – 125g of pasta of your preference or gnocchi

    While boiling pasta. Peel the korinky and remove the seeds. Steam. When sift enough mash roughly in a pan with a fork or a wooden spoon. Add cream, salt and pepper and mash again. Cook at low heat for five minutes. Wash the malabar spinach and chop roughly. Add to the mixture. Cook an other 5 minutes. The cream should reduce by half. Add the pasta drained to the mixture and stir well. Serve and eat immediately or wait until it has cooled down and eat at room temperature.

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