Garden greens

After one week cooking potatoes in many different ways, we started missing pasta. So it was time for a change to cook some. I love all sort of pasta and often forget how delicious spaghetti are, in particular when well dressed. So with the garden producing a little more than potatoes, though I must admit we had quite a bit of failures… I harvested more peas, celery, and basil, and decided to prepare some pesto with a touch of celery and serve it with blanched peas to top my spaghetti. And it was damn good!

Well now the week is not yet over and it’s been a bit crazy with some traveling for the upcoming days, so I’m not sure I’ll be able to post as often as I would like… we’ll see!

June 27, 2019

Brandade

Probably the last recipe of this potatoes week. I could have talked about gnocchi (but I have so many times done already), about hachis parmentier, or oven grilled potatoes, and I may some other times. But it’s true that with new potatoes I love simple recipes when they are steam or pan fried. Yet there was one recipe I had never tried before and I wanted to for quite a bit now: brandade. It’s a traditional recipe from Provence and Occitanie and I grew up eating some quite often. Like many traditional dishes it is rather simple to prepare, and it requires very few ingredients: salted cod, potatoes, milk, olive oil. It just requires to prepare in advance the salted cod that needs to bath in water for 12-24h or so. I made a very light version on brandade, and we ate it as a dip for steam vegetables. It can be used further in a few recipes too: with bread toasts, potatoes, tomatoes… But without further delay here is the recipe. I hope you’ll enjoy it!!

Brandade

– a piece of salted cod

– one mid size potato

– olive oil

– milk

– pepper

12 to 24h before eating bath the cod in water. Change the water once in a while. If you use Japanese salted cod, the quantity of salt is much less than in Europe so I only had mine bathing for 6h.

Now that the cod is soft and almost unsalted, boil it in a large pan and boil the potato to without peeling it. When cooked, remove the bones of the cod and peel the potato.

I used my blender but you can do it in a bowl too and do it manually. Put the cod and the potato and purée the mixture, add a tablespoon of milk and one of olive oil each time it’s needed to smoothen the mixture. Repeat until you have a creamy dry texture. It should not be liquid so be careful when adding the liquid, not to add to many. Add pepper and your brandade is ready!!

June 24, 2019

Potatoes and green beans

If there is one combination I love it’s potatoes and greens: green peas, green beans, broad beans… usually I would prepare them with new onions blanched and olive oil. Today I decided to try for new sauce, a lazy mayonnaise. Mayonnaise requires that you emulsion the oil, the egg yolk and the mustard together. It requires a lot of beating, and a lot of oil. A lighter and lazier option actually exists, and plus you use a whole egg so no wondering what to do with the remaining white. Here is my recipe. I hope you’ll enjoy it.

Oh! We’ve also eaten up all the potatoes I’ve harvested last week. I’ll harvest some more tomorrow if the weather is not as bad as today… so there’s gonna be potatoes recipe coming again very likely…

Potatoes, green beans and lazy mayonnaise

– 3 new potatoes (billiard ball size) per person if a main dish, less if a side

– a handful of green beans

– 1 egg

– 2tsp of mustard

– olive oil

– pepper

Wash the vegetables. Boil the potatoes until just soft. Boil the egg for 6min. Blanche the green beans. Peel the egg.

In a bowl, crush the egg, the mustard and the oil until the mixture is creamy. It’s ok if the white is roughly crushed. Dressing is ready!

Cut the potatoes in four, cut the bean in two if they are long. Add the dressing, stir well and it’s all ready. It warm, at room temperature or refrigerated.

June 22, 2019

Sautéed new potatoes and green sweet peppers

That is not much of a recipe I reckon!!! Who needs a cook book to make sautéed new potatoes honestly??? But in the meantime, as I cook to enjoy the ingredients I have around me and to sustain our bodies, not just to make pictures on instagram, I believed it was cheating not to mention sautéed new potatoes as they are one of my favorite ways of eating new potatoes, even though I prefer them tiny tiny, but I failed in growing my potatoes properly for that.

To twist them just a bit I added green sweet pepper or shishito -シシトウ in Japanese. And because I didn’t have much, I served them with scrambled eggs. It could be breakfast, lunch or dinner, you have the choice!

Tonight we have guests at home so I not sure I’ll have a new recipe for you, but I’ll for sure serve some of my kitchen garden potatoes!!!

Have a good day!

June 21, 2019

Purple potatoes soup

Continuing the week with a recipe that this time uses only purple ratte potatoes, that is simple, delicious and beautiful: a cold creamy soup.

All you need is a few purple potatoes, some fresh cream or milk, salt and pepper. Yes! That’s the only ingredients in my recipe.

Cold potatoes soup

– 3 purple ratte potatoes (vitellote)

– 150ml of cream or cream

– salt and pepper

Wash the potatoes and boil them until very soft (actually if you do it a couple of hours before it is even better as the potatoes will cool down naturally and you won’t have to cool them under excessive water or in the fridge!).

Blend the potatoes with 300ml the cooking water, or just water, add the cream or milk, blend again. If too thick add a bit of water and blend again. Repeat until it has a creamy texture. Serve, top with salt and pepper.

That’s it!!

June 20, 2019

Potatoes Japanese style

Day 2 for this week of freshly harvested potatoes. Today it’s a Japanese simple recipe that can be made everywhere, every time. Of course it is much tastier with new potatoes but it can work with old ones too. It has all the distinguishable flavors of Japanese cuisine: the cooked sake, the soya sauce, the sweetness, and the katsuobushi, well the umami as it’s called and as it’s all over cooking and gourmet magazines.

Simmered potatoes Japanese style

– a few (new) potatoes. Pick 3 midsize (billiard ball size) new potatoes per person for a main dish, 2 for a side.

– 3tbs of soya sauce

– 3tbs of sake

– 2tbs of brown sugar

– some katsuobushi, optimally ultra-thin cut (see below)

Wash the potatoes and cut them in four. In a pan, set the potatoes and cover with water. Start boiling under cover. When the potatoes are almost done, add the soya sauce, the sake and the brown sugar. Simmer a little and turn the pan so that all the sauce will pass over all the potatoes. Do not stir!! You may break the potatoes and end up with a purée!!

Cook at high heat will turning the pan once in a while. When the sauce is almost gone move in serving plates or a bowl. Top with ultra thin cut katsuobushi (itogiri katsuobushi – 糸切り鰹節). Eat right away or after it has cooled down. Enjoy!!!

June 19, 2019

Colorful potato salad

The first recipe for this potatoes week is very simple. I wanted a preparation that would let us enjoy the difference between the two types of potatoes we grew and would be a full lunch. Well… I simply decided on a self grown plate with only staples from our kitchen garden. Well the choice is still quite limited but here is what I had: salad, celery branches, snap peas, overgrown snap peas that turned into green peas, basil, mint, rosemary, fennel leaves, parsley. The beats are struggling after a bird and a bug attack, the passion fruit is just having flowers…

So celery and peas appeared as the best options. Olive oil, salt and pepper as the best dressing.

I simply washed and steamed (or boiled) 4 small purple ratte and 4 small potatoes, blanched the peas and, and wash and cut the celery, then dressed the plates, topped with olive oil, salt and pepper, and lunch was ready.

Steaming the potatoes allows for a simple tasting where the flavors and texture are untouched, but don’t over cook them. As soon as they are cooked plunge them in cold water.

Have a good week!!

June 18, 2019

Potatoes week

In March we planted potatoes in our new kitchen garden. We went for two species: some melty white potatoes and some purple ratte potatoes. It was our first time ever growing potatoes on our own, so I guess we made some mistakes: soil too rich and too compact, lack of leaves clearing… but I still harvested a few plants and we got a decent amount of potatoes. Enough for the two of us, to eat fresh and new (I am not good with preserving food for long). So I’ve decided this week will be a potato week! And I’ll share with you some of my favorite recipes. Stay tuned for the first recipe!!!

June 17, 2019

Plum plum plum…

June is the time for the rainy season, and every day the weather reminds us that, but it is also the season for plum harvesting and plum pickling.

Even though I trimmed many of our plum trees this winter, the amount of fruits they produce it still enormous and it’s also time for giveaways. 1Kg here, 3Kg there… yet the harvesting is tedious and with one rainy day following the previous one, it doesn’t make things easy.

Once harvested I pickled quite a bit of our plums. I usually make plum wine and plum syrup with the green plums and umeboshi with the yellow ones (which is about 7 to 15 days after harvesting the green plums).

But because only our visitors drink umeshu and I still have plenty from last year, and we drink little syrup and again last year I made plenty, I decided to try new recipes. One new syrup recipe and one of savory plums in soya sauce. Because the preparation has to sit for three months I have no idea what it would taste like but just wanted to share that recipe because it looks really nice.

Soya sauce pickled plums

– 1kg of green Japanese plums

– 1/2L of soya sauce

– 4tbs of brown sugar

– 2 pieces of dry konbu (4x4cm)

– a handful of katsuobushi flakes.

Wash the plums and remove the stems. Dry them well. Pick them to make a few small holes in. In a clean and sterile bin, set the plums, add the sugar, the konbu pieces cut in four, the katsuobushi flakes. Cover with the soya sauce. Set to rest for 3 months. Turn the bin every week. We’ll see in the results together in 3 months!!

Have a good week!

June 10, 2019