Gnocchi & romanesco

When comes the end of the week (Thursday or Friday) our resources shopped the previous weekend in the country are almost all gone and only a few things remain. This week it was the case gor the romanesco. So beautiful but we had other things to eat first. So easy to prepare that it’s always perfect for late dinners. I tried the combination gnocchi-romanesco-Parmegianno and it was just sublime. As you may guess these are not homemade gnocchi unfortunately, but it work as well if you have some. Boil the gnocchi and 1min before they are ready add the romanesco in little bouquets. Serve altogether when the gnocchi are ready (they float in the water) add so freshly gratted Parmegianno (mine is a souvenir from our holidays in Italy), olive oil, salt and pepper. Enjoy right away.

January 30, 2016

Setting priorities

Recently I found this urgent need to prioritize both at work and at home to get the best of my time. I don’t know if it’s specific to my job, or to being in Japan where working long hours is common yet with poor productivity, but I feel inefficient. At work it’s quite difficult to prioritize because for me the most important is research and teaching, but I spend most of the time doing paperwork, administration, budget plan and research proposals, though what I really want to do is spend more time with my students and read and write more. In the lab I’m on my own, without any assistance and a growing number of problems to solve, all being more pressing and paying often for others poor organization. At home it’s much more simple and rather the contrary, I have a lot of help, good organization and sharing tasks allow to always have time for urgent matters, and for cooking. Which is absolutely important for me because the kitchen is the place I can make the transition from work to home, set my brain to a quieter pace after the bustling day by keeping it busy with thinking and inventing but on a diffferent topic, by keeping my hands busy with a knife requiring velocity and precision. The more veggies to cut, the more relaxed. And only after that can I sit and relax. That’s why for me going to the restaurant after work is hard because I lack the transition.

So here is a little pasta dish, nothing too exciting but still delicious with trofie, plenty of leek cut in small pieces and diced tomatoes, olive oil of course too! Something that just require the perfect amount of time to move on and of knife manipulation to stay focused. Happy Wednesday!

January 27, 2016

Making (good) cooking mistakes

With beautiful spinaches in the fridge I was wondering what to do with and decided that I should use this pack of flour I had bought in Tsunan this summer. Of buckwheat floor right? Buckwheat and spinaches are really a good match! So let’s make a thin crust and add the spinaches with some eggs. I started to prepare the dough for the crust, I found the flour exceptionally soft and white until A. whom I asked to pass me the floor asked: which buckwheat floor? You mean the rice flour? And then everything made sense: the colour, the texture… But it was too late to change and it wouldn’t be the first time I make dough with rice flour, but it was not was I had in mind! So I slightly changed my plan and instead just added the raw spinaches in the dough and baked. When it was almost done I added eggs and cooked until the eggs where just perfect and served. As most of the cooking mistakes (only this memorable miso eggplant 10 years ago was horrible) I make it was a good one, with a delicious and a nice assortment.

January 25, 2016

One-bowl of energy

Saturday, it’s cold and one of the stray cat in the garden has woken us quite early this morning. Damned stray cat (not our little Pablo, a different one)!

So after playing tennis 2 hours in the cold we needed a lunch full of energy and tasty. So I boiled some spelt and served it with 3min sauteed cauliflower chunks and mushrooms, and made some chicken koloke or croquette or balls or whatever you call them, with just some chicken breast minced rolled in panko, and cooked in a bit of oil in a pan. All in A bowl. Yummy, full of energy!! Have a good weekend!

January 23, 2016

Curry mochi

Because fresh rice cakes, or mochi 餅 come in a bundle of 6, I had some to eat so I decided to experiment a little with a vegan curry not served with rice, but with grilled mochi. Something in between a nan and rice! And it worked super well!!! So here’s what I did: in a large pan greased a little I cut 1/2 leek, 1 potato, 2 little purple sweet potatoes, 1 turnip, 1 carrot, 1 red carrot, after it started to get golden I added some water just to cover, and 2 table spoons of curry powder, 1 tea spoon of tumeric (curcuma), 1 tea spoon of carvi seeds, 1 tea spoon of coriander seeds, grinded black pepper, a little piece of cinnamon and cokked until most of the water is gone. In the oven I arranged the rice cakes on a sheet of aluminum foil and baked them until they grown (I love to watch them in the oven, moving, breathing…) and the tip is golden. Then served all together.

January 21, 2016

Sometimes

Sometimes all these happen: you have a tough day at work, you want to cry it out and prepare a lovely post (yes, for you guys!) when the squarespace app crashes before you’ve saved this beautiful coconut pyramids recipe, the only thing that remains to do is to say “sorry guys, I’m going home and eat the coconut pyramids with my supportive husband!”

Well, hopefully the next morning the sky is blue, Mount Fuji is all covered in fresh snow and the storm has passed, so now I can share with you my recipe inspired by the nordic cookbook. For a 20one-bite pyramids I used 1egg, 45g of brown caster sugar, 100g of coconut flakes, 40g of melted butter. Mix the egg and sugar, add the coconut and the melted buter, stir well and let sit for 10-30min so that the coconut get moisted. Pre-heat the oven at 175deg and on a cooking sheet form the pyramids. Cook until the tip is golden. Enjoy!

January 19, 2016

New cookbooks

For Christmas I had a few new cookbooks from Europe that I am now reading (yes, they are this kind of cookbooks that you read) before trying any of the recipes. The first one is a vegetarian encyclopedia cookbook in French with a lot of inspiration to take such as quinoa soup. As the name suggests it’s quite a big book. It’s the same series as my beloved Italian cookbook so I’m quite familiar with the structure and the way it reads. The book as many pictures and most of the recipes are quite simple, the one that just need a little “gentiane” touch to be done for dinner in a really short time. The one that one can easily use. So there’s plenty to extract from it very quickly. If not already done!

The second one is a completely different approach, not exactly the kind of book you actually bring to the kitchen (even thicker than the previous one!!!), but the one you read and mature. It presents extensively the Nordic cooking from of course Northern Europe but also Iceland and Greenland and covers all the possible ingredients from herbs to whale (yes you read well), and I reckon that there are some recipes that will never make their way to my kitchen! But they retain some interesting historical components just like we also have in France “boudin noir”, blood sausage… It is richly documented, with beautiful few pictures and really interesting because I see many common things with Japanese cooking tough the climate is completely different. It is half a cooking book half a research paper so I really enjoy reading it. I think if I were to write a book on food that’d be something like that!

In any case both are very refreshing and different than Japanese super practical and thin cookbooks! What are your recent cookbok pick?

January 15, 2016

Spinach risotto and cod

As expected, it is now getting cold in Tokyo and the real winter is here. Nothing better to get warm than a kind of thick ice soup or wet risotto with veggies and fresh cod.
In a pan greased with olive oil, first grill the rice (arborio or carnoli), then cover twice with some veggie consome of your choice, and cook. When the consome has lowered by 1/3 add some fresh spinach roughly cut, and cook until the consome is now just on top of the rice. Add the cod, a slice of lemon and cook some more until the liquid has almost vanished. Serve immediately while still wet, and eat when hot.

January 14, 2016

Cauliflower soup x katsuobushi

Too happy with the mix cauliflower and katsuobushi in the tart the other day that I decided to try it in an other version: a warm soup for a cold evening. And the magic worked again!

It’s crazily simple and delicious: boil a cauliflower (I just removed the green leaves, washed it and boiled it all in one piece in 3cm of water under cover. Once soft I roughly crush it with a wooden spoon and mix it with the remaining water in my blender, add black pepper and the soup is ready. When I serve I add some thinly cut katsuobushi (usukiri), that’s it!

January 13, 2016