Tag: recipe

The magic of the little red beans

One thing I have very rarely talked about here is adzuki – 小豆 literally small bean. They are present in many Japanese recipes and in most of the Japanese sweets. In fact beans are an important staple in Japanese cuisine: to name only a few the soya beans or daizu 大豆 literally big beans, the traditional jumbo black beans or kuromame 黒豆 for new year and of course the tiny adzuki!

raw adzuki beans

These little beans are usually cooked with sugar and salt to make tsubuan 粒あん when the beans are kept almost whole, or anko あんこ when the beans are puréed into an homogenous paste. The paste of tsubuan and anko is then used in many preparations: yokan, dorayaki, daifuku, ohagi, kintsuba, oshiruko…

Today let me introduce the basic recipe for anko and tsubuan and of oshiruko お汁粉, one of the traditional new year “soup”. Even though adzuki are dried beans they cook in 1h only so they are surprisingly easy to use.

Anko and tsubuan (makes 500g which is a lot!)

  • 200g of dry adzuki
  • 200g of brown sugar
  • Water
  • A pinch of salt

Rince the beans and put them in a pan, cover with water, bring to a boil, then decrease the heat to keep a steady boiling for 5min. Then drain the beans and throw the water. Return the beans to the pan and cover with ample water and bring to a boil again. Cook at medium heat for 40min, until the beans are almost soft. Drain the beans, throw the water, return the beans to the pan, add the sugar and cook at low heat and stir gently until the remaining moisture is gone. Add a pinch of salt. For the tsubuan that’s it. For anko you need to purée to obtain a paste.

Oshiruko (1 serving)

  • 50g of anko or tsubuan
  • 15cl of water
  • A small piece of semi-dry mochi to grill

In a pan heat the bean paste and the water to obtain a kind of thick soup. In the meantime grill the mochi. Serve the soup, add the mochi and enjoy!!! Beware that the soup, because of the sugar can be really hot.

Kwarezimal… again and perfect!

A few months ago I made Kwarezimal and posted the recipe. Kwarezimal are these Maltese vegan treats usually for easter that we had in Valetta last year when visiting. My first attempt at recreating these delicious sweets was tasty but I wasn’t quite happy. The recipe posted reflected the slight modifications needed to improve it but I haven’t tested it fully: a little overcooked and not enough moist from the honey. Also a slightly too strong taste of almond compared to what I wanted and the other ingredients. As these treats are rather rich and nourishing they are perfect in winter with a hot tea after working outside in the cold in the garden or after playing tennis, or both. So I decided to prepare them when the thermometer hit the 5degrees in the house in the morning. What best than working in the kitchen near the oven while the house warms up. I used the recipe posted earlier this year with a few modifications in the process, the shaping (made a smaller double bite size, faster cooking) and the topping: honey dip + hazelnut + pistachio. And made one slight change in the ingredients amount: double tap of cocoa powder. So here is the new recipe. To be honest it was perfectly delicious. Hard to stop eating them!!!

Kwarezimal (makes 18 double-bite size pieces)

  • 150g of almond powder (or hazelnut powder)
  • 100g of flour
  • 60g of brown sugar
  • 1tsp of orange blossom flower
  • 2tsp of cocoa powder
  • 1tsp of cinnamon
  • 1tsp of clove
  • 1/2tsp of cardamom
  • the zest of half an orange or any other citrus fruit (I used yuzu this time)
  • a bit of water

For the topping:

  • a small handful of pistachios
  • a small handful of hazelnuts
  • 3tbp of fragrant honey

Pre-heat the oven to 180 while mixing all the ingredients (but those for the topping) together. Add a bit of water and knead until you obtain a dense but not sticky dough.

Roll the dough to a 5-7mm thick and cut the double-bite size with a shape or with a knife. Other option is to take small balls and shape them the way you want. A flat surface is better for the topping. Set on cooking paper in the oven for 15minutes.

In the meantime, crush the pistachios and hazelnuts of the topping, and set in the plate. In another plate a bit deep, put the honey. As soon as the Kwarezimal are baked and out of the oven, flip a few of them in the plate with the honey, and leave for a couple of minutes. Then dip the sticky side in the pistachio-hazelnut mix and flip on a dish or back on the cooking paper, repeat with the others and let cool down before enjoying!!

Wafu pasta 和風パスタ

If you’ve been following me for a bit you are no stranger to the fact that I LOVE pasta. All kind!!!

Wafu pasta are a common thing on our table, even if for Italian people I reckon this is a terrible thing. But honestly… it is delicious, and since it mainly involves spaghetti or capellini, one could almost consider them as noodles… sorry if I make a big leap here!!!

Wafu pasta to me are a mix of Japanese vegetables, soya sauce, sesame oil, sesame or nori topping etc… this time my recipe is super simple and really tasty: leek, mizuna, sesame oil, sesame seeds and a good doze of soya sauce, with half whole wheat spaghetti. That’s how much simple lunch can be!!

How do you like your wafu pasta???

Lotus root burgers

I often talk of recipes with lotus roots. It’s a Japanese staple easy to find when in season and super very versatile to cook and delicious. I love it in Japanese classic preparations such as stuffed or with vinegar, but also in more western style like on pizza or in quiche… lotus root is reaching the end of the season but there are still a few more weeks to enjoy it luckily!!!

Lotus root in pizza and quiche

In Japanese supermarkets, you pack your shopping goods after the cashier on dedicated tables that have small bags, tapes and usually a few advertisements for local things or recipe cards. I like to look at these recipe cards, they sometimes remind me of a recipe long forgotten, an ingredient cooked last too long ago or just an idea for a new recipe. That’s how the lotus root burgers came to my mind. The recipe is rather simple and very tasty, it is made with chicken meat but it can easily be replaced by hard tofu for a vegan version. So let me share it with you.

Lotus root burgers (2 servings)

  • 10-15cm of lotus root, about 4-5cm diameter
  • 100g of ground chicken breast or drained hard tofu
  • 2tbs of miso
  • 50g of panko
  • 1 egg
  • A bit if oil for frying

In a bowl mix the meat or the tofu, the miso, the panko, the egg. Stir well.

Peel the lotus root and cut 12 regular slices of 4-6mm. Chop the rest of the lotus root and add to the mix.

Pick one slice in your hand. With a spoon cover with the mix to obtain about a 10mm layer, sandwich with another slice.

In a non sticky pan slightly greased with oil, fry the 6 burgers in both sides. Serve with rice, and add the juice of a yuzu for an even tastier experience. Et voilà!!!

Chestnut flour pancake 2-ways

Funnily Japanese are very found of chestnuts 栗 kuri, and the fall comes with all sort of chestnut preparations savory and sweet. The most famous is probably 栗ご飯 kurigohan (rice with chestnut) or 栗の渋皮煮 kuri no shibukawa ni (boiled chestnut in syrup). The use of chestnut flour though is more restricted, and often limited to some mochi preparations. So finding chestnut flour in Japan is not an easy task… luckily my parents once in a while send me a package from France, and chestnut flour, and green lentils are often on my order list!!! To be honest, I’ve never seen chestnut flour in any of our trips to the mountains in Japan, or in regions where they might produce some, though I always stop at local shops and markets or farmers cooperatives.

So this recipe may not be the most local one, but for me it is something that I really love in autumn. It is naturally very sweet, yet flavorful. It reminds me of Cevennes, Corsica or Tuscany. It is rustic yet refined because so rare now.

Chestnut pancakes

  • 100g of chestnut flour
  • 50g of wheat flour
  • 1tsp of baking powder
  • 1 egg
  • water

Simple as it is to make pancakes… simply mix all the ingredients to obtain a silky but thick dough by adding water little by little. Cook in a non-sticky fry pan. I use a small-medium one and made one at a time for the savory ones, and made two at once for the sweet ones.

For the savory ones, I cooked in a pan with a bit of olive oil: mushrooms (nameko for their beautiful color!), kabocha and komatsuna. Add cheese from Takahide farm for me and sausages from Isumi for A..

For the sweet ones I topped with dark chocolate, melted in the last minute of cooking, a sprinkle of brown sugar and a splash of olive oil.

Cheese version for she
Sausages version for he

Soup and bread…

What is more comforting than a warm soup when you have spent the whole day outside and the temperature have suddenly dropped? Every year I am shocked by the sudden change of the temperatures in Japan in autumn. There is always one day in November when you start the day wearing tea shirts and short pants, and go swimming in the morning and then turn on the heater and cashmere sweat pants and sweater in the evening are more than necessary. When this time comes, I crave for warm vegetables soups. A. always complains as he prefers them to be velouté. I love any style, but rarely bother using the blender, and prefer listen to A.’s complaint… 😉

One thing that I love with soup is when they come with croutons, but I also have amazing memories of rural vegetables soup with fresh sourdough bread eaten at Mme Fages’s place in Mas Saint Chely. Something that I would be so happy to have, warming up near the fireplace after a mushroom hunt in the cold. That and her chocolate mousse!

Now that I have Lois and make only sourdough bread, it was perfect for this kind of very simple dinner: a piece of bread remaining from breakfast, many vegetables waiting too long their turn to be prepared, a pan with the juice of a long cooked piece of pork. That’s what this soup is made of, and here is the recipe.

Vegetables soup and bread (2 servings)

  • 1/2 sweet potato
  • A piece of kabocha (3cm slice)
  • 1 little turnip
  • 1 carrot
  • 2 bundles of komatsuna or spinach
  • Water, salt and pepper
  • Bouillon of your choice, mine comes from the pan in which I slowly cooked a piece of pork
  • 2 generous slices of sourdough bread

In the pan I cooked the pork I add about 600ml of water and heat. I wash, peel and chop the vegetables and add them to the bouillon in order: carrot, turnip, sweet potato, kabocha, greens. I cook at medium heat until the vegetables are soft or mushy. Add salt and pepper. Blend and serve. Top with the bread roughly cut, and eat right away.

No need for butter, olive oil, no nothing.

Omurice – オムライス

I am lucky to work with one of my students on the development of a system that proposes variations to things someone do depending on preferences… for developing such a system we decided to chose a concrete example, and the first idea that came to our mind was a system that could help you in making new recipes by trying adding popular ingredients. And to do a first real life experiment we needed something easy enough to prepare and with many possible variations. We picked omurice. The whole time we were meeting and discussing it reminded me how much I live omurice, and how little I cook it.

I also remembered that a long long time ago I promised to post the recipe of this popular wa-yo 和洋 recipe. But for some reason it seems I never did… so let’s fix this right now!!!

First of all let’s talk wa-yo food a bit. While Japan opened to the west for many things in the 19th century, it had continually had this very specific way of not copying but adapting to its own taste or resources the cultural elements of another civilization, such that in the end it creates a genuine Japanese part of culture. Food has many examples: curry-rice, castella, dorayaki, and omurice. It seems to be born in a cafe in Ginza in the early 20th century.

The first time I heard about omurice was when reading one of Murakami Ryu‘s novel: “coin lockers babies”. The translation and the way it was presented was that of a rice omelette. In my mind I imagined a batter of eggs with cooked rice in it, cooked in a frypan. How far from the truth I was!!! Omurice is a simple preparation for sure but with many variations. Each place that serves om-rice has its own recipe. It consists in three parts: the rice, the omelette and the sauce.

The rice: usually plain white rice, but can be also sautéed with green peas (my favorite) and small bit of pork… tomato sauce or tomato ketchup can also be added to the rice to give it a nice pink color. Mushrooms, chicken are also other options.

The omelette: it can be a rather straightforward omelette, or a more runny one, or something like very runny scrambled eggs. Usually plain. It is nice to have it a bit runny in any case as it mixes well with the rice.

The sauce: that’s where most of the creativity is, and often too much for me. One popular sauce in fancy om-rice recipe is the demiglass sauce デミグラスソース, made from red wine, beef consommé etc… but my ultimate favorite is just a splash of tomato ketchup. The simplest the better.

This time, I made omurice with brown rice and that was super delicious. A runny omelette on one side with 2eggs, a splash of tomato ketchup, and a side of blanched komatsuna.

Burdock – 牛蒡

With the fall, burdock 牛蒡 gobou is back in season. This long root that looks like a salsifis but is firm and ressembles in texture artichokes, and a bit in taste too… is a classic flavor in Japanese cuisine. Probably because of a rather country style strong flavor and its fibrous texture, it often appears in simple recipes with other strongly flavored ingredients: chilly pepper in kinpira for example, or in very small quantities. Given that a burdock root is quite big, and one can keep for rather long, it is a very handy vegetable!!!

I love to cook it in different preparations. Creamy soup is one of my favorite but it takes quite some time and requires a blender. Last night I came up with a simple recipe that mixes daigaku imo recipe inspiration with gobou in a light version. I’ll talk about daigaku imo later… The recipe with burdock is really simple and super tasty. It is perfect with a bowl of rice or whatever you like.

Burdock & sweet potato (2 servings)

  • 1/2 burdock
  • 1 sweet potato not too big (fits in the palm)
  • 2tbs of sesame seeds
  • 1tbs of sesame oil
  • 2tbs of soya sauce
  • 1tsp of sugar

Wash and peel the burdock. With a peeler make kind of gobou flakes. Boil in water until it softens. About 15min probably. Drain. Wash the sweet potato and cut in sticks not too big.

In a pan greased with the sesame oil, start cooking the sweet potato. Add the burdock drained. Stir well. When the sweet potato changes to darker yellow or golden, add the sugar the soya sauce, and the sesame seeds, stir well again. Cook another 2 minutes while stirring. And serve. Eat warm or chilled.

Completely in love with my sourdough 🤍🤍🤍

After the slightly difficult beginnings with my sourdough starter Lois, it’s been almost 2months and we have reached a nice cruising speed, I use it all the time now. I’m still a bit surprised that my starter hasn’t done any crazy bubbling so far, on the contrary, it’s been behaving very very well, doing regular foaming but to a reasonable volume, and when in need for food it smells a nice apple flavour.

Cooking bread with my sourdough starter at first was quite tedious, with the impression of starting from the scratch, in particular, I had to relearn how the proving and rising worked, cooking at higher temperatures, with many of my first breads that just imploded when baking, ending up with big cracks on the bottom rather than on the top, or being too dense. I also needed a bit of adjustment with the flour I was using. I am still searching for a steady supply of organic local flour (and I will make a post as soon as I find something that is worth mentioning). The ones I have used during the summer are now out of stock and it seems unsure when they will have stock again. Together with searching for supply, I steadily continued and learned from my mistakes, and now they are all fixed or so, and I have started to obtain a regular shape and beautiful crusts with fluffy crumble on a regular basis. I started playing again with whole wheat, wheat bran,nuts etc… In the end, it seems that lower room temperature and longer times work very well for my sourdough starter. That to say that the sourdough adventure is a beautiful one and the flavour of the breads are uncomparable with those made with yeast (dry or fresh), so even if it took me so long to make up my mind, that it is a hassle to travel with my sourdough back and force between Tokyo and Ohara, it is just a new habit. And if while in Tokyo I use little of the sourdough for baking (until I get my kitchen redone with an oven…), but the one thing that I find really amazing is to use the extra sourdough I have for flat breads and for pancakes. It brings the flavour to a new level, something quite addictive.

  • Flat breads
  • Hazelnut and walnut bread
  • Plain white bread

So if you have a sourdough starter that you don’t use much for bread baking like me, I highly recommend you continue feeding it every day and use it for anything that needs flour and water. If you have other tricks to use your sourdough please let me know I am curious about other uses. Indeed Lois is quite gluttonous and in 4 days it gets quite voluminous!
Actually I have already starting giving parts of it away to friends so if you are interested in a stable sourdough starter, please let me know!

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