Fresh home-made food every day
I’m still a bit suffering from jetlag, and I wake up early, but in France it’s all dark until 7:00am, so there’s not much to do. So let me introduce an other recipe of delicious veggies, like I already miss them!
Grilled veggies are the best! Potato, sweet potato, kabocha and broccoli. I just added a few pieces of prosciutto. An other pre-travel meal perfect to empty the fridge and to sustain my hunger for veggies.
Before and after traveling I feel like needing more than ever fresh fruits and veggies and super simple recipes. So let me share with you a new idea I add. I wanted to eat mashed potatoes, I love them! But I don’t make some too often. So for this recipe I prepared simple mash potatoes with only a bit of butter, then I added some little chunks of broccoli, and finished with an egg, and lot of pepper. Simply delicious!
You know how we like seeds with Gentiane, we use them all the time and can put some of them everywhere.
For this quick breakfast, I need yogurt (or creamy fromage blanc), a drop of brown sugar, blackberries, raspberries and of course many different kinds of seeds. I use goji berries, sunflower seeds, pine seeds. You can add some homemade granola. And tada!
Breakfast is ready.
After days of rain and gloomy weather and some chilly days I am slowly accepting that summer is over. It is also noticeable at our local farmers market: new rice is there and with it sweet potatoes and kabocha little pumpkin) are now taking over. Tomatoes are more rare, nashi tend to be more ripe…
So there is no choice than to move forward and start cooking with new seasonal ingredients. For this dish of grilled tuna I prepared a summer/autumn mix of veggies: tomato and okra for the summer, sweet potatoe, carrot and leek for the autumn. Simply grilled in a greased pan.
Out of the multitude of recipes and usage of katsuobushi, one thing I love is okaka. Okaka is basically a mix of katsuobushi flakes and soya sauce, sometimes a few sesame seeds. It is often used as a filling of onigiri (rice ball). Today I tried a slightly different manner to serve these onigiri. Instead of using The okaka as a filling I decided to mix it directly with the rice and they grill the balls in a fry pan (small oven or grill can do too) to make yaki-onigiri. I served them with grilled vegetables: tomatoes, okras, shiitake, and with some marinated mackerel.
I baked 1 cup of rice, added 4g of katsuobushi flakes and a tea spoon of soya sauce, stirred well. Them I prepare the balls and flattened them in patties and grilled them in a greased fry pan until golden.
Last year when we went back to France for Christmas we had several time beetroot, mainly in winter style salads, and I realized that in Japan this is not a common vegetable, just like fennel, kale or so many other vegetables that are common in the west (celery was hard to find a few years ago and outrageously expensive). So the other day when I spotted a beautiful beetroot I just couldn’t resist. But to be honest it was the first time ever I bought a beetroot! Back in the time we lived in Paris my mother in law would give me beetroot from her garden but she would cook them before. And usually I would prepare them in salad, since I’ve never been a big fan of it until last year!! I guess it is mainly due to the fact that in France the classic way is to boil or steam them and them make plain beetroot salads… It’s notvery attractive.
Well then, I ended up with a fresh beetroom, and it took me a couple of days to figure out what to do with it. First of all grilling it in the oven. I search for a few recipes, but them I decided to start with the simplest way: a small oven dish, the beetroot inside, baked at 180deg for about 80min. Then once cold I peeled it. Everywhere on the web I found recipes about goat cheese, beetroot, walnuts salad… Sounded nice to me but a little straighforward and anyway my husband don’t eat cheese and doesn’t really like walnuts unless it is in a delicious cake or cookie!!! So I passed this recommendation, next were soups and bortch… And finally I found a picture of a beetroot risotto: that’s it! I have bought the same day I bought the beetroot at Eataly a nice piece of vintage Parmegianno and a beautiful piece of pancetta. All set!
I used half a leek (the white part) cut in tiny pieces, and butter. Cut the pancetta and added it to the leek in the frypan. Once soft, I added a little more butter, the risotto, and finally added some chicken broth, and cooked until almost all the liquid was gone. I diced half of my beetroot and finally added it. When stirring the rice takes this beautiful pink color. I served and gratted the vintage Parmegianno on top.
What I love with katsuobushi, it’s that it suits very well greens Simply prepared: delicious spinach topped with katsuobushi, green beans, and even shishito. Shishito is a sort of tiny green pepper with a typical taste, and sometimes they can be really hot, but not often. I usually prepare shishito for snacks, by just grilling them in a pan and serving with salt. But I discovered that adding some soya sauce and topping with katsuobushi make a delicious combination. So simple and yet so many tastes of Japan in one dish!
As I was thinking of preparing something about dashi and katsuobushi for a while, I imagined that I had to pay a visit again at Ninben to see if they were selling all of the different katsuobushi I learned about, and I found there a very nice recipe book. Of course all the recipes use katsuobushi. The recipes are all quite simple and perfect to prepare for every day. Since summer has faded away very quickly this year I’m starting to want to eat some fall typical ingredients: kabocha, mushrooms… So the first recipe that inspired me was a Japanese style tart. I of course changed the recipe to adjust it to my own taste (only Japanese can put potatoes into a tart filling!!!) and it came as a perfect tart with leek, eringi mushrooms and katsuobushi, in a home made brise dough. Delicious!
Basically you prepare the dough, then cut the leek and mushrooms, grill them a little in a pan, add soya sauce and 10g of katsuobushi, stir well. Add 3 eggs and set in the dough. Bake until golden. The mix can be starling at first if you are used to mote classic tarts or quiche but it’s really delicious. the original recipe was also includîg carrot and potato, bit I don’t think it is necessary.
There is an infinity of variations with crepes and pancakes, by changing the flour, adding baking soda or not, milk, egg, seeds… I love to play with all these possibilities and create something different each time. This time I grilled some eggplant and sweet pepper, so I decided to bake a big thick crepe made of chickpea flour and added some flax seeds in. For the crepe just chickpea flour, water, olive oil and salt is ok, for a less dense one adding an egg is good also. I baked it at low heat under cover and served with olive oil and pepper.
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