Tag: rice

Cooking and baking, yes!

Finally the weekend, almost done with my administrative duties at the university, and also done with two crazy weeks of dining out. So the first thing we did when we arrived in Ohara was to rush to the local farmers market to shop fresh food, then I started baking and cooking!! Hurray!!  

Baking a big bread for our breakfast tomorrow; and cooking our dinner, something simple but fresh: plain white rice with fresh shiso leaves chopped; lotus root cooked in sardines dashi and then slightly fried; and bonito, just cooked in a hot pan. Back to simple and delicious homemade food, back to the country with our stray cats, back to spring with the frogs now in the rice paddies!

Weekend one-plate

Sunny weekend, fresh food from the market and the beginning of spring vegetables: na no hana. So I prepared a simple one plate with white and green rice, boiled daikon in dashi with yuzu miso, boiled na no hana in dashi with soya sauce and katsuobushi, grilled fresh bonito, and some little radish. All simple all delicious!

Rice – お米

In Japan finding deliciouss Japanese rice to cook is not difficult, it’s like finding bread in France or pasta in Italy. Yet finding organic rice or at least non chemical rice is not so easy. There are only few places I know in Tokyo where to find some for sure and the one usually sold in supermarkets is not chemical free. In the countryside the “Eco” label is already a guaranty of better quality in terms of production, but I’ve hardly found it in the city. Isumi is one place that grows rice in Chiba and they have a rather big production, and I was surprised the other day to find something new on the shelf at the local cooperative: a 100% chemical free rice grown locally and sold in a nicely design package. So I had to buy it. I support all initiatives for local, chemical-free, environmental-conscious production and if possible aesthetical and sustainable packaging. I think this one has it all. I believe the packaging (who buys 2kg rice vag in the country???) is really targeted at Tokyo hipsters (even if there is nothing really as such) but I think there is something good in developing it, it just has to stay sizeable and not to become a crazy business which losses all the ethics and original purpose.

Miso-parsley-pork meat balls

Nothing better than a one-bowl meal for a perfect lunch. Donburi are really easy to prepare in endless seasonal variations, with meat, fish or vegan, with white rice, brown rice, a mox of grains… 

For this one I used plain white rice, seasonal veggies: turnips, carrots and shiitake, and prepare miso meat balls. For that I used pork meat, about 100g, 1 egg, 2 or 3 branches of parsley, 2 table spoons of panko, and 2 table spoons of miso (of your choice). I mix all together and cook the balls in a frypan until golden. The mix miso-parsley is really delicious!

Donburi

The donburi or one rice bowl is a very convenient alternative to one-plate, and I like the rice base lunch because it provides tons of good energy necessary to stay outside all day long, now that it’s gotten colder.

 

For this donburi I cooked plain white Japanese rice that I topped with sautéed purple sweet potato, carrot brocoli, and finished with some proteins croquettes: I mixed rice flour with a mix of seeds, an egg and dome chicken meat. The egg and meat can be replaced by tofu for a vegan option. 

A dinner with guests

The other night we had some guests at home, and when we do I need to be super-well organized to squeeze one hour to prepare dinner in my schedule, this usually my target time. So I need to think carefully the menu, the ingredients and once I enter the kitchen I know exactly what I’m doing. Usually I have some extra time or a few ideas on the fly, so that it turns I always improvise something. This time was no exception!

For the dinner it was simple: grilled delicious wild snapper with a little of sesame oil, rice with katsuobushi, white and pink turnip tofu salad with pumpkin seeds (similar recipe with the persimmon salad, but I replaced the persimmon with a little cucumber and the walnuts by kabocha seeds) and some pickled sweet ginger.

Then I realized that we didn’t have too much to snack while drinking so I decided to make a little extra, because it’s nice when you have dinner after work with friends to hang out and chat, to release the oressure of a long day at work. Well, with what I had in the fridge the best option was to make some kabocha chips, so I thinly sliced half a kobocha and cooked it in a bit of oil. Add some salt and served. That was a hit! Everyone loved it! 

Autumn meal

I love when I get back to work a bit late (which is to be honest pretty much every day) to open my veggie drawer in the fridge and to find a whole set of fresh things just waiting to be prepared. What and how just naturally flow from my mind and in less than 15min the dinner is almost ready or at least all decided!

This time my fridge had a wide choice of autumn veggies, no surprise there. And I prepared a little mix to accommodate a simple bowl of rice and some pickles. So I just just a red onion, a piece of lotus root, a carrot, a piece of kabocha, some shimeji and a few green pepper. I cooked them in a bit of oil at high heat for a few minutes then under cover at low heat for an other few minutes, finally add a little of soya sauce and serve.

Macrobiotic dry curry

As I was mentioning earlier, we found close to our home in Ohara, a macrobiotic local kind of small community where they have a cafe and a tiny shop. We had lunch there and it was delicious, and after we went to check out the little shop and I found this book: “whole rice & veggies on plate meals”, which was written by people from the community, and which presents seasonal recipes all gegan and somehow macrobiotic, or what they call “soft macrobi”. Perfect for me who enjoy the vegan food but don’t becessarily adhere to macrobiotics: I hate imposed rules in particular when it comes to food. I have my own, I like them and I think they suit me well. Well, this book is a treasure trive of midern Japanese recipes and I really enjoy looking at all the recipes and in particular the ones using ingredients I seldom use or buy. Coincidently, some time ago, a friend traveling to Koya brang us back some Koyadofu, a kind if dry tofu that can be rehydrated and used in several preparations. So I jumped on the occasion to prepare the first recipe I found with Koyadofu: vegetables dry curry. Dry curry mesns that there is no thick sauce like in regular Japanese curry.

The recipe is awfully simple, I had most of the ingredients but not all, so I replaced them and interpreted my way. For 2 You need 2 blocks of Koyadofu, 1 green pepper, 1 potato, 1/2 onion (I used a red onion), 1 tomato, curry powder, carvi seeds, cinnamon powder, salt, pepper, 1 tbs of miso, 1 tbs of apricot jam (I used kaki jam), a bit of soya sauce and s bit of oil. First cut all the veggies in 5mm cubes, the tomato can be cut in large chuncks. Rehydrate the tofu in hot water, drain roughly. In a pan with oil, cook atlow  heat the veggies, but the tomato, add the carvi seeds and the curry powder, the cinnamon. In a mixer, mix the tofu, the jam, the miso, salt pepper, soya sauce. Add the mixture to the veggies, cook until almost dry. Serve with rice. I serve with a mixture I made of whole rice, black rice, red rice, barley and white rice. Super delicious, but not very picturesque I reckon!!!!

Gingko nuts rice

There are several ways to use gingko nuts in cuisine. The simplest is probably to grill them, for that you just beed to break the hard shell roughly, grilled them in a pan and serve with salt. It’s the easiest because no need to remove the hard shell, everyone does while eating. Perfect as a snack. But definitely not the most elegant way. So first if all renoving the shell without breaking the nuts is important. It’s not too difficult. Then there is a brownish skin that you don’t want to serve. To remove it it’s easy, boil a dew minutes the nuts then roll them in a metal net or drainer. The peel will go away with the friction. Now you have the perfect yellow nuts that you can use for any recipe. One of my favorite use issimply with white rice, to accompany a Japanese dinner. Jusr add the nuts in the rice after it is cooked. Count 3 to 7 nuts per person. Finish with a bit of salt when serving to enhance the taste of the nuts.

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