I love these autumn days when the skies are so blue and the light is so bright, these “akibare” days. This is an invitation to wake up early and be outside all day long . So I spend little time cooking during the day and we need some quick fix for lunch, yet full of energy to enjoy a few more other hours out gardening, hiking, playing tennis or whatever. Pasta provide a perfect base, and since temperature are still warm if not hot at this time of the day, acold salad is perfect: penne with avocado, radish, cucumber, sesame seeds and sunflower seeds, olive oil and ready!
A pure bowl of yumminess! With quinoa simply boiled, baby leaf salad, diced avocado and dried salted konbu (shio konbu – 塩昆布), and the juice of a local lime for a late Friday evening dinner in the country. I love shio konbu, it accomodates very well with Japanese and non Japanese dishes. It tastes slightly like salted licorice, and I am still imagining ways to use it in my recipes.
Today, for a quick healthy meal, I made a really simple salad. Of course the main base is with seeds (as always), here it’s a mix of lentils, quinoa and brown rice, then I add tomato, avocado, beetroot, balsamic vinegar, goji berries, a few of sunflower seeds and on the top: smoked mackerel.
OK! I promise this might be the last post about summer salads!!! But this past days I’ve really tried a lot of new things and each was a great match. This spelt and mozarella salad is an other example.
Simply boiled spelt, cucumber, ocra, boiled edamame and fresh mozarella diced, a lot of pepper, and always delicious olive oil.
My mother does this very simple classic salad as a starter: green beans or broad beans, potatoes, new onion, olive oil and mustard. I love when the potatoes have marinated in the oil and when the green beans water is mixing in an indiscriptibly delicious juice. This time I mimicked her recipe but made it even simpler: remove the mustard and replaced the onion by some momendofu (hard tofu) crumbles and served it as a main dish for dinner. To enjoy the delicious juice I recommend to prepare the salad one hour before serving and with new potatoes I don’t peel them, just brush them under water.
It’s funny because I like potatoes but I seldom cook some except to make gnocchi and I have no idea why I don’t prepare more potato-base recipes. So I had two potatoes in the fridge that were waiting there, and suddenly I come up with a potato salad idea. Here in Japan usually potato salad (just like macaroni salad) means a lot of mayonnaise and I hate that. My potato salad is completely different: for 2 I used 2 new potatoes (about the size of an egg) boiled with the skin; 2 branches of celory; 1 cucumber (Japanese cucumber, right?); one boiled egg chopped; a few slices of smoke salmon; pumpkin seeds; flax seeds; olive oil. Et voila! A super delicious salad, but that doesn’t look so on the picture! And many more ideas for potato salads!
Et voila! Busy weeks, long working hours, the one-plate dinner is back!!!
Quinoa and bulgur for the energy, salad for the green, cherry tomatoes for the red, momendofu (hard tofu) for the white and a little shiso omelet fr the taste. Seasonned with just olive oil and we’re set.
Remember to always drain your tofu, and cook the omelet under cover at slow eat to avoid the flipping task!
After a whole week in Seattle, it’s good to be back home. Though the city has numerous farmers markets, with very attractive food, the hotel life allows only for limited purchases and preparation. There are also a lot of food trucks but honestly the idea of having lunch standing or seated like punks in the street is not very attractive, though the food looks good. As for restaurants, food was ok, fresh but I didn’t find anything outstanding. The best we had was surely grilled salmon or grilled halibut with asparagus. There might be some nice places serving local food (not limited to seafood, which is not what I like best) but we couldn’t find them… It’s really a pity because driving around Seattle one can find again tones of organic farms selling their products, fruits, veggies, delicious yogurts…
Chimacum local farmers shop
So being back home it is time to go back to the kitchen and improvise some summer recipes with fresh food and light enough to beat the jetlag and the heat. So we’re back to the basics: quinoa and bulgur as a base, baby leaf salad, cherry tomatoes and cucumber, yellow zucchini, ocra, and to finish pumpkin seeds, flax seeds and white chia seeds. Back on the tracks!!
