Tag: simple

Taking time

The past two years have just gone in a flash. Since A. changed jobs and we moved, it’s been a continuous flow of things: 2 jobs for A., a cross appointment for me (which is basically a new job on top of mine), we started pottery classes, we had a giant garage and workshop built, we started paddle surfing and surfing, we started a kitchen garden with less rather than more success and I got more confident at baking breads. These have been for sure 2 amazing years, but they also left me with an impression that I have done nothing but running from one work appointment to the other, from one work task to the other, and when the work week was over either we flew to the countryside or we had to stay in Tokyo because I had some work related events to attend. Business trips were plenty as well. This resulted in working days of 12 to 14h with a lot of moving here and there, spending time in trains and metros which in Tokyo can easily be an hour or more. Both of us coming back home often past 22:00 and I then start to cook for dinner, a dinner that needs to be quickly made to satisfy our empty stomachs. While I still dream of country life in a sense, I believe that by changing my habits I could just as start by improving our Tokyo life. Being sick with fever and bed ridden for the first time in more than a decade and then working at a very low speed has taught me to be super efficient again. When your efficient brain time is just a tiny portion of what it used to be you have to use it wisely! I realize I could work differently and I have started as soon as I got back last week. I need to process information on a priority base, and for that refuse all extra work that is not exciting and to help someone I care for. Being sick was a good excuse to start with, now I just need to continue. Time with my students and with my colleagues for projects I care for should be valued over administration. That said it won’t make days shorter.

So the other major change concerns cooking. I was tired of rush cooking so my new schedule is that no matter what I leave the lab between 17:30 and 18:00, go back home, start cooking dinner, and then work again from home. I am lucky enough that most of the work I do can be done everywhere. It means I can cook things that take more than 10min such as spelt, lentils, brown rice and all the others alike.

So when A. comes back dinner is ready and we can eat a much better prepared dinner and at least 30min to 60min earlier!!

This has been really great to finally cook a lot of cereals and products I bought on our trips and they end up in the fridge waiting to be cooked. For example pearled barley from our trip to Italy a year ago… This recipe is highly Mediterranean with capers from Greece that my parents bought me when they went there last spring, sun dried tomatoes from a farm in Gozo I brought back from Malta and olive oil from my home town. The fish comes from our local fishing harbor in Katsuura.

Pearled barley and bonito

– 120g of pearled barley

– 5 sun dried tomatoes

– 1tbs of capers salted or in salty water

– olive oil

– a piece of bonito or tuna

Wash and cover with water the barley. Boil under cover for 20min. If all the water didn’t go, drain it. Add a splash of olive oil. Cut the tomatoes, add to the barley, add the capers. Stir well. In a olive oil greased fry pan, grill the fish. Serve in plates with a last splash of olive oil.

So far I applied this new concept for a week and it worked very well. Let’s see how the second week will work!!

Ochazuke – お茶漬け

Those who are familiar with Yasujiro Ozu’s movies must know “The flavor of green tea over rice” or “お茶漬けの味”, while being a cinematographic beauty and a brilliant socio-cultural representation of the the Japanese society transition of the time, it also introduces to a large audience ochazuke. Literally, as in the movie, it’s a dish that consists of pouring green tea over rice. A warm and comforting dish. While for westerners this might sounds odd, this dish, well prepared is actually delicious. It is also very simple if you have the right ingredients: rice, a hot tasty liquid, some topping eventually.

Ochazuke as you can imagine, is not supposed to be eaten with freshly cooked rice, while it is ok to do so, it is rather a recipe to use rice leftovers that have cooled down. So what I usually do is cook more rice than I need once to guarantee leftovers and then keep them for the next meal. Of course I mean Japanese rice cooked the Japanese way!!! You can use white rice or brown rice, it is equally delicious.

Then you need a hot liquid. As the name may be misleading, the liquid can be, but does not limit to green tea. Of course a nice and tasty green tea will work very well, yet my favorite recipe is with a flavor-rich dashi. A dashi made from konbu and katsuo, or from shiitake for a vegan version. The liquid must be hot enough to warm the rice if you use leftovers as it might be just at room temperature.

Finally you need a topping. Something that brings in a new texture and a new flavor. The topping is in rather low quantity, about one~two table spoon for one bowl. And as the rice and the liquid have quite a fine and light flavor you can use a topping that contrasts vividly such as umeboshi, salty salmon, mitsuba or create new combinations. Well, to be honest umeboshi is one of my favorite, and it can be used with some other toppings as well.

Why is that that I suddenly I talk so much of ochazuke when in the past 15 years I barely made one and only have them in restaurants? I think its just a matter of interesting circumstances: (1) Finding a nice dashi made from natural ingredients (dashi bars and tasting are becoming more trendy but not all dashi are made from simple natural ingredients) (2) Having leftover rice (when I was sick I would cook rice for 2 or 3 meals to have always something ready in case I would be hungry) (3) Wanting to eat a warm meal (with the temperature changing rapidly and the days becoming chilly one needs a warm, light and comforting meal…)

Here are the ochazuke I made in the past couple of weeks, top to bottom: umeboshi and pickled red chiso, umeboshi and mitsuba, 7 herbs and salmon, umeboshi grilled mushrooms and salmon.

For all the principle is the same: serve the rice in a large bowl such that it uses not more than half of it. Top with the topping of your choice. I blanched the round turnips in the 7 herbs version and slightly grilled in olive oil the long ones. Same for the mushrooms, I grilled them before. Prepare the dashi of your choice and pour while hot gently to cover the rice. Eat right away!

Artichokes

One of the food I miss much in Japan as you already know, is artichoke. For some reason it is something that reminds me my childhood. From the simply boiled large ones that one of my grand mother would prepare to eat one leave after the other dipped in mustard vinaigrette, or the tiny purple artichokes barigoule of my mother or a recipe from my other grand mother “greek style artichokes” I love them all. When we lived in Paris I used to prepare some quite often and the greek style artichokes were always a good pick for casual dinners. When we go back home, my mother always prepare artichokes for me, usually for the very first day when we arrive, since they can be made in advance, and they are very good warm or cold it means lunch or dinner is always ready for us to eat anytime. Yesterday for a family lunch she made artichokes greek style. I thought I’d share that recipe today.

Artichoke greek style (for 2)

– 10 large artichokes (in worst case artichokes heart preserves)

– 10 bell onions

– 1 tbs of coriander seeds

– 2 leaves of laurel

– a branch of thyme

– 3 tbs of olive oil

– 3tbs of white wine (optional)

Boil the artichokes and extract the hearts.

Clean the bell onion by peeling one layer.

In a large pan put the olive oil, the wine, the artichokes hearts, the onions, the coriander, thyme, laurel. Add just a bit of salt and pepper, cover with water and cook at low heat under cover for 40min.

Perfect eaten with fresh rustic bread to enjoy all the delicious juice.

Cooking with A.

When I was supposed to rest, I still cooked a bit for myself. One has to eat anyway. But during the weekend, A. wanted to help a bit with the cooking. So his main responsibility was to make apples or pears compote, one thing I invariably love, sick or not. He varied all the possible cuts: thin slices, big chunks, very tiny cuts… and all were so much better than when I was making it for myself. But then on Sunday evening, I was a little bit tired and I asked him to help me prepare some steamed gyoza. For a reason that probably no one can understand, since Sunday noon I was craving for Chinese dumpling or any other steamed dumplings. And the easiest to prepare when you’re living in Tokyo are definitely steamed gyoza – 水餃子.

Of course I wasn’t interested in any of the meat filling, I was interested in the vegan version, the one where there is on the inside some mashed vegetables. And that was perfect because I had a piece of kabocha and a few sweet potatoes that our neighbor gave me. So A. helped me making these delicious dumplings. I roughly prepared the vegetables, then he steamed them, mashed them with a few drops of soya sauce and I only had to do very simple task of filling and closing the gyoza.

Steaming user is actually very simple, if you have a bamboo steamer or if you have a steel steamer like I do just late sheet of cooking paper at the bottom of the steamer put the dumplings in top of it and cover steam for about like 5 to 10 minutes until the dough is translucent and moisten. Eat right away with soya sauce. That’s how simple it is! Thank you A. for your constant support, for helping me cooking this delicious dish and let us watch a few episodes of a stupid series!

PS: For those worried about my health condition, apparently I should survive is pneumonia. ;)

I’m just a utterly bored to have to do so little and with so much to catch up with… Being sick sucks, recovery is too slow!!

Cooking for the sick me

Well I wasn’t just tired, actually I was really sick. So when I was writing my blog post the other day I actually had a very high fever on that same day and the next day I was diagnosed with a pneumonia. What the heck is that disease? I thought it was only for old people? Am I that old already? How did I get there? Well… I must admit probably too much work, too few sleep and outdoor activity in the past days, breaking with my normal rythme that is 7-8h sleep and 45-120min of physical activities 4-6 days a week. Hopefully I was diagnosed quite early, so it wasn’t that bad, or so they said. But for sure what the doctor told me was that I shouldn’t work for a couple of days and I should rest.

What does resting mean? So far resting for me was synonymous of walking around the city or walking around the countryside, riding bicycle, practicing kyudo, going swimming in the ocean, gardening and cooking… But this time what the doctor had in mind was actually “doing nothing”. So, in the coziness of my ivory tower I’m trying to do nothing. Which is basically failing poorly. So I force myself to work at a slower pace remotely and to sleep a lot. And also because this was quite unprepared that I would be sick I needed to prepare myself a few things to eat as A. Is at work. And naturally I’m falling for some comfort food. Which comfort food for me means a lot of cream cheese (but not the regular cream cheese from Hokkaido that I usually use, no for French Kiri, which to me is the best one, well balance between fat and flavors), a lot of bread that was suppose to be our next breakfast and some fresh vegetables cooked or rather overcooked in a mushy and unpresentable manner. Which incidentally so resonates with the recent podcast from one of my favorite food bloggers I was listening to recently.

So it starts with pear compote, with steamed broccoli mashed with cream cheese, spread on campagne bread. It continues on with warm vegetables soup also topped with cream cheese. Or rather the other way around. It goes on with steam pumpkin also with cream cheese. oh! And I am having all my lunches in bed!!!

Oh! And because I had to drink a lot, unsurprisingly my favorite drink has become homemade plum syrup, it adds just the sweetness and flavor to a glass of tepid or warm water without providing the feeling of being sick that herb tea sometimes gives when one is actually sick.

And hopefully by the time I have eaten all the cream cheese, finished emptying my vegetables drawer I’ll be fully back on my feet and back to normal.

Mushy broccoli with cream cheese spread on campagne bread with a glass of homemade plum syrup

What is your favorite comfort food when you’re feeling down and sick?

How do you cook for yourself when you have little strength left in your body?

How quick…

Not enough time to do all the things I want to do… and in a snap it’s already mid December…

Busy days follow busy days… the excitement of all the things I do leaves me quite resourceless and for the first time in quite a while I feel tired. Tired of so many things undone, tired of running after time, tired because of too little sleep. I am normally a heavy sleeper. If I dont sleep 7-8h I physically can feel it and I am underperforming. For the first time in quite a while I had a nap on Saturday afternoon. It was rainy and cold, perfect to just let it go… Just 20min but my body and my mind were craving for it. It gave me new strength to start again!

I started by baking pompes a l’huile for ourselves and to give away to friends. December is definitely the time to bake pompes a l’huile, this Provence traditional sweet bread we eat for Christmas. And it’s really easy to make and bake, and so easy to eat, so making several at the same time is probably a good idea!

The recipe is quite simple. I posted it quite some time ago. I made a few variation this time. Used a little less olive oil (believe it or not, I ran out of olive oil!!!) and I used the zest of a tangerine from the garden!

This was a great success! Everyone loves pompe a l’huile!!!

Pompe in the making, proving

Scones forever!!!

There are so many things I love to eat and so few meals and time to eat them all, that I end up forgetting a few things I love. Last weekend I decided to catch up with these. So I prepared avocado rice bowls, quiche and scones. When it comes to scones I usually have in mind something for breakfast or tea-time, but this time, as we went surfing and then were busy fixing things in the house I only get to the kitchen around 18:30… and given the cold weather this weekend it was probably too late for bread. So I decided to prepare scones. And since it was almost time to think of aperitif snacks I went for two recipes.

Both use the same base. One is sweet with yuzu harvested in our garden, the other is savory with pancetta and shiitake. It is very simple and by simply changing the size or shape of the scones it can feel very differently.

Scones

– 180g of flour

– 50g of butter

– 1tsp of baking powder

– a pinch of salt

– milk (quantity will slightly vary depending on flour quality, temperature etc… but usually not more than 200ml)

In a bowl mix the flour, baking powder, and salt. Add the butter cut in small pieces and start kneading. Add milk little by little until the texture is smooth but not sticky. Form a 5cm diameter stick and leave to rest for 30min.

For the yuzu scones:

– 1 yuzu

– 2tbs of brown sugar

– a handful of flour

Wash the yuzu and dice thinly the skin. Add to the dough. Extract the juice roughly and add to the dough. Add a bit of flower if the dough becomes too sticky. Roll 2cm thick, cut to desired shape and size and bake for 12-20min at 180 depending on shape and size.

For the shiitake and pancetta scones:

– 50g of pancetta

– 1 or 2 fresh shiitake

– 1 tsp of salt, pepper

Chop the pancetta, wash and chop the shiitake. In a small pan heated at medium- high heat add the pancetta, stir gently until the fat starts to melt, add the shiitake, and stir once in a while. Cook like this for 5min. Add the cooked pancetta and shiitake to the scone mix, add salt. In really needed add a bit of flour. Add ground pepper generously. Roll 2cm thick, cut to desired shape and size and bake at 180deg for 12-20min depending on size. Enjoy!!!

Actually you may want to add some grated fresh parmigiano in the mixas well…

Gyoza

I cannot hide that I have a thing for stuffed food, for pies and for dumplings… whether they are Italian ravioli, Japanese gyoza, French ravioles, Russian pilmini, Chinese shumai and other little stuffed breads… I simply love them, how the filling is steamed in the little poach and when opened all the captured flavors develop in the mouth. And I enjoy a lot making them with my own prepared filling. You already know how much I love making ravioli, well I also love making gyoza and I want to try other recipes from Asia and eastern Europe. From the scratch, or when I am a little too busy I use gyoza “skin” 皮 that only contains flour and water. Luckily in Japan it is easy to find some (be careful though that most gyoza skin sold in supermarket contains a lot many ingredients to be good, so, as usual look at the label, if there are more than 4 ingredients, pass).

To celebrate the beginning of the cold weather I invented a new filling recipe with seasonal vegetables and that was a very nice try, to reproduce soon.

Here is my recipe!

Early winter gyoza (makes 30 pieces)

– 30 gyoza skins

– 100g of ground pork meat

– 2 sweet potatoes (mine are 15cm long, 3cm wide)

– 2 leeks

Boil the sweet potatoes with the skin. Once very soft, peel them and crush them in a bowl, add the meat. Chop the leeks and add to filling mixture. Stir well. Now it’s time to prepare the gyoza. In a skin set 1tsp of filling and close it. Repeat until all is gone.

To cook the gyoza, grease a fry pan (I used olive oil) and put the gyoza in, add 1cm of water. Cook under cover for some time until the water is gone, flip the gyoza and when they are golden flip again. Serve hot with soya sauce in which a bit of white vinegar has been added. Enjoy!!!

Stuffed bread

This all started with a picture that I saw on my IG feed one morning from Jul’s kitchen. I’ve been following her for quite some time now. Her recipes always make me want to be in Tuscany and when two years ago (whoa… It seems like ages ago!!!) we actually were thinking about moving to Florence and went there repeatedly I asked her recommendations about places to shop delicious things in Florence and they were gold. Well, just to say that her blog makes me dream of Tuscany… so… back to that picture I saw very likely on my way to work, last winter I guess… it was a savory stuffed pastry… it looked wonderful and I thought about doing some for a long time, but every strictly new recipe requires to mature in my head and to find the proper timing of ingredients and preparation. It’s only the other day that the winter vegetables started to be back in particular the cabbages, the spinaches and that I bought some pork ribs.

All was finally there to make the stuffed bread. But instead of a pastry dough or a brioche I decided to go with some straight white flour bread dough. The result was a very very delicious and warm meal, perfect for a rainy evening like today. Here is my recipe.

Stuffed bread (2 generous portions)

– 150g of flour

– 10g of salt

– 5 g of yeast

– water

– 1/2 small Chinese cabbage or 1/4 large

– a bundle of spinach

– 150 of pork ribs thinly sliced (豚バラ)

– pepper

– sesame seeds

Prepare the bread dough 1 or 2h before hand: mix the flour, the salt, the yeast, add water little by little and knead until the dough is soft and smooth. Leave to rest in a warm place under a moist cloth for 1 or 2 hours.

In the meantime, in a frypan cook the meat until golden. Wash and pat dry the vegetables.

Roll the dough with a pin, set the meat in the middle, top with the vegetables. Add some pepper. Fold the dough and close it. Flip the bread to have it upside down. Top with sesame seeds. Leave for proving about 30min and then bake at 230deg for 18min. Serve hot!

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