Tag: soup

Food in Tuscany

There is so much to say about it…

Food in Italy is always simple, fresh and great… I love to go shopping on the markets (there are markets pretty much everywhere) and find some local delish, I love to cook the simple fresh vegetables in season. My favorite Italian vegetables are zucchini, with the flower even better), fennel, artichokes, celery, radicchio, ceps and tomatoes. I love also the fresh pasta, the million varieties of cheeses and the prosciutto and the speck… but Italy is also great for herbs and dry fruits: pine nuts, hazelnuts, pistachios depending on the region. Pisa province is a region where pine nuts are produced and I couldn’t help but try them and bring some back to Japan! Recipes using them coming soon!

While in Italy I cooked a few different and very simple meals. I am a big fan of pesto soup and minestrone, so as soon as I can I usually cook one. In particular when the fresh beans are in season. It is really simple: celery, tomato, zucchini, fresh beans is the base, then add whatever: spinach, chard, carrot, onion… cook in salted water, serve with olive oil and grated Parmigiano. Enjoy warm or cold.

Fresh pasta are always good at least so much better than anything you can find elsewhere that there is no need to make tour own!! And stuffed pasta are always my favorite. Ricotta-spinach ravioli is on the top of the list, served with either a tomato sauce or chards and basil simply blanched and then cooked in olive oil with the ravioli. An other quick and delicious recipe!

When I have more time I like to prepare risotto with fresh and seasonal vegetables. Fennels that can hardly be found in Japan make a fresh risotto served with fennel flowers picked during a stroll in the garden. An onion to start with, plenty of olive oil, the perfect risotto rice, a large fennel, vegetable broth, and here is a beautiful risotto after 30 minutes!

Here it is for my selection of simple recipes for a little dinner fix in Italy!

More zucchini!!!

I could have totally go with an other zucchini week worth of new or modified recipes in the last 7 days… to add to the existing collection of zucchini recipes! I’ve been preparing most of our meals using zucchini because it’s just the season and now they grow plenty of zucchini in Isumi! So again last Saturday I got plenty… yellow, green, small and big… later there will so round ones… And with the typhoon coming and the sudden drop in temperatures, a warm soup was very welcome, so I prepared a … zucchini soup of course!!!

Zucchini naked soup

– 2 large zucchini

– olive oil

– salt and pepper

– optional: 2tbs of cream cheese

– optional: bread croutons

In a large pan filled with 1l of water boil the zucchini washed and cut in rough pieces. When tender blend and add olive oil, salt and pepper. That’s it!!! Serve warm and eat right away!

You can add the cream cheese directly in the plate. Stir a bit when it has melted. Add the bread croutons if you want a richer experience.

Cresson soup

Cresson, or watercress is this little green that is harvested in spring or in autumn, and is delicious in many various preparations. It is for some unclear reasons not so easy to find watercress easily at the market so when I find some I just buy plenty and use it in many various recipes. You’ll find in the next days the recipes I have tries this time. Some classic one and some more exploratory. I hope you’ll enjoy them and it will convince you to try this little plant in your next recipe!!

To start with, a simple watercress soup, light and green, with only 3 ingredients: watercress, milk and water. I added a bit of pink pepper for the picture. No salt, nothing added, I found it was tasteful enough. Of course you can add salt of spices, but the simple preparation reveals the real nature of the watercress.

Watercress soup

– a bundle of watercress

– 1/2L of water

– 1/3L of milk at room temperature

Wash the watercress and remove the bottom hard part if any. Boil in the water until soft. Blend, add the milk, serve. That’s it.

Soup or so

After the snow last week, the snow again this week. The weather in Tokyo was gloomy all of Thursday and Friday and I wanted some simple warm food. One thing I really love in winter is Japanese cabbages. They are perfect steamed with olive oil, thyme and salt, raw with miso, but not only. With carrots, sweet potatoes (or potatoes) they make a perfect rich soup. Soups are an alternative for one plate in winter. And since A. was complaining about the little animal protein we had recently I just added chicken to the basic vegetables soup. Here is my super simple recipe, and very very healthy.

Cabbage soup (for 2 people) 

– 1/2 cabbage

– 2 carrots

– 1 leek

– 1 sweet potato  

– mizuna

– alfalfa  

– 1 chicken breast (optional)

I just wash and chop the vegetables, and put them in a large pan full of water. I cook at high heat until it boils, then lower the heat to low. Chop the chicken breast, add it. Cook for 15min. In the mean time wash some mizuna and cut in 4cm long.

Serve with not too much bouillon, top with the mizuna, and top again with alfalfa. Add a bit of salt, pepper and turmeric if you like. 

 

Japanese delight

I finally tested a recipe inspired by the cooking book I bought last week on my way home at a bouquinist in Jimbocho. It’s an old book from the 1970’s or 1980’s and it has a lot of very beautifully presented food. Plating changes with time and they certainly had some nice one at that time too!! Though a few a bit crazy… bubble time… The recipes that attracted me much were the miso soup and other clear bouillons. I mean I didn’t actually read much of the recipes, rather I enjoyed reading the explanations about how to choose a good rice and how to cook it very interesting. But the soup section pictures inspired me a lot. One recipe I wanted to try was daikon miso soup. Actually, after years of living in Japan, I finally start to really enjoy cooking daikon. May be because the most often we find is gratted daikon, which I find extremely boring, or simmered and over cooked, but there is so much to do with it. I could now totally go with a daikon week of recipes!!! Would you like that??? Let me know and I’ll be happy to share my favorite classic Japanese recipes and my invented ones!

Today, I’ll just share a simple white miso soup with both radish and daikon, but daikon only, or radish only, works very well too. It is extremely simple and delicious and warm form a chilly evening. You need for 4 serving, 1.5L of dashi (I used simple katsuobushi),  a 7cm cut of daikon, 3 large pink radishes, 4 small leaves from the radishes tops (optional), 3tbs of white miso. In a large pan, prepare the dashi. Peel the daikon, cut the piece in half in the lenght to obtain half circle shapes. Cut slices of 1mm in the width. Add to the dashi and cook for 10min. Wash the radishes and slice them. Add to the soup and cook for 4min. Add the washed tops, the miso, stir and serve immediately. If you want to prepare ahead, reduce the cooking time to 7min and 2min. Add the tops and miso after reheating the soup, and serve immediately. I served it with grilles sanma, and briwn rice with fried tofu and gingko nuts.

Shiitake week! Day 2!

When suddenly the weather is chilly in the country, that it’s late and I want some confort food, I usually prepare a hot pasta soup with a clear vegetable bouillon. Leek and carrots are the two main ingredients for the bouillon, but alone they do not provide enough, so I like to add something else. This something else being more than often shiitake. Mushrooms in general are great to prepare when in a rush. They just need to be washed and are really easy to cut: slices, quarters, dice… they are quick to cook too… some are also good raw, but not really shiitake. In my warm soup I added a bit of parsley, and for the pasta I chose some pretty stelline.

You can finish with a bit of gratted parmigiano. Keep warm!

Typhoons

It’s the second weekend with a typhoon this month and the third all day rain weekend. Busy with a lot of work, we decided to stay in Tokyo to see some friends, go to the movies, see an exhibition and … work… It was also a good opportunity for me to get familiar with my new oven. So I baked scones Saturday morning and tarts/quiches on Sunday. And I start to get use to it!  Since I had some leftover brown rice I made a new version on my brown rice quiche. Also with leek, but this time I simply chopped thinly 3 Japanese leeks and cooked them in a bit of butter at very low heat, until they were all creamy and topped the pie crust baked simply without nothing. Perfect match of crispy/creamy texture. I served it with a cresson soup. Simply boiled the cresson with some stock of your choice. Blend, add some cream, and serve. That’s it!

Have a beautiful week!! 

Baking scones
Baking scones

Butternut squash and pasta

I’ve been posting a lot about butternut squash these days, indeed it’s the pick season now before shifting to kabocha which taste is very different. And since I’ve been living alone in the past weeks, one butternut squash is a lot of food for one, so I’ve cooked it one way, an other, and an other… and tried to find new ones… Last night I came back late from work but at last the rain had stopped so I could walk home using a detour to enjoy being out. But it was really cold. I almost regretted not having a beanie. So I arrived home craving for something hot to eat. And I was pleased to find some leftover butternut squash soup in the fridge. Yet I was starving and it was not enough. So after browsing my cupboard and the fridge I opted for short pasta that I simply threw in the soup that was already boiling and I cooked 10-12 minutes until the pasta were soft and the soup has almost reduced to puree. I generously gratted fresh parmigiano on top and added black pepper. And I was very happy with it!!!

Vegan butternut squash soup (2 or 3 servings)

– 1/2 or 1/3 butternut squash

– 1 cup of soya milk

– salt and pepper

Peel the butternut squash and remove the seeds. Cut in pieces. Boil in 1L of water. Once soft enough, blend everything with the soya milk, salt and pepper. That’s it!  It’s basically the same recipe as the cauliflower soup!

Then you can add the short pasta. I chose stelline. And cook them together in the soup. For a better result use fewer water to cook the butternut squash or as I did, use left over soup.

Where is the Japanese autumn?

One thing that is really beautiful in Japan is the autumn sunny days called akibare-秋晴れ. They are usually warm and the blue of the sky contrasts vividly with the changing colors of the nature. This period usually streches until mid-November even December sometimes. This year, after the rainy summer we had, I was longing for this period, enjoying gardening and walks in the nature. But after just a very few days, we’ve entered a series of rainy days that seem simply endless. And any time I watch the weather forecast it seems it is stuck with the rain mark… but not only does it rain, it is also chilly. So nothing better to warm up than a little soup and some brown rice. For the soup I chose a cauliflower. Simply blanched it until just tender, not over cooked otherwise the taste changes. They blended it with the water and added some soya milk. Finished with salt, pepper and curcuma. The cauliflower just cooked as above, and well blended is creamy enough and doesn’t need further addition of cream or whatsoever ingredient. The brown rice, I took the time to cook it in the rice cooker, on the brown rice menu. It takes about 2h30 but it is worth doing so because it becomes very soft. Then I made rice balls, topped them with a small table spoon of miso just to cover them thinely and grilled them in a fry pan miso face down. You can also grill them in a grill or an oven. That’s it!!

Have a beautiful week! And don’t forget your umbrella if you’re in Tokyo!! 

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