Tag: soup

Recovery food

As I was telling you on Monday, I was pretty down with pollen allergy and vertigos. I am very rarely feeling bad so I am not used to it and it annoys me a lot to be reduced in any of my activities.  Because of the vertigos I could only eat industrial butter rolls, the one sold in all the combinis, and drink coca-cola. What a diet for me!!! So as soon as thing got better I prepared a very simple recovery recipe with fresh vegetables and little star pasta. I prepared two versions of it, a dry one and a soup one. In the dry version I use 1 new carrot and a bundle of mizuna, a bit of olive oil, that’s it. I cooked it until all the water was gone. In the soup version I added 2 little sweet potatoes, a few snap peas and curcuma. Very easy to prepare, very easy to eat! A perfect dish to recover!

Dry version of the recipe
Dry version of the recipe

Warm soup for cold day

Since I was in France in November when it snowed in Tokyo, today was the first snow of the winter for me. It only snowed to be cold, wet but not white, but I don’t mind because we ste going to the mountains soon and we will have plenty if snow and white there! But damn, how this rainy-snowy weather plus A. Away make me feel cold and gloomy!!! I needed a warm colorful soup to cheer me up before my late night meeting. So after browsing the fridge I decided to prepare a warm soup with some fresh sunny taste. I used coconut oil, fresh ginger and a zest of lemon for the sunny and warm side, together with a red carrot and two leeks for the winter side. And because I’m busy running here and there, I added some green lentil. That’s it! So simple to cook. In a large heated pan I put 1/2tsp of coconut oil,agg the leek cut in small sticks, then add the carrots cut in small sticks too. Then 2 large zest of lemon, and a piece of ginger peele and cut in small pieces. When the water comes to a boil I add 2 small handfuls of green lentils, a pinch of salt. Cook for 10min (the lentils must not be over cooked and too soft, it’s better if they are slightly undercooked). Serve and eat rigt away!!!

My Japanese style vegan soup

Largely inspired by the quinoa soups (winter and autumn) I made, I wanted something more Japanese. So I cooked in a pan: one sweet potato, one large sato imo, a piece of kabocha and a leek in a bit of olive oil, and in an other pan I cooked a mix of seeds and beans together with brown rice, I cooked them as you would cook regular Japanese rice. I didn’t cook the veggies and the rice together to avoid over cooking the veggies, to keep their beautiful colors (black rice has a tendency to color a lot) and limit the stickiness of the rice and seeds. Just before serving I added a bit of boiling water to the rice mix to make it soupy, and I deglazed the veggies with a large table spoon of soy sauce. I served the rice mix, the vegetables and topped with golden sesame seeds. A rich and tasty soup for a winter evening.

A little soup

With some yellow carots, red carrots and normal carrots, some lotus root, some potatoes, and with some Italian beans soup mix that I cooked for lunch, I made for dinner this warm and rich vegan soup. Very very simple and so quick if you have cooked the beans before (optimally leftovers). In a large pan I put the cooked beans, water, quite a lot, and then cut the veggies and add them. I like both when it’s overcooked and veggies melt in the mouth, or when they are still crunchy, in particular the carrots, so I adjust the insertion time in the pan and the cooking time depending on that. I served warm, optionally with some gratted parmegiano, a good preparation foe our stay in Sicily!!!

Carrot soup and almond cake

Carrots and tomatoes could both be on top of my favorite food and favorite infredients. I love how it is easy to prepare them in many different ways, raw, grilled, simmered, in puree, sauce, with herb, just with salt… I could continue endlessly the list of options they offer. Yet, I don’t think it is easy to find delicious fresh products after tomatoes pick season in summer, and carrots, which season for the big sweet ones is now on, are often too hard and a little bitter. So when I find some big, soft, juicy and sweet carrots, I prepare them in the most simplest way: a soup which is just made of carrots and a bit of water, eventually a bit of sea salt and black pepper for the final decoration. Nothing more because the taste is just perfect like this. For two, I used two large carrots, peel them, boil them, blend them, add a bit of water if needed to obtain the preferred consistency. Serve hot or cold.

And because after a long day a soup is just not enough for dinner for us, we need carbs, I prepared a very strange thing that actually was perfect with the carrot soup (I must say that I am a bit in an inventive period now, so I try new recipes I invent on the spot and things have been working pretty well so far!). I made a kind of vegan almond bread, or almond cake:  it’s basically the base recipe of the scones, where I replaced half of the flour by rough almond powder, butter by vegetal oil, sugar by salt (much less though) and milk with soya milk,  and set in a cake pie to bake for 30min at 160deg. It gave a very crumbly bread texture a bit between scones and brioche and the almond taste was perfect with the carrot soup. 

Quenelles sequel

So once you have made some oven grilled quenelles, the next thing you can do is a green soup.  for that green soup, as I mentioned yesterday it is very simple, green leaves of any kind work perfectly: spinach, radish tops, turnip tops, salad… and since I found beautiful radishes with perfect green and yound tops, I simply used that. After washing thoroughly the leaves to remove soil I boil them in a 3/4L of salted water. Once well boiled I blend them thinely and add some cream (vegetal or not), some pepper. I slice the quenelles add them to the soup and cook for 10min. Then serve. The dish, because of the quenelles is quite rich and is a full dinner for me if you count one quenelle per person.

Pickled cabbage

This week, our nice little grandma neighbor gave us some salt pickled chinese cabbage. She has offered to teach me how to make it if we like it. Of course we liked it! So next weekend I’m looking forward to learn how to make it. In particular because I like Chinese cabbage but they are too big, and if I buy one we have to eat some for 3 consecutive days of more and I get tired of it. So pickling a part of it seems a very good option to keep it a little longer. And I find actually quite easy to use when pickled, even more than raw. 

Last night I used it in an improved recipe where I found it brings the perfect salty-crunchy taste and texture to a very simple saffron pasta soup. I used 1 cup of small soup pasta, 1 dose of saffron, a little piece of butternut squash peeled, a puece of pickled cabbage thinly cut, a piece of flounder, optional, black pepper.

In a pan I boil 0.75l of water, add the saffron and the butternut squash cut in small cubes, the pasta. Separately I grill the flounder in a fry pan. A minute before the pasta are ready I add the cabbage. Stir well. Serve the pasta/veggies then the fish, add black pepper. That’s it! 

Back to “normal”

After one full week of reunited Tokyo Paris sisters, it is time to part again, not for too long, since we’ll reunite with our whole family for another Christmas in Sicily, which I am very much looking forward too!!!

Shibamata
Shibamata

One week with guests at home and usual work is always quite intense. Dining out, waking up earlier to spend sometime together in the morning, and using our days off to travel the city. Yesterday was Culture day 文化の日 and we had quite a full day to enjoy the beautiful autumnal weather: we went to Shibamata to see some old shopping street and beautiful temple, then head to the new Otani hotel for a teppanyaki lunch and stroll in the Japanese garden. Spent part of the early afternoon at Dailanyama T-site, stopped on the way back at the Aman hotel, and finish shopper in Asakusa for some order-made paper lantern P. wanted for a very long time. Back home just in time for sunset and mount Fuji!!! (Don’t think of this kind of schedule if you are not motorized!)

And then by dinner our guests were gone, going back to Paris. And a sudden emptiness and quietness st home! Time for us to catch-up with our regular habits and in particular with our veggie-based dinner! So I prepared a very simple soup with butternut squash, potatoes, burdock, lotus root, cabbage, a large piece of konbu for the broth and finished with a little of soya sauce and sesame seeds. So simple and very Japanese in flavors.

Autumn quinoa soup

Last Christmas my parents offered me a giant book on vegetarian cooking. I’ve tried several recipes from that book and a lot of inspiration. I also learned a lot about some basic preparations. But if there were only one recipe to remember about it, the one that I would have not thought of, it’s the quinoa soup. I love that recipe and how it can easily be adjusted to the seasonal ingredients. This time I prepared it with half of a little kabocha, 2 little potatoes, 1 large very ripe tomato and one Japanese eggplant.  First, I cut all the veggies but the tomato in dice then in a pan on high heat, greased with olive oil I roast them a bit. Add water for 2.5 soup servings, 1/2 to 2/3 cup of quinoa (I used black quinoa, but red and white work perfectly too). Add the tomato diced or in 1/8. Add a bit of black pepper and nutmeg (salt is not necessary with the nutmeg I find). Cook under cover at medium heat for 10 to 15min. Serve hot!

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