Tag: Soya sauce

Simmered kabocha

All a sudden it has become very cold and warm food, rich and tasty is more than necessary. During the autumn I have used a lot of butternut squash, leaving the little Japanese kabocha on the side for a while, knowing that they would be right there when needed in the winter, as the season for kabocha is much longer (though you may find it year round when grown in green houses). And now the time has come to use it. kabocha, like most squashes and pumpkin is versatile and easy to cook. The great part with kabocha is that it actually doesn’t need to be peeled and cooking time is rather short. One of my favorite traditional Japanese recipe is to prepare it with dashi and soya sauce. It can be eaten hot, cold or reused after in other recipes. It is very simple to make and often found in bento boxes. Here is my recipe for the simmered kabocha.

Simmered kabocha (4 servings)

– 1/2 kabocha

– 40g of katsuobushi in flakes

– 2tbs of soya sauce

Wash the skin of the kabocha, remove the seeds (you can keep them to grill them to make snacks… or plant them)

Cut the kabocha in large bites with the skin on (only remove parts of the skin that is brownish or hard, usually the part that was in contact with the ground).

Put the kabocha in a pan and cover with water. Add the katsuobushi flakes in a tea bag, and cook at low heat until the kabocha is just soft (test with a bamboo toothpick). Do not over cook, you’ll end up with purée. Remove all liquid and the bag of katsuobushi. Add the soya sauce. Eat right away, or when cold.

I used the leftovers in a sautéed vegetable dish. With a bit if oil, the kabocha becomes golden and even more delicious.

Shojin cuisine

As I was questioning myself about Buddhist cuisine in China regarding these Chinese beancurd noodles, I decided to do a bit of search and reopen my Shojin cuisine book. I was right, until the 18th century in China buddhist and taoist temples would only serve vegetables soup and tea to pilgrims, the same thing monks were eating. Only it started to be a more elaborated and widespread cuisine during the Qing dynasty (late 17th to 20th century). In japan shojin cuisine was of course imported from China together with Zen by Dogen during the Kamakura period in the 12th-13th century. All the basic about Shojin cuisine were actually written in the 典座教訓 (Tenzo Kyokun) itself inspired by Chinese writings. It has evolved regularly from the early 17th century during Edo period to become shat it is now. Next time I go to China I’ll try to eat in a temple and try local buddhist or taoist cuisine for sure!

But back to my kitchen I decided as I said to reopen my Shojin cuisine book from the Sanko-in past abbess. I always have a lot of pleasure opening a cookbook I haven’t opened for a while and this one is no exception. One thing I love with that book is that it actually tell not only how to cook but also how and how long you can keep the food you have prepared, something that I find extremely useful. Browsing the book, I found plenty of autumn recipes I wanted to try and luckily I had all the ingredients needed to proceed. I tried two recipes one of kabocha and one of burdock. Both extremely simple. And I was very happy with the result, being back in my kitchen and preparing delicious locally grown vegetables. Here are the two recipes, not the way they were in the book but the way I actually cooked.

Burdock:

– 1/2 burdock

– 3tbs of sake

– 3tbs of soya sauce

Wash and cut the burdock in 4cm long sticks. Cut each piece in the length in 4 to 10 depending on the diameter.

Place in a small pan with water and boil 10min. Drain and the in a little pan add the sake and soya sauce and simmer for 20min at low very heat under cover. Eat warm or cold. Keeps one month refrigerated according to the book but it was so good we ate everything at once!!!!

Kabocha with black sesame and yuzu:

– 1/4 of kabocha

– 4tbs of black sesame

– 1/2cup of sake

– 3tbs of brown sugar

– grated yuzu peel

– pinch of salt

Cut the kabocha in bites keeping the skin of course. In a pan put the kabocha and cover with water. Add the sake, and sugar and bring to a boil, cook until kabocha is soft but not mushy. Grill the sesame in a pan and grind finely in a suri bowl. Add 2tbs of the cooking broth of the kabocha, add the salt. Remove the kabocha from the broth, set in a plate, add the sesame mix and finish with grated yuzu peel.

Soba salad

I’ve been so busy at work running from one place to an other and with some tension when our robot was making its debut on stage, and with the moving that I barely cooked and even barely thought about writing a post to share with you a delicious recipe. .. for which I must apologize!

But as little as I cooked I still found some very nice combinations for a simple Japanese meal that can be prepared everywhere else than Japan since the ingredients are easy to find. What you need is a pack of dry soba noodles (I use only 100% buckwheat flour noodles, but it’s up to you), some green beans, a few fresh okras, some spinaches or mulukhiyah, a piece of fresh cod fish, soya sauce, 1 kabosu or 1 lime. That’s it! Blanche the spinach, the okra, the green beans and bath them in very cold water. Grill the cod in a slightly greased frypan. Boil the soba and bath them in cold water. Squeeze the kabosu or lime, add the same volume of soya sauce. In a bowl add the soba well drained, dry with a cooking cloth the vegetables, cut them and add to the soba. Top with the cod that should crumble. Finish with some dressing. Enjoy! 

Simple Japanese meal

With friends at home for the whole weekend I ended up not cooking Japanese at all, and since Friday I was still craving for some simple Japanese taste. Finally last night I got it done! A. is good at preparing Japanese rice, which saves a bit of time when I am finishing work rather late, and I had some perfect fresh Japanese vegetables for a simple meal: onion for Shirako, white carrots and new lotus roots. I simply wash/peel and cut all the vegetables, heat a bit if oil in a pan and cook them under cover until almost done (the onion being probably the most critical) then I remive the cover, add some soya sauce and cook at high heat for 2 minutes, and serve with the rice. It’s not very elaborated but it tastes perfectly Japanese!

Japanese style quiche

Today we were invited at our neighbors places for a group session of Vipassana meditation and a dinner aftewards. I was busy all afternoon harvesting plums and didn’t see time flying, but absolutely wanted to prepare some food to bring rather than simply buying drinks. So in a rush, the thing I am the best at is making quiches. So I prepared a Japanese style quiche. Japanese style meaning that I used buckwheat flour, katsuo bushi flakes and soya sauce. For the topping I used tomatoes and red onions, with a egg base of soya milk and soya sauce, making it taste a bit like chawanmushi, this Japanese egg-base preparation that is steamed. It was simple to prepare and cooked in 30min in the oven, which is hand-free to continue doing what I was busy with.

As for the meditation, it was my first group meditation and I was curious to see what it was, even if I am a total novice and know very little about the different methods except for a bit of Zazen, so trying Vipassana was interesting, but I guess it requires a steady practice to feel any benefit from it and I not sure I am ready for that… we’ll see. Yet discovering it and discussing with some steady practitioners was very interesting. A great experience! 

Carrot pudding

So, as promised, here is my very probable entry recipe for the recipe and cooking contest by Soy Sauce. The same I participated in last year and was selected as a finalist and received the bronze prize. I chose a recipe with very simple ingredients, that can be served as a main or a side, and that is very easy. So here it is! 

Carrot pudding Japanese style  

– 2 carrots of medium, large size

– a piece of ginger, about 2x2x2cm but not strictly

– 1 large egg, or two small

– 2tbs of soya sauce

Wash and cut the carrots roughly (if they are not safe from chemicals peel them). In a pan add the carrots, cover with water and add the ginger as a block. Boil until the carrots are soft. Remove the water, the ginger, pit the carrots in a food processor or blender, puréed them, add the egg and mix again, add the soya sauce and mix again to obtain an homogeneous purée. Grease an oven dish or individual oven dishes, add the preparation to the dish. You can either bake or steam the preparation. Bake in a oven at 180deg until a knife comes out clean. Or steam it. Serve directly in the individual oven dishes, or slice and serve, or rather, like Idid this time, use shapes to cut to your liking and serve. This is a perfect main course served with salad and greens; or a side, like on my picture with a pork filet deglazed in soya sauce. Bon appetit and wish me good luck for the contest!

Soya sauce recipe contest

So… apparently the Parisian sister has again let us down once again, and despite her promise to contribute every week steadily, she didn’t keep it more than 2months…  Sorry, no sweets and cake recipes because I myself rarely cook or bake some. I am more interested in meals and breads! Recently with the spring coming I’ve been using a lot of greens, and in particular I am working on a new recipe for the soya sauce recipe contest, which deadline is approaching rapidly. I thought I was almost ready with a receipe inspired from my mother spring glazed vegetables and it would definitely includes some spring greens, most certainly some extra thin green beans, because I found some lovely ones at the farmers market Saturday and prepare this delicious dish which was not very picturesque. And likely features also some new onions… I love their sweet taste and the texture they bring to a dish! So many options now… The problem, now that I know how the contest works, is that the finale is in August and these vegetables are not going to be found easily then… but I have a hard time thinking of an all season recipe… with what? Mushrooms, potatoes, cucumber, carrots, leek… hum… nothing too fancy here… so I still need to work on it a bit and I’ll let you know what will be my entry to the contest soon!

In the meantime here is my killing soya sauce recipe from yesterday dinner: sea bass with soya sauce glazed new vegetables  

– a sea bass filet

– a handful of green beans

– a handful of snappeas

– 1 large new potatoes

– 1 new onion

– 2 tbs of oil

– 1 tbs of soya sauce  

Wash the vegetables, don’t peel the potatoes, just brush them. Cut the fish filet into cubes or slices as you like. Remove the stem of the greens. Remove the first skin of the new onion, cut in 4 or 8. In a pan, heat the oil, add the onion, then the potatoes. Stir and lower the heat when it starts to be golden. Then add green beans. Cook at low heat under cover for 2-3min. Stir well. Add the fish, the soya sauce and cook under cover for 3min (abit more if your fish cubes are large). Finally add the snap peas. Cook under cover one minute. Serve and eat immediately!

Have a good week! 

Plum trees start to bloom

It’s been a few weeks that the red plum trees in the garden were boiling to bloom, now it’s official plum flower season has started. Even some if the white plum trees have started to bloom too. It is one of my favorite moment in the year. It is still cold but spring is already showing up. I like the beautiful little flowers against the crisp blue sky.  So using the plum as a base I prepared a one-plate lunch with pink small radishes for the color, plain white rice shaped in plum flower (I made 5 little balls that I then compacted together using a piece of cooking wrap), an umeboshi on top. Then scrambled eggs with nori and grilled shiitake with sesame and a drop of sesame oil and soya sauce. And everything ready in 20min (when in a rush cooking rice in a pan is much faster than the rice cooker). And shaping the rice took me the most time because I had no clue how to do it, but I’m quite proud I managed! Happy Setsubun!!!

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.

Proudly powered by WordPress | Theme: Baskerville 2 by Anders Noren.

Up ↑

Verified by MonsterInsights