Getting ready!

On August 20th I will cook for the final of a cooking contest. It’s my first cooking contest and I have clue how it works. For me cooking is quite an intimate experience, I usually cook alone and enjoy it very much, so cooking in front of people is going to be a fun challenge!!! For the contest I needed to write down the recipe of the dish I will cook and more difficult the quantities required. Since I cook by feeling, on the spot, with the ingredients I have I don’t keep track of what I put in exactly, hence I started this cooking diary to keep track of my ideas, but not the recipe in detail as you may have noticed. So I wrote down some numbers in my recipe but I needed to check if they were actually ok. For example with 100g of buckwheat flour and a bit of rice flour can I roll a dough big enough for a 20cm pie dish etc… I guess I could, but I needed to be sure before the contest. And since tomorrow I leaving Japan for more than 2 weeks (going to the US and Canada) and I won’t have much time when I come back, I finally did it last night. And everything seems to work well!!! I didn’t put to much effirt on the shape, but the taste was amazing!!! I have a winner I’m sure, hope to convince!!!!

July 28, 2016

Summer vegetable soup

The summer is chilly so far and the rainy season is surprisingly not yet finished. It is very nice to eat a warm dinner at night and summer vegetables soup is always a good pick. Ready in less than 15min, full of delicious vegetables, warm and tasty with infinite variety, it is really easy to prepare. For the bouillon I use a veggie bouillon base when I don’t cook leek or onion. As for the veggies: whatever I find at the farmers market. This time green beans, flat beans and tomatoes. While the bouillon is heating up I wash and prepare the beans, cut them in small pieces and add them to the bouillon. I also add the tomato (peeled) cut in two halves. When it is boiling I add some optional little pasta (here Sicilian little soup pasta) and cook until the pasta are ready: about 11min. Serve directly and add for those who like, some gratted parmegiano. That’s it!

July 26, 2016

Back to normal

The quick trip to France followed by a weekend in Ohara to recover from the jetlag, enjoy the fresher air in the country, see friends and celebrate Sea day with a swim in a warm and beautiful ocean, it’s time to go to the lab again, stay seated 12h in front of my computer and regret there is no outdoor pool nearby (why on earth would they shutdown the beautiful pool we had on campus just when I arrived????)… Hopefully there are the colorful one-plate full of Japanese tastes with fresh shiso, soya sauce, rice, grilled tuns and raw summer veggies! While everyone here and there will go on holiday, we will keep working and moving: next biz trip already planned and departure in 10 days!

July 19, 2016

Rice salad Japanese style

Japanese purists would hang me for that recipe!!! In the edamame gohan I’ve added boiled chick peas, and served this “mame gohan” with blanched green beans, cherry tomatoes and hard boiled egg. A sort of “salade de riz” as we call it in France, (so 70’s tupperware cooking!!!) but with a Japanese touch. Of course for the dressing it’s just a little of soya sauce if the green beans and tomatoes, the sacrilege doesn’t go that far!

Speaking of soya sauce, I’ve been selected as a finalist for a cooking contest organized by the soya sauce association! The finale is on August 20th… Let’s see what I can do. It’s my first cooking contest. I have no idea how it is gonna look like…

July 7, 2016

Craving for fresh pasta al pesto

This weekend Sunday I was looking forward for swimming in the icean and body boarding. We first wanted to go really early in the morning between high and low tide but we over slept and when we woke up at 7:30 it was already to close to low tide, and there nothing more boring than low tide: the water is shallow and very little waves for body bording. So we had to wait fir the next high tide that was later in the afternoon. At 16:30 I was really excited to go but there was no wave… Well at least we could swim… But the 22deg announced on the surf report was not too accurate and it was rather a 17deg, with a little chilly wind blowing… Swimming ended up by trying up to the thights and resigning… Back home… Frustrated… Looking at magazines and suddenly craving for pasta al pesto. The problem is that A. doesn’t really like pesto: no parmegiano allowed and no pune nuts either… So the best option was to do a tomato based one and to rapidly prepare some fresh tagliatelle (yes, I know, most normal people will just open a box of dry tagliatelle…). Now that I know really how to use my pasta machine it’s really easy to make whatever pasta in a short time and without having to wash the kitchen floor to ceiling for the flour eveywhere. So I made the tagliatelle, went to cut fresh basil in the garden, and added really plenty of little cherry tomatoes, olive oil, and that’s it!!! I wish a very pkeasant week!!!

July 4, 2016

Shojin cuisine inspiration

Since I got my Shojin cuisine book I only tried one recipe but many others are really simple and delicious. So I’ve decided to try (and slightly adapt) two other recipes. One is a classic, the otherone is rather new for me. But even the classic I gave it a little twist. I really love green beans salad, alone, with potatoes or with tomatoes. It’s a real simple dish perfect with thin little green beans or flat beans that my mother cooked very often in season. I used the recipe of miso green beans as a base and mixed it with my childhood memories. So I added small ripe tomatoes. So it’s just blanching the green beans, just a few minutes, they should remain vivid green and crisp, mixing with miso of you choice, adding the tomatoes in quarters (bottom left of the picture).

The second recipe is eggplant and edamame. The colors and mix of textures and tates really attracted me and I was very happy with the result. The recipe apparently used fava beans or broad beans but the season is over and the season for eamame just started so I replaced them. Also in the recipe the beans were sweetened with sugar, but I didn’t find it necesary, the edamame being already super sweet. So you need half little eggplant per person and a handfull of shelled edamame for two. Halve the eggplants, in a frypan greased with oil cook the eggplants, skin size first, the turn them. They must be soft but not overcooked. Keep to cool on kitchen paper skin up. Boil the edamame, when ready shell them and peel them. The thin skin over the beans must be removed for a smooth preparation, and is actually super easy to remove. Place the beans in a mortar and crush them but not too much. Cut the eggplnt in bites and top them with the edamame.

Both recipes are perfect served at room temperature.

June 19, 2016

Ratatouille ravioli

Yes, I made ravioli again! I was too happy last week to finally masterize the pasta machine and the ravioli mold. So far I was using them but it was never perfect, but now I know how to do and it works really well. And because we love ravioli there is no excuse not to make some! The problem was to find the appropriate filling. Last week I used asparagus, but this time I wanted to challenge myself with something new, something more summer than spring. There was not too many option at the farmers market, so I decided to go for ratatouille since there was everything I needed to make a real ratatouille the way my grand mother would.

So first prepare the ratatouille: onion, zucchini, eggplant, capiscum, tomato. All cut in small pieces, a bit of olive oil, garlic for those who like I don’t), salt, black pepper and a leaf of fragant laurel. Cook at low heat under cover for 2 to three hours, check and stir every 30min. Since we want to use this as a filling it needs to be significantly dry, so remove the cover if needed in the end. Cool when ready, ravioli filling cannot be used warm. Then prepare the dough with the classic recipe: 100g flour, 1egg, salt, olive oil. I actually used half flour half semolina. Then roll your dough until the level of thinness you like (I used 8 out of 9 on my pasta machine). Then flour well one side of the dough and ise the ravioli mold to fill them and shape them.

Now prepare a big pan with water to boil the ravioli, and add one big branch of fresh rosemary for the broth. Keep the water boiling 3min before adding the ravioli. The smell of rosemary should be quite strong before adding them. Cook until they come back to float on the surface. Serve immediately, just with olive oil and pepper. The rosemary broth slightly perfumes the ravioli to bring a perfect balance of taste with the ratatouille filling.

June 5, 2016

When A. is out

There are weeks like this week when we have westerners visiting for work as I was mentioning yesterday. This week actually both I and A. do have visitors and this means a lot of eating out, and usually working late (the regular work still has to be done, right?), so when the opportunity after a long day at work to dine at home (alone) finally arrives, it’s only to eat things I love, simple, fresh, and full of cheese that A. wouldn’t eat :)!
I was lucky to find beautiful tiny zucchini in Koganei and I had a few cherry tomatoes waiting in the fridge, I quickly roasted both of them in a hot pan, just a few minutes, I added pieces of mozzarella, the fresh juice of half a lemon, a bit of olive oil, salt, pepper and went out on the terrace to cut some fresh mint, and my dinner was ready, together with a taste of summer!

May 26, 2016

Summer plate

The very first days of sudden hot weather always make me happy but I have a hard time adjusting with the temperature and never know what are the proper clothing. I feel kind of feverish without being sick. When this happens I like super simple a freshfood, eating melon and grapes a lot, and preparing some very simple dishes. Brown rice is a real treat in that case. Simple to prepare, both delicious warm or cold, easy to accommodate with all the vegetables and herbs. I love shiso for its fresh taste and its herbal texture, thinely chopped and mixed twith rice is just a perfect match. As for the vegetables I take what is available on the market, and because we didn’t go to Ohara, it’s not that fancy: mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, salad. The dressing is a simple olive oil plus a bit of fresh lemon and a few drops of soya sauce. Simple as can be!

May 24, 2016