Tag: tradition

Special guest: La bouillabaisse

Monk fish in the bouillon
Monk fish in the bouillon

For this second special guest, we have picked our mother with a very traditional dish in our family: La bouillabaisse, or Bouillante. This typical Provence dish is a grand summer tradition in our family. Our great grand father used to go fishing near La Ciotat every Sunday and bring back the fishes, our great grand mother prepared it, our grand mother fished too and took over to prepare it , and now our mother prepares it too. 

No one fishes anymore in our family and what was a  fisherman’s hot pot to use all the small fishes and less noble fishes has now turned into a very high end and not so easy to eat/find dish. Of course a lot of restaurants in the south of France serve something they call bouillabaisse but nothing compares with our traditional and familial preparation. Bouillabaisse in our family consists in 3 separate dishes: the fish soup with bread, saffron potatoes and rouille; the fishes cooked in bouillon; the “ramichelle” with rouille. The first thing is to find the proper ingredients and even when living in the south of France it is not that easy! The rock fishes for the soup: wrasses and combers, the white fishes for serving in second: large red mullet, john dory, monk fish.

Soup with the saffron potatoes and bread and rouille
Soup with the saffron potatoes and bread and rouille

Once that is secured it is rather straightforward to prepare. The fish soup must be a clear bouillon. In our family that’s the way it is made and eaten. We use only fishes (no crab…) and don’t keep any flesh to obtain a brown golden bouillon. It is all hand made, no machine here.
Large soft potatoes are sliced roughly and sickly and boiled in saffron water. 
The rouille is a kind of mayonnaise with saffron, paprika, red pepper and additionally garlic if you like it.
The ramichelle are simply vermicelli boiled in the fish soup (not on the pictures because honestly not very photogenic!) eaten with rouille so delicious!

Thanks Mum for this amazing dinner and this familial recipe!

Bouillabaisse family table with croutons, saffron potatoes croutons again, fish soup and rouille
Bouillabaisse family table with croutons, saffron potatoes croutons again, fish soup and rouille

Umeboshi – 梅干し

The best way to enjoy umeboshi is with simple plain white rice in my opinion. Since I got a big pot of freshly made little shiso umeboshi from our neighbor  (mine are big plums without shiso), I really wanted to try them. I prepared simple white rice, and to make it a dinner I added a little of ginger grilled pork and some little radishes grilles too.

The plum are just freshly pickled and in their juice to they are salty-sour-sweet, very tasty and melting in the mouth. Actually they are delicious without rice too and now I understand why a Japanese traditional snack for kid is umeboshi. There are so many ways to prepare them and so many ways to eat them!!

25year old umeboshi

I must say that when our neighbor told me she would give me some 25year old umeboshi, like if it were a very special gift, I was a bit suspicious. Who keeps food for that long? I mean we can keep alcohol but pickles? Then I did my homework and found out that 100 year old umeboshi do exist and are still edible so what’s 25 years?! And then she bring me a little bag of the treasured plums. And finally we tried them. I wanted something really simple to try them to actually enjoy the taste so I simply prepared gomadofu (sesame flavored tofu), a red cabbage salad with jakko, and rice, plain white rice. I was worried they might salty, or sour but actually they weren’t. The flesh is rather dry compared to umeboshi of the year, but the taste was really amazing. Rather sweet with a strong plum taste, not sour at all. I guess they would be perfect for ochazuke when the plum flesh can get a little more moisture. But they were worth trying! And since she gave me quite many actually you’ll see umeboshi a little bit more in the future!

Rainy season – 梅雨

梅雨 literally the plum rain is the perfect word for the Japanese rainy season. In June it’s getting hot and humid and this is the season for harvesting plums. So everywhere it’s about ume-everything: umeshu, umeboshi, ume jam… We have several plum trees in the garden producing every year dozens of kilos of fruits. Unfortunately in the past we haven’t been there in June for the harvest season. Only last and this year we managed to be in Japan and harvest our plums. Last year with the help of Mrs I. I made some umeshu that I’ve just bottled, and is apparently delicious (I can only enjoy its beautiful smell since I don’t drink alcohol anymore). It was actually more simple to do than I expected only it takes a whole year to wait to start drinking it.

This year I decided to make umeboshi with our 85year old neighbor. She promised me this winter to teach me and since then I’ve looking forward to it. The day finally came! I harvested some of our plums Saturday, washed them and had then bath in a lot of water for a whole night and yesterday I prepared my first umeboshi. Here again it was much simpler than I expected. It’s only salt and plums. And time. Bonus before I can enjoy our umeboshi obasan gave me 25year old umeboshi. Something I’m looking forward to try too very soon!! I’ll keep you updated!

One more thing I love about this season too, this is also the season for vibrant greens and colorful hydrangeas blooming under grey skies, giving this special and beautiful rainy season light and colors to the country.

And an other one

Indeed, I am still crazy busy at work with this grant application, but hopefully it should be all done today. In the meantime we still need to sustain ourselves and the Japanese one-plate is on the menu again with an unexpected variation. Indeed, I prepared the green beans with miso and the pickled onions, but we have some fresh simmered small bamboo shoot on the plate now, that I didn’t prepare! 

There exist two types of bamboo shoots, the big one I’ve been cooking quite often because you can find them everywhere and the small one that are more let’s say “wild” and that one needs to pick in the forest. Picking bamboo shoot is a real fun sport, basically it’s hiking and them crawling in bamboo groves. We’ve had the chance to go bamboo shoots picking with our friends from Tsunan once and it was really awesome. Like wild mushrooms picking it takes some time to figure what to pick and to know the good spots. Unfortunately in Isumi we don’t know yet these spots and people keep them secret, like everywhere!! But one of the guy we met on the tennis court came to bring us some small bamboo shoot simmered with sesame oil. There is something here quite unique with Japanese, is that they love to offer us food they make and local products. I think it goes together with this tradition of food souvenir etc… I need to do some research about that! 

Anyway that’s how we ended with a perfect Japanese one-plate, with only fresh and delicious local products.

Sansho and konbu Shojin style

Sansho, or Japanese pepper  
Sansho, or Japanese pepper  

Here we are with the first recipe I tried in my Shojin cuisine cookbook. Because we had plenty of sansho in the garden I decided to try this super simple recipe, that was perfect to eat with plain white rice and some raw vegetables and miso.  Usually I use the leaves of sansho or kinome a lot but so far I never used the fruits. I buy them. But we had many fruits and I thought it was really time for me to use them since that was the all point of having a sansho shrub in our garden. And this recipe literally took 5 min to prepare and 15min to cook, which makes it perfect for a busy day at work.
All you need is dry konbu that you cut in little squares, fresh sansho (the seeds not the leaves) if possible but canned or packed one can do, soya sauce and sake. In a pan you put the konbu and sansho, add 1 tbs of sake and one of soya sauce, and one of water if you have fresh sansho (to remove the bitterness it’s better), then simmer under cover at low heat until most of the liquid has disappeared. It’s ready! You can serve hot or cold, perfect with rice or as a snack with a drink.. The taste is quite strong so it’s not a main dish, right!?

Back to normal… Socca lunch

Hectic weeks, busy week ends, when we arrived in Ohara last night it felt like we haven’t come for months. Everything in the garden has grown tremendously high and green, no cat was waiting for us… Of course H. came today but we are more a food supply than anything else so far… There is such work to do in the garden that we started early this morning and work until lunch, without even going to shop for frrsh veggies. So when lunch time came and we needed energy before our afternoon tennis game I had to fix something with what I had in stock: sokka and a few vegetables: tomatoes, cucumbers and avocado. Sokka is a traditional dish from Nice in the south of France. It is extremely simple to make!

Socca (chick pea flour galette) 

– 100g of chickpeas flour,

– a cup of water,

– a bit of olive oil,

– salt and pepper.

Mix all the ingredients. Preheat and grease with a bit of olive oil a frying pan. Pour some dough in the pan to obtain a 3-5mm thick layer. Cook, flip, cook again, serve immediately. It is also possible to do it in the oven but the pan is much more convenient for me.

Simmered bamboo shoots

There are plenty of manners to eat bamboo shoots in Japanese traditional cuisine and that one is a real classic. It always starts after you have cooked the bamboo shoots in rice water. This simmered recipe is really simple and as a strong Japanese accent with the sweet soya sauce arranngement, that can actually also be used for any other vegetables: pumpkin, carrot, potato…

Cut the bamboo shoot in half in the height, then cut 2cm thick slices. Arrange them in a pan and add water to just cover them. Heat until it boils. Then add 1tbs of brown sgar and 2 tbs of soya sauce, and a 1tsp of rice vinegar. Cook under cover for 10min at low heat, turn softly from time to time. When all the pieces of bamboo our brownish remove the cover and increase the heat. Wait until all the water as disappeared. It’s ready!

Ha-uta concert 端唄

Every year (but last year) there is a big event organized by my husband shamisen’s teacher where a lot of people from the traditional Japanese entertainment business and their apprentice and students join. The event is centered on ha-uta (端唄), a type of Japanese singing from the late 19th early 20th, where is added some naga-uta (長唄), dancing and a lot of other attractions. We’ve been participating in the event every year. My husband plays many pieces and for me it was first just a lot of fun watching and listening (before I starting singing too) and a great chance for me to wear a kimono, because everyone is wearing one! Every year I challenge myself with a new pairing kimono-obi, and by wearing it myself. But always with a twist, because in the end I am not Japanese and everyone knows it!!!

The pairing of the obi, the kimono and all the accessories obimi age, obi jime, haori…)  can be really awkward at first since the color scheme and mix can for a western eye be quite a shock or an aggression. But with a bit of imagination and browsing a lot of kimono magazines (my favorite is kimono 姫) it becomes easier every time and quite fun. This year I opted for Japanese traditional patterns both for my kimono and my obi and played with greens, dark blue and ivory (which changes radically from the usual dark grey or black I often use), accesorized with a big broche that Prunellia offered me. Japanese with always a Parisienne touch!! And outside I wear it with high heel boots and a vintage clutch bag of course.

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