Tag: turnip

Winter favorite

A., and I too, are big fans of Brussels sprouts. Anytime there are some at the farmers market I would bug some even ic sometimes there are sold in tiny portions of 5 or 6! A few years ago we tried growing some in our kitchen garden, hoping for a consistent harvest, but once again the slugs and caterpillars were too quick at first and since then the plants grow leaves every year but never sprouts… I keep them thought, just in case!

Another winter favorite is turnips. The small and firm turnips of all possible shades from white to purple. That we never tried to grow yet… but they are easy to find by rather big bundles.

With these two in my basket I came up with a super delicious recipe, perfect for a side or starter. that can be eaten at room temperature or just warm: a beautiful and colorful plate of Brussels sprouts and tiny pink turnips. I dressed them in olive oil only bug you could easily think about adding a few drops of yuzu juice, or even more Japanese, a white miso and yuzu light sauce. So let me share my recipe.

Turnips and Brussels sprouts salad (2 servings)

  • 6 Brussels sprouts
  • 6 little turnips
  • 1tsp of olive oil
  • Salt and pepper
  • Optional: a few drops of yuzu juice or grated yuzu peel, 1 tea spoon of white miso

Wash carefully the vegetables. Slice the Brussels sprouts in 4 or 5. Cut the turnips in 4. If you can’t find tiny turnips then slice them. In a heated pan add the olive oil and the vegetables. Cook while stirring gently for 5 minutes. Add salt and pepper. at this stage you can serve. Add if you want to use them, the yuzu juice and/or the grated yuzu peels. If you use white miso, stir well the yuzu juice with the miso and too the vegetables.

Voila! Really not difficult and soooo scrumptious.

Snowy day gets bright with the warmth of golden rice

Many of you may be familiar with golden milk, this Indian drink with turmeric and milk, rooted in Ayurveda. Not that I am a fan of it, but borrowing the idea, I prepared myself a warming and bright lunch on a snowy day. Snow doesn’t fall often in Tokyo. Usually once or twice a year in January and March. It is very sudden, it snows a lot for a few hours to cover everything under a beautiful white blanket, and then the next minute is sunny and the blanket melts into a mess of mud and ice. But for a few hours it is magic. The city becomes suddenly quiet.

So before going outside for a walk, what best then having a warm lunch? A what if it is not only warm, it is also bright and full of flavors? That’s how I came up with this golden sautéed rice recipe.

Golden rice (2 servings as main dish)

  • 1 cup of brown rice
  • 1 or 2 leaks
  • 3 little turnips or 1 large
  • 1 little lotus root
  • 1tsp pf curry powder
  • 2tsp of ground turmeric
  • Ground black pepper
  • A punch of salt
  • 1tsp of vegetal oil
  • 6 rakkyo (optional)

Cook the rice. Wash and cut the vegetables. In a pan large enough, heat the oil, add the vegetables and cook while steering. Add the rice, the spices and pepper and steer very well. Serve and top with the rakkyo. Eat while watching the cold outside!!

Spring chrysanthemums – 春菊

When you can feel that winter is still here but you slowly get tired of the cold winds… the plum trees start blooming and the spring vegetables are arriving. I harvested already some time ago the first wild spring vegetables: fukinoto and canola will arrive soon, but today I want to talk about a winter vegetable which name says it all: Shungiku, that I like to translate literally by “spring chrysanthemum” (which made its entry in the glossary page) and I like to eat in the end of winter, is actually known more as “crown daisy”. Eaten in Japan in the winter until very early spring it has a very strong flavor, very characteristic of chrysanthemum hence probably the name, though it belongs to the daisy family. Usually used for nabe and rather thick and stiff, it is actually not easy to find smaller tender ones. The soft ones are much nicer and easier to prepare in more inventive recipes. And for some reasons, I find them more easily in the late season. I personally like to use them in replacement of spinach or as herbs.

I tried two different preparations that were both simple and in which the strong flavor was perfectly balanced by the other ingredients.

The first recipe is with lentils, turnip and shiitake; the second recipe is with red cabbage and penne. How do you like to cook your crown daisies???

Lentil and crown daisies

– 120g of lentils (green or brown)

– 2 shiitake

– 3 turnips

– a handful of crown daisies

– 1tbs if miso

Boil the lentils. Wash the vegetables, slice the shiitake and cut the turnips in small bites, chop in 2cm long the crown daisies. In a greases frypan at medium to high heat, cook first the shiitake, then add the turnips, when almost golden add the crown daisies, stir well, add the miso and 1tbs of water, stir gently while cooking for 2min. Serve the lentil, add the vegetables. That’s it!

Red cabbage and crown daisies (2 servings)

– 1/2 red cabbage

– 2 handfuls of crown daisies

– 125g of penne

– olive oil, salt and pepper

Boil the penne. Wash the crown daisies. Chop the red cabbage. In a large frypan greased with olive olive oil start by cooking the red cabbage. The add the crown daisies, finally add the boiled pasta.

Stir well until the vegetables are soft. Add salt and pepper and serve… well that’s it!

Whaou!

Quite a week, and it’s only Thursday!!!  So let’s get back to when I left you last Saturday… Sunday evening we had 4 guests (mix of French and Japanese) for dinner at home in Tokyo so I cooked some of my half new recipes: creamy cauliflower soup with curried croutons (recipe below), pork cutlet with roasted roots: lotus, taro, sweet potatoes, turnips, deglazed in soya sauce, and for dessert hasaku with spices syrup (ginger, cinnamon and cardamom) served with sesame and kinako biscuits. A. picked many Japanese and French wines to accompany my food. Oh… and I also made some plain and olive fougasse, with the olives from the garden in Aix that my mother prepared! But that was Sunday and it seems ages already!!!

And then Monday it had snowed, quite a lot actually, so I came back home earlier than usual to avoid being stucked with train problems. And I was happy to work from home eating left over sesame-kinako cookies with a hot chaï late. And having nothing to prepare or so for dinner since I hade made too many roasted vegetables! I like to recycle leftovers and do new things with them. So I added fukinoto and topped with sprouts for a perfectly balanced dinner. It was a great flavor experience! Fukinoto bring so much!! They are also the taste of coming spring with plum blossoms! And then there was this workshop I co-organized at the French Embassy. Everything went great, I met amazing people, now I can think about what’s next (and there’s plenty) and go back to the work routine for a short while!!

How is your week doing? 

Cauliflower soup with curried croutons (6 servings as starter)

– 1 cauliflower

– 1 potato

– 150ml of cream

– 4 slices of bread (I used half rye bread I made) 

– 2tsp of curry

– oil for the frying the croutons

– salt, pepper  

In a large pan I boil the cauliflower washed and chopped and the potato, peeled and chopped too. When they are very soft I blend everything. Add water if it’s too thick. Then add the cream.

In a fry pan add oil and the curry, cut the bread in cubes and fry them while turning them regularly. When golden take them out and keep them on cooking paper. When serving heat the soup, add salt and pepper if you lile, serve and top with the croutons. I added a sprinkle of tumeric for adding a bit of color.

Simple food

There is one thing that I always think about cooking when in a rush to prepare our meals and want to eat some Japanese food, it’s simple seasonal vegetables sautéed, deglazed in a bit of soya sauce, served with rice and pickles. It is so very simple and yet so delicious that it beats any other recipe. It requires no thinking, a very short preparation for the vegetables and then everything in a pan with a few drops of oil, under cover, just stir once in a while. Which frees the hands to do something else! Perfect when the week is super busy with many deadline at work, friends and family visiting, a weekend away in preparation and A. leaving for Europe for 10 very long days…

Autumn version of sautéed vegetables (one plate dish for 2 people)

– 1 Japanese sweet potato

– 3 shiitake

– 2 little turnips (long or round) 

– any other seasonal vegetables: a little piece of kabocha, a few green beans, gingko nuts, shishito, eringi…

– 2tbs of soya sauce

– some vinegared pickles: I love rakkyo (Chinese onions) which are served with curry.

– 1 cup of Japanese rice

Star cooking the rice. Wash and cut the vegetables. In a pan greased with a bit of oil add all the vegetables (except if some have very short cooking time like green beans) cook at high heat for two minutes and stir. Lower the heat and cover. Cook for 12min and stir once in a while. Add the soya sauce, and stir for one minute. Serve all together.

One-plate lunch

What best when it’s getting chilly outside than a bowl of hot and steamy white rice? And to complete the lunch, a plate with angelic (ashitaba-明日葉) omelette, grilled pork, grilled cherry tomatoes and turnips with miso. Very quick to prepare, tasty and warming! 

I am also very pleased to use my new Arita yaki bowls! 

Barter

Takenoko imo - たけのこ芋 
Takenoko imo – たけのこ芋 

It’s been a year now I’ve started some barter process with our neighbors in the country. Some gingko nuts here, some citrus fruits, some plums, some bread etc… in exchange one would sew a kimono, teach me how to make umeboshi, give us a few pickled vegetables, and more often they would give us fresh vegetables from their gardens. Last weekend we’ve found on our door step a bag full of turnips, sato imo and a very strange vegetable that looked like a root that has grown and that I have never seen before. Since a few weeks ago I gave gingko nuts to several people, I couldn’t identify where the veggies came from and ask directly what was this strange vegetable. I couldn’t find it either in any cooking book. So I decided to use my resourceful Instagram friends to help me in that task and in less than 5min I had an answer that confirmed my guess. It was a sort of sato imo, but instead of the round gingle bell like, it’s a specie called bamboo shoot imo (takenoko imo – たけのこ芋) because of its bamboo shoot shape. 

I cooked it in dashi with the skin (washed), together with turnips and peeled the root once boiled. The skin peels very easily. I seeved it with barley miso and grilled salmon from Iwate, and a bowl of plain rice. I really like the creamy texture of sato imo and this takenoko imo was really delicious.  For the miso I hesitated between white miso and barley miso, but I found that the granulous texture of the barley miso a much better fit with the takeneko imo, and I was not disappointed. Fresh simple ingredients soeak for themselves, that’s it!

One plate

Gloomy, rainy chilly day… What best then a warming plate in front of you? With little turnips, pork fillet and quinoa, simply cooked in a pot, here is a very healthy and nourishing meal. In a little bit of olive oil I simply put the pork filet in a cocotte and cooked under cover. When almost done I added the little turnips simply washed, and cooked under cover until all golden. Don’t forget to turn them time to time to roll them in the juice. I prepared the quinoa separately but when dressing the plates I added the quinoa in the juice of the cocotte. I served without any addition. Enjoy!

Miso-parsley-pork meat balls

Nothing better than a one-bowl meal for a perfect lunch. Donburi are really easy to prepare in endless seasonal variations, with meat, fish or vegan, with white rice, brown rice, a mox of grains… 

For this one I used plain white rice, seasonal veggies: turnips, carrots and shiitake, and prepare miso meat balls. For that I used pork meat, about 100g, 1 egg, 2 or 3 branches of parsley, 2 table spoons of panko, and 2 table spoons of miso (of your choice). I mix all together and cook the balls in a frypan until golden. The mix miso-parsley is really delicious!

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