Tag: vegan

New rythm

Pfou… it’s not easy to find a mew rythm when days at work are 13h and one day you start early, the other you finish late… even less easy when A. has meetings until quite late… Cooking dinner past 22:30 when lunch is that far away and you’re starving requires food that can be prepared quite rapidly… but I still want to eat fresh, seasonal, local food. There are a few tricks to do that:

– trick No 1: stock on daikon radish, carrots and miso. It takes 2minutes to peel and cut daikon sticks (even faster than carrots!!) and 3minutes for a carrot or two. Dipped in miso they are the perfect snack!

– trick No 2: pack on food that can be prepared in hot simple pot and don’t need to much time to prepare (no peeling…): kabocha, sweet potatoes, carrots… in 10min they can be cooked and preparing them is simple: wash & cut! 

– trick No 3: prepare your rice cooker in the morning and schedule cooking or cook rice in a thick pan on gaz directly (it reduces cooking time to a mere 20min)

And while you eat you veggies with miso and you smell the veggies roasting and the rice boiling you can open your mail, chat about your day and admire the result of your first experience of making pottery on a wheel!

Long weekend

After a series of very rainy weekends, so many that I don’t even count them anymore, a perfect autumn weekend was more than welcome, and even better: it was a long weekend. We spent sometime in Tokyo and most of the time in Ohara with D. and C.. The planning was simple: outdoor activities and delicious healthy local food. And it was easy with such a weather, the garden providing persimmons and herbs, and the farmers market full of autumn vegetables. So basically ocean swimming and hikes, drives and cooking together was our agenda. Among the many things we cooked were black wheat bread, whole wheat fougasse, muesli pancakes, hot pot veggies with snapper for girls and pork filet for guys, and a thin crust mushrooms quiche, vegan and gluten free. Now it’s time to get back to work, with a busy week ahead! Have a beautiful one!

From all we cookedI loved the quiche quite a lot so here is the recipe.

Mushrooms quiche:

– 1.5 cup buckwheat flour

– 1.5 cup rice flour

– 4tbs olive oil

– about 1/2 cup water 

– plenty of different types of mushrooms of your choice (enough to generously cover your pie dish

– rosemary

– salt and pepper  

Mix the buckwheat flour and rice flour, add the olive oil and stir. Add the water little by little while continuing stirring. Stop addind water when the dough is crumbly dry. Since there is no gluten in both flour it is better to keep the dough drier. Knead briefly to obtain a silky dough. 

Roll it thinly and set in a pie dish. Wash and cut thinely the different mushrooms. Toss them in the pie crust, add a bit of olive oil, salt, pepper and fresh rosemary branches. Bake at 180deg in the oven for 30min. 

Yuzu season: start!

The autumn is here for sure now, and despite the lot of rain, the typhoons etc… there are a few very beautiful sunny days like today. And it is great to enjoy yuzu in the recipes with the fruits starting to appear at the farmers market. I love to use the skin of the yuzu in many recipes and this uear I have been totally in love with Malabar spinach (ツルムラサキ) and I’ve been cooking some a lot. The yuzu goes very well with it and so dowa the lorus root. So naturally I prepared this little dish with grilled lotus roots, blanched Malabar spinach and fresh yuzu peels. A perfect combination to eat with rice of course. And stay dry in Tokyo since the rain is back again!

Two simple Japanese recipes

With some guests from France at home this weekend I cooked some simple Japanese recipes that they could reproduce back home. And because the weather was really terrible I could take all the time needed to chop thinly the vegetables and prepare recipes I usually don’t.

The two recipes I prepared were daikon and miso, and some kinpira gobo (without the red pepper). 

Daikon and miso: 

– 1/2 daikon

– 2 tbs of miso of your choice

– 1/2L of dashi of your choice: konbu, katsuo, niboshi… 

Cut the daikon in 3cm slices, peel them. Prepare the dashi and when boiling cook the daikon. It is ready when a toothpick enters smoothly. In a small bowl put the miso, add 2 or 3 tbs of dashi and stir to obtain a creamy paste. At this stage you can add yuzu peels… for a slightly enhanced version of the recipe. One the daikon is cooked, drain and top with the miso preparation. Eat while still warm.

Kinpira gobo :

 – 1 burdock

– 1 carrot

– a small piece of lotus root (optional) 

– 300ml of dashi of your choice

– 1tbs of soya sauce

– 1tbs of sake

– 1tsp of sugar

– 1 red pepper  

Peel the vegetables. Cut the burdock and gobo in thin matches sticks. Cut the lotus root and the red pepper in thin slices. In a pan boil the vegetables in the dashi. When reduced, add the sake, the red pepper, the sugar, and the soya sauce. Cook until almost dry. Add a few sesame seeds to decorate eventually.

Butternut squash and pasta

I’ve been posting a lot about butternut squash these days, indeed it’s the pick season now before shifting to kabocha which taste is very different. And since I’ve been living alone in the past weeks, one butternut squash is a lot of food for one, so I’ve cooked it one way, an other, and an other… and tried to find new ones… Last night I came back late from work but at last the rain had stopped so I could walk home using a detour to enjoy being out. But it was really cold. I almost regretted not having a beanie. So I arrived home craving for something hot to eat. And I was pleased to find some leftover butternut squash soup in the fridge. Yet I was starving and it was not enough. So after browsing my cupboard and the fridge I opted for short pasta that I simply threw in the soup that was already boiling and I cooked 10-12 minutes until the pasta were soft and the soup has almost reduced to puree. I generously gratted fresh parmigiano on top and added black pepper. And I was very happy with it!!!

Vegan butternut squash soup (2 or 3 servings)

– 1/2 or 1/3 butternut squash

– 1 cup of soya milk

– salt and pepper

Peel the butternut squash and remove the seeds. Cut in pieces. Boil in 1L of water. Once soft enough, blend everything with the soya milk, salt and pepper. That’s it!  It’s basically the same recipe as the cauliflower soup!

Then you can add the short pasta. I chose stelline. And cook them together in the soup. For a better result use fewer water to cook the butternut squash or as I did, use left over soup.

Where is the Japanese autumn?

One thing that is really beautiful in Japan is the autumn sunny days called akibare-秋晴れ. They are usually warm and the blue of the sky contrasts vividly with the changing colors of the nature. This period usually streches until mid-November even December sometimes. This year, after the rainy summer we had, I was longing for this period, enjoying gardening and walks in the nature. But after just a very few days, we’ve entered a series of rainy days that seem simply endless. And any time I watch the weather forecast it seems it is stuck with the rain mark… but not only does it rain, it is also chilly. So nothing better to warm up than a little soup and some brown rice. For the soup I chose a cauliflower. Simply blanched it until just tender, not over cooked otherwise the taste changes. They blended it with the water and added some soya milk. Finished with salt, pepper and curcuma. The cauliflower just cooked as above, and well blended is creamy enough and doesn’t need further addition of cream or whatsoever ingredient. The brown rice, I took the time to cook it in the rice cooker, on the brown rice menu. It takes about 2h30 but it is worth doing so because it becomes very soft. Then I made rice balls, topped them with a small table spoon of miso just to cover them thinely and grilled them in a fry pan miso face down. You can also grill them in a grill or an oven. That’s it!!

Have a beautiful week! And don’t forget your umbrella if you’re in Tokyo!! 

Muesli pancakes

Since A. is away, I was thinking of having muesli and fruits for breakfast, so I stopped by the supermarket last night to buy some nuts muesli and some soya milk. But then this morning I was up at 6:15 and decided that after a bit of workout I would rather eat pancakes. So basically I prepared my muesli in a large bowl, covered it with soya milk, added a mix powder of black sesame, almond and kinako (grilled soya beans), add 2tbs of flour, a bit of baking powder and stirred well. Then cooked on both sides in a frypan. Finished with my uncle’s honey, added a kiwi sliced and I got a delicious breakfast, or rather two! Because I prepared a bit too much… I so much used to cook for two people… it’s hard to be alone!

Simply simpler

No time to fix dinner? Don’t worry, I’ve just found a new preparation for sweet potatoes, and it’s so simple and delicious that it surprised myself. This is a sweet potato soup. But usually sweet potato soup means, that first you cook the potatoes, then blend them, add some cream or whatever and then eat. Last night I didn’t want a soupy soup, but rather something with a mix of textures. So here is what I did and turned superb! 

Sweet potato rough soup   2 servings

– 2 sweet potatoes

– black pepper

– parmegiano (optional) 

I washed 2 sweet potatoes and sliced them. Then in a pan I started to cook them, with just a bit of water to cover. I cooked them at high heat under cover without touching them once until all the water had disappeared and the potatoes started caramelizing in their own juice. Only then I stirred well and started to break them with a wooden spoon. Finally added water again to cover them, and bring to a boil. Add some black pepper, and served. Topped with parmigiano slices.

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.

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