Tag: vegan

Picnic Japanese style

When I have guests from abroad I try to cook Japanese as much as possible except for breakfast. So when we decided to take a walk to the beach and picnic there I decided to prepare some bamboo shoots onigiri or o musubi. This is just the end of the season of bamboo shoots, so I wanted to take the most of it. It is extremely easy to prepare and super fresh and delicious. I prepared the bamboo shoot as usual, first boiled in rice water, then in a light dashi: konbu, katsuo, iwashi… Cook some Japanese rice too, all white, or half brown. Add a bit of salt once cooked, some kinome leaves. Chop the bamboo shoot in dice of less than 5mm. Insert in the rice and stir well, then start preping for the balls. Finish with a little branch of kinome, or a thin alice of bamboo shoot. Have a nice golden week!!!

An other brown rice bowl

Every year the week before the golden week is always crazy. Indeed it’s the season for research reports, the lectures have take. A steady pace and the students start to have many questions about their research. So before the long break it is slways crazy and days are too short to squeeze in all I want to do. Dinner thus become simpler and lighter with fresh dpring veggies bowls with pasta or rice. This year it’s rice, brown rice. A simple bowl with asparagus, broad beans, sprouts and yuzu miso!

Cauliflower risotto

Though I love risotto and I cook some often, I don’t post recipes as often as I would like just because I really fond it hard to photograph. I already mentioned that before, I’ve tried several techniques but I am not often satisfied with the results. In particular because I cook chiefly for dinner and don’t use professional equipment, lighting is hell. Plating is not always easy too. Anyway, I managed to get my hands on a lovely little cauliflower, probably the last for this year, and with chilly evenings a warm dish was much needed. I prepare a simple risotto with nothing extra. I roasted the cauliflower cut in little bouquets in olive oil, the added the rice, some vegetables bouillon and cook without cover until the bouillon was all gone. And serve with grinded pepper. Nothing more.

Vegan donburi

When we have friends from Europe visiting I cook a lot more Japanese and every time we realize how much it is delicious, so for the two of us I’ve been cooking Japanese more often, in particular a lot of rice and donburi. This one is a very simple recipe that takes only a few minutes to prepare, and can be ready as soon as the rice is ready. I used half brown rice half white rice but all brown, all white can work as well of course. I just sliced a piece   of lotus root and cut in big chunks a large ripe tomato, cook them in a pan with a tea spoon of oil. I top the rice with the mixture and for the fresh taste I added a myoga chopped thinely. The sweet and melty tomato goes perfectly fine with the crisp lotus, and the myoga adds a perfect touch.

Bamboo shoot in kinome pesto

And here is the second recipe with bamboo shoots, the one that I really wanted to try. It is inspired from a dish we had at Daigo in February and since then I’ve been thinking/dreaming of it. It’s a very Japanese dish with taste of spring. It requires some fresh bamboo shoot boiled and cooled down, a table spoon of olive oil and 10 branches of kinome (the small leaves of the sansho tree, we have one in the garden so I just had to go and pick some!). I cut the bamboo shoot in dice, chopped the kinome leaves and add then to the bamboo, then add the oil and stir well. Ready to serve ready to eat.

Vegan patties and cumin baby spinach

I got a nice bunch of fresh baby spinach at the farmers market and wasn’t sure about what to do about it. A salad of course, but lately evenings have been chilly and I wanted to eat something warm. Yet not completly ruined them: like in a tart or in an omelet. So I just washed them and steam them for a few minutes, add some cumin piwder and cumin seeds, that’s it!  I served it with some ripe and sweet tomatoes diced and some grilled cereals patties. Here I use a vegan burger mix. I usually don’t use these kind of products and I should work on my own mix but really this vegan burger mix, slightly spicy is really good, I just don’t look at what are the ingredients inside for once!!

I didn’t use any seasoning with the tomatoes because they are ripe, juicy and swwet, just on the side a bit of curcuma powder and salt and pepper.

Vegan pizza

Rucola instaneously makes feel like eating a pizza, so I prepared a dough and a vegan pizza with just one fresh new onion, 3 fresh tomatoes and plenty of fresh little rucola. A slightly different version of last year vegan, the new onions bringing some creamy texture, perfect with the crisp of the fough. (http://www.tokyoparissisters.com/4hands/2015/4/27/yudgf7c5merf96p9hv0l2f4ajirwid), nonetheless delicious.

An other dinner at home

What to cook for your friends visiting Japan when you are back from work past 21:00 and everyone is starving? A soba salad with spring veggies of course!!! Spring veggies: asparagus, snap peas, green peas, are very easy to prepare and require very little cooking, just blanching them for 2min. Soba are also quick to cook, so in 15min I can have a dinner plate ready for 4 people. To the spring veggies I’ve added some cucumbers and a bit of brocoli sprout, as for the dressing, I mixed a bit of soy sauce with vegetal oil and just add a bit to prevent the soba for getting too sticky. You can also top the plate with some Japanese salmon, shredded nori…

A new delicious combination

We were supposed to have friends for dinner last night but A. had a strike of dust/pollen alergy and we had to cancel. I really to cancel invitations but sometimes it really can’t be helped. Instead of a fancy dinner I wanted to prepare something simple and tasty but I really wanted to use my fresh tomatoes and coriander. I hesitated with couscous (too trivial), quinoa (trivial), but then thinking of the sweet taste of quinoa I imagined that sweet potatoes would work not bad either, be less obvious and more “comfort food” for A.. I was a bit skeptical while cooking, how to do it… But in the end I grilled the sliced sweet potatoes in a bit of olive oil, added the tomato and topped with coriander just before serving. Perfectly delicious!

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