Picking bamboo shoots

Here we are, spring is here, cherry trees are finishing blooming in a snap. Last week it was pink all over, now it’s new green 新緑 shinryoku everywhere. Everything is so early this year that it feels like it took me by surprise. And spring means not only flowers everywhere in the garden, the jonquils, the snowdrops, the peach trees, and all the others, it means also the spring vegetables and with them the incomparable bamboo shoots or takenoko 筍.

Cooking them is fun and I love creating new recipe with bamboo shoots. I have already posted many recipes in the past and love rediscovering them or testing some others. But beware, the season is short so it’s not like you can take all the time you want. They’re here and in a snap they are way too high and big and no longer good to eat.

What is fun with bamboo shoots is to go and pick them. Bamboos grow pretty much anywhere and in abundance so picking bamboo shoots is rather easy. The point is that you want fresh and soft ones that have pointed out so it looks like a little green/brownish plant so eyes need to get used to spot them, but them accommodate really quickly. Once spotted with pickaxe and a shovel you need to clean around to uncover the hidden part until the very first red spots on the root. And then cut with a firm and clean cut. Return the soil in place and search for the next one.

Of course said that way it’s rather simple, but you compete in finding bamboo shoots with wild boars and they are really greedy! So they only leave those hard to find, under monticules of earth and fallen leaves, on the steep sides etc… Then the bamboo shoots are often entangled with other roots that you don’t want to damage making it really a puzzle to find where to dig and cut. But that’s part of the fun!

Once you have a nice bamboo shoot to prepare in the kitchen, the first thing to do is to remove the many layers of the soft and furry skin that wrap delicately the shoot. It’s a bit tedious but still important. Then boil your shoot in ample water added with rice first wash water or nuka. Boil at low heat until soft… it can take up to 2 or 3 hours. Pick with a tooth pick to test. And then only you have a bamboo shoot you can prepare for the many recipes. I am working on a few new and a few classic recipes right now, so hopefully in the coming days you should discover some!!!

Peeled bamboo shoot ready for the first boil

April 2, 2021

Anise bread

Anise, fennel, star anise, and also cumin, carvi seeds and caraway seeds are some of my favorite seasoning seeds. Maybe because I grew up in the south of France where fennel grew everywhere on the path sides and it was so easy to harvest while admiring the beautiful shape of the flowers and the little white snails that would gather on the stems, that I used to call “colimaçon” but are in fact “caragouille rosee”, and chewing a piece of flower… or because of my grand mother homemade pastis, this very distinctive drink made from anise and also typical from the region. My mother would use ample fennel to stuff a fish we would have fished, and bake it with potatoes and tomatoes. A dish every one loved very much.

Funnily, in Japan this is not something so common. And I hardly have seen fennel growing anywhere in the wild. Maybe some areas do have some, or my eyes haven’t been opened enough. So most of the fennel and anise I use is either coming from my parents, or bought from the grocery. Recently I have bought quite a bit more often than usual, probably since we’ve been to Malta, to make Qagħaq tal-Ħmira… so I decided to use them to make straightforward anise seeds breads. Less elaborated than the Maltese breads and I was very very much please with the result. I must say that it is thanks to a very healthy sourdough and warmer temperatures. It goes like below for the recipe and I hope you will enjoy!

Anise breads

300g of flour
80g of sourdough
1tsp of salt
Water
1tbs of anise seeds

The recipe is simple as can be. In a large bowl mix the sourdough the flower, the salt. Add water little by little and knead to obtain a smooth dough. Add the anise seeds and knead a little further.

Let rest under a wet clothe until the dough grows. Mine was really growing happily.

When quite fluffy move to a flat surface dusted with flour. Flatten the dough gently with your palm. Cut into 6 pieces. Make 6 balls. Then flatten and cut three ribbons and braid then. Leave to rest for an hour then bake at 240deg until golden.

March 27, 2021

Definitely in love with wafu pasta

As I was reading the Japan times the other day I discovered they have a monthly column called Japanese kitchen with some cooking tips and recipes and found an old recipe of natto and umeboshi pasta. Neither A. nor I are fans of natto but it was time to prepare lunch and I was planning to make tagliatelle but I wanted to eat umeboshi, so wafu pasta naturally, and the recently read recipe made me create this super simple version: replacing natto by seasonal vegetables, and using some soya sauce for dressing the pasta. As I mentioned in my earlier post on the topic, wafu pasta are something of their own kind that may be ignominious to the purists but once you have tried them they are quite exquisite and the mariage of flavors can be exceptional. I loved the one of this recipe. I hope you will too.

Umeboshi, nanohana and shiitake tagliatelle (serves 2)

180g of fresh tagliatelle
5 nanohana
3-5 shiitake depending on size
3 plain umeboshi medium size
1tbs of soya sauce
A ponch of sesame seeds

Wash and slice the shiitake. Wash and cut the nanohana in 3. In a large pan slightly greased (I used sesame oil, but anything works) start cooking the vegetables under cover at low heat. In the meantime boil the pasta. Drain the pasta and add to the pan. Stir well. Add the soya sauce, the sesame seeds, the flesh of one umeboshi, stir again and serve. Top each plate with an umeboshi, enjoy!

March 8, 2021

More Wafu pasta

I have a principle that I apply for pretty much anything and even more when I cook or think about cooking, it’s to be always flexible and opened to opportunities, or see change in plans as one. Nothing is definite. A recipe evolves and comes to life as ingredients are mixed together, taking the mood and the time into consideration… This is exactly how this wafu pasta recipe was created. It all started with a bicycle ride to go diy shopping. On the way back, if we take this road, I like to stop at the little stall that sells local fresh vegetables grown right on the spot. Sometimes the shelves are empty, and sometimes they have little treasures. They just had many little treasures this day. In particular a big bundle of tiny sweet leeks appealed me. I just picked it, slid a 100yen coin in the box and off we went.

But what to do with them… I had no plan… until a few days later when time for dinner came and it was decided we would eat pasta. Tagliatelle. A bit of sesame oil was remaining in the pan from some little rice crackers I made, so I decided to use it. Chopped the little sweet leeks, coated them in sesame oil, added a very ripe large tomato (that can easily be replaced by a good tomato sauce or preserved tomatoes), and cooked at low heat until I obtained a creamy tomato sauce with the delicious flavor of the fragrant sesame oil, slightly confit. Added the boiled pasta, stirred well and added a bit of sesame seeds before serving. A new version of the wafu pasta…

How do eat your pasta Japanese-style? Have you ever tried???

February 20, 2021

Warming up!

Sunny but cold days follow each others this week, so a warming and rich soup is always good, isn’t it? I had rice ready for lunch and a romanesco in the fridge, and I wasn’t sure about how to eat them together, when the idea of combining them in a soup came to my mind. I was a bit worried about how it would turn, but with a few well chosen spices it was really a great idea! Not very photogenic though… so let me share the recipe here with you. I hope you’ll like it and test it!

Rice and cauliflower soup

1/2 cauliflower or romanesco
1 cup of rice (cooked)
1 pinch of nutmeg
2 pinches of paprika
salt and pepper
1 little pinch of red pepper (optional)

If your rice is not cooked yet, cook it, you can use leftover rice too.

Wash the cauliflower or romanesco and steam it. Then mash it roughly adding a bit of the cooking water, to obtain a rather liquid but not too though, mixture (blender works too). In a pan heat gently, add the rice, salt and pepper, the nutmeg, the paprika and if you like it a little spicier the red pepper. Stir and serve hot.

February 11, 2021

More of the little red beans!

I hesitated in doing an adzuki week but thought I would come dry of ideas quickly except from the many sweets… but we don’t eat so many. But discovering more and more recipes, maybe I should have had… another time!

So to change a bit from sweets I wanted a savory recipe to test and when browsing a Japanese cooking website I discovered recently I was immediately convinced that it was a perfect recipe for me: brown rice, sweet potato and adzuki! The simplicity of the ingredients, the seasonality of sweet potatoes 🍠 and the timeliness of me buying and cooking adzuki for the first time. (Really!! Can you imagine it took me 16 years to buy dry adzuki and cook with them!!!!)

The most common and popular recipe of savory adzuki is probably sekihan 赤飯 or literally red rice. The rice used for this preparation is usually mochi rice (sticky rice). It is served topped with black sesame and salt. It is often served for special occasions, but I think the most often I have had it was in bento bought in Tokyo or Ueno station… so for me it’s associated with train travel! 😉 That could still count as special occasions, more now that we haven’t traveled for a year, neither plane nor train… As I don’t buy normally mochi rice (but that too may change soon…) this option of recipe was excluded. Of course using regular Japanese rice would work too by slightly steaming longer… but the idea of adding sweet potatoes was just too tempting, I love sweet potatoes so much!!! So here is the recipe, easy as can be and each ingredient perfectly balanced and the flavors harmoniously enhanced. You can replace the brown rice with white rice, but it will change the texture balance of the overall. Taste will still be ok of course!

Sweet potato and adzuki rice (2 servings)

1go (150g) of brown rice
10-15g of dry adzuki
1 sweet potato (not a big one!)
a pinch of salt
a pinch of sesame seeds

Rince the adzuki, set in a pan (that can be used for cooking the rice as well, so non sticky is nice), and cover with 1.5cm of water, bring to a boil and boil at medium heat for 5min. Wash and dice the sweet potato. Add the brown rice and the sweet potato and the salt to the adzuki pan, stir a bit and cover with water to obtain enough liquid to cook the brown rice (that will depend on your pan, your cooking range and the lid you are using. I usually add water to double the height in the pan, plus a bit for brown rice, but I do every thing about). Cook under a lid at low heat until the liquid is all absorbed and the rice is soft. Serve and top with a bit of sesame seeds.

January 11, 2021

Kintsuba

Sorry for the delay! I was hoping to publish it much earlier but then I got busy with work and I am struggling with wordpress and jetpack… technical issues that are getting more and more annoying.

So to continue with adzuki, there are a few more recipes I would like to share, and as promised on IG, kintsuba was one of them. It’s a slightly more elaborated recipe of wagashi than those with just anko and mochi or shiratama. I like it very much for the variations that exist, it can be with sweet potatoes, including walnuts etc… so many options… I like it also for its very graphic visual. It’s a little square “cake”. Kintsuba consists of a soft and melting jelly and a thin cooked skin. Making kintsuba is simple but takes a bit of rest time as it uses agar agar and it takes 2h for it to solidify. Then there is a frypan cooking step to finalize them. But they are really delicious and worth trying.

Kintsuba also uses an ingredient that is often used in Japanese sweets: shiratamako. It’sa kind of rice flour but made from cooked mochi rice.

Kintsuba (4 pieces)

For the beans jelly

100g of tsubuan or anko
25ml of water
1g of agar agar

For the skin

25g of wheat flour
5g of shiratamako
60ml of water
A bit of cooking oil to grease the pan

First of all the jelly. It’s quick to make but as I said it takes about 2h for the agar agar to stiffen so better do this step ahead. Once you have the rest is rather quick.

In a pan heat the water and the agar agar, stir well, when it comes to a boil lower the heat and continue stirring for 2min. Add the anko or tsubuan prepared before hand as in the recipe here. Continue stirring for 5min at low heat. Then move the paste into a dish that is square ideally. I use a Japanese tofu and jelly stainless steel dish for that specific use (see below picture). The jelly should be 1-2cm thick in the dish. Let cool down and refrigerate for 2h. That’s it for the jelly. You can eat it once it has stiffen as a jelly.

Once the jelly is stiff, take it out of the fridge, cut it into 4 pieces of 4x4cm approximately. In a bowl mix the ingredients for the skin. If you use shirotamako, you will need to crush it to powder it. It’s very easy. Stir well. Heat a fry pan and grease it. Now dip one face of a square in the skin dough and put this face down in the pan. Cook until that side is dry and no longer sticky. Repeat for each side. If you think your skin is too thin, apply a second layer. You can eat right away or keep a few days in the fridge.

January 8, 2021

The magic of the little red beans

One thing I have very rarely talked about here is adzuki – 小豆 literally small bean. They are present in many Japanese recipes and in most of the Japanese sweets. In fact beans are an important staple in Japanese cuisine: to name only a few the soya beans or daizu 大豆 literally big beans, the traditional jumbo black beans or kuromame 黒豆 for new year and of course the tiny adzuki!

These little beans are usually cooked with sugar and salt to make tsubuan 粒あん when the beans are kept almost whole, or anko あんこ when the beans are puréed into an homogenous paste. The paste of tsubuan and anko is then used in many preparations: yokan, dorayaki, daifuku, ohagi, kintsuba, oshiruko…

Today let me introduce the basic recipe for anko and tsubuan and of oshiruko お汁粉, one of the traditional new year “soup”. Even though adzuki are dried beans they cook in 1h only so they are surprisingly easy to use.

Anko and tsubuan (makes 500g which is a lot!)

200g of dry adzuki
200g of brown sugar
Water
A pinch of salt

Rince the beans and put them in a pan, cover with water, bring to a boil, then decrease the heat to keep a steady boiling for 5min. Then drain the beans and throw the water. Return the beans to the pan and cover with ample water and bring to a boil again. Cook at medium heat for 40min, until the beans are almost soft. Drain the beans, throw the water, return the beans to the pan, add the sugar and cook at low heat and stir gently until the remaining moisture is gone. Add a pinch of salt. For the tsubuan that’s it. For anko you need to purée to obtain a paste.

Oshiruko (1 serving)

50g of anko or tsubuan
15cl of water
A small piece of semi-dry mochi to grill

In a pan heat the bean paste and the water to obtain a kind of thick soup. In the meantime grill the mochi. Serve the soup, add the mochi and enjoy!!! Beware that the soup, because of the sugar can be really hot.

January 6, 2021

Koyadofu simmered with winter vegetables

You may remember that in October I introduced a very Japanese ingredient: Koyadofu-高野豆腐 in a post with a very simple recipe of curry. This was just one of the many examples of using koyadofu. Some may definitely claim that it is spongious and tasteless, I wouldn’t argue much, but I could also say that it is packed with proteins and it adds a very interesting texture to many preparations. The recipe I want to present today is a very simple recipe of Koyadofu first slightly fried and then simmered. It is basically a preparation that could be done with hard tofu as well. The vegetables I chose for the recipe are those I had around but you can also change slightly and add greens or vegetables of your choice. I must admit that lotus root and shiitake are really perfect for this preparation: the fresh shiitake are soft and a bit chewy, the renkon is crunchy, and the koyadofu just perfectly spongy, but the prior frying avoids it from sucking all the juice.

So without further delay, let me share this recipe, that is really simple but holds all the best Japanese flavours.

Simmered Koyadofu (serve 2 people as a side of rice)

5cm of lotus root, a bit big
10 cubes of 1~2cm of koyadofu. If you use large blocks of koyadofu 2 should enough
10 little shiitake, or 5 large
a 1cm piece of fresh ginger
3tbs of soya sauce
3tbs of cooking sake
1/2 of water
some katakuriko 片栗粉 or potato starch
a bit of oil for frying

First of all return the koyadofu to a soft texture by bathing it into water for a few minutes. Drain well by squeezing it like a sponge. If you use large blocks cut them in 1~2 cm cubes. Roll them in the katakuriko. In a oiled and heated frypan fry the cubes until white golden.
Peel the lotus root and cut in 5~10mm slices, cut in 2 if the root is really large. Add to the pan and cook in the remaining oil. Wash the shiitake, remove the stem, cut them in 2 or 4 if large. Add to the pan. Grate the ginger, add to the pan, add the soya sauce, the sake and the water and simmer for 10min or until the liquid is almost gone. Serve with a bowl of rice for example.

December 23, 2020