Fava beans and wakame

I’m a great great fam of greens such as asparagus, green peas, green beans, snap peas eda mame and fava beans. I could eat them all the time! Unfortunately the season for each is rather short but luckily they follow each other and overlap a bit so from March to August there are always some nice greens to eat!!!

Now is the season for fava beans and green peas and I cook them quite often. A classic Japanese preparation of fava beans in Shojin cuisine is with wakame, and I really like the association of the melting soft bean with the more slimy and crunchy seaweed. In the books normal recipe the fava beans and the wakame are simmered with soya sauce and sake. I chose a lighter version in taste and I prepared them as a sauce for soba noodles and added also some green peas. It’s almost a classic for me since I often cook something similar at that season! Here is my recipe:

Fava bean and wakame soba

– a handful of fava beans

– a handful of green peas

– a bit of wakame (I used new wakame)

– soba noodles

– olive oil and salt (or soya sauce)

Shell the peas and the beans. Peel the beans (I realized recently that it is no need to blanch the beans to peel them, raw they are easy to peel too). Boil water in a small pan to blanch them. Add the wakame cut in small pieces and then drain and reserve. In a large pan boil water for the soba. Cook as instructed. Then rinse in fresh water and drain very well. In a bowl put the soba, pour some olive oil, add salt or soya sauce, then the vegetables. Stir gently and serve.

May 15, 2018

Brown rice and curry double-tap

With all the fresh spring vegetables now available, in particular carrots, lotus roots, snap peas… and the weather changing quickly from sunny and warm to windy and chilly, a warm curry is always nice, accompanied with brown rice.

And with friends around I cook always much more than we can eat so I often have left over and brown rice makes a great base for a crunchy pie crust. So here are my recipes.

Spring coconut milk vegan curry:

– carrots

– lotus roots

– snap peas

– new onion

– red bell pepper

– coconut milk

– curry powder

– salt

– brown rice

Cook the brown rice in a rice cooker or in a pan at low heat under cover with twice more water than usual.

Was and peel the vegetables and cut them as pleases you. In a large fry pan or wok start by cooking the onion at low heat to soften them a bit, then add the lotus root, the carrots, the coconut milk and a tsp of curry powder, a pinch of salt. Cook at low heat for 10min. Add the red bell pepper and finally the snap peas. I like my vegetables crunchy so I try to avoid over cooking. Serve the rice and the curry together.

Brown rice quiche:

The base of this recipe is the left over from the previous, but you can start from the scratch.

– cooked brown rice

– flour

– vegetal oil

– sesame oil

– new onion, snap peas, and any other vegetables of your choice

– tofu

– eggs

For the pie crust, in a bowl mix the brown rice, flour and add a bit of water and vegetal oil and sesame oil to obtain a very granulated dough. Roll it on cooking paper to a thin layer the size of your pie dish, plus the sides.

Drain the tofu. Wash and cut the veggies (if using the leftover then it’s all set). Mix the tofu with the eggs, the vegetables and pour everything in the pie crust. Cook at 180deg for about 25 min. If you didn’t use the leftover you can still add coconut milk and curry to the tofu-egg batter.

Have a great week!!!

May 7, 2018

Poached eggs and spring vegetables

When I have guests at home for dinner I usually serve fish, and if I cannot find fish that pleases me, I would serve pork or chicken. I love eggs, and cook them often for breakfast or when we are just the two of us, but I often forget that eggs are amazing and that they can actually be quite impressive when perfectly cooked and dressed. The “Cuisine and vins de France” issue for Easter has reminded me that, and I remembered that back then in Paris I was serving our guests some delicious spinaches and sprouts salad with poached eggs. For our guests last night I decided to make poached eggs back on the menu! This time for a spring version. Eggs are great to eat with some carbs, the make a great combo, and when cooked perfectly creamy, with some dry ones: bread, pasta, potatoes, rice… I opted for a mix of Italian faro perlato and black Tuscan rice. And the vegetables, simple: radishes, carrots, snap peas and green peas sautéed in a bit of olive oil.

Poaching eggs is ultra simple and impossible to mess. Simply take the eggs out of the fridge a little ahead of cooking them. Boil some water, add a tablespoon of white vinegar in the water. Break the eggs in the water, one by one. Wait 3-4min and drain. Serve.

April 22, 2018

Spring angelica

Oh! These green leaves I love so much and that are so popular in Hachijojima are back at the farmers market!!! Spring is coming and this is one of the great things with it: the massive return of the greens!!! Ashitaba (or angelica) is a great ingredient, easy to cook and that suits very well basic Japanese recipes. This time I prepared some vegetables sautéed with slices of pork and then added ashitaba at the end of the cooking. I also deglazed the whole in a bit of water and soya sauce. A great combination for a scrumptious dinner!

Have a great end of the week!

March 1, 2018

Simple food

I have the impression that recently I have further decreased our intake of meat and fish without A. complaining much about it. Only after 5 or 6 days would he start asking for some. So once in a while I buy a pork filet or some ham, or some nice fish in Isumi. This weekend there was not much fish, probably with the rainy weather and the winds, so we went to our old little butcher shop and got some ham (the cat is crazy with the fat so I like to give him some!!!) and some pork filet (where there is stricly nothing to trash). Pork filet in a cocotte with some vegetables is such a treat that I simply cooked it that way. A bit of olive oil, a few new potatoes from our neighbors kitchen garden, some locally grown new carrots (yellow and orange) and a handful of green beans, the pork filet from Isumi, everything together at low heat and just stirring every 10-15min. You can add herb, salt, pepper, but I didn’t. Why would you make more complicated when it is perfect as it is?

July 4, 2017

Double luck!

I was thinking that these days I don’t cook much and in particular I haven’t created new recipes as often as I usually do. Indeed, I am busy with work, handling a lot of things at the same time, and the beginning of the new term at the university, with new students in the lab, teaching and budgeting is always a period with a lot of pressure. On top of which, because more is better, I have taken the lead for an exhibition at the science museum of the university and the opening is in just one month, so there is a lot to do and prepare. Of course I have an amazing group, with great people that are always ready to challenge themselves. But in the end of the day I have little energy left to think about creating a new recipe, as I also concentrate on this recipe/cooking contest entry. So last night when I stepped in the kitchen at 21:00 past the first great news was a package from Poland from our friend who knows how much I love the Polish traditional potteries which I find suits very well Japanese food, and every once in a while sends us one. I now have a pretty collection!!!

Then I started to cook some vegetables sautéed for our dinner, and I was thinking that it was really not enough as a meal and A. would complain I don’t feed him enough!!! 😉 And just at this perfect moment (timing couldn’t be better), the doorbell rang and after a short time A. came back to the kitchen with a warm dish of bamboos shoot rice prepared by our neighbor who has been to the country to pick bamboo shoots. Isn’t that lovely! And here the perfect dinner was ready! Thanks a lot I. and Mrs W.!!!!!

My collection of Polish crafted potteries

April 27, 2017

Barley risotto style

I love barley but I don’t cook some too often. An other curiosity of what happens in a kitchen! May be it’s because I have the impression it is only good for soup or that it takes too much time too cook. But actually it is not and in risotto style with veggies, or in salad it it really delicious and changes from classic recipes. And in the middle of winter, with winter veggies it is a delicious meal.

Barley risotto style with fresh veggies: 100g of barley, 1 leek, 1/3 cauliflower, 1 hand full of little spinach, olive oil, salt and pepper. In a pan heat the olive oil; cut the leek and add it to the oil, strir at low heat until soft. Add the barley and cover to twice the height with water. Cook under cover 15min at medium heat or until almost all the water is gone. Add salt pepper, the cauliflower washed and cut, the spinach washed and cut. Cook 3min and serve immediately.

January 24, 2017

My Japanese style vegan soup

Largely inspired by the quinoa soups (winter and autumn) I made, I wanted something more Japanese. So I cooked in a pan: one sweet potato, one large sato imo, a piece of kabocha and a leek in a bit of olive oil, and in an other pan I cooked a mix of seeds and beans together with brown rice, I cooked them as you would cook regular Japanese rice. I didn’t cook the veggies and the rice together to avoid over cooking the veggies, to keep their beautiful colors (black rice has a tendency to color a lot) and limit the stickiness of the rice and seeds. Just before serving I added a bit of boiling water to the rice mix to make it soupy, and I deglazed the veggies with a large table spoon of soy sauce. I served the rice mix, the vegetables and topped with golden sesame seeds. A rich and tasty soup for a winter evening.

January 11, 2017

Experiment

I was in the mood for a little cooking experiment: something in between an okonomiyaki and a galette, with plenty of veggies. Vegan, gluten/free, delicious and colorful. I used plenty of the veggies I had in the fridge: sweet potato, sato imo, lotus root, and carrot. I peeled and cut them then grilled them in a pan. In the mean time, I mixed buckwheat flour, rice flour and water with a bit of baking powder to obtain a quite thick dough. Then in a smaller pan I layed the vegetables covered them with dough and cooked at very low heat under cover then flipped it. And served. Use bulldog sauce like for okonomiyaki if you like.

December 21, 2016