Tag: vegetarian

Romanesco

As you may have discovered along my posts and even more on Instagram, I am a big fan of all cruciferous vegetables. I couldn’t name my favorite!!

But when it comes to prepare romanesco cabbage I always feel sorry to crush the beautiful fractals. What’s the point of buying a romanesco to make a soup or a gratin out of it… a cauliflower would have been as good, even better as the color is nicer. So usually my romanesco end up boiled or steamed or slightly sautéed… but this week I was bored with this and wanted something that changes a bit. So I made a quiche with a special pie crust: very thin and crunchy, with garam masala and mustard seeds. The crunchiness was perfect with the softness of the baked romanesco just sliced and the egg flan. The slight spicy flavor of the crust was really nice and warming and we could still enjoyed the beautiful fractals.

One other thing I cooked then with the remaining half, was a soup… I could resist. I boiled the romanesco (but kept 2 slices for decor that I simply blanched to soften). Then crushed it with a fork… sorry beautiful fractals… Made a roux with a bit of butter and flower, then a bit if milk and then continued on with the cooking water. Once I obtained a light creamy texture I added the boiled cabbage and stirred well. Made some croutons and served.

What is your favorite romanesco recipe???

Why I love Instagram… inspiration…

There are few social media I really like or use… I joined facebook a longtime ago to try and as an alternative to my first blog, but never get too convinced except that my professional community is very active there and it helps to get the hot news quickly… Twitter never attracted me, and I only created an account when forced at work as part of my role of publicity committee member… this account is now closed… Pinterest was great when we were refurbishing our house to make idea boards… until the next house (maybe sooner than I think!) I probably won’t use it anymore… The rest… not even tried… my bad… but only Instagram won my heart and I have a steady instagrammer for now a little more than 7 years. Posting 1 picture a day has been my routine since I opened my account. But more than sharing my daily life and food recipes, it has been a tremendous source of inspiration. I love to browse the pictures of seasonal food that echoed to what I have in my fridge or in the garden; from the picture to guess how it could prepared, or plated and how I could recreate or adjust it to our liking… sometimes it just creates a craving… seeing 3 or 4 pictures in a row of beautifully golden quiche, or replete ravioli and dinner is all decided! Sometimes it takes more time to mature and after I thought it over for a few days I test something… That’s how I tested handkerchief pasta, stuffed bread etc…

Yesterday while going to work, after my usual morning post I was scrolling down my IG feed and got captured by a sweet potato and coconut milk soup (don’t ask me which account… I can’t remember :()… and miracle, I just had a large sweet potato waiting to be cooked in the very bottom of my fridge and bought coconut cream the day before… stars were aligned! So what did I do when I came home last night????

I prepared a fragrant sweet potato soup, and here is the recipe, perfect for a cold day like we have right now in Tokyo.

Sweet potato & coconut fragrant soup (for two, as main dish)

– a large sweet potato

– 200ml of coconut cream

– a large pinch of salt

– 1tsp of turmeric

– 1/2tsp of chili powder

– 1/2tsp of ground black pepper

Peel and boil until very mushy the sweet potato in enough water. Add salt. In a blender add the potato and cover with the cooking water. Blend. Add the coconut cream and blend. If too thick add more of the cooking water. Move to a large pan, heat again and add the spices. Serve very very warm.

How do you get your inspiration for your new recipes? Does a picture only inspires you like me? Or do you prefer a full story/recipe?

Has anyone tested Feedpost or is a user??? I just realized and was surprised they ranked In Gentiane’s kitchen in their ranking of top 100 home cooking blogs!!! And I was wondering if I should also use it for further inspiration…

Qagħaq tal-Ħmira

I love breads of all kinds and I’m always happy to try local breads when traveling. In Malta I didn’t expect I would fell so much in love with one of their bread: Qagħaq tal-Ħmira, sesame, anis, spices rings. We had one the very first morning when we were at the Birkirkara market, and after that I wanted to have some always, but there not that easy to find actually. Pastizzi were good but these little Qagħaq tal-Ħmira were just perfect. It has a perfect balance between sweetness and not, between richness and not, between spiciness and not. The balance of clove, anis seeds, citrus zest and sesame is perfect and that was the most difficult to recreate actually. But after 3 attempts I think I’ve nailed it and can share my recipe now. We love them so much and just to be sure I tested a fourth time, they were perfect, so there will many many more times!!!

Qagħaq tal-Ħmira

– 200g of flour

– 25g of butter

– 25g of sugar

– 3g of dry yeast

– a pinch of salt

– 1 cup more or less of tepid milk

– 1/2 tsp of clove powder

– 1 tsp of anis seeds

– 2 tsp of citrus zest (official recipe says lemon and orange, I used what I had: yuzu, natsumikan…)

– sesame seeds for the toping

In a large bowl, mix the flour, sugar, salt, yeast, butter, add the milk slightly warmed little by little while kneading. Stop adding milk and kneading when the dough is smooth. Add the clove powder, the anis seeds, the zest of citrus. Knead just to mix well. Leave for an hour or two in a warm places. When the dough has grow a bit and is warm and fluffy, cut in 4 pieces. Make a ball of each piece and shape like a bagel: squeeze the center of the ball with your thumb and make a hole, roll around your fingers to make the hole bigger about 4-5cm wide. Roll the top in sesame. Leave to prove for 1 to 2hours.

Bake at 180deg for 15 to 20min depending on your oven. Must be slightly golden but still soft.

Enjoy warm or cold, with jam, butter, cheese… or nothing…

Almost there

While I’m hoping that the doctor will tell me I’m good to go tomorrow I’m still taking it easy, resting a lot and trying to sleep a lot. But the one thing that makes me confident that I am recovering is that now my appetite is gigantic. Indeed in the first few days when I was sick I had very little appetite and I couldn’t eat much but now I’m feeling hungry all the time. Like really all the time!!! And I have a craving for energetic food, in particular super high carb. So, I eat Christmas breads and pasta all the time. And I came up with a few new recipes that I’d like to share with you today.

One is a vegan recipe very simple and perfect if you have a very fragrant olive oil. The second one is an adaptation of the classic Japanese kabocha salad and pasta salad. A vegetarian, warm version that is becoming a new favorite.

Cabbage pasta: (2 servings)

– 1/4 of a cabbage

– 125g of pasta of you choice

– olive oil

– thyme

– salt and pepper

Steam the cabbage for a few minutes, it should stay in shape but become just a bit translucide. Boil the pasta al dente, drain.

Cut the cabbage in large slices. In a pan greased with a bit of olive oil add the cabbage, the pasta, the thyme, salt and pepper and stir well at low heat. When well stirred add a bit of olive oil and serve to eat immigration.

Kabocha pasta warm salad (2 servings as starter or side, 1serving as main)

– 60g of pasta

– 2 kiri (equivalent to 2 tbs of cream cheese)

– 1/6 of kabocha

– salt, pepper, paprika

– 3-4 hazelnuts and 3-4 cashew nuts

Boil the pasta and the kabocha separately. Drain. In a bowl mash the kabocha with a spatula or a fork, add the cream cheese, salt, pepper and paprika. A pinch of each. Stir until creamy, add the pasta and stir well again. Top with a few hazelnuts and cashew nuts chopped. Enjoy!

Cooking for the sick me

Well I wasn’t just tired, actually I was really sick. So when I was writing my blog post the other day I actually had a very high fever on that same day and the next day I was diagnosed with a pneumonia. What the heck is that disease? I thought it was only for old people? Am I that old already? How did I get there? Well… I must admit probably too much work, too few sleep and outdoor activity in the past days, breaking with my normal rythme that is 7-8h sleep and 45-120min of physical activities 4-6 days a week. Hopefully I was diagnosed quite early, so it wasn’t that bad, or so they said. But for sure what the doctor told me was that I shouldn’t work for a couple of days and I should rest.

What does resting mean? So far resting for me was synonymous of walking around the city or walking around the countryside, riding bicycle, practicing kyudo, going swimming in the ocean, gardening and cooking… But this time what the doctor had in mind was actually “doing nothing”. So, in the coziness of my ivory tower I’m trying to do nothing. Which is basically failing poorly. So I force myself to work at a slower pace remotely and to sleep a lot. And also because this was quite unprepared that I would be sick I needed to prepare myself a few things to eat as A. Is at work. And naturally I’m falling for some comfort food. Which comfort food for me means a lot of cream cheese (but not the regular cream cheese from Hokkaido that I usually use, no for French Kiri, which to me is the best one, well balance between fat and flavors), a lot of bread that was suppose to be our next breakfast and some fresh vegetables cooked or rather overcooked in a mushy and unpresentable manner. Which incidentally so resonates with the recent podcast from one of my favorite food bloggers I was listening to recently.

So it starts with pear compote, with steamed broccoli mashed with cream cheese, spread on campagne bread. It continues on with warm vegetables soup also topped with cream cheese. Or rather the other way around. It goes on with steam pumpkin also with cream cheese. oh! And I am having all my lunches in bed!!!

Oh! And because I had to drink a lot, unsurprisingly my favorite drink has become homemade plum syrup, it adds just the sweetness and flavor to a glass of tepid or warm water without providing the feeling of being sick that herb tea sometimes gives when one is actually sick.

And hopefully by the time I have eaten all the cream cheese, finished emptying my vegetables drawer I’ll be fully back on my feet and back to normal.

Mushy broccoli with cream cheese spread on campagne bread with a glass of homemade plum syrup

What is your favorite comfort food when you’re feeling down and sick?

How do you cook for yourself when you have little strength left in your body?

Extravagant bread!!!

Last night I asked A. what he would like for breakfast, or more precisely what kind of bread, brioche etc… ans he said I want an extravagant bread!!! But not extravagant because there are fancy things inside… hum… that didn’t really help so I started kneading a 1/3 whole wheat 2/3 white wheat and decided it would be extravagant in the shape…

With the chilly evenings now and our house rather cold I have tested over the years many options for the first rise of my doughs. If like me your house is not very warm (20-25deg) and your dough has difficulty rising and you don’t want to invest in a machine for that or use your oven and waste energy you have three options:

1. Prepare your dough 6 or 4h earlier than usual and give it enough time to rise. This only work is the temperature is higher than 18.

2. Soak the bottom your bowl in a sink or larger bowl filled with warm water (35-45 deg). Change the water once or twice if your house is really cold.

3. If like in Japan (and like me) you have the habit to take a bath in the evening, keep the dough in the warm bathroom. It’s very nice because the air in the bathroom is very humid usually and it doesn’t dry the top of the dough.

Personally option 2 and 3 are my favorite options and they work 100% of the time. I tried many others that I found in cook books and on internet but they were not as good: drying too much the dough, not very efficient, wasting too much unnecessary energy…

So back to the extravagant bread, after a beautiful rise, I shaped it as a ring. Indeed, I find that the ring is a more extravagant shape than the classic shapes, it gives a good balance between crust and crumbs and it bakes evenly. So ring it was! And A. was satisfied with the result!

While the bread was finishing to bake I just went in the garden to pick some tangerines (we have plenty this year) and breakfast was ready!

Have a good Sunday!!!

Oh! And the bread shape was perfect to make sandwiches to go for our picnic on the beach after surfing!!! I just prepared an omelet with plenty of greens and a bit of grilled pork.

Kabocha pie

Halloween doesn’t inspire me much for cooking. Too much colors, disgusting appearance… I am not a fan at all and I must say that looking at my IG feed these days was not very attractive. Hopefully it’s passed now… None the less the orange pumpkins and the sweetness of their taste is something that I love, though in Japan we don’t really have the giant pumpkins of North America, we have our little Japanese kabocha all the same delicious, while different in texture.

A Japanese kabocha though rather small is usually something that is big enough to be used for 3 or 4 meals… so when I ended with 1/3 of kabocha that needed to be eaten, I decided to make a pumpkin pie. But since we don’t eat much sweets… except when I flip crepes!! I made a savory and spicy pie. I knew it would be good, but what I didn’t expect is that it would be scrumptiously addictive!!! So… here is my recipe and let me know how you liked it!!

Savory kabocha pie

– 1/3 kabocha

– 25cl of milk

– 2 eggs

– cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, salt, pepper

– 50g of whole wheat flour

– 80g of white hard flour

– 4tbs of rice oil

– water

Wash the kabocha, remove the seeds, and a bit of the skin if you find hard spots. Cut in large cube and boil until very soft. Drain.

In the meantime in a bowl mix the flours, the oil and add water little by little while kneading until the dough is soft and smooth. Roll to the size or your pie dish and set.

Turn on the oven to 180deg.

Go back to your kabocha. With a fork mash it, add the milk and the eggs, stir then add the spices to your liking. Stir again. Pour in the pie crust and bake for 45min. Enjoy!!!

Butternut squash ravioli

It’s been a while I didn’t make pasta! It was too hot and the summer vegetables don’t go to well for making ravioli filling. But now that autumn is here, hey! Hey! It’s time to get the pasta machine out and roll some pasta!!!

As the title indicates, I made butternut squash ravioli. It’s not my first time of course, and you can find different recipes already here and here, but this time I decided to try making tiny ravioli and add some spices: nutmeg and cinnamon, and a bit more salt and pepper than usual. And serve them with roasted pine nuts and olive oil… and you know what? It was delicious!!! The cinnamon adds a really nice twist of sweetness and is much better than just the nutmeg alone. So here is the filling recipe and the sauce, for the pasta just as usual…

Butternut squash ravioli

For the filling:

– 1/2 butternut squash

– 1 pinch of nutmeg

– 1/2 tsp of cinnamon

– a pinch of salt

– freshly ground pepper

For the sauce:

– a handful of pine nuts

– olive oil

Boil or steam the butternut peeled.

Drain well and remove all the water, seeds and fibers. Let cool down. Add all the other ingredients and stir well. Fill the ravioli.

In a frypan roast the pine nuts.

Boil the ravioli, dress the plates with ravioli, pine nuts and a bit of olive oil. That’s it!!!

Lack of inspiration

I don’t know if it’s the super hot and humid weather, the hard time we’ve had with jetlag (it took almost two weeks to recover with a permanent impression of being tired, feverish, and to have a cold), or the impression that the summer is over and somebody (Mr. bad weather) still it from me… as it was way too short… but I have difficulties in finding inspirations to cook. For I don’t know how many days our meals have consisted of pasta and vegetables. Not that I don’t like them… but still… or of rice and umeboshi… But even if I have time to cook I don’t have the energy or the inspiration… because nothing attracts me anymore. I reject the autumn vegetables, too early!, and I am not enthused with the late summer ones anymore…

So last night I decided to cook something I don’t cook often but we love: a potato salad with fresh greens, a rich yogurt dressing and herbs plenty. And this morning, the first autumn day was here! Temperature under 30 and a nice breeze… so now I will start cooking a lot more butternut squash, kabocha, shiitake and other mushrooms! But still, here is the potato salad recipe, because what is good is good!!!

End of summer potato salad

– 3 or 4 potatoes

– 1/2 branch of celery

– 1 cucumber

– fresh coriander leaves

– fresh sprouts: broccoli, soya…

– 1/2 cup of greek or nordic yogurt, drained

– olive oil, salt, pepper

Boil the potatoes and peel them. Slice them. Wash and cut in thin slices the cucumber. Cut in 5mm cubes the celery. Wash the sprouts and the coriander.

In a bowl, put the potatoes, the yogurt and the olive oil, salt and pepper, stir well. It doesn’t matter if you crush the potatoes. Add the vegetables, stir again, the sprouts, stir and serve! That’s it!

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