Tag: white

Cauliflower and broccoli

Having all these beautiful cabbages in the fridge, I’m always wondering which one to chose and to cook, so tonight I opted for a duet: cauliflower and broccoli. 

Again this time, the recipe was not decided when I started to cook and I changed my mind ten times in the process. So first I steamed half a cauliflower and a broccoli, because I wasn’t sure of what I was to prepare I kept them separately all the time. Then with the cauliflower I prepared a roux with quite a lot of flour to obtain  a thick dough, seasonned with nutmegs, salt and pepper, and decided to make pancakes with that. For the broccoli I decided to make a soup, so I also prepared a roux but with very little flower, then I blended the steamed broccoli and added enough water for two servings, salt, and a little of sesame seeds.

I baked the pancakes in a greased pan, and served. An other seeving option is with some prosciutto and Parmegiano with the pancakes. 

Radish soup and miso grilled sea-bass

This litlle radish (little compared to giant Japanese daikon), or this big turnip, was so beautiful that I couldn’t help buying it at th coop shop.

I didn’t how to prepare it and what to do with it at first, but suddenly the idea of using it for a soup was obvious. So I peeled it and boiled it in consome and with a little piece of leek. Once soft enough I blended i into a creamy soup. I served the soup with a piece of local wild sea-bass that I grilled after rolling it in a mixture made with miso, oil and soya  sauce. Simply delicious!
For a 100％ vegan experience you can replace the fish by a piece of mochi (rice cake)

Sunday morning's English scones

Yesterday I’ve been busy cooking for dinner so I didn’t have time to prepare some bread for this morning. Usually when this happens I either cook crepes, pancake or English scones in the morning and in 30min we have a ready to eat breakfast.

This morning it was plain English scones. The recipe for a dozen 4cm scones is simple (based on recipe from BBC of course!!): 175g of flour, 1/2 tsp of baking powder, a bit of salt, 40g of soft butter, 80ml of milk or equivalent, 2tbsp of brown sugar, vanilla (I use exclusively fresh one, no extract, much tastier and love the black dots!!). After mixing all the ingredients and obtaining a nice dough I roll it in sticks of 4 cm diameter and cut thick slices of 1cm or more and line them on cooking paper. Bake in the oven for about 15min  (depending on thickness) at 180deg. And ready to eat!! With butter, jam, marmalade… 
This morning I served an apple-strawberry salad to complete the breakfast.


Fukinoto – ふきのとう

Fukinoto growing in our garden
As a lot if places, Japan is full if wild plants that are edible. A lot of them come as a set called 山菜 (pronounce that sansai, literaly the “mountains vegetables”). It includes kogomi, tara no me, warabi and fukinoto. Most of them are great fun to pick, just like mushrooms. Depending on places they are more or less abundant and they grow at different times. For example fuki no to grow in January-February in Chiba prefecture, while in the Niigata mountains they are snow piercer and grow in May.
The first time we ate fukinoto, we actually went to pick them in Tsunan machi area with some friends connoisseurs. Later, I realize that we have some in the garden!! Fukinoto are delicious, with quite a strong taste easy to identify. They are better eaten while still at the bud stage (not as opened as the picture show them). They are often prepared in tempura (I skip this since I don’t deep fry at home), in a mixture with miso: fukinoto-miso which allows to preserve them longer, and in miso soup.
Today I tried the miso soup with tofu!

For that you need a good katsuo dashi, or konbu dashi for a vegan experience (I promise to prepare something about dashi soon), some miso (I prefer white or light colored miso for miso soup, which is also what is used for winter miso soup in cha-kaiseki), a piece of silky tofu, and some fresh fukinoto. Once you’ve prepared the dashi, mix in a spoon of miso per person. In the bowls put a few dices of tofu (after draining it), top with the finely chopped fukinoto (for a softer taste of fukinoto you can boil them once chopped in a net for 30s) and finally add the miso soup. Et voila!
Plain rice and fukinoto miso soup

Coconut meringues

So, what do you do with an egg white once you’ve used the yolk for chocolate truffles?

Meringues of course! Of course? Well it was my first time!!
Making meringues is surprisingly easy but you need to be sure to jave time ahead because the baking takes more than one hour! Unexpectedly I used a bbc recipe again (http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2445/ultimate-meringue) and divided all the quantities by 4, having one egg. I also prefer to make small quantities anyway.
I don’t have an electric whisk at the country house so I just beat manually and it worked perfectly. At the end I just added a bit of grated coconut.

And more than one hour later beautiful meringues ready to eat!

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