Fresh home-made food every day
What best when it’s getting chilly outside than a bowl of hot and steamy white rice? And to complete the lunch, a plate with angelic (ashitaba-明日葉) omelette, grilled pork, grilled cherry tomatoes and turnips with miso. Very quick to prepare, tasty and warming!
I am also very pleased to use my new Arita yaki bowls!
So once you have made some oven grilled quenelles, the next thing you can do is a green soup. for that green soup, as I mentioned yesterday it is very simple, green leaves of any kind work perfectly: spinach, radish tops, turnip tops, salad… and since I found beautiful radishes with perfect green and yound tops, I simply used that. After washing thoroughly the leaves to remove soil I boil them in a 3/4L of salted water. Once well boiled I blend them thinely and add some cream (vegetal or not), some pepper. I slice the quenelles add them to the soup and cook for 10min. Then serve. The dish, because of the quenelles is quite rich and is a full dinner for me if you count one quenelle per person.
What if suddenly the temperature drops again and it feels like winter again?
Nothing as simple as a making a quinoa soup! I’ve spotted the recipe the very first time I was browsing my vegetarian cookbook received for Xmas, and didn’t had a chance to make it before: no quinoa, not the proper veggies, to warm… But last night was perfect. The recipe is extremely simple, and it takes very little time to prepare because quinoa cooks really quick, so that makes a perfect option for days at work. Of course I slightly changed the original recipe because I didn’t have potatoes and i found anyway that potatoes+quinoa was a little to much, so I replaced the potatoes by lotus root.
For this quinoa soup for a full dinner for 2 you need: 90g of quinoa; 1 tomato; 1 little leek or half onion; a handful of fresh spinach; 2 potatoes or the equivalent of lotus root; salt, pepper.
In a pan heat a bit of oil, chop the onion or the leek and throw them in the pan, add the tomato diced, then the spinach washed and roughly cut and finally the potato or lotus root, cut in big chunks. Finish with the quinoa. add water to cover the whole ingredients and add an other 2cm. Add a bit of salt and pepper, and cook for 20min under cover.
Serve while hot. I thought about adding an egg at the end of the cooking, but then realized that it was already well enough energetic, so finally didn’t.
After a gloomy week of rain and cold weather, now the sun is back for a few days and the temperature gently increases during the day, spring veggies and wild sprouts are more and more present on the market, while classic veggies like mushrooms and spring cabbages are also taking a large part of the show. I wanted to cook some risotto primavera but couldn’t find all the proper ingredients so I decided to change it to a green peas-eringi-bacon version. Simply delicious with the softness of the rice, the chewiness of the eringi and the sweetness and crispiness of the peas. I didn’t use any broth because I use the bacon as a base. Then add the eringi, finish just one minute before serving with the peas to keep them just a little hard.
Because sometime all you want is plain sautéed fresh veggies, and it’s so simple and so delicious that you wonder why it’s not what is on the menu everyday!!!!
After a rainy and windy morning. The sun finally showed up, it was incredibly warm, so we decided to go for a (Valentine) drive ;). You know like they do in the Japanese drama… Ahahah! Except that ours was a little twisted, we always love to visit industrial areas!! So this time we picked a scenic route through the city that leads us to the “dinosaur” bridge, a bridge that was opened a few years ago in the bay and that we’ve never taken so far. Eventually the route we took was a (romantic) garbage and waste collection route since we’ve passed all Tokyo dumpsters that happen to all be on the newer islands in the sea front with a beautiful view all with names that try to conceal the hideousness of their finction: Yumenoshima (Dream island), Wakashu (Young land)…!! Actually Yumenoshima-夢の島 is worth a trip for itself for its little museum on nuclear tests in the Pacific and the sadly famous wreck of the Daigofukuryu-第五福竜. The route we took was passing also right next to Haneda airport, so planes were just flying over ours heads at low altitude! Kind of love that! Finally we crossed the bay arrived in Heiwajima and Shinagawa’s warehouses and containers warf, for the industrial part of the ride, passed the water sewage and recycling plant and drove to Tokyo tower, before heading to Mitsukoshi to buy ourselves some little Japanese sweets: plum jelly and sakura manju and watch the sunset from home. Happy Valentine! Hope your Sunday was a good one!!!
PS: I also prepared the classic chocolate truffles for Valentine!
We wanted to go to Hakuba for a long snowboarding weekend but didn’t manage to get a room at our favorite hotel: la neige Higashikan, so we decided to go to Karuizawa. Karuizawa is not well known for being a ski resort but rather a summer getaway to get a bit of fresh air and to avoid Tokyo heat. It’s therefore known for being a classy place for the Tokyo well off to have a country house. We really love the forest in Karuizawa and we once considered buying there before we found our house in Ohara. Karuizawa in winter is not a crowded place, most of the villas are closed during the winter, a lot of shops, museums and restaurants too. But the principal was there. There is a little ski resort with enough tracks to spend a whole day having fun there, and it’s steep enough for a few shirt black tracks. The view of Mount Asama, a nice smoking volcano, is really nice from the top of the resort.
There are tons of nice hotels to stay at. We tried the newly refurbished Kyu Karuizawa Hotel and were not disappointed. And since there are some hiking courses in the area we went snowshoeing too, which is also something I really like to do, and I found missing in Hakuba (only found guided tours). I also like very much visiting the old Nakasando-中山道 area of Oiwake with some nice old houses along the path.
Eating in Karuizawa is also nice, there are plenty of local nice products, one being ham and cured pork meat. Miso is also great and I bought a few. I can’t wait to try it!
And if outdoor is not your cup if tea or the weather is not good, there are a few art museums to visit around.
So it was a great outdoor time, with little use of connected devices; I have muscles ache and this time I know it’s not because of work and stress and it feels really good!!!
When Thursday and Friday arrive, usually the fridge is getting empty of fresh veggies, but this week since we had some guests for dinner I bought more than usual last weekend to have a wide choice of possible menu, and so there’s still a few deliciously fresh veggies wauting to be cooked. In particular it’s rate to find things different from kabocha in the pumpkin-squash family, but last week I found a beautiful butternut squash. And after all the looking delicious pictures found on IG this autumn, I was really excited to cook it. I just roasted it with yellow carrots, and made a fluffy whipped omelette (which almost tasted like a quenelle and made me think that I really should cook some!!). All in orange tones, the whole plate is served warm and with just a bit of salt and pepper on top. Have a nice Friday!
When the winter market decide for you what will be on the menu, it’s veggies, veggies, just veggies simply oven cooked with thyme and a very little of olive oil. From top left: purple sweet potatoe, potato, romanesco, red carrot, shiitake. Copy paste and get a dinner for two after baking for 1h at 170deg in the oven. Serve as it is or add a splash of olive oil and a bit of salt.
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