French in Japan!

Homemade cereals bread and artisanal natural cheese from Komagata cheese factory in Isumi.

There is a cheese factory very close to our house in Ohara. Yes yes! a cheese factory in Japan! and not in Hokkaido!  But, sadly it is impossible to just go there and buy cheese... At least all my trials didn't success.
But, at last, I have found a place where to get some: Na no hana local products shop!!!

They have a selection of cheeses from Komagata and so far what I've tried was really good. A perfect match to my cereal favorite homemade bread!
A French girl, even in Japan is still French!!!

Pork fillet in cocotte

I have a beautiful Staub cocotte that I use  not often enough. It's a pity because I love vegetables cooked in the cocotte, when the juice and extracts mix together.

So today I decided to use it and prepare a Japanese style pork filet in cocotte with new onions and carrots.

 In the cocotte I put a little of sunflower oil, 2 new onions cut roughly, 2 little taro potatoes and one carrot, then I lay a large pork filet on top, salt, pepper, laurel and cooked for 30-40min. (In my case the vegetables were perfect for two, but I seeved only half of the filet)

Once finished, I opened the cocotte and added a little of soya sauce to dilute the extracts, which gave a dark beautiful and delicious glazing, almost tasting like miso.

Served with rice with soya beans and fresh pickled vegetables.

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Colorful plate

I love vegetable sauté and all the possible combinations.

I tried a new one, with sticks instead of slices. I cut the carrots, sweet potatoe with a mandolin, cook them in a bit of olive oil under cover, then added na-no-hana, and served with scrambled eggs.
Perfect brunch plate for a Saturday!

Flan patissier

I love this thick and rich dessert called "flan patissier", which basically is a milk pudding on a dough. It's been years I haven't eaten any, and recently I've been thinking about making some. Chance was on my side with a special issue of "cuisine actuelle" on homemade cooking, and a lot of classical French recipes, and the one of the flan patissier!!!

It is really easy to make and a delicious dessert or a perfect breakfast served with fruits.

The dough is a "pate brisee", so just flour, butter and water. The pudding part is vanila flavoured milk, eggs and sugar like for a regular pudding. And it is baked 45min in an oven at 180.

Delicious!!!

Chia pudding

I found this really quick and simple recipe to "cook" chia seeds. The result is like tapioca with milk but here it's really more easier.

Just add 20g of chia seeds with 250ml of almond milk (or rice milk, or whatever you like), wait for one or two hours. 

It's ready to eat. 

One-bowl lunch

This is definitely the end of winter! But the spring greens and veggies are not yet ready, we'll have to wait a few weeks, so in between, mizuna, brocolli, spinach, na no hana are the best options!

I find that mizuna really goes well with plain Japanese rice, so I prepared it on a rice bowl with some steamed brocolli, and I made some pork-okara-curry bites.

For the mizuna just wash it in clear water, the brocolli I steamed them on top of thd rice for 2 min, the bites, I mixed pork meat with 2 large spoons of okara, one egg, a spoon of curry powder, salt, pepper and cooked then golden. Served all in one bowl, topped with some sesame seeds.

I believed that the pork can be removed and replaced by a little of panko for a veggan experience.

Angel cake

One of my favorite cake is the angel cake. Last week I tried the delicious one at Ciel patisserie in Paris, very sophisticated and very good, especially the matcha one. And the Sakura, just made for few days for hanami.

But at home I just made a regular one, with a drop of vanilla, rice flour, and rice milk (totally gluten free). 

And I had it with a spoon of cream and apple marmalade. It was a success, everyone liked it. 

Coconut-strawberry tart

Coconut ad strawberry tart with a bit of coconut and ice sugar for the decor

I love strawberry tart and I love to make some! Usually the best time starts end of March in Japan, but this year we've started to have delicious strawberry for a few weeks already, so I couldn't wait!

I love to make variations with the dough, with the custard. This year I added some grated coconut in the dough and made the custard with soya milk and a lot of vanilla. I also wanted to try making the dough in circles and just top it with custard and strawberries. I need a little more practice but the result was not bad at all!

For the dough I used flour, brown sugar, one egg, butter, and added some coconut (I always make the dough without measuring anything, I like to "feel" it).

For the custard I used 2 egg yolks, a little can of soya milk, vanilla, a spoon of flour and brown sugar.

No-time-dinner and almost empty fridge

It is often that around Thursday the fridge starts to be empty because I shop mainly my fresh fruits and vegetables in the country on weekends. Adding a few dinners out for work and a busy schedule, I couldn't refill at the local shops in Koganei, so I must say that it happens that I arrive home with pretty much nothing to eat and the only option is the little supermarket round the corner. Not too bad but not too great either. It ended up in cooking a tomatoes andbasil  pilaf. Boiled some rice, then in a frypan with olive oil add some roughtly cut tomatoes and basil leaves, salt, pepper, in a circle in a plate, and ready!!! If you have leftover of rice it's even faster! If you want to top it with some parmegiano perfect!

Sticky millet croquettes

I discovered just recently while on a trip to Nagano prefecture that in Japan they grow some sticky millet. It looks very much like millet but once cooked it is much stickier.

I found this consistency perfect for vegan croquettes. So I mixed some boiled sticky millet with some vegetables sautéed I had in the fridge: a leek, half new onion, 2 small carrots gratted, one egg and a few linen seeds, and made croquettes that I cooked in olive oil in a frypan.

I also made a version with cheese but taste-wise without was really delicious and if the cheese makes the croquettes creamy and more golden, I don't think it is a must.

Gomadofu

During my last stay in Tokyo I tried, in a very nice restaurant in Asakusabashi, gomadofu: a tofu with sesame inside. It was so delicious.

Back in Paris, I cannot find it at the Japanese grocery so I decided to make it myself. I found a recipe, and it was very easy to make it. 

45g of kuzu (found in naturalia), 30g of tahini, 2 spoons of sushi vinegar, 2 spoons of agave syrup, 400ml of soya milk. Just melt the kuzu with the milk, add all the other ingredients and warm during one minute. Put in a mould and wait until it's cold. 

That's it. 

New onion vegetable sauté and seeds

Spring is in the air!!! Sunny days are getting a little warmer, in a week daffodils have sprouted everywhere in the garden and new vegetables start slowly to appear. It starts first with onions. They are so sweet and with a taste that is so much the annunciation of warmer days that I love them!!!

This morning there were plenty of new onions at the coop and I bought several and decided to prepare some vegetables sauté with some seeds.

In a wok I put a little of olive oil, peeled and cut in big chucks one new onion, add one carrot cut in sticks, later I added brocoli, small tomatoes cut in halves, sunflower seeds, salt and pepper. Separately I boiled a mix made of some lentils, barley etc...

Once cooked I mix everything in the wok with a little more olive oil, just before serving.

Spinach and tomato tart with chick pea dough

Chick pea flour is really easy to use. Mixed with some water and fried, you make soca, a little bit thicker you can make panisse. I love pies because they can prepared in advance and are handy when work is really busy. Today I wanted to try a pie dough with chick pea flour. I mixed chick pea flour, water, olive oil, salt and pepper to obtain a soft dough. I roughly shape it to my pie dish with ghe fingers. Then I've cut tomatoes and lined them on the bottom, cover with finely cut spinach, snd a batter of tofu and eggs season with cumin, and finish with a few tomato slices. Bake for 30 minutes and it smells so good... can't wait to try it!!!

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.

Stamped butter cookies

For my birthday, my best friend offered me a very nice present: a customizable cookie stamp. I've used it a few time already for tea and we ate the cookies right of the oven so didn't had a chance to take a pic!!! This time I made some for dessert and I could keep them long enough to take a picture!! These are plain butter cookies, a bit like Britany's specialty.

The recipe is really simple: 100g of butter,  150g of flour, 40g of sugar, baking powder, salt, vanilla. Of course you can make any variation of your choice!

After baking the cookies until golden at 180 degrees I kept them in a cool dry place before eating them.

Breakfast with twisted orange bread, whole grain bread and smoothie

With Prunellia and Aurore visiting us I'm preparing a few samples of what we like to eat. The rice bowl with salad-acocado-tuna topping (see Prunellia's post), nabe, cookies, smoothie, breads...

For breakfast I asked them to pick one bread they wanted to eat and they decided for a twisted orange bread. Excellent pick for breakfast!

This bread is a little sweet, with orange peels and orange blossom water. (250g of flour; 155g of water; 12g of dry sourdough; 2g of yeast; 20g of sugar; 5g of salt; 12g of butter; 12g of orange blossom water; 45g sugared orange peels. Mix everything together, until smooth, then prepare like regular bread, only in the end you twist the dough and bake in a buttered pan with a lid for 30min at 220deg.)

I also made a whole grain bread too (see previous post), and a green melon-pineapple-strawberry smoothie.

We ate the breads just out from the oven with homemade marmalade and butter. Deliciously warming on a rainy Sunday morning! 

Steamed whole cabbage

In winter, when it's cold and dark I really love to eat cabbage based recipes. One of my favorite yet simplest is steamed cabbage. Basically I steam a whole cabbage so that the inside is still a little crunchy while the outside melts in the mouth. I usually accomodate it with only a fruity olive oil, thyme from Aix garden and salt. Today on the plate I've added a few slices of crunchy grilled bacon, but it's optional.

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!

Sunday breakfast

For Sunday morning breakfast I like to eat homemade freshly baked bread, pancakes, crumpets, or anything alike, and fresh fruits in salad or smoothie. It's a good start before spending the day out.

This weekend I prepared sugar bread, the recipe comes from Erik Kayser's book, my reference for bread making (in French). 

It's basically bread base in which a little sugar has been added, and the final shaping is slightly different. After baking it it is also finished with sugar sirup.

Perfect with butter, jam or just nothing.