They call me ‘shoe cream’… Puff cake blues.

Les choux à la crème are probably the most successful French cake in Japan. Chou was easy to pronounce, but à la crème was too long. Everybody knew that meant cream. So the name became シュークリーム shu-kuri-mu chou cream, which is also how they say “shoe cream”.

Well we can see them everywhere from the luxury hotel tea room to the discount kombini (convenience store). They can be extraordinary, great, good, meh, abominable. The choice is huge. Some stands prepare them fresh all day.
I still find home-made fresher.

First let’s make the little choux. Then a cream at local taste including anko (azuki bean sweet paste) an ingredient borrowed from wagashi (Japanese tea sweets).

Simple, 125 g of water, 25 g of oil, 80 g of flour. I included about 2 eggs, a little vanilla extract and sugar.

Baked at 200 degrees, 25 minutes.

I really love the inside still wet. So I don’t fill them, I keep the cream on the side.

I passed boiled azuki beans through a sieve to get the creamy texture, added sugar and a little brandy. That’s koshian (‘passed’ bean paste, recipe here). More about it here.

The whip (here veg’) plus anko bean paste mix. It is very popular now.

Causa maki. Lima-Osaka fusion.

A Japanese-Peruvian fusion. Causa rellena the Peruvian, stuffed mashed potato, and makizushi the sushi rolled in nori seaweed.

causa

PLUS

sushi

And that rocks. Of course, since the success of the food chain Nobu, Peruvian-Japanese fusion cuisine is famous over the world. Except here actually. There are many Peruvian residents (mostly people with Japanese origins that got a visa to come over the 80′s), but few Peruvian eateries and these tend to propose purely Peruvian dishes they may be nostalgic about, not a mix. That makes sense.

Normally you need yellow potatoes. I colored some with turmeric, flavored with grated onion, habanero chili powder, salt and grated onion. Let that chill a few hours.

Red onion : cut, salted, let a while, rinsed.

Then carrot, negi leek greens and avocado.

Rolled on a sheet of nori. That would need more support than a rice roll, so I’ll use 2 layers of nori next time but that was the last one.
Cut. I’ve eaten them like that, with nothing added, they were very tasty.

Yakitori tsukune

Tonight yakitori !
But the photos are… night photos. Sorry.

You’ll see nicer in this post with 2 more versions of this basic skewer. And a mini-compil :

other yakitori

Soft tsukune recipe :
-For about 150g of meat (not too lean ground chicken), I’ve added a 1 tbs of ginger (minced), 1 tbs of leek (minced), 1 ts of soy sauce, a pinch of sugar, 2 tbs of sake, 1 tbs of sesame oil, plus a little more salt. After adding the previous ingredients and kneading, I’ve mixed in 2 big tbs of potato starch and about 1/2 cup of water. I let it rest 2 hours so flavors can mix.
-Then the balls are formed and boiled. Bring a pot of water to ebullition, pass on medium heat and throw in freshly made balls. When they are done, they are white all around and they come afloat. Take them away. They can be cooled and stored for a later meal, or used immediately.
-Put balls on skewers, oil, salt and grill. It’s the simple “salt grilled style”.

Yuzu citrus and togarashi hot chili pepper tsukune. I also made nira tsukune by adding minced nira (garlic chive) to the mix.

With the broth I made a soup, adding slices of ginger, shimeji mushrooms and negi leeks.

Meatballs or not…

So that’s this month’s Daring Cook’s challenge.

The June Daring Cooks’ challenge sure kept us rolling – meatballs, that is! Shelley from C Mom Cook and Ruth from The Crafts of Mommyhood challenged us to try meatballs from around the world and to create our own meatball meal celebrating a culture or cuisine of our own choice.

Meatballs !

There will be several posts that will appear in the next days on this topic with Japanese chicken meat balls (tsukune) :
yakitori

So let’s start with this “Italian” version.

Yes, no meat in sight… and well bean versions are allowed.

Taisho kintoki red beans (boiled), garlic, onion, black miso, herbs (oregano and basil), paprika, hot chili and a little potato starch for the binding.

Chinese black miso is the main flavoring.

The cheezy filling is sakekasu (sake lees), tofu, olive oil and salt.

Then they can be steamed in a steamer or in a micro-wave (200 watts). Served in tomato sauce. They are equally good hot and cold.

the whole meal (click here)

Green gnocchi in yellow curry soup

It’s humid, hot or cold (or both), stuffy, windy, raining and air pression that gets on the nerves… A typhoon that’s called. So a spicy soup for dinner, with gnocchi in it.

Full of veggies.

This my attempt to shape gnocchi (colored with matcha green tea) with a bamboo mat. Ahem… Not today, but that should work.

Konnyaku is easier to shape with veggie cutters.

Yes, it’s vegetable . That brings volume, a fresh texture and the fibers help digestion.

The soup is light coconut milk, turmeric and an Indian spice mix containing mango powder. I’ve added sliced leek white and grated carrot. Just let the bubble 10 minutes and it’s ready.