Pesto and chirimen-jako

Pesto spaghetti with a Japanese twist.

A base of spaghetti in a basil sesame pesto I had as a leftover of the day before.

ちりめんじゃこ chirimen-jako are fish bait of the anchovy and sardine family. They are dried under the sun and can be kept a few days. That’s salty and tasting of fish of course.

The other topping : boiled and skinned favas (broad beans). And a few ribbons of basil leaves.

Side dish : ginger cukes.
A quick tsukemono : Sliced, cut, rinsed white cucumber. Added sea salt and minced ginger. Mixed well. Let one hour in the fridge.

Pickling cukes : kimchi + cornichons à l’estragon

Two ways of quickly pickling small cucumbers.

I really had a big bag that I was not going to eat before they go bad. I don’t need pickles for Winter, just some that prolongates the cukes for a week.

Lazy kimchi : breaking the cucumbers in dices and mixing with kimchi from the store. Mix and close. The lacto-fermentation of kimchi will extend to the added vegetables.
They will be ready in one or two days.

Note : kimchi is nor vegetarian usually, but some versions without animal products can be made.

Cornichons is the French name for finger sized cucumbers, and for their pickled version. Estragon is tarragon. I’ve also added a small onion.

1/4 of vinegar heated with water. A few grains of black pepper. And there is salt. Let cool. Close.
They will be ready next week.

Mitsuba and Spring roll du jour

Hot weather is back and Spring roll addiction too. They are never exactly the same. Is there a more convenient way to eat a large variety of raw vegetables ?

三つ葉 mitsuba means “3 leaves” in Japanese. It’s a very common herb here. I’d say it’s Japanese coriander. It is not so strong, it’s different but if you ate some you’d think about coriander or cilantro.
It is not great to cook it, so it’s added to salads, to garnish a soup.

The base is grated Japanese turnip, with some leaves. I’ve let it a while and squeezed excess water.

Gochujang (Korean spicy miso) + natto.

Cucumbers.

Field of fairies, with munsterious natto

Flowers dancing on my plate make me think of small flying fairies in a clear field in the middle of a dark wood ? A wood of matsu, Japanese pine trees…

Now the sadistic natto shooting…

It came in this wood leaf package. Pine flavored natto. Very special. Let’s spill the beans :

And you are missing the small. The closest… Munster cheese !

And strong in taste too… OK, that’s the last one.

Something fresher to balance the dish. Cukes. And shikibu-so leaves, in ohitashi. That means I briefly passed the leaves in boiling water (I poured it on them), drained and refreshed in cold water. Such ohitashi veggies are usually served simply with soy sauce for instance. Here the sauce comes with the natto.

shikibu leaves (click here)

Making dashi…’t! (Obanazawa no dashi) (via Gourmande in Osaka)

CAUTION : This stuff is highly addictive ! It's a tsukemono, J-style pickles. This one is a cousin of the picalilli. You can eat them with rice, tofu… or how you want. For instance, directly from the bowl, barefoot in front of the fridge in the middle of the night. A dinner with Yamagata no dashi This is not the run of mill tsukemono at your local sushi shop, but a regional specialty. Of course, I can buy some in Osaka but that's expensive. Ing … Read More