Matcha pasta on a flower bed

There is green tea in my pasta and my plate looks like a garden today. Happy !

Add 1 tbs of matcha (green tea powder) to 1 cup of flour or semolina, mix well and make pasta as usual.
I like them thick and thin, that depends on days. This time, the mood was for thick tagliatelle.

I used what was in the fridge : like leafy mini daikon (leaves had been eaten, I wonder by who…), red cabbage and carrot. A dry chili. New onion. Stir-fry in olive oil. Season with sea salt and freshly ground pepper.

Add in the cooked pasta. Yes, there were 2 volumes of veggies for one of pasta. That’s the perfect ratio.

Serve with 2 sides, well 2 desserts…

A season citrus. It’s a sort of pomelo. It’s very sweet and flavored, not bitter at all.
子夏 (konatsu) or 日向夏　(hyuganatsu). The first name means “little Summer”.

Homemade soy yogurt.

Kabocha mousse et matcha au lait

A cute mini-meal, totally in this season’s mood.

A mousse made of mashed boil kabocha, pumpkin spices, a little sugar (optional), (veg) whipped cream and cream cheese. The stalk is made of cream cheese, passed in green powder and sugar.

The matcha au lait is a big hit in Japanese fast-food coffes. Matcha green tea powder and foamed milk.

Bubble matcha au lait

That’s refreshing and delicious. In addition the cafeine wakes you up from humidity induced torpor.

Cooked and refreshed pearls of tapioca.

Matcha green tea powder, whisked in ice-cold water.

Iced milk espuma.

Sugar ? Only the cute stars. The skim milk is naturally sweet.

With a wagashi Japanese tea cake (bought). It’s kashiwa-mochi colored green with yomogi. The leaf is not from “oak”, it’s an alternative version more common in Kansai.

Midori okowa bento for flower time – Green tea rice lunchbox

Bento today. It’s a leisure lunch, a picnic for a park bench. I do it for the fun. For the pleasure of using nice boxes too.

I don’t live the lunchbox at work lifestyle. I don’t need to as most days, either I work at home or I can arrange my schedule to be back to eat.

Then, it’s inconvenient in a Japanese big city. There is no place to eat in business areas. No parks, you don’t have your own desk anywhere. In small towns, I have visited friends at their job, and all the staff stopped working for lunch break, so the office was turned into a dining room. No such thing in Osaka. That never stops, people take their break in turn, if they take it. You can eat in from of customers, not very professional. So if your only option is to eat your packed lunch standing in the company’s closet or in emergency staircase, it’s better to have a sandwich. It’s good for the mood to get out of the workplace for a few minutes, and there are countless delicious shokudo (small restaurants).

Green rice. The idea comes from the Shizuoka Gourmet’s eki-ben cha meshi.Okowa means it’s sticky rice, mochigome. It’s 50% sticky and 50 % brown rice here. I added a few used tea leaves and macha green tea powder diluted in water at the end.

Veggie side. Steamed carrot and green peppers, white beans with sweet chili sauce.

Protein side. A ball of ikanago (eel fish bait) with curry spices, rolled in bread crumbs and black sesame. Dices of konnyaku

The whole lunch with a crisp apple as a dessert.

Don’t forget to put the flower in the box. That will be nice to see it at lunch time.

Ume plum blossoms for an early Spring tea

Ume (Japanese sour plum) trees are blossoming in Osaka. Their fragrance is like in a dream.

Old style yatsuhashi sweets (from a shop, not home-made). They are a specialty tea cake of Kyoto, whose production started in Yatsuhashi (8 bridge street) in 17th Century.

The oldest ones were yaki yatsuhashi that are cookies, shape in half cylinder, like the bridge that gave the name. Today, it’s nama yatsuhashi (fresh time), a more recent type.

My green tea looks muddy. I have added a little matcha (ceremony powdered tea) in my cup of sencha (Japanese leaf tea)…
Matcha is NOT powdered sencha, they are from different tea leaves, from tea bushes grown differently, so tastes differ, but they went well together.

This yatsuhashi is matcha flavored. This is a variation, not too recent. They recommend it for this season as green is the color of Spring, of course.

The sweet is made of a sheet of mochi, inside tsubuan (chunky sweetened azuki beans).The powder around is kinako (roast soy bean flour) slightly sweetened.
To know more about ingredients :
Wagashi Saga : Photo-menu of all Japanese sweet posts.

Now, hanami, the blossom viewing festival means cherry blossoms in Japan. Over 1000 years ago, ume plum blossoms were the most popular , and there were other flower events. High society refined people would have small picnics under the tree, to hear poetry and music.
All these traditions were those of the princes of China. Japanese nobles imported their lifestyle and pertpetuaded long after it became extinct in China.