Pâtes fraîches au fromage frais (milk curd pasta)

Pâtes fraîches au fromage frais. Fresh cheese on fresh pasta.

That’s being made…

I’ve curded some whole milk with a little rice vinegar. That’s not exactly cheese, but that’s close enough.

The liquid makes a nice sour drink.

The curd seasoned with salt, pepper, olive oil, onion, tarragon, parsley and marjoram. Let the flavors mix during 2 hours in the fridge.

Shiruna (chard or beet greens).

Stir-fried.

Then, freshly made egg spaghetti, in tomato sauce :

Serve the pasta topped with fresh curds, the greens as a side…

Dill veg’ burger

A quickie : azuki patties with dill gomadare sauce. It’s delicious.
Herbs are expensive in Winter, but when they have too much at the end of the day, the stores discount : at the condition that you take 4 packs of dill, you pay like 1/2 a pack. Oh, I’ll find something to do with it. I’ll just put some in everything.

Azuki beans. Well, you have to soak and boil them first.

The burger is made of half-mashed boiled azuki beans, onion and ginger cubes, powdered sesame, minced dill stalks, ninniku no me (garlic stalks).
It is flavored with salt and wuxi (Chinese 5 spices).

The sauce gomadare (sesame sauce) is pasted sesame seed, white miso and rice vinegar in equal amount. Plus a pinch of sugar. I’ve added dill in it and some water to make it liquid.

Enjoy the burger with the sauce. And some freshly baked bread to clean the plate.

A bowl of vitamins…

A fruity brunch is magical. It uplifts the mood.

The base is oatmeal, soaked with coconut milk and cream and some yuzu citrus juice. A few dried grapes inside. Let one hour or more.

On top : mikan mandarin oranges, goji berries, yuzu citrus peel.
And some freshly ground sesame, a little black sugar to add before mixing.

Tanuki soba and big kabu turnips

A hot Japanese soup. Soba are buckwheat noodles. The tanuki is a Japanese raccoon dog.

ezo-tanuki, Northern white tanuki (image source, a blog with nice animal photos)

I’ve not been hunting. This dish is nearly vegan (you can use vegan broth). In Osaka, tanuki soba means a soba soup garnished with a slice of abura-age. In other places in Japan, they may give it a wrong appellation. Maybe it evokes the color of the fur of a tanuki. Or it’s because it’s tanukis’ favorite dish when they dine out in town…

Thin abura-age, it’s fried tofu slices. I bought them. Before adding them to the soup, I wipe away the excess of oil and slightly toast them.

Kabu are Japanese turnip. They can be pearly white, either small or huge. And more rarely red skinned.

Slices of the red kabu, kabu greens, cabbage, carrot, onion… All that is covered with dashi stock.
Classic dashi
kombu seaweed dashi (vegan)
DIY soba noodles
other soba recipes

Creamy ginger okara patties

Pan-fried patties that are very creamy inside but that’s not cream at all.

When I made tofu, I had squeezed ground tofu beans in a cloth and inside I had those grounds called okara :

Mixed with a little potato starch (that serves as a binder), a little miso, grated carrot, minced onion, a few sesame seeds.

I added minced pickled ginger,like the one serve with sushi. And used some more as a topping. You never have too much ginger to fight those Winter viruses and colds.