Green chili polenta

Today polenta, and as usual, a variety of season produce.

I cooked the polenta grain. Added minced and salted sweet green chili, small bits of hot chili (red). Pepper, nutmeg. Let chill overnight in a mold. Then put on a dish, paint with olive oil and pass a few minutes under the grill. Pour a little tomato juice around in the dish. Serve hot.

Frozen cotton tofu (momendofu). I froze the whole block in its water. Thawed. Press to push out the water, cut in cubes. As you can see, it has a bread like texture now.

Stir-fried frozen tofu with eringi mushroom, garlic, olive oil.

Na no hana no ohitashi (rape blossoms). They are blanched and refreshed. With tomato juice agar jelly.

Edamame pesto salad. Boiled edamame, onion, yellow pepper, the broken leaves of na no hana. I mixed in a leftover of sesame basil pesto. Let a few hours in the fridge.

Nashi. Japanese pear.

Stuffed onion rings with fresh laurel and shiokoji

It’s great to have tender leaves of fresh laurel. The taste is very different from the dried ones. So let’s make a little dish with them.

It’s a filling of mashed kuro mame black beans, chili pepper, a little potato starch, onion.

This white texture… You know this ? It is called shio koji, 塩麹, a fermented product made from rice, a by-product of making sake, miso, etc. It came back into fashion as an ingredient a few years ago.

You can read interesting (in English) at the Kojiya (the house of koji), a maker of koji.

The shio koji brings saltiness with a mellow sweet aftertaste. Interesting.

Then I’ve added a few finely shredded laurel leaves to the mix.

Cut slices of onion, the mixture inside, pan-fried.

Mmmm… simple and delicious. The fresh green hints are lovely.

Salad 1 : na no hana (rape blossoms), negi leeks, sansho peppercorns

Salad 2 : okra, tomato, onion.

No soup. Just iced green tea. And rice.

Summer veggie couscous and pattzukis

Another simple plant-based lunch…

Cooked couscous, with turmeric, ras-el-hanout spice mix, carrot chips and sweet corn. Cherry tomatoes. Rape blossoms.

Pattzukis (azuki bean patties) and goya (bitter squash).

Add a little harissa.

2 plates for a lunch ready in 10 minutes.

Island fish, somen chilled vermicelli and rape blossoms…

A slice of tai (seabream)cooked nearly like a dessert, with warm cake flavors : vanilla, almond… Chilled noodles. Greens. Natto. That makes a hot day lunch.

I first stir-fried the renkon (lotus root, sliced) and onion (sliced), put them aside. Then in the same pan, the fish with a little bit of star anise, salted. In a cup, I mixed saffron, vanilla powder, water, a pinch of sugar. 1/4 ts of potato starch. I’ve added to the fish when it was cooked, turned 2 or 3 times while reheating on low heat. I finished with a few drop of almond oil.

Steamed na-no-hana (rape blossoms) with sesame seeds.

Somen : thin wheat vermicelli. It’s boiled, refreshed in fresh water and served in a bowl of iced water. Next to it a dipping sauce : dashi (fish broth), black rice vinegar, onion et soy sauce.

Another little side, natto with nira (garlic chives) and onion.

3 minutes for this “soupe du jour”

Just mix stuff in home-made duck stock and reheat 3 minutes in micro-wave :

Konnyaku.

Na-no-hana (rape blossoms).

And a few dry stock items : dry garlic slices, dry chili, salt. And broken sheets of rice paper. Don’t throw them away. They become instant noodles for soups.