Walnut crust blue sweet potato pie

It’s very a simple and delicious coffee cake. Few ingredients, little process and full flavor.

Purple satsuma imo sweet potato. The potato has already a flavor of almond cream cake, so not much is needed.

I took the flesh of a baked potato, and smashed it with a little coconut cream, a little Grand Marnier liquor and very little sugar. Just mixed.

The crust is walnut, oatmeal, a little sugar, a pinch of salt and very little water, together in the blender. Then put in molds and dried in the oven. Well I should have taken it out before filling…
The taste is really pure walnut

So just fill the crust.

Serve chilled or warm. And enjoy with your coffee.

Soba no mi, buckwheat as rice

Buckwheat groats (sometimes called buckwheat berries) are called 蕎麦の実 soba no mi in Japanese. Mi means fruit/nut, and maybe that’s not too far from the botanical reality as that’s not really a grain. They are often added to cook together with rice. And they can simply replace rice.

Raw.

Cooked in the rice cooker on brown rice program.

I’ve added a few drops of sesame oil and black sesame for even more nutty flavor. No salt because I add it with :

Umeboshi natto.

Satsuma imo (sweet potato) and mizu nasu.

Platter of steamed veggies : suguna kabocha, satsuma imo, bok choi and chestnuts.

Not a pretty dish… This type of aubergine mizu nasu is usually served raw. I’ve sliced (I did) and cut in ribbons (roughly) the flesh. Salted. Rinsed after 19 minutes and sprinkles shikwasa lime juice.

A nice old fashioned meal.

Autumn lasagne

Lasagne with season ingredients : kabocha pumpkin, mushrooms, mature sakekasu (sake lees)…
First, I’ve made the pasta with durum semolina.

Steamed kabocha pumpkin. Silky tofu, crumbled and mixed with a little olive oil, thyme, salt, pepper, chili flakes.

On the boiled pasta, I’ve layered kabocha, tofu and sauce.

For the sauce, I’ve pasted the nuts, garlic, sakekasu.

Added the paste to the soaked fungi. Added a tbs of potato starch to thicken slightly. Let a few minutes on low heat. Seasoned with salt and pepper.

Top sauce : I’ve pasted sakekasu, miso, water, olive oil, then added broken walnuts.

A newly created Japanese citrus. キノス kinosu, from 木の酢, which means “vinegar from trees”. It has a very fruity flavor.

Blanched okra with negi leeks and kinosu juice as a green side.

Peanut, shiitake and black bean ‘pâté de campagne’

It is a chunky pâté with a woody flavor of nuts and fungi.

It looks like the meaty pâté de campagne.

classic pâtés

It’s not a faux. It’s a different one, with these ingredients :

Onion, garlic, black beans (kuromame), mashed black beans, soaked dry shiitake mushroom slices…

Crunchy and flavored…

After baking.

Painted with sweet chili sauce.

It has a spreadable texture. Well, it’s pâté. Perfect with buckwheat yuzu bread and a salad.

Galette des noix. My pie is a nutcase.

You knew French 3 Kings’ cake, la galette des rois . Here it’s the galette des… noix. Noix are nuts. It went a little crazy.

It was going to look like that. Something like this :

galette des rois au chocolat

But it would be filled with a classic crème d’amande. It became that :

MDR (ROFL).

It’s made like a crème d’amande but…

It’s a crème with two nuts, cashew nuts and a few walnuts. Both are infinitely cheaper than almonds, and just as good.

Then… a mistake : not waiting enough to chill the filling. Bref, the crème was runny, no way to properly seal the pie.

Then… oops, the fève (token) is not inside : forgot it !
Bref, that was too late.

Then… the pie burst in the oven.
Bref, some filling leaked.

Then… the runaway filling fell in the bottom of the oven, burnt and made tons of smoke, the cooking sheet started burning.
Bref, the whole city of Osaka was totally burnt.

Then… the pie was not burnt at all.
Bref, the monster survived the tragedy and came to scare guests on the table.

Then…1/3 of the pie wedges had no filling ! And no king, no queen, no quiing, this year.
Bref, we are all losers (yes, everybody picked one of the damned wedges).

Then… we’ve eaten the good wedges after that.
Bref, we’ll be super-fatty losers.