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.

Neon colored stalks

Today my greens have joyful colors.

They sell them as spinach but that’s not the common spinach. They are definitely beet leaves, what some call Swiss chards.

To garnish pasta in garlicky tomato sauce. Topping is cheezy sauce (sake kasu, miso, olive oil).

Creamy garden pasta

Pasta can be very healthy… at the condition you don’t use it to replace your greens. Have both together.
This dish is particularly easy to digest. It’s creamy but not in the Alfredo way.

The Spring produce : green peas and new onion are today’s guests.

That’s a one-pot dish : I add the veggies in the pot with the pasta, just not from the start so they don’t overcook.

For the sauce, I mixed home-made soy yogurt, lots of minced parsley, salt, black pepper and secret touch : coriander seed + nutmeg.

The sauce added on the hot plate will tenderly coat the pasta.

Buta no shogayaki – Ginger pork

Two easy and tasty Japanese dishes.

Of course, the most important ingredient is ginger.

You can use any cut of pork that can be cooked quickly in a pan, but the easiest is to use these very thin slices.

Here are the proportions of the sauce. You need about 1 tbs per person, but use as much as you wish. The ginger is peeled and grate, you can also mince it thinly. Just mix.
First, you can stir fry onions, and keep them aside.

Cook the meat fully on both sides. Add the sauce, and a little water, let simmer about 10 minutes. Put back the onions. Reheat together.

Serve with raw veggies. Here cabbage and kintoki red carrot.

Furikake is a dry powder mix used to give flavor to white rice, or other plain food. There exist many types. This one is called yukari (purple), it is made of mostly dried akashiso (red shiso). The other ingredients of the mix vary. Here : umesu (pickled plum vinegar), salt, sugar, yuzu lemo. It’s ready to use. So just put on boiled spaghetti and that’s a side dish.

Flower power pasta

Two flowers and a dish of spaghetti. Happy !

My beloved nanohana are back on the market. They are the unopened blossoms of rape (the plant to make rapeseed/canola oil) and the greens around.

Lots of leaves… They sell some like that, with lots of stalk, cheaply. It’s possible to buy only the blossom part and the first leaves, and it’s more expensive.
The pasta dish is very simple. I blanched the nanohana in the pasta water (1 minute before the end). Then added on the pasta, with parsley, salt, olive oil.