A soup made of all the leftovers :
-purple sweet potato
-cod fish
-jelly fish (preserved in salt, soaked)
-chick peas
-capers
-onion
-red wine
Simmer, then add Kintoki red carrot and turmeric.
And it’s… delicious indeed.
Steamed kabocha with sesame oil and sesame seeds.
Steamed okra and sudachi lime.
A yummy Winter lunch.
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.
A simple pleasure when it’s cold : eating a yaki-imo, a hot baked sweet potatoes.
Satsuma imo, Japanese sweet potato are more common in the red skin and pale yellow version.
There exist blue purple ones too.
大学芋 Daigaku imo, literally “the university’s potato”, is a street stall sweet. It’s certainly of Chinese origin, but theses sticky potatoes have become part of the furniture in Japan. Osaka has a famous shop that makes some special ones, dipped in crack maybe, as you can’t stop if you start eaten one. I don’t know their secret. Maybe there is none. You take good satsuma imo (Japanese sweet potato), you fry them and coat in a syrup.
And the results depends on the quality of your ingredients and how you master the process.
Flat and small is easier, so I cut shapes of 5 mm of thickness.
I cook them in 3 steps : steaming till they are half-cooked, then I stir-fry them at 160 degrees C till they soften. I put them aside and bring the oil at 180 degrees, to cook them a little more and get crispiness. I put on oil absorbing paper 2 minutes.
Syrup : 1 tbs of sugar + 1 tbs of honey or mizuame (glucose jelly) + 2 tbs of water. Simmer till it starts getting thicker. Add a few drops of fragrant sesame oil. Pass the freshly fried potatoes (still hot) in this hot syrup.
Decorate with black sesame.
NB : I fry them in normal neutral frying oil, not the dark sesame oil for seasoning. It’s possible to fry in sesame oil but only if you have a different white frying sesame oil.
They have to be soft inside crispy around. They are better if you eat them warm, just after making them.
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.
GOURMANDE in OSAKA 