Okaasan and her fondness for making jams out of any fruit of the season, we brought back a bottle of apple honey jam and decided to make muffins out of it.

Apple honey sesame muffins with a cream cheese centre

I dont know why but i was craving chicken potatoes stew mum style, so dinner tonight was...

Chicken & potatoes shoyu based stew with shiitake

After so many cream based dishes and rich gravied stews like coq au vin, i just wanted something shoyu based with my dose of chicken and potatoes this week.

Using the golden 4:1:1 ratio of japanese broth, shoyu and mirin, this stew has a wonderful light shoyu fragrance without the taste of shoyu being too strong.

ingredients were simply

chicken (a piece of thigh, lightly sprinkled with salt and pepper then thinly coated with flour)

onions (chopped roughly)

2 potatoes (each chopped into 3)

4 shiitake mushrooms

japanese broth 200ml

shoyu 50ml

mirin 50ml

Lightly brown the onions and chicken in a frying pan, add a dash of white wine of sake when fragrant.

Add the potatoes, mushrooms and pour in the broth, shoyu and mirin.

Cover with a drop lid and broil on low heat for 20min.

Voila =)

Spring cabbage is in season now and the green is so pretty i decided to do a light stir fry to preserve the colour...

Stir fried sweet spring cabbage with black fungus and crab surimi, (thats cucumber konbu pickles at the back)


lotus root soup

Its been some time since i had such a bad flu and my nose feels so violated...

Sakuras are starting to bloom all over the place little by little...
Over at the big park near our place, many of the trees are already a hue of pink and white but the whole place is not in full bloom yet.


It was a very nice sunny saturday morning, and the walk in the park was indeed relaxing... and eye opening since it is my first time seeing different kinds of sakuras in one place

the standard yoshino sakura is common at this park

a pink flower we spotted, not so sure what this is, may or may not be a sakura

I love the tiny white petals on this plant, its like white polka dots all over the park.

Notice how many layers i was wearing. it is still cold...

Ok, this was not from the park, but a vegetable called flower leaves that is very much in season now, so i decided to add this to our soup for lunch...

Alphabet pasta curry soup

playing with my food
havent had these alphabets for a long time...

J bento today

Sauteed pork in BBQ sauce, mini carbonara and hijiki mixed rice

Dinner

Salmon sauteed with wafu mushroom sauce, flower leaves salad with tomatoes tossed in ponzu

snapper miso soup with black beans and some leaves of the season

natto topped with sweet okinawan pork miso (a souvenir from onisan)
Looking forward to more walks in the park =)

J bento

Ritz pork chops, mini spaghetti, and last nights salad mixed with rice

Dad keeps saying grandpa used to make pork chops with unsweetened marie biscuit crumbs,

while i cant find marie biscuit crumbs, i decided to use ritz crackers instead since they are not sweet. I think it turned out =)

a bit like cereal prawns isnt it?

Todays dinner was a bit different from the past few days

Baked snapper with topped with garlic sauteed mushrooms, celery puree, chevre chaud (warm goat cheese) with walnuts and carrot sticks, salad with parma ham

These shimeji and eringi mushrooms were hand picked by moi! =)
they were still in their pots, and i got a chance to pick them out. haha it was fun ~


this celery puree is a bit different from the one we tasted in Paris cos i cant find celery root so i used the celery head plus the whole bunch of leaves, and i didnt have enough potatoes, hence the very green puree, but it was nice.

Usually, celery root puree is made using blanched celery root, potatoes pureed into a paste and mixed with butter and milk, and paired with meat dishes like how we enjoy mashed potatoes with roast chicken or beef, but this is less rich than the usual mash and i really loved it at the first taste. hmm... i wonder where can i get celery root...

J bento

Just when he thought it was a big croquette,



it was scotch eggs... =)

first time i made this, first time for J <3

I think the next time i make this, i have to buy tinier eggs or by the time i pile on the meat patty layer and bread crumbs, i wont be able fit the bento cover.

More fish dinners...

this time, not a common dried fish, but it was dried red snapper. simply grilled.

With side sauerkraut and...

udo, wakame and beef salad dressed with sesame ponzu

it is still freezing...

Doesnt weird looking herbaceous perennial vegetable called udo look like an overgrown white asparagus?

About 1 m in length, and like white asparagus has a thick fibrous coating.

Yeah you can imagine how it was sticking out of my groccery bag oddly.

shaved off the thick layer, blanched it quickly, chilled and tossed with fish sausage and umeboshi dressing. Had it as salad for dinner.

Dinner was a bit extravagant with that BIIIIIIG slice of fish i managed to get at the new supermarket at my place.

Like how the western world enjoys smoked salmon, this is how the Japanese love the tasty dried fish (no it doesnt smell like socks). when grilled, it is marvellous~~

snapper, black bean miso soup with some vegetables

J bento

Miso roasted pork, olive salad and rice

Brrrgh was it cold and rainy today, hoping to see more sunshine soon...

Found an interesting vegetable at the mart today...

Salt leaf. The water droplet looking sheen makes this vegetable look so like a pretty plant that i never thought it could be eaten! And no, those are not water droplets on the leaves but a mineral coating. its got a mild salt taste and a refreshing crunch. yummy, but i doubt i will reach for a second helping.

And tricolour tomatoes (red, orange and yellowish gold), nothing unusual, just cute to find these assortedly packed in a punnet.

Made a new batch of muffins today for breakfast tommorrow

Thé vert a la azuki et amande muffins

(Visited quite a few tea leaf shops in Paris and found the green tea Thé vert variety to be quite popular with the ladies)

When i came back i just felt like baking something green tea flavoured. So voila, green tea, red bean muffins with chopped almonds.

J obento

carrot and cheese tonkatsu, olive and chopped eggs in tomato mayo dressing, inari sushi.

Dinner

mentaiko salted chicken burgers, broccolli short pasta soup, and...

natto and chopped shungiku topped with korean seaweed atop warm rice.

The raw egg yolk, yup, not a common sight in dishes outside of Japan, when stirred into warm rice gives a pretty yellow marble hue to the rice.

We are back from beatiful Paris!

(i wished i live here too), this was taken at a colleagues place at Place Ditalie which has a magnificent view of the almost whole of Paris...

Standing at this window even better than heading up the Eiffel (which needs a lot of patience)

So the past 2 weeks were spent quite fruitfully compared to the last time i was there. listed a hundred and one things to do before boarding the plane and managed to accomplished many of them!=)
Top of my list was of course seeing the real mona lisa painting at this beautiful Louvre museum...

which had so many paintings from the past that i fell in love with, including this one that had a mary poppins feel to it.

next was, to indulge in some Pierre Hermes macarons

and, to simply eat nice bread and baguette everyday

So after all that French fare,

we decided to go full blast Japanese today for lunch and dinner.
Lunch was a luxurious version of cold soba. topped with various tempura, natto, nameko mushorrms, tender spinach leaves and poached egg.


Dinner was simple salt grilled fish and mentaiko, vegetable flowers in sesame dressing, miso soup, white rice and pickles. ahh...

It is getting warmer here, and i am so glad to be back to home sweet home...

After a tiring week...

nothing beats a hot pot dinner on a saturday night...

Even better when it is sukiyaki! And we treated ourselves to nice sakura mochi (left), and ichigo daifuku (strawberry wrapped in red bean and enveloped in mochi pastry)

thats the sakura leaf which is usually salted and preserved for making such desserts

Being strawberry season, it is the best time to find ichigo (strawberry) desserts at cake shops

the plump juicy strawberry was a refreshing break from the usually heavily red bean filled daifuku

Spring is nearing, and cabbage and celery taste good now.

Found a really beautiful bunch of celery at the local veg seller...

Really sweet on its own, but since there were so much leaves in this lot,

i made minestrone soup (topped with poached egg and parmesan)

Also, since we managed to get a really good deal at the fish seller yesterday too. Tuna sashima at half price!... i made this for dinner...

Tuna, avocado, natto and a poached egg topped on warm sushi rice

i made simmered sauerkraut again with a new batch of cabbage i bought yesterday. the cabbage was sweeeeeeeeeeeeeet!~ cant wait to buy more cabbage this spring!

our extravagant dinner this evening =)
Oh, with the remaining caesar salad dressing, i tossed chopped boiled eggs and fresh carrots together into a salad that you see on the right.