Looking at the huge number of leaves on my basil plant,


I decided to make basil pesto today

Roasted some hazelnuts Blended 50g of those nuts, 50g basil leaves, 2 cloves of garlic & 50ml of olive oil in the food processor

and made basil pesto chicken pasta for dinner...
Basil pesto chicken pasta with freshly grated parmeggianno

Went to this stall at Kichijoji that specailises in fresh pasta today.

Walked past this stall many times but this is the first time i am buying those freshly made pasta. Also, i never realised the name of the stall was supakichi スパ吉!　In nihongo, spaghetti is also pronounced similary. that is, su pa ge ti. And since Kichijoji is written as 吉祥寺, in which the first character is pronounced as kichi, the shop owner cleverly put together supa & kichi!

I loved the mochi mochi chewy texture of the pasta & the lightness of it.

Definitely will drop by again =)

Made ratatouille too

Eggplant, green peppers and zucchinni, with homemade provencial herbs tomato sauce with ground beef, mixed beans & shimeji mushrooms. topped with freshly picked parsely from my garden.

& had it with bread for dinner

Its been a long time since i had such yummy fresh pasta.

never thought i would be able to get them in a traditional japanese shop at kichijoji!!!

Am feeling a bit blue this week cos of a twisted, hmm not really but, an overstretched muscle in my back.

Decided to make dinner a little upbeat today

Japanese style risotto with heaps of vegetables

Grilled scallops on a bed of lettuce
Sweet rock melon & parma ham appetisser

and a basket of freshly baked garlic & herb sticks

Frozen pie sheets really make my life very easy. Just gotta slice thinly, twist, sprinkle some garlic powder & mixed herbs, pop in the oven and you get these very tasty sticks that just flake away and melt in your mouth~

Simple luxury on a weekday =)

Made stuffed green peppers this evening...

with mashed tofu & minced pork seasoned together with some chopped garlic, onions, salt & pepper, this was simple yet very flavourful. oven baked for 15min at 210deg. besides the radish miso soup, tomato salad, there was our broad bean salad from yesterday,
which tasted extra yummy after a night of ume & shoyu marinade.
With yesterdays eggplant dish, topped it on tofu noodles for a cold salad.

Quite like this fake noodles. hehe. made of tofu, it was so soft, didnt need much chewing. =)
good for summer.

Laid my hands on very yummy broad beans today from the farmers mart...

I remember loving the deepfried salty broad bean snack sold at the most snack stalls in Singapore. Never had them fresh before till i came here. Tried these last summer plainly blanched and sprinkled with salt, and they were from the supermart, this time when i saw it at the farmers mart, i was so excited! this meant it was freshly picked this morning!!!

I tossed it in ume, chicken bits, salt and a bit of light shoyu olive oil for a refreshing salad

We did hanagoyomi today.

This time all the petit dishes were meant to go with our brown rice porridge.

From bottom left, going anticlockwise, saba mini gratin, grilled mentaiko with cheese,

simmered leeks with aburaage and white bait

eggplant with miso meatsauce

Havent had porridge for quite some time. Brown rice porridge is indeed more appetising compared with the white version because of the subtle nutty flavour.

As promised, made karepan today.

Added some cheese to last nights curry

cheese vegetable curry bun

And for our mini sunday cafe time lunch

Minestrone style beans & vegetable soup topped with freshly baked cheese sticks

The frozen pie sheet i bought quite some time ago came in really handy. I just had to cut them into strips, sprinkle with parmesan and garlic herb mix, twist, and bake for 15min.

and

kiwi smoothie for J, blueberry & strawberry smoothie for moi
J and i noticed, since we moved here and took walks along the neighbourhood and observed the door plates, that there are so many people with the family name Kamoshita (鴨下).
Today as i opened the pack of strawberries bought from the local farmers market, realised that the guy who grew these strawberries is a Kamoshita san!!!
Am now very interested in finding out of how come there are so many Kamoshitas here!

Dinner was lots of veg too
first, there was oyako don(chicken and egg), with heaps of fresk leek,

mixed pickles. just have this thing for buying a few picked vegetables and mixing them together.

Baked fresh peas and smoked cheese.

Toasted the pods separately, which were very crunchy and sweet.

Was rainy the whole day, so we decided to just enjoy the langour at home.
=)

Went shopping at the reopened MARUI department store in shinjuku today.
J saw it on tv and decided it might cheer me up a little cos it was featured as a girls relaxing place with 8 stories of clothes and homemaking shops, plus cafes with menus specially designed for ladies.
Dined at Cookcoop cafe which has a famous bookcafe in uptown Aoyama, and was very refreshed by the experience. it was like dining in a mini resort. And the food was in small portions(meant for ladies) but very tasty. I had a minestrone soup set with salad with grainy bread & herb butter, whil J had the meat sauce pie, which left him craving for more. Poor J was still quite hungry after lunch. The pie was so very tiny and i think definitely isnt sufficient for a standard guys lunch.
Well, after all that walking, i was very hungry too when we came home, so as agreed on the train, i decided to make a curry with a huge amount of vegetables.

Wafu curry with spring vegetables

Why i call it wafu (japanese style), is because miso was used for the curry sauce.

Since i had some time on hand, decided to make my own curry sauce, that is, without the use of curry roux.

Curry is generally regarded as a high calorie food here because of the sugar content and oil used.

But this one has almost no oil and really no sugar added at all.

Ingredients

1/2 a large onion (roughly chopped)

1 clove garlic (minced)

1/2 teaspoon of ground ginger

1 large tomato

150g groung lean beef

1 large eggplant

1/2 a zucchini

1 pack shimeji mushrooms

3 tbs curry powder (i use one that has cumin, coriander and cardomon mixed into it)

2 tbs miso

3 tbs milk

Mix garlic and ginger with the ground beef and leave to marinate while preparing other ingredients.

In a large pan, fry the onions, mushrooms, eggplant & zucchini in a 1/2 tablespoon of oil till fragrant. Sprinkle salt & pepper.

Add 1 tbs of sake (or white winte), curry powder and stir fry.

Push aside the vegetables, fry the beef in an open area of the pan till fragrant, then toss together with the vegetables. At this point, add some boiled mixed beans if you like.

Add 1 tsp of dashi granules with 1 cup water, simmer on low heat for 15 minutes.

Stir in the miso melted in 1 tbs of water together with a sprinkle of curry powder,

Add the milk, stir in a few strips of preboiled snow peas, mix in some pizza cheese, and serve with hot rice.

Top with more beans and egg bits for colour.

Made extra curry to make more karepan tmr =)

Didnt know what to do with the caramel i made quite sometime ago.

made some scones, popped in the oven with the solid caramel & bits of banana for our morning mini luxury of scone banana caramel fondue.
& since J was at home for lunch, and it was so hot, we decided to have chilled noodles with creamy sesame sauce and the basic chuka (chinese style in japan) noodles topping of shredded chicken, crabsticks, cucumber slices, beansprouts & tomatoes. Commonly eaten in summer.


Dinner this evening was an experiment

for the first time i made tofu burger without meat at all!
just tofu, japanese leeks, celery leaves, shiitake, canned scallops & panfried.
got this idea from a tv program & i give it 2 thumbs up!

and since there was fresh corn on the cob at the mart, decided to grill it with garlic & spice.
and at the same time in another foil, smoked cheese & tomatoes

its the weekend again~

Made karepan again today...

heres how the inside looks like =)

Went to the local veg seller very early this morning & was pleasantly surpriesed at the huuuuuuuuuge variety of harvest from the different farmers. because i couldnt resist all the different kinds of freshly picked vegetables, i brought home a whole big bag full of them and happily decided to make Aki Hanagoyomi for dinner.

Hanagoyomi was like a precious treat when i was working in business class and always in limited quantity, we always rejoiced secretly whenever there were extras after taking meal orders. Comprising of an elaborate spread of 9 appetisers and entrees, each in petit portions, it was a feast for the eyes too, so when i saw this 6 dish plate at the store one day, i decided immediately that i wanted them for our home, our private cafe.

Todays hanagoyomi

mini katsuo potato gratin, kimchi tokoroten, daikon with sakura ebi sauce, purple asparagus with parma ham salad, enoki tossed in mentai mayo & zucchinni ratatouille.

of which, the young potatoes, daikon, daikon, asparagus & zucchinni were fresh from the different neighbourhood local farms.

and a vegetable soup

with fish cakes & freshly picked snow peas which i bought from someones garden yesterday.

of all the petit dishes, this was my favourite
basically just potatoes mixed with cream cheese, topped with katsuo flakes , breadcrumbs and parmesan for an instant mini gratin. =)

never liked potatoes, cos the people around me avoided eating them for the fear of carbohydrates. but coming here made me forget all about this taboo food cos potatoes are regarded as a vegetable here & the japanese simply love their potato salads.

in fact, if you ever get to try these local potatoes, so flavourful are they on their own that you wont need any butter or rich sauces, so no more will they be a taboo.

all this fuss about disinfecting door knobs & stuff is scaryyyyyy!!!!!

oh man, this influenza is scaring me =(

made my first karepan (fried curry bun) today!

made extra curry on monday, froze them in little portions for Js little luxury in the morning.

freshly fried curry buns.
This was surprisingly quite simple to make! using hotcake mix, some water & beaten egg to make the dough, i just had to wrap the dough around the tiny portion of curry, coat with breadcrumbs & deep fry~

with banana, yoghurt with choco sauce for dessert. yup i believe in desserts in the morning too =P

Since the deepfryer was out, decided to fry a tonkatsu to make tonkatsu sandwich for J bento.

which meant 2meals in one go!

Dinner was meant to be easy on the stomach after all the fried stuff

Tofu ankake with edamame & mentaiko
umeshio kinpira
kinpira is usually made with very sweet shoyu, which i like, once in a while, but today, i felt like having something milder, so i modified it a little, added less shoyu n mirin, and added ume and salt for tasting.

Tokyo reported its first case of influenza patient today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Made chiffon cake again today~

Received a pack of sakura tea leaves as a gift quite some time ago... thought it would taste nice in chiffon cake!

it was good~

For J bento, i tried to imitate the Hiroshima style yakisoba in omelette that we had over the weekend...

Mentai cheese yakisoba wrapped in fluffy omelette

Dinner
Finally succeeded daikon no fukameni (deeply simmered daikon). The daikon steaks was soft enough to be sliced through with just chopsticks! And the plain sweet daikon steaks went very well with the chicken ankake sauce. For accent, topped some sakura prawns & grated ginger,

Daikon steaks in ankake sauce, vegetable soup, and

with my stock of katsuo flakes, a refreshing, cucumber salad.

Went out in shorts & T shirt today =)

was sunny but very very cool cos of the cloudy skies. perfect for strolls in T shirts~