Recipe collection vol.6 / Sweet potato tarts

 My recipe of sweet potato tarts is so easy that everyone can make them successfully!

Ingredients for 12 tarts or 4 adults:

1 sweet potato - 400 gr

2 sugar - 60 gr

3 fresh cream - 10 cc

4 milk - 10 cc

5 salt-free butter - 30 gr

5 vanilla essence - a few drops

6 a small spoonful of rum

7 a yellow of an egg

Recipe:

1 Slice sweet potatoes to 1cm thick.

2 Boil the sliced potatoes till they become so soft that you can skewer them easily. 

3 Mash the potatoes thoroughly

4 Add salt-free butter, fresh cream, milk and sugar and mix them up thoroughly. After cooling down, you can add the yellow of an egg, vanilla essence and rum into potato and mix them up again.

5 Fill the mixture into molds with a pastry bag

7 Bake them in a toaster oven for about 7 minutes and serve them with tea!

Boiling sweet corns

"Sweet corns should be boiled as soon as you've harvested them"

That's what my wife's aunt, my gardening teacher, said me. Harvested corns can loose water faster than we expect. That's why my teacher advised me. Today I harvested 2 fresh sweet corns and followed her advice.

 I pour water and the sweet corns in a deep pan, added some spoonfuls of salt and boiled them for 3 minutes. I used a dish as a weight for pressing the sweet corns to boil the whole part of them.  Water in corns determines the freshness. So I wrapped them with plastic wrapping sheet and store them in my fridge. They will be served in today's dinner.

Pickling cucumbers in rice bran

 Pickling vegetables is not only a way to make them delicious but to preserve them for longer. As many cucumbers are harvested, I've been eager to make "糠漬け (Nukazuke)", one of the Japanese traditional pickled vegetables in rice bran. When I was a child, my mother or my grandma got tons of rice bran for free from a local rice shop since rice bran was seen as just by-product at that time. Many Japanese households had their own taste of the Nukazuke with adding variety seasonings to rice bran.

 Now we can buy a packed rice bran, which is specialized for the pickled vegetables, mixed with salt, pepper, and other seasonings in local shops and I also tried it.

 First, I have to make "a rice bran bed" for cucumber to be pickled there. Add water to the rice bran and mix them up with hands to make it sticky. We have to care amount of water to be added since too much water make the bed too watery.

 When the rice bran bed is completed, put cucumbers onto the bed and,,,,,

cover them fully with the rice bran and keep it in a fridge for a few days.

 After 2 days, I found water coming out of cucumbers in a cup inside the Tupperware which shows the cucumbers had been pickled well and ready to be served. 

  The taste was moderately salty, juicy and very crispy! They go well with steamed rice but my favorite way to enjoy pickled cucumbers is to eat them with cold beer!

Recipe collection vol.5 / Pasta in cream sauce with spinach and sliced bacon

Ingredients for 4 people:

・Pasta / 300GR

・Spinach
・Sliced bacon
・Sliced onion / using a half of an onion
・Butter

・Milk / 150ml
・Cream / 100ml
・Consomme / 5GR
・flour / 2 spoons
・Salt and black pepper

1 Cut and slice spinach, bacon and onion.


2 Grill sliced onion, bacon with butter and brown them.


3 Add 2 spoons of flour and pour milk and cream slowly into a pan with stirring them to avoid lumps.

4 Add consomme into the sauce. Don't use it too much or the taste would be too salty.

5 Sprinkle salt and black pepper on the pan

6 Add spinach into the cream sauce


7 Add boiled pasta into the sauce and stir it well.


8 Serve a dish and enjoy it!


-- from iPod touch

Simple recipes

 Today my wife cooked thinned out pak choi and daikon radishes.

 The pak chois were small but very tender and easy to cook so she simply stir-flied them seasoning with only salt.

The daikon redishes were also so small since I failed to thin them out properly. So my wife grated them to make "Oroshi-ponzu" , or mixture of citrus say sauce and grated daikon radish, which is one of popular sauce among Japanese and go well with deep fried foods. When we grate daikon radish, we always use a handy grater shown below. I don't know that kind of tool can be seen in your country but it's very useful to grate vegetables and fruits.

 The Oroshi-ponzu added to pork cutlets. I believe the combination is perfect! The refreshing taste of the sauce goes well with oily deep-fried cutlets.

Harvesting my black chilis

 Since this year's rainy season ended, my vegetables have been growing and getting mature faster and my black chili is no exception. I wondered if they would have been grown well in my garden since they are so rare kinds of chili produced in the limited areas in Nara prefecture that they would be adopted to the soil and environment of my garden.

 Now I'm very happy that you can see many fruits of my black chili in the photos shown below!
Today I harvested a bunch of my black chili successfully and they still have many flowers and buds so I can expect that they can be productive in a few mouths.

Today's harvest

I call it "Black chili".
But it's not truly black but deep purple.

Today's harvest.
20 black chilies
2 egg plants
1 cucumber

 After harvesting them, I cooked the black chilies with sliced sausages and green beans.



 It's very interesting that my black chilies have turned "green" as they were grilled! I don't know what the mechanism. The taste of black chili is not hot but is like that of okras. Anyway, yummy!


-- from iPad

Recipe collection vol.4 ( Fried chickens with minced green perilla )

 Some of green perilla (green shiso/紫蘇） have grown so I tried to use some leaves of them for a dish for today's dinner. Perilla's leaves may remind you of some recipes like sushi rolled in the leaves or condiment for salad dressings because of its good aroma.

 I also wanted to make the use of the aroma so I tried to mix minced perilla's leaves with seasoning for fried chicken.




Fried chickens with minced perilla's leaves (for 4 people)
Ingredients:
・ Chopped chicken (300grams/11oz)・ 6 green perilla's leaves・ A spoon of salt, say-sauce, sake or white-wine・ Grated garlic and ginger

Method
1 Mince all perilla's leaves.

2 Pour say-sauce, salt, sake, grated garlic and ginger and minced perilla's leaves into chopped chickens and mix them up.


3 Coat the chopped chickens with fry butter and fry them deeply.



4 Serve them on a plate and let's dig in!



-- from iPod touch

Recipe collection vol.3 ( Stir-fried pak-chois with sliced bacons )

Stir-fried pak-chois with sliced bacons
Ingredients:
・ 3 bunches of pak-chois・ Sliced bacons (150grams) Mixed seasoning・ water (150cc)・ 2 tablespoons of powdered chicken stock・ salt・ say sauce・ sake
Method
1 Cut pak chois and sliced bacons.
2 Making the mixed seasoning soup by mixing water, powdered chicken stock, say sauce. You can add salt and sake according your taste.


3 Pour 1 tablespoon of oil to a pan, heat it for a while and grill sliced bacons first. And then put pak chois and grill them together. When the pak chois've became tender, pour the mixed seasoning into the pan and boil them for a few minutes.


4 Serve the dish and done.


-- from iPad

Today's dinner

My wife made a soup with my pak chois which I harvested today and sausages.
The soup was so simple that my pak chois were boiled only in consommé soup. Salt coming out of sausage can add mild taste. That simple recipe can make the best use of the taste of fresh pak chois.



I love the pak chois which absorbed soup. Oh,yummy.




-- from iPod touch

Recipe collection vol.2 ( Kiwi fruit jam )

 How would you deal with extra ripen fruits after you've enjoyed them?As I introduced ripen kiwi fruits harvested last year, we have preserved extra kiwi fruits even after our family ate a lot of them. They can't be preserved any more and my wife made kiwi fruits jam using all of them.
-Ingredients-
1. Ripen kiwi fruits 240grams2. Sugar 120grams
-Recipes-
1. Peel the skin off.2. Mash the kiwi fruits in a bowl3. Add sugar to the mashed fruits. You can change the amount of sugar to your taste. My favorite proportion of sugar and kiwi fruits is 2 (kiwi) :1(sugar)4. Microwave it for around 4 minutes.5. Preserve it in a fridge after bottling it up. 
-- from iPad

Recipe collection vol.1 ( Komatuna saute with hams )

 I know some followers are curious about our dishes and recipes. Therefore I decided to start the series of my recipe collection on my blog. In the collection I'll introduce dishes made by my wife and I (mainly by her) using our vegetables, the recipes and delicious foods I eat on a travel. I put a tag named "Recipes" on each post in the collection to let you access to it easily. I hope the collection posts would be the place where you can gather your own recipes and respond to them after you've actually made the dishes.
 Today I would like to start the first memorial post with "Komatuna saute with hams". The dish is so simple that everyone can cook it swiftly while you can enjoy komatuna making the best use of it and salty hams.
-Ingredients-
1. Komatunas2. Ham ( Beef or pork is also OK.)3. Salt and pepper

-Recipes-
1. Wash komatunas with a plenty of water to get rid of soil.2. Cut the komatunas and hams ( you can use beef or pork ) into bite-size (3～4cm)3. Heat a pan and add cooking oil.4. Grill the komatunas and hams for 1min.5. Season with a bit of salt and pepper. 
-- from iPad