spring

How to cook bamboo shoots (takenoko)

maki — Fri, 16 May 2008 18:22:40 +0200

There are two Japanese vegetables that I can’t get fresh here that I miss very much. One is burdock root or gobo; the other is bamboo shoot or takenoko (竹の子 or 筍）. Bamboo shoots are very much a spring-only vegetable, much like asparagus, so around this time of year I always get a craving for the crunch and subtle flavor.

While fresh bamboo shoots haven’t made their appearance at markets and stores in Zürich, it is possible to buy precooked bamboo shoots. (And the truth is, most Japanese people nowadays use convenient precooked bamboo shoots anyway. Fresh bamboo shoots start to go hard and somewhat bitter as soon as they are dug up.)

An added bonus: boiled bamboo shoots are so low in calories that you can put them on your ‘eat as much as I want’ list. 100 grams has about 12 calories and 1 gram of fiber.

Cooking fresh bamboo shoots

If you’re lucky enough to live in an area where you can get fresh bamboo shoots, here’s how to cook them.

Select bamboo shoots that are heavy and firm, with a lively looking outer skin. (Only about 2 or 3 kinds of bamboo varieties produce edible shoots, and they are all quite large and come from fairly old bamboos. You could experiment with bamboo shoots from your garden, but you do so at your own risk.)
Cut off the pointy end and the root end.
Put in a pot with enough white rinsing water when you wash rice to cover. (Alternatively you can put in some rice bran, wrapped in a cheesecloth.) Bring to a boil, and simmer for about an hour or more, until it is tender enough to poke a skewer through. (Some suggest putting a couple of chili peppers in the simmering water.)
Let cool in the water; if you try to peel it while it’s still hot, the shoot may split.
The outer skin will peel off easily. You can then proceed and use the bamboo shoot in various dishes.

Using pre-cooked vacuum packed bamboo shoots

You can get canned bamboo shoots, but I much prefer the vacuum packed kind. They are a pale shadow of freshly cooked bamboo shoots, but they haave to do. They come packed in a little water.

Essentially they have been cooked in the manner described above, and are ready to use. You may see some white gritty stuff in the inner folds - that’s just rice residue. Rinse it out in water.

Once you’ve opened a vacuum packed bamboo shoot, try to use it up right away.

Recipe: Takenoko Gohan (Bamboo shoot rice)

Takenoko gohan is a quintessential spring dish. The rice is subtly perfumed by the bamboo shoot, which retains its crunchy texture. This can really make me homesick for Japan.

This is a method to cook it in a rice cooker. This is a vegan dish.

3 rice cooker cups (1 cup = 180ml) rice (white rice is traditional, but you could use sprouted brown rice. If using regular brown rice, soak it overnight.)
3 dried shiitake mushrooms, pre-soaked until soft
1/2 small to medium cooked bamboo shoot (about 4 oz / 120g)
1 Tbs. sake
1 Tbs. mirin
1 Tbs. soy sauce
1/2 to 1 tsp. salt (less salt if you intend to eat this as part of a Japanese meal with other salty things; more if this is served as a side-dish Western style)
The soaking liquid from the shiitake, plus added water if needed

Wash the rice and drain in a sieve.

Drain off the dried shiitake, reserving the soaking liquid. Add to the rice in the rice cooker, and top up with water if needed to bring it up to the 3-cup level mark. Add the sake, mirin, soy sauce and salt. Let the rice soak for at least 30 minutes. (Overnight if you’re using regular brown rice.)

In the meantime, chop up the shiitake and cut the bamboo shoot half into bitesize pieces. Add to the rice, and cook using regular cooking settings.

Let rest for at least 10 minutes after cooking, and them fluff up to mix.

Recipe: Bamboo shoot and snap pea stir fry with bacon

The other half of the bamboo shoot can be used in a stir-fry or a miso soup. Here’s a simple stir fry that uses another spring vegetable, snap peas. The bacon makes it not very vegetarian. You can leave it out for a vegan version.

1/2 small to medium cooked bamboo shoot (about 4 oz / 120g), sliced
2 cups snap peas, de-veined if needed and trimmed
2 slices bacon, cut into small pieces
1/2 cup white parts of spring or green onions sliced
1 Tbs. oil
1 Tbs. soy sauce
1/2 tsp. salt
pepper
a few drops of chili oil Head up the oil in a wok. Add the bacon and cook until just about crisp. Add the onion, stir fry a couple of minutes. Add snap peas and stir fry until bright green and crisp-tender. Add bamboo shoots, soy sauce and salt and pepper, and the chili oil, and take off the heat.

Of cherry blossoms, ohanami and Japanese culture

maki — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 13:27:23 +0200

It may surprise you to read this, but I do not actually miss living in Japan that much generally, except for my family and the food. My home territory there is the greater Tokyo area, and while Tokyo is a great metropolis, it’s also unbearably congested and you are living on top of other people all the time. To borrow a term used for another place in the world, generally speaking it’s a nice place to visit, but I’m not sure (given a choice) that I’d want to live there. But there are certain times of the year when I do wish I were there, and right now is one of them. It’s cherry blossom time.

Cherry blossom trees are so ubiquitous all throughout Japan, that they are used as an official measure of the changing of seasons. There is something called the sakura zensen (桜前線） or the cherry blossom front, which tracks the blossoming time of cherry trees throughout the country. (It’s so official that it even appears in elementary school geography books along with other weather maps.)

One thing that Japanese people repeat all the time is that Japan is unique because it has four distinct seasons. The implication is that no other place on earth does! This isn’t quite true of course, but I do think that the Japanese culture has a deep appreciation for the changes of the seasons. One of these appreciative rituals is o-hanami or hanami (お花見）. Groups of people congregate on mats under the most picturesque clumps of cherry blossom trees with bento lunches and have a good old party. A lot of sake is usually involved. Since certain places in Tokyo are so popular for o-hanami gatherings, it is traditionally the job of the lowliest grunt in the office to go out early in the morning to the place where his bosses want to party later on that evening with a mat and stake out a choice spot under the trees. He’d then have to sit there all day.

Families go out for o-hanami too, sans the sake usually, though there might be a small bottle or two (or beer) for Dad. Mom would wake up early to make lots and lots of onigiri, and the whole family sets off in their car or on the train to appreciate the blossoms.

(The illustration is by Melbourne artist and designer Andrea Innocent. Her web site is called Otoshimono and it’s filled with Japanophilia. See the original full size illustration on CalorieLab.)

Eating cherry blossoms and leaves

The trees that produce those beautiful pink flowers are different from the ones that produce cherries, but in Japan parts of the flowering tree are still eaten. The leaves are salted and wrapped around a mochi that is dyed a pale pink filled with an; this sweet is called sakuramochi. This is one of my favorite wagashi (traditional Japanese sweets) because the subtle salty-sourness of the pickled cherry leaves counteracts the sweetness of the an nicely. The flowers themselves are eaten too, salted and pickled in shiroume-su, the clear vinegar produced when making umeboshi that hasn’t been colored by red shiso leaves. Floating one or two of these preserved blossoms in a bowl of clear soup or tea is really nice, adding that little salty-sourness again.

Around here it’s still rather cold, but in a couple of weeks the apple trees in our village should be blooming. I wonder what the neighbors, human and bovine, will think if we had a o-hanami party in the fields…

The cherry blossom front lost in translation

Speaking of the cherry blossom front (sakura zensen) brought back memories of an odd experience I had many years ago.

In the late ’80s to early ’90s there was a revival boom of tanka, a traditional form of Japanese poetry that predates the haiku form by centuries. The instigator for this boom was an author and poet called Machi Sawara, whose book of modern tanka called Sarada Kinenbi (Salad Anniversary, サラダ記念日), became a runaway bestseller. (There’s a good analysis of her work and impact on her official English web site.)

One day, Ms. Sawara was engaged to speak at the Japan Club in New York, together with another author whose name I don’t remember anymore. My mother was a big fan of Sarada kinenbi, and so she dragged me there to hear this bestselling author who wrote such beautiful poems talk about her work. The audience there was almost all Japanese.

I don’t remember most of what Ms. Sawara talked about that day, except for one thing. She was describing how she had given a similar talk on Denmark, to a Danish audience. She said that she had described the sakura zensen, and how Japanese people tracked the arrival of spring with it as the front creeped up day by day from south to north. She said her Danish audience laughed at this, and said it sounded stupid, and that she realized that it was a very Japanese way of thinking that was not understandable by gaijin-san (foreigners).

Now I ask you, if you are a non-Japanese person reading this, do you have a hard time understanding the sakura-zensen? Does it sound stupid to you? I’m guessing it doesn’t at all. Every culture around the world appreciates the changing of the seasons, and have different traditions that mark them. I highly doubt that Danish people are any different. And I really doubt that that Danish audience said it was stupid. There must have been a severe breakdown in communication there somewhere - either a bad interpreter, or just that Ms. Sawara totally got it wrong. But the thing is she chose to interpret the situation the way she did.

I wasn’t a fan of hers when I heard this (I hadn’t read Sarada kinenbi yet), but my mother the big fan felt stunned at the shiya no semasa (the narrow view). It changed her opinion of the author so much that she stopped being a fan. Before that, she used to quote the tanka in Sarada kinenbi to anyone who would listen all the time. (A number of the New York-residing Japanese people who were there agreed with her, and the reviews in the local expat papers were pretty scathing, if I recall correctly.)

Anyway, the point of telling this story is that oddly enough, I think it was one of the defining moments in my life. It made me realize that one of the things I wanted to do was to give a real, living and informed (as much as possible) ‘translation’ of Japanese culture to people who weren’t Japanese, and vice versa. It’s one of the many motivations behind this blog and the others I run. For nihonjin (Japanese person), living solely in Japan (or in any single place) is like being in a protected, comfortable cocoon to a great extent, even in this internet age. Living outside of it is like being dunked in freezing cold water. It gives you a shock, but also opens your eyes to both sides of the divide.

Shell-shaped sushi (Hamaguri-zushi) for Girls' Festival

maki — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 12:52:50 +0100

From the archives, originally posted March 2, 2007: I’ll be making these pretty egg-wrapped sushi again for hinamatsuri (Girl’s Festival) on Monday, March 3rd. The pale yellow and pink colors are like a harbinger of spring for me, besides being very girly. As delicate as they look, they are pretty easy to make. I have revised the recipe in minor ways. It’s a great way to use usuyaki tamago. Enjoy!

Tomorrow, March 3rd, is Momo no sekku or Peach Day in Japan. Peach blossoms usually start blooming around this time, signifying the coming of spring. It’s also the day for hina matsuri, the Doll Festival or Girls’ Festival. Households with daughters display hina ningyo-, traditional dolls that represent a princess’s wedding procession. This is because the ultimate happiness expected for a girl was for her to make a fruitful and comfortable marriage. Nowadays girls may be expected to do other things besides become happy wives, but on this day at least traditions still hold strong.

In Japan there is a long standing stereotype that girls and women like very sweet things, while manly men like less sweet and bitter things. So, for Hina Matsuri the guests are served sweet things like amazake (a very thick non-alcoholic hot drink made from the lees of sake, rather like eggnog in color and cloying sweetness), hishimochi (tri-colored mochi cake) and okoshi (colored sweetened puffed rice). Although there were three girls in our house, none of us liked amazake at all. However, my mother often made some kind of sushi for Hina Matsuri, which we really loved.

Here are two kinds of very pretty, girlie sushi in feminine pink, yellow and white with a touch of green. These colors fit the theme of Hina Matsuri perfectly: the traditional hishimochi is colored white, pink (or light red) and green.

The first is hamaguri-zushi or clam sushi, pictured here. It’s supposed to look like a clam, but to me it looks just as much like a little yellow flower. (Hamaguri are in season in March in Japan.) It can be filled with any kind of sushi rice, but here I have made a slightly pink-tinged sushi rice with lemony smoked salmon, mitsuba or flat-leaf parsley and white sesame seeds, wrapped in a usuyaki tamago or thin omelette. It’s related to chakin-zushi, where the omelette is wrapped in a bag shape and tied, but slightly less fiddly since all you have to do is fold it into quarters.

Besides making a very pretty spring party dish (for an appetizer maybe, or as part of a buffet), these work very well as bento items too since the sushi rice has good keeping qualities, and the omelette keeps the rice from drying out. Plus you can just grab them with your hands to eat.

The second sushi is smoked salmon temari zushi - the recipe is here.

March 3rd, is Momo no sekku or Peach Day in Japan. Peach blossoms usually start blooming around this time, signifying the coming of spring. It’s also the day for hina matsuri, the Doll Festival or Girls’ Festival. Households with daughters display hina ningyo-, traditional dolls that represent a princess’s wedding procession. This is because the ultimate happiness expected for a girl was for her to make a fruitful and comfortable marriage. Nowadays girls may be expected to do other things besides become happy wives, but on this day at least traditions still hold strong.

The second sushi is smoked salmon temari zushi - the recipe is here.

Hamaguri-zushi (clam sushi) or yellow flower sushi

The rice:

4 cups of cooked plain white rice cooked with dashi stock
1/4 cup plum vinegar or raspberry vinegar
1 1/2 Tbs. sugar
3/4 tsp. salt
About 60g/2 oz smoked salmon, chopped up into pieces
2 tsp. lemon juice
1 Tbs. toasted white sesame seeds
2 Tbs. chopped mitsuba or flatleaf parsley leaves

The wrapping: * usuyaki tamago using 6 eggs

Garnish:

Salmon eggs (aka salmon caviar) or ikura (which are salmon eggs marinated in a soy sauce mix)

Equipment:

Small non-stick frying pan
Rice cooker (will make your life a lot easier)
A heat-resistant brush for brushing the oil onto the pan, or a wad of paper towel
Spatula to turn the omelette
Rice paddle or spatula for mixing the rice

Make the usuyaki tamago. Dissolve the cornstarch in the water. Beat the eggs lightly with a fork or chopsticks (not a whisk or it will become too bubbly) with the sugar, salt and the cornstarch/water.

Heat the small frying pan over a medium-low heat. Brush lightly with oil. Put about 1/8th cup or 3 tablespoons of the egg mixture in the pan, swirl carefully so it coats the bottom of the pan but doesn’t slosh up the sides. Hint: use the same scoop or spoon to measure equal amounts of the egg - I use a 1/4 cup measure, half filled.

Cook just until the top is barely set, then carefully pick up the omelette with the spatula and flip over. Cook for about 10 seconds just until it’s set, then flip out of the pan. The omelettes should be yellow, and not browned.

Repeat for the rest of the egg. You should end up with about 12 to 14 omelettes.

The omelettes can be made the day before and kept covered with plastic in the fridge.

Make the sushi rice the day you plan to serve it. Cook the rice following the basic instructions. Turn the hot rice out into a bowl and break up lightly with the spatula. The sushi vinegar in this case is made with a red colored vinegar, either plum or raspberry (don’t worry, this won’t make the rice taste weird). Mix together the vinegar, sugar and salt in a pan and heat until the sugar and salt are dissolved. Pour over the rice, and mix/fluff the rice until it’s all a uniform pale pink. Let cool to room temperature.

In the meantime, sprinkle the chopped up smoked salmon with the lemon juice, and let sit for at least 10 to 15 minutes.

Fold the sesame seeds, salmon, and mitsuba or parsley into the rice, trying not to smoosh the rice grains too much. Here is how the rice looks. You can just make this into small rice balls and serve too.

Assembly

Divide the rice into as many portions as you have omelettes. Put the portioned rice on one quarter of one of the omelettes.

Fold the omelette in half, then into quarters.

Turn over so the rice part is on top (the weight of the rice helps to keep it stable). Squeeze the sides a bit so the insides can be seen.

Garnish with a few salmon eggs. This is optional but makes it really pretty. You can also sprinkle a bit of mitsuba or parsley instead.

Note that you do not need dipping soy sauce for this, since the sushi itself is already flavored quite well.

Rhubarb berry trifle

maki — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 18:20:52 +0200

On rhubarb, stewed fruit and England

I first saw this curious plant called rhubarb during the time we lived for 5 years in Berkshire, England. I was 5 when we moved there. The rhubarb grew like a small jungle in a corner of the vegetable patch of the house we were renting, alongside some equally puzzling gooseberry bushes. Neither existed at all in Japan at the time, and my mother was at a loss as to what to do with them, until our next door neighbor lady told her how to stew them. The neighbor lady believed in stewing most fruit - she told my mother to stew or jam all of the raspberries too, since eating them raw may lead to upset small tummies. Thankfully my mother didn’t take her advice for all of the raspberries, and I still have memories of stickily enjoying bowls and bowls of red, ripe raspberries with clouds of whipped cream. One of the first things I did when I got my own garden was to plant several raspberry canes.

Stewed and cooked fruit figures quite prominently in my memories of English food at the time. This was in the ’70s. Whenever I was invited to tea at a friend’s house, there was usually always some sort of cooked fruit dish, be it a compote of peaches in the summer or apple and blackberry pie later on in the year. I think we only ate fresh, raw fruit at home, except for bananas and strawberries. I didn’t even know that gooseberries could be anything other than sour, green and only edible stewed with sugar, until I came to Switzerland and saw them left to ripen on a bush, turning a bright reddish-purple.

That penchant for cooking fruit does mean that there are many terrific fruity desserts (aka puddings) in British cookbooks. One of them is trifle. I’m in the midst of my annual rhubarb orgy period, and it’s one ‘fruit’ (though it’s botanically a vegetable) that needs to be cooked. Hence, the rhubarb trifle.

The slightly modernized trifle

A trifle is small pieces of sponge cake soaked in a sweet, fruity liquid, and topped with custard or cream. Some versions of trifle are quite alcoholic, but this one has no alcohol in it since I imagine my 8 year old self tucking into it. The components are simple: the fruit-liquidy mix, the cake, and the creamy topping. The key part that makes this trifle different is the rhubarb soaking liquid part, which is quite sour and not too sweet. I’ve added a few frozen berries (raspberries from last summer’s crop in fact) to make the red color more intense - if you have fresh strawberries by all means use those instead.

Trifle is traditionally topped with custard, cream or both. Here I have combined the two so to speak and topped it with vanilla ice cream instead - this is the slightly modernized part. It’s homemade but you can use a good store bought ice cream if you don’t want to bother, or don’t have an ice cream maker.

I think that the key to a good trifle is to not overload it with sponge cake, which makes it go rather stodgy. Add just a few pieces for the interesting texture. Note that I’ve used pieces of store bought roll cake here (called Swiss roll in England, but not really Swiss as far as I know) which adds some extra flavor. You can assemble it all in a big bowl, or in individual glasses as I’ve done here.

This is my pre-planned entry for Sam’s Fish and Quips event celebrating British food. See also my other two British-theme posts this week, Tasting Guinness Marmite and The Edwardians and their food.

Rhubarb berry trifle with vanilla ice cream

To keep the color as clean and red as possible, use only the red parts of rhubarb stalks. This may mean buying more rhubarb than you need. Use the green parts for another dish.

I’ve used cup measurements here throughout since it’s easier for this particular recipe, and everything is proportional. Note 1 cup = 250ml.

The ice cream part:

This makes more ice cream than you’ll probably need but…anything wrong with that? I don’t think so. You can skip this step and get some good quality store bought.

Vanilla Ice Cream

2 cups whole milk
1 vanilla pod or 1 tsp. real vanilla extract
4 egg yolks from pasteurized eggs or eggs from very happy organic hens
7/8th cups (a bit less than 1 cup) sugar
1 cup heavy cream

If using a vanilla pod, cut it open and scrape out the beans put the pod and the beans into the milk. Let the milk simmer for about 10-15 minutes on very low heat.

In a bowl, beat together the yolks and the sugar. Slowly add the heated milk (fish out the pod), beating vigorously. Add the vanilla extract if you are using that. Add the cream and whisk together. Let cool until ice cold. Put into an ice cream maker and churn following the manufacturer’s instructions. This, incidentally, is my standard vanilla ice cream recipe.

The rhubarb-berry part:

8 cups of cut up red rhubarb
1 cup fresh or frozen red berries (raspberries or strawberries or even red currants)
1 1/4 cups sugar
Juice of 1 lemon

Mix everything together in a non-reactive pan (stainless steel, enamel or non-stick. Not aluminum or iron in other words). Heat over medium-low heat - after a while it will become quite liquid. Simmer for about 20 minutes until the rhubarb pieces are soft.

Let cool to room temperature, and taste - if it seems too sour to you (remembering that you’ll be adding sweet cake pieces to it) add a little sugar and mix well to melt.

The cake part:

A store bought (Swiss) roll cake with a jam and cream filling

To assemble it all:

For every cup of the rhubarb mixture, add about 1/3 cup’s worth of cut up cake. Don’t overload the liquid with the cake, and reserve some for decoration. Allow the combined mixture to mellow and cool in the fridge for several hours.

To serve, scoop the mixture into individual parfait glasses or into one big glass bowl, a trifle bowl if you have one. The mixture should come up to about 2/3rds of the height of the glass. Top with scoops of softened vanilla ice cream, and decorate with slices of the roll cake.

Rhubarb, ginger and berry smoothie to chase away a cold

maki — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 12:45:07 +0200

I have a raging cold at the moment. Stuffed head, fever, ringing ears, streaming eyes, the lot. What makes it worse is that the weather is glorious outside, and here I am stuck inside, groaning a lot and feeling sorry for myself.

In times like this the only things I can even think about eating and drinking are fruity yogurt, juices, and tea. This smoothie, which is an adaptation from a recipe in the adorable Innocent Smoothie Recipe Book, combines two of those elements and is tart yet spicy in a nice chest-clearing sort of way. It also tastes wonderful. Although, I’m pretty sure it would taste even better if my mouth didn’t feel like cotton wool.

It’s a good thing I took this picture against the clear blue spring skies before the cold took over at full steam.

The glass in the photo is a vintage ’60s frosted-glass one I got at a flea market in New York. I have a set of 6. I love them and would kill anyone who broke them.

Rhubarb, berry and ginger smoothie

For the stewed rhubarb in apple juice:

1 carton of apple juice (1 litre or 1 quart) - organic, blabla preferred, or juice your own apples
4-5 stalks rhubarb, cut up

Stew the rhubarb in the apple juice until soft, about 10-15 minutes. This can be stored in the fridge for making the smoothies later.

For the smoothie:

1 cup stewed rhubarb and juice
1 cup fresh or frozen red berries - strawberries or raspberries or a mix
8 Tbs. plain yogurt
1 Tbs. ginger syrup (if you don’t have ginger syrup, use honey)
1 tsp. ginger juice (grate some fresh ginger and squeeze out the juice)

Combine all in a blender. Serve in tall cool glasses.

Makes 2 servings (which you may consume by yourself if needed as medication)

Notes

It’s also great without the ginger element. (The original recipe doesn’t have ginger.)

The Innocent Drinks Company is a U.K. maker of smoothies and other ‘healthy’ type drinks, with very hip and cute marketing. (They’ve recently branched out to Germany too.) In a way the book is another marketing ploy. It has cute bite-sized bits about saving the environment and so on, alongside the nice and sometimes quite imaginative smoothie ideas.

I do try to not over-indulge in smoothies since one glass of a smoothie can be like 3-400 calories, but nothing much else goes down as, eh, smoothly, when your tonsils are swollen.

Smoked salmon temari zushi: Ball-shaped sushi

maki — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 19:23:33 +0100

Following up on the previous recipe for shell shaped sushi, here is another kind of sushi that’s great for parties. Temari are small cloth balls made from leftover scraps of kimono fabric, and temari zushi are meant to look like these colorful toys. You can make temari zushi with any number of things, such as thinly sliced sashimi grade fish, boiled and butterflied shrimp, thinly sliced and cooked or uncooked vegetables, and even thin slices of cheese.

For these, I’ve used thinly cut slices of pale pink smoked salmon, with tiny amount of cream cheese inside, rather in the same vein as a New York Roll - quite non-traditional but it’s a great combination. The key is to make the temari zushi on the small side since they are quite rich.

As with the hamaguri-zushi, these don’t require any soy sauce for dipping.

Smoked salmon temari zushi

4 cups of cooked plain white rice cooked with dashi stock, turned into sushi rice either by following the traditional recipe on that page, or into pink sushi rice as per the instructions on the hamaguri sushi page
8 to 12 thin slices smoked salmon
Cream cheese
Finely chopped parsley for garnish

Equipment:

Tiny bowl or small teacup with about 1/3 to 1/2 cup cup capacity
Plastic cling film

The procedure for making these is the same as for Onigiri 2.0, but even easier. A small teacup is lined with plastic wrap, then a slice of salmon, and filled with rice. Everything is gathered up and squeezed in the plastic wrap, and formed into a little ball.

Line the cup or little bowl (I used a tiny glass bowl that I use for holding small amounts of ingredients and such when cooking) with plastic cling film, then a slice of smoked salmon.

Fill with sushi rice. Poke a hole in the middle and put about 1/2 teaspoon of cream cheese in there. I used a kind with olive bits in it, which makes it even more interesting.

Gather up the cling film and twist tightly, and form into a ball. Unmold and sprinkle a tiny bit of green if desired.

If you are bringing these to a picnic or something, leave the plastic wrap on. Try to keep cool until you eat it, since this amount of smoked salmon on the outside will get nastily greasy if left too warm.

Variation

The pale pink sushi rice makes a subtle yet nice contrast to regular white sushi rice. You can make little balls alternating both, for a pretty display, to serve as a side dish or as the rice part of your bento box.

Baked Early Rhubarb

maki — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 15:56:55 +0100

Here in the central part of Europe we have had a ton of snow over the past few days. In our corner of Switzerland we had about half a meter (about 19 inches) of the fluffy white stuff descend on us over the weekend.

In spite of that, there is a definite sign that spring is almost here: rhubarb is back in the stores!

I adore rhubarb, and have written about it here frequently. I love its sour taste that is so lovely when tempered by sweetness. I love the color. And I really love the fact that it's one of the very few truly seasonal produce items around. Rhubarb in October has not yet, thank goodness, been engineered.

Early rhubarb is a gorgeous magenta-pink in color, with pure white interiors. The flavor doesn't differ much from later, greener rhubarb, but it sure looks more beautiful.

I've already posted a few of my favorite rhubarb recipes in the past, but this time I would like to introduce you to the easiest ever way to cook this fruit (or..is it a vegetable?): baked rhubarb. It be eaten in any number of ways: with a dollop of whipped cream or creme fraiche or quark or yogurt; with vanilla ice cream; or just on its own, straight out of the fridge, from the bowl.

Past rhubarb recipes on Just Hungry:

Rhubarb (with optional strawberry) crumble pie - one of the all time favorite recipes on Just Hungry. They even 'borrowed' the picture to illustrate a Backpack project.
Rhubarb compote with marscapone-custard cream - you can use baked rhubarb instead of the stewed one for this!
Rhubarb ginger muffins - gorgeous, dense little gems.

Technorati Tags: rhubarb

Baked rhubarb

This is so easy it's barely a recipe. My favorite kind of cooking - prepare everything, dump it into the oven, set the timer, and come back when it beeps. Cooking things in packages is always fun too. Opening the packet almost feels like unwrapping a present.

6-8 cups of cut-up rhubarb (5-6 stalks). Be sure to cut off any leaf parts.
1 1/2 - 2 cups sugar
1 vanilla pod (optional)

Preheat the oven to 200°C / 400°F.

Toss together the sugar and rhubarb. Put a double layer of aluminum foil on a baking dish, and put the rhubarb in a pile in the middle. If you're using a vanilla pod, place it in the middle of the rhubarb. Seal up the foil securely so you have a pouch. Bake in the oven for 30 minutes, until the rhubarb is tender. Chill before serving (though frankly it's good at any temperature).

If you want the rhubarb to disintegrate even more, bake for about 10 minutes longer.

If you want it to be more acidic, omit the vanilla and add the juice of half a lemon.

Strawberry, strawberry

maki — Mon, 30 May 2005 03:44:19 +0200

This monster strawberry, that looks like - and was the size of - 3 regular strawberries all fused together, showed up in a batch bought some days ago, and since then I haven't been able to look at any strawberries at the store without a twinge of fear.

I'm fairly sure that this strawberry just grew together by accident or something, but it sure looks like some horrible mutation. Still, it did make me think about something I haven't worried much about before - genetically engineered food.

Of course, real genetically engineered strawberries (if they exist) probably look very normal.

On the bright side, the very first alpine strawberries, or fraises des bois, are peeking out here and there in the wilderness that passes for a garden in front of the house. They are quite early this year, probably because of the hot days we have been having.

There are still too few to eat except to pick and pop straight into the mouth, but soon there will be enough to fill a small teacup, and eat with fresh (non-UHT, thank you) cream. The sight of these tiny wild strawberries, each with more flavor than 10 monster strawberries combined, is very comforting.

Rhubarb ginger muffins

maki — Wed, 11 May 2005 18:36:50 +0200

As if last month's IMBB muffin (and cupcake) orgy weren't enough, here is another muffin that has definitely entered my must-make list. It's yet another way to enjoy the tanginess of rhubarb, with the added twist of preserved or crystallized ginger. (I used my precious homemade crystallized ginger, but you can use the store-bought kind with no problems.)

I almost hesitate to call it a muffin, because it's rather dense and moist. I don't really want this sort of denseness early in the morning. It's very well suited for a mid-morning snack, or for afternoon tea. It tastes better the day after it's been baked, and subsequently seems to improve in flavor. The little cakes or muffins turn out with a very appealing pinky hue, which I've enhanced here by using pink paper cups.

Rhubarb-ginger muffins

Makes about 24 medium sized muffins.

1 large egg
3/4 cup non-runny (if you can get a hold of it) honey
1/2 cup melted butter
3/4 cup orange juice, fresh squeezed if you can manage
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 cups of chopped up rhubarb (about .5cm / 1/4 inch pieces, cut by hand)
1/2 cup finely chopped hazelnuts
1 Tbs. finely chopped preserved or crystallized ginger
2 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt

Ingredient notes: by non-runny honey I mean the kind that is sort of solid (or butter-texture) in the jar. If you can't get a hold of this kind, regular clear honey will do. The hazelnuts can be substituted with walnuts.

Preheat the oven to 150° C / 300° F. Make ready your paper cupcake cups - by doubling them, you can usually avoid having to stand them up in muffin tins.

Mix the honey with the butter over a very low heat until blended. Take off the heat, and add the juices and the beaten egg.

Add the chopped up rhubarb, nuts, and ginger to the wet mixture.

Mix together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Fold this into the wet mixture, Don't overmix - as long as it's incorporated it's fine. Pour equally into the cupcake cups.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center of one comes out more or less clean. Let cool, and ideally let rest for at least a day before eating.

This recipe is considerably adapted from the one for Rhubarb Bread, aka Pain au Rhubarbe in one of my favorite baking books, Bernard Clayton's Complete Book of Breads. I think the richness of this works far better as little muffin-cakes than as a dense loaf. (Incidentally I have never encountered rhubarb in France, baked in a bread or any other way... but maybe I've just missed it somehow.)

Rhubarb compote with mascarpone-custard cream

maki — Sat, 07 May 2005 17:14:24 +0200

I am shaking my head here as I realize that it's been more than a month since my last update. Time flies so fast when stuff is going on elsewhere. This means that the rhubarb season is flying past us too. Since this really is a seasonal item (vegetable? fruit?) it needs to be enjoyed as much as possible right now, before it gets too warm. My favorite rhubarb dish (because it's so easy) is still rhubarb crumble pie, but this one is a very close second, with or without the cream on top.

Already it's getting rather difficult to find the beautiful pinky rhubarb stalks that are usually forced rather than allowed to grow freely, but in case you can still get some mostly-pink stalks, this is a beautiful dessert that is worthy of the most dainty of occasions. It still tastes great even if made with the greenish stalks, though it will not look as pretty.

The compote itself should be pureed very finely, but not strained. Straining taked out all of the fibrous stuff, which adds body to the compote, and inadequate pureeing leads to some sort of long, viscosy strands hanging from your spoon, which are not too attractive. A food processor or good hand-mixer therefore is a must.

If you want to make the pink even pinker, add a ripe strawberry or two to the puree.

The cream on top is a rather complicated, utterly unctuous mixture that fits the tartness of the compote perfectly. If you find it too much of a bother to make the custard, you can also use any of the following as a topping: whipped or unwhipped cream, crème fraîche, yoghurt, fromage frais or quark. You may want to sweeten these with some vanilla sugar, or add some vanilla essence and plain icing sugar.

Rhubarb compote with marscapone-custard cream

Makes 8-12 servings, enough for a party

For the compote:

About 1 kg / 2 lb pink rhubarb cut into 2cm / 1 inch or so pieces
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 cup water

Mix together all the ingredients. Cook on a medium-low heat for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the mixture is totally soft. Process thoroughly in a food processor or with a handmixer. Let cool. Pour into largish wine glasses or (if you are lucky enough to have such) individual trifle bowls, about 2/3rd full. Chill in the refrigerator.

For the marscapone-custard cream:

6 egg yolks
3/4 cup sugar
a pinch of salt
1 cup marscapone
2 cups milk
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup crème fraîche
1 vanilla pod

Combine the milk and cream. Cut the vanilla pod in half, and scrape out the seeds inside. Dump everything incoluding the cut pods into the milk and cream mixture. Heat the milk and heavy cream in a pan over very low heat (to allow the vanilla to infuse) until hot. Combine the egg yolks, salt sugar in a bowl over another pan of hot water (or in the top of a double boiler, if you have one).

Fish out the vanilla pod. Add the milk-cream mixture slowly, stirring all the time, to the egg mixture. Heat while stirring, until the mixture coats the back of a wooden spoon (if you draw your finger through it and the mixture 'holds' before filling in the gap for a bit, then it's done.) Take off the heat and stir in the mascarpone. Cool, then pour very gently over the compote in the glasses. Chill the glasses until ready to serve. Garnish each glass with a sprig of mint.

This makes rather a lot of cream, so you may either halve the ingredients, or use the leftover to make ice cream. Either use an ice cream maker, or simply freeze in a plastic container, stirring the thing up with a spoon every couple of hours.