Japanese spinach with sesame dressing

As my adventures at Japanese cooking school continue, it is becoming apparent that I am not coming through on the second half of the bargain: actually making what I learn for the Young Man.

However, short of ideas for a veggie accompaniment to a non-Japanese meal, I remembered the recipe for veggies with 2 sesame dressings from a couple of months back. Horenso no goma-ae (spinach in sesame dressing) is an old favourite, and very easy to make. It is meant to be eaten cold or at room temperature and keeps well in the fridge, so feel free to make it in advance.

This is a "white" version is made with sesame paste, which visitors to this site with a Middle Eastern bent will likely have in the form of tahini, tahina or tahin, amongst its many regional names. It is slightly different in taste from Japanese sesame paste, but will do very well just the same. I use it myself.

The recipe also calls for lightly ground sesame seeds, which in Japan you can buy in packets ready-ground or in a special grinder. If you don have access to these, a quick blitz in a mini food processor will do it or, if you want a more "authentic" feel, grind them yourself in a suribachi (which looks like a ceramic bowl with a washboard inside). You don't want to grind them too fine, though. It won't matter if some seeds stay whole.

The spinach is blanched quickly in boiling water and then gently squeezed as dry as possible before cutting into lengths. Do yourself a favour and don't cut the roots off the spinach bunches until after you blanch them, as this will make it easier to keep the bunches together for wringing (you'll probably be surprised at the amount of liquid that comes out, but do squeeze it all out or you'll end up with a watery mess). Of course, if spinach is only available as loose leaves where you live, you'll just have to make do, I'm afraid. I think you'll find this earthy but fresh side is worth the trouble anyway.

Oh, and you can use the dressing on the half the weight of Japanese mushrooms (maitake or shiitake would be good) or boiled green beans cut on the diagonal.

Japanese spinach with sesame dressing

400 g spinach, roots attached
2 tbsp white sesame seeds, toasted and lightly ground
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp sesame paste or tahini
2 tsp Japanese soy sauce

1 Wash spinach very well and drain. Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil and blanch spinach until it wilts. Remove and drain until cool.

2 To make the dressing, mix together the remaining ingredients.

3 Gather up bunches of spinach and squeeze as much water out as possible. Think squeezing out long hair after washing. Remove the roots and cut into 4 cm lengths.

4 Add the spinach to the dressing and mix gently but thoroughly.

Enjoy!

Foodie weekend: Pumpkin pie

For too many years now, I've been promising to make my "traditional" Halloween pumpkin pie but not quite getting round to it.

I say traditional because although pumpkins, let alone pumpkin pie, were not part of my childhood Halloween in Scotland (or Australia, come to think of it), I did make this pie faithfully for many years when the Young Man was, well, younger (g).

This year, I thought I'd try it with the fragrant sweet spice blend instead of cinnamon. Especially since we were making the pie for a Halloween party hosted by a dear friend whose hubby is not partial to that spice. If you want to go this route, you'll probably want to double (or more) the "cinnamon" in the recipe. Just to be sure, taste it before filling your pie crust. Taste it twice or even three times if need be (g).

Given the price of butter in Japan these days, I followed my dear friend H's lead and made the pastry with half lard/half butter, with an extra pinch or two of salt to make up for the salt missing from the butter. Lard, sold in squeezable bottles here in Japan, is much easier to handle than butter, and gives a nice light crust.

I usually roll my pastry between two sheets of food wrap, which prevents it from sticking to the counter top and minimises cleanup afterwards. Double bonus!

The recipe is from a food column that Tamako Sakamoto had in the Japan Times many years ago (its seems to have ended in 1999!) . Even my photocopy is tatty round the edges and covered in stains. Evidence of many happy Halloweens past, and hopefully more to come in future.

I might not have grown up with pumpkin pie at Halloween, but fellow party-goer C, who hails from the US, pronounced the pie a success, even if it was a little light on the cinnamon (g).

Pumpkin pie

200 g plain flour
100 g butter (or 50 g butter + 50 lard + 2 extra pinches of salt)
Pinch of salt
5 tbsp cold water

Filling
300 g pumpkin, peeled weight
50 g butter
100 g sugar
2 egg yolks
150 ml heavy cream (also works with what is called "whip" in Japan)
1/2 tsp cinnamon (or 1 1/2 tsp fragrant sweet spices)
1/4 tsp allspice
Dash of vanilla extract

1 Sift flour and salt in large mixing bowl. Rub in the butter (& lard, if using). Alternatively, blitz flour, salt and fat in the food processor. Stir in water and blend until dough holds together. Wrap and chill until ready to use.

2 On a lightly floured board, roll out the pastry to a 5 mm thickness. Place the pastry in a lightly buttered 21-cm round pie dish. Prick the bottom of the shell with a fork and chill 30 minutes longer.

3 Now prepare the filling. Remove seeds from the pumpkin, wash and cover with food wrap. Microwave on high until very tender. Peel with a knife while warm. Push through a sieve or smooth in a food processor (you may need to add some of the cream to keep the blades whirring).

4 Cream butter in a mixing bowl and add pumpkin, sugar, egg yolks, remaining cream, cinnamon (or sweet fragrant spices), allspice and vanilla extract. Mix well..

5 Preheat the oven to 200 C. Line the shell with two layers of aluminium foil, weighted down with beans or aluminium pie weights. Bake in the oven for 10 min. Remove the foil and beans or weights Reduce heat to 180 C and continue baking for 15-20 min until the pastry turns lightly coloured.

6 Fill the shell with pumpkin mixture. Bake for 30 min or until set.

Enjoy!

PS I wonder if the Scottish Halloween is still homemade, with tangerines, nuts and apples the "treats" of the day like it was in my day (god that makes me feel old), or if Halloween is the same commercial "event" that is has become here in Japan?...

PPS The bottle of South African wine in the photo was a terrific foil for the pie. Especially as it provided a ready excuse for our dear hostess to regale us with tales of when she visited said winery.

Foodie weekend: Cooking class 6: Borscht, priozhki and classic chocola

For my cooking class this month I didn't take the Japanese class, but the Russian one. Russian food has been on my radar for over a year, since finding out about Diana Henry's Roast Figs, Sugar Snow, the cold-weather partner to her book on Mediterranean, North African and Middle Eastern food, Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons. I count the latter as a treasure, and waited until October this year to receive what would have been a Christmas present last year!

Not content to leave it there (am I ever?), I ordered another book Russian cookbook (more on which later, as it is my cookbook of the year!) which I was in the midst of reading when ABC Cooking Studio offered a taste of Russia at school.

On the menu: borscht, which is more correctly Ukrainian cooking, gorgeous meat and egg-filled pirozhki and classic chocolat for dessert (not sure about any Russki origins there, but very tasty just the same).

The borscht was okaaay. The meat needed more cooking, but in the limited time available, you'd need a pressure cooker to do more. Once again it used the granulated "consomme" that I dislike so much. I reckon I'll be able to do much better. It was good to know that you can buy beetroot in Japan, even if only cooked in water in the can.

The pirozhki were terrific. The dough was really easy to make and fun to play with. You can make these in the oven, apparently, and I'll be investigating this option as a healthier and less smelly alternative to deep frying.

The classic chocolat was a revelation. I would never have thought you could make cake in such a short time (well, cupcakes anyway). This is a real keeper, and I think I'll look into making it a full-sized cake the next time.

Cooking class 5: Tempura with bean & chestnut rice and tart octopus salad with Japanese egg "mayonnaise"

Tempura, deep-fried seafood and vegetable morsels served with a soy-based dipping sauce, is such a quintessentially Japanese dish it is easy to forget that it is actually a foreign import, brought by the Dutch.

Not one for the oily smell left after deep-frying at home, I was happy to do it in class at ABC, where it was teamed up with bean and chestnut rice and a show-stopping vinegared side dish.

The rice, which had a little "sticky" rice thrown in to give a little more texture, was flavourful and, with it's reddish hue, very autumnal. I wasn't able to pin down why the beans did not need pre-cooking and were merely cooked with the rice, but I suspect they were of a cooked and dried variety. Beans like that are eaten as a snack here in Japan, and are the beans of choice for throwing on Bean Throwing Day in February, when everyone expels "ogres" and welcomes good luck into their homes at the end of winter.

The octopus, cucumber and wakame side dish was superb. Particularly the kimizu (literally egg yolk-vinegar), essentially an oil-free mayonnaise. I learned a new cutting technique called snake's belly, where you make millimetre deep cuts on a slant on two sides along the length of a thin Japanese cucumber. This allows the cucumber to bend like a snake. It's not just for decoration, though: this helps the kimizu to penetrate into the cucumber. Ingenious! I am dying to make this again, but no one around me is game to try the octopus. Perhaps a little steamed chicken might substitute, but it definitely wants to be something slippery.

Saffron

Slatit batata helwa: Claudia's Moroccan sweet potato salad

Sweet potatoes are a funny vegetable. They pop up in many countries, and each has its own way with them.

In Australia, sweet potatoes often get flung in the oven in a medley with other root veggies with the Sunday roast. If a spice is used at all, it's likely to be cumin, otherwise it's topped with lashings of butter.

One freezing winter when I was studying in China, old guys used to hang around the university gates selling for pennies piping hot roast sweet potatoes, which they weighed on old-time pan and rod scales . With dormitory heating on only at set times of the day, we unacclimatized Aussie students were as likely to use those hot pods as handwarmers as we were to tuck into their belly-filling flaky sweetness.

Around Yokohama and Tokyo, the sound of the yaki-imo or stone-roasted sweet potato guy calling out, "Ishi yaki-imo, yaki-imo," from his wood-fired stove-bedecked truck is the first sign of autumn. But buy one from this old guy, and you're likely to pay a small fortune!

Here we have a Moroccan treatment, with spices, lemon, honey and other goodies. This one is boiled, and with its unctuous spicy sweet and sour coating, looks and tastes quite impressive. I'm afraid that I disappointed my dear friend Hw when he asked how long this took to make; is twenty minutes really all it takes to get something this criminally good!

In all the years I've cooked this, I've not once not had to boil down the cooking liquid until it was syrupy. But that could just be the type of sweet potatoes I use. Anyway, this is more than made up for by spicy aroma that wafts through the house whenever I make this. You might want to wait to skim the scum off the surface before you add those spices, though.

This is also from the same article of Claudia's in the Guardian here. And yes, this and the tagine in the previous post are perfect partners.

Slatit batata helwa (Claudia's Moroccan sweet potato salad)

In this Moroccan salad, the mix of sweet and spicy is quite delicious. It is nice as it is but you may add, if you like, a handful of black olives, the chopped peel of a preserved lemon and a tablespoon of capers. Serve it as an appetiser.

Serves 6

700 g sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 4 cm cubes
½ tsp ground ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp harissa or a good pinch chilli pepper
Juice of 1 lemon
2 tsps honey
salt
5 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
4 tbsp chopped flat-leaf parsley or coriander

1 Boil the sweet potatoes in just enough water to cover. Stir in the ginger, cinnamon, harissa or ground chilli pepper, lemon juice, honey and salt, and cook, uncovered, for 15 minutes or until the potatoes are tender, turning them over once and being careful not to let them overcook and fall apart. The sauce should be reduced to a thick syrupy consistency. If it is not, lift out the potatoes with a slotted spoon into a serving dish and reduce the sauce further by boiling.

2 Just before the end of cooking stir in the oil and the parsley or coriander. Serve cold.

Enjoy!

Claudia's Moroccan lamb tagine with peas and preserved lemons

Autumn is here and we've not had a lemon recipe for a while! Funny how one's thoughts turn to lemons as soon as the skies get moody...

This is one of the very first Middle Eastern dishes I ever cooked (as a way of using those magic preserved lemons), and it is pretty much a classic in my food repertoire now. It's clean, sunny taste is perfect whatever the season, but I reckon its at its best when the weather is less than stellar. It is also as great an introduction to the seductive taste of preserved lemons as you are likely to find.

I made it for an unseasonably cool January birthday party in Australia one year. There was a big spread, and when I first checked, it looked like my "exotic" contribution might have been a bit too exotic. But just a few minutes later, you'd've been hard pressed to get enough to coat a bit of bread. You can't get much more of a vote of confidence than that.

I've adjusted the recipe for metric and the pressure cooker, but the credit for it rightly belongs with my very, very favourite food writer, Claudia Roden, who wrote the wonderful article in the Guardian that it appeared in a few years back. A culinary tour Morocco is one of my dreams, and Claudia's writing is one of the main reasons. Rereading the article now, I wouldn't be surprised if I'm not the only one.

Now there is nothing exotic at all about the recipe, the preserved lemons notwithstanding (and they are only salt and lemons after all). If you don't have any, go and make yourself some now. They're a total doddle. Really. We'll still be here when you've got them ready.

I made the tagine with beef this time, and I can tell you that it is not a patch on the lamb version. Leg being my preference. Perhaps its as well, then, that we were not able to take it to its intended recipients due to the Young Man being sick with the cold. Sorry Sa, I'll make it again next time!

Lamb tagine with peas, preserved lemon and olives (if you can find them (g))

Serves 6-8

1 kg leg or shoulder of lamb, trimmed of excess fat and cut into cubes
2 tbsp vegetable oil [S: optional, I've never put it in, and never needed it]
1 onion, chopped
salt and pepper [S: go light with the salt as the lemons are salty]
1 tsp ground ginger
A good pinch of chilli powder or chilli flakes (optional)
½ tsp saffron powder [S: optional; it is a minor attraction on this dish]
500g shelled peas
2 tomatoes, peeled and chopped
Peel of 1 preserved lemon or more, cut into pieces
A dozen green olives

1 Put the meat in a large pressure cooker with the oil (if using), onion, salt and pepper, ginger and saffron. Almost cover with water and cook under low pressure for 45-55 minutes or until the meat is very tender.

2 Add the peas, tomatoes, preserved lemon peel and olives and cook uncovered a few minutes longer, until the peas are tender and the sauce reduced.

Enjoy!

Harira: An Algerian take on the Ramadan-fast-breaking soup

I find foods with cultural significance irresistible. And feast time foods especially so. In the 10 months I've had this blog I've waxed lyrical about the foods of Christmas, the Japanese New Year (Oshogatsu) and Persian New Year (No Ruz). What special foods mean to people is endlessly fascinating.

Although I've made a Moroccan version of the Ramadan fast-breaking soup harira before, the cultural element was missing. I was overjoyed, then, to find 64 sq ft kitchen, a gorgeous Algerian food blog by Warda, who writes deliciously and evocatively about what it is like to grow up in a household where lively ritual after-dark feasting occurs for a whole month of the year! (Many first-hand accounts suggest to me anyway that Ramadan should more rightly be called the Islamic feasting rather than fasting month!)

Warda even has a version of harira on her blog, and it is perfect. The soup is rich, despite the tiny amount of meat it contains, the spicing heady, but not overpowering, and the dersa fresh herb and spice topping invigorating. The sum of this soup is so much more than its parts. A blend of fresh coriander leaves, garlic, paprika and caraway (or, in my case mistakenly dill seed), the dersa was particularly intriguing. Googling hasn't provided much insight, but I'll keep you posted if I find out more about this mouth-popping Algerian "salsa".

The use of caraway in Warda's harira intrigued me. In all my years of cooking Middle Eastern food, this was the first time I had call to use this particular spice. But using it this once seems to have opened the floodgates, as just about every recipe I've looked at since has contained the seed! It was in my little list of spice names in Persian (so it's obviously used in Iran), and in several Iraqi recipes in Delights from the Garden of Eden, which I picked up again for a good read.

But back to the harira. I made it with less water than Warda called for, thinking it looked about right for the goodies in the pot, but pureeing the veggies and the addition of bulghur later really thickened the soup up, so my meddling really wasn't required (g). Unusually for me, I even made my beans from scratch, rather than flinging ones I'd cooked and frozen earlier in at the end (I really hate canned legumes, whatever family and friends might tell me). My contribution is to change the measures to metric and adjust the recipe for the pressure cooker.

We had this with bread and just one appetizer and empty bowls and suddenly-too-tight jeans were evidence enough that this recipe is a winner. Definitely try it!

Harira: Fragrant Chickpea and Lamb soup with Bulgur

Serves 6 to 8

1 1/2 cups chickpeas, soaked overnight
300 g stewing lamb, cut into 1 cm chunks
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 large onion, peeled and roughly diced
1 potato, peeled and roughly diced
1 tomato, roughly diced
3 carrots, peeled and roughly diced
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 small bunch of fresh cilantro [S: coriander], tied with a string
1 generous tsp of allspice
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground
2,000 ml water
1 sprig of mint (5 big leaves)
¾ cup wheat bulgur
Kosher salt, freshly ground black pepper

For the dersa: (fresh herb and spice topping)
3 tbsp cilantro [coriander] leaves
½ tsp ground paprika
2 fat clove garlic, chopped very finely
1 tsp ground caraway

1 In a large pressure cooker, heat the oil on medium heat. Season the lamb chunks and sauté them on each sides until browned. Add the onions, tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, and chickpeas. Sauté until lightly colored, about 5 minutes. Add the spices, the bunch of cilantro and the tomato paste, and stir to combine. Cover with the water. Season the soup with a generous amount of salt and pepper, cover and bring to pressure. Once the soup comes to pressure, lower the heat and cook for 6 minutes, or until the chickpeas are cooked and the meat fork tender.

2 Discard the cilantro bunch and the stick of cinnamon. Place the meat and chickpeas on a plate, and, using a vegetable mill or stick blender, puree all the rest of the vegetables. You can also use a regular blender, but you will have to do it in batches, as the liquid is very hot.

3 Put the soup back in the pressure cooker. Add the chickpeas and the scattered meat. Bring to the boil and add the mint sprig and the bulgur. Stir to distribute the bulgur. Cover and bring to pressure again. Cook under low pressure for 5 minutes, or until the bulgur is cooked. Season with salt and pepper if needed.

4 Before serving the soup, make the dersa: Using a sharp knife, or even a mortar would be great, finely chop the cilantro [coriander] leaves and mix with the garlic, paprika and ground caraway.

4 Serve the harira in individual bowls, topped with a squeeze of lemon juice and a sprinkle of dersa.

Enjoy!