Summer has come

I can't believe it is summer already. Summer started with my parent's visit and I didn't really have a moment to realize the fact spring is over. I took them to lots of places and that let me discover many things. How beautiful scenery is around here. How peaceful trees make me feel. The size of the sky and shapes of the clouds etc....

I don't have a green thumb. I call myself a "plant killer". But I am enjoying having a little garden and I got ambitious this year so I started growing Shiso which is basil like Japanese herb. When I was living in Japan 20 years ago, it was almost impossible to find fresh basil in even in Tokyo. Cooking books usually suggested to use shiso instead. Yet it is a lot different from basil. I associate the taste of shiso with traditional Japanese dishes so I am not a good candidate to describe the taste. However, shiso is nice with non-Japanese dishes, too. I particularly like to cook it with butter

It started to grow nice leaves, so I decided to make cold noodle with shiso for lunch.

*Ingredients*

1 Cup of water

1 1/2 Table spoon of Sugar

3 Table spoon of Soy sauce

1/2 Tea spoon of Salt

Crashed garlic

1 Table spoon of Fresh squeezed lemon juice

1 table spoon of Rice wine vinegar

1 Teaspoon of Sesame Oil

1 Japanese Eggplant

10 Cherry tomatoes

1 Scallion

3 Leaves of red shiso

3 Leaves of green shiso

5oz. of Somen Noodle

< 1 > Put water and sugar in a sauce pan and bring to boil, then take it out of heat. Put rest of the ingredients for the sauce and mix. Let it cool.

< 2 > Slice an eggplant and cook it in small amount of oil.

< 3 > Slice cherry tomatoes and scallion.

< 4 > Roll shiso leaves together and chop them to skinny strings.

< 5 > Boil Somen. Somen is very thin wheat noodle. Be careful not to over boil it. After it's boiled, run cold water until it's cool.

< 6 > Mix the vegetable and sauce with the noodle and serve.

Somen is very thin and white noodle. It can be found in Asian stores. I use Korean version of it and it tastes very good. Sometimes I saw "Soba" on a menu of Asian restaurant and I was served Somen. Soba is buckwheat noodle. Thin white noodle is Somen. Although this recipe would be nice with Soba noodle, too.

To me, shiso makes dishes very summer-like. Because it's summer herbs. Coupled with summer vegetable (or fruits?) such as an eggplant and tomatoes, it is very refreshing. 

I'd love to play with this herb more during summer.

Spring is here and so are the Farmers Markets

The farmer's markets in my area are finally opened.  I am so happy!  Even though the scale of the markets are much smaller compared to Union Square Farmer's Market, there are lots of nice local produces.  And each town has their own market, so I can visit different ones easily and that's fun, too.

Tomatoes are very reasonable at the market and the wether is getting warm, so I decided to make fresh tomato pasta one day.  This recipe is adapted form the cook book written by Sophia Loren, the Italian actress, which was translated to Japanese and published in 74.  My parents must have bought it when it came out.  It is really a precious cooking book for me.  Same version translated in English is published in 98 as " Sophia Loren's Recipes and Memories".  The English version has more pictures of the actress and nicely styled food photos, but the Japanese one has more recipes.  

* Fresh Tomato Pasta (For 4)*

2 large tomatoes

10 green olives

3 teaspoon capers

1/2 small onion

A bunch of parsley

2 cloves garlic

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

1 table spoon oregano

Salt and pepper to taste

1 box of your favorite pasta 

< 1 > Chop tomatoes to bite size.  Chop olives and capers to small pieces.  Mince onion and parsley.  Crash garlic with the blade of large knife so the extract will seep out. 

< 2 > Put everything together and keep it in the refrigerator for at least 12 hours.  (It will keep 1-2 days).

< 3 > Just boil the pasta to al dente and pour the tomato sauce over and serve.  Don't forget to take out the garlic cloves.

I always feel like that I should put fresh squeezed lemon juice in when I'm putting all the ingredients together, but it is not called for.  The tartness from olive and caper is enough, yet more gentle than lemon juice so the sweetness of the tomato stands out more.

Don't press garlic through a garlic press.  The juice comes out from the crashed cloves is just right amount of garlic taste.  More than that will be overbearing.  A slight garlic taste is more suited for this dish.  I have to admit that even though I'm a garlic lover.

This pasta makes me feel like it is finally spring.  It was nice weekend lunch.  Although we had a cold spell this week.  

The strawberries are in season right now, too.  I found a gallon of them for $10.  That is a lot of strawberries and we ate them in many ways.

Strawberries with pancakes, strawberry mojito, strawberry and grapefruits sorbet, strawberry roll cake, strawberry and rhubarb pie.....  They were all very enjoyable.  Simple strawberry sorbet is in my freezer right now.

Other thing that I must write is these donuts at the Farmer's Market.  These donuts are very famous in this area.  Mennonites fry them and glaze them right in front of your eyes.  I am not a big donut fan.  Not a even small fan either.   I only eat them every 3 to 5 years.  I love sweets like tarts and cakes, but I was never attracted to donuts. 

There is always a long line of people trying to buy these donuts.  The first time I saw it, I though: they are probably good, but I definitely wouldn't stay in the line for 20 minutes to get something like donuts!  But J sent me for them one day because he ate it at his office and it was very good.  The day, the market was not too crowded because it was early and drizzling a little, so I stayed in line for 5 minutes.

These donuts are not donuts that I knew.  It's fluffy, light, not greasy, not too sweet, has nice aroma of vanilla, so simple.  They are the best donuts I've ever eaten.

Now that I know that they are the donuts form heaven, I must fight the urge to stay in the line every time I go get fresh vegetables....  It is spring now and summer is around the corner.   I can't put on weight right now.

Poached Egg and Tomato Sauce on Garlic Bread

My mother found the recipe for this dish on a magazine when I was still in school.  So it must have been about 20 years ago.  I immediately fell in love with it, and I still make this dish once in a while.  J and my daughter love this dish, too.  The good thing about this dish is that you can use baguette that are getting to be stale.  Or if you have tomato sauce left over, you don't even need to cook the sauce.  I love recipes that I can use extra stuff laying in the kitchen!  

*Tomato Sauce*

2 cloves garlic

1 table spoon olive oil

1 small tomato can

Salt and pepper to taste

< 1 > Cook the garlic in the olive oil in a pan.

< 2 > When the garlic is cooked to golden color, pour the canned tomatoes and cook it for 20 minutes.

< 3 > Put salt and pepper.  Done!

*Garlic Bread*

4 slices of baguette

1 clove of garlic, cut to half

< 1 > If the bread is fresh, toast it to light brown.

< 2 > Put the cut side of garlic against the bread, and smear the garlic all over the bread surface.  The hardened bread should work like a sand paper against the fresh garlic.

*Poached Eggs*

4  eggs

Poach them as you want. My secret is to cook them in a coffee maker.

*Assembling* 

Place the garlic bread on the plates and pour tomato sauce on it, then put the poached eggs.

The tartness of the tomato sauce and creaminess of the poached eggs work very nicely together.  The bread gets very soft by soaking the moisture from the sauce and the eggs.

There is a egg called "Onsen Egg" in Japan. "Onsen" means hot spring.  The egg is cooked in natural hot spring which temperature is 150 F for about 30 minutes, so they are boiled very softly for long time.  It's very much like a poached egg, but because it's cooked very slowly at the moderate temperature, it's soft all over.  The yolk gets hard at 50 F lower than the temperature that white gets hardened at, so the yolk is not too runny even the white is still very soft.

It was very difficult to get Onsen eggs unless you are actually at a hot spring in the past, but it became very popular and the technology allows people to duplicate same effect without having natural hot springs.

This is the method that I read years ago on some Japanese web site.  I have been cooking poached eggs with this method since then.  The great things about this way of cooking are almost fool proof, you don't need to be glued to the pan, very easy to clean, and you can cook ahead of the time if you wish.

All you have to do is to put the fresh eggs in the coffee pot, pour water in it as if you are making coffee, and turn it on.  You want to leave them in the pot for about 8 to 10 minutes.  You need to do it for a few times to see how long the eggs should be left in the pot to achieve your favorite consistency.

Yes, it looks funny.  But it tastes really good!  

We recently switched to a french press from a electric coffee maker.  But we kept it to make Onsen eggs.  

For breakfast, we sometimes put it over the brown rice and sprinkle soy sauce over it.