my first pumpkin-"tofu"

Hooray, I finally made my own "tofu" this evening. I wanted to make it with hemp milk. I got "Nigari" which I bought from the health food shop in France. I boiled the hemp milk, waited to cool down a bit, then added nigari dissolved with 1 cup of water. I waited....for about 15mins... I couldn't see the milk curdling. So, I went on the Internet, I found a forum.... apparently, "GOOD HEMP" milk doesn't coagulate due to the corrargen(stabilizer). O.K, I admit I was being lazy to use the hemp milk. So, I made pumpkin milk, sieved, boiled for a bout 3-4mins... hooray, I saw the milk curdling! I poured into muslin cloth with colander, put some weight on for about 5mins(or less).... here's my pumpkin "tofu". 

Tasted slightly sweet, I loved it. Mind you, I love pumpkin seeds. I munch them quite a lot. Good thing about this tofu was I didn't actually use nigari to curdle. Then, give me an idea. "cashew nuts "tofu""??? It doesn't have to be soya beans does it? Depends on what to serve with(garnish) or what type of cuisine you are cooking, change the flavour of "tofu" too. I wasn't very hungry, so I made a small oriental salad with it. ☺

I wasn't guanna eat another piece, but I did. With little bit tamari♥. Yum Yum. I sprinkled omega3 mixed seeds roasted with tamari which I made on the poodle weekend. I got this salad for tomorrow lunch too.☺I love tofu. My parents' friends in Tokyo make tofu. I remember the tofu was really nice, one of the best tofu I ever had. Kyoto tofu taste different from Tokyo tofu. I think Kyoto cuisine in general taste more sutler and they make foods with good dashi. So as their Kyoto tofu making. My mum used to mail-order the tofu from Kyoto every now again, for our treat. My mum is a good cook, but she never made sushi and tofu at home. That was main reason I was really surprised one of my friend(tami-chan in Canada) told me his mum used to make sushi at home. I didn't realized sushi was also a home cooking. These days I do make my own sushi sometimes(vegetarian/vegan), and it's fun, it's yummy, easy, cheaper than restaurants too. I think I've found some fun in "tofu" making! What tofu shall I make tomorrow????

Our dinner and breakfast with French produce

That's it, enough of cake talks now. I did cook/make some healthy salads for our dinner and breakfast. First evening I made "Fig & parsley salad and bean & olive salad with lemon and garlic dressing" Using produces from the farm shop. 

We had some risotto for a few days too. It was a bit trouble finding risotto rice...not sure why not everyone(spars) had the rice.... This is what I cooked.

I roasted some green, red pepper and a round courgette, left skin on, slice them, in a mean time cook risotto rice accordingly to the cooking instruction on the packet.  Saute some garlic and white onion, add rice. I would use little bit white wine, make veggie stock, slowly add to the rice. keep stirring. When the rice is done to al dante, add some chopped parsley(or herbs of your choice) and season. Serve on the rice onto a plate, top with the roasted veggies. Drizzle some oil on the plate make it look pretty! Risotto is eazy, quick and yummy. 

This is another risotto dish I cooked. I used left over vegetables in the fridge. I cooked "chili, sun dried tomato risotto with roasted round courgette" Again, I used lots of good extra virgin olive oil...Oh, I bought a packet of local salt(it's grey!) and the salt takes flavour of food really well and not too salty either. And it was very cheap. 500g for €1.90. Of course, I took the rest of salt with me. I only used a tiny bit while we were there anyway.  When we were on our way back to the airport on Sunday, Marcus showed me where those salt were made. I'd never seen how salt was produced. Cool! Marcus had his birthday week before, I told him I would like take him out for dinner. So, we were looking at menus for something we could eat. I could understand a bit of French menu(only some kitchen French I know), most of dishes were either meat or fish, or contained wheat. So, after a 3 days looking, we gave up, and on Thursday, I cooked dinner. I wanted to do some dishes a bit like tapas, but didn't turn up how I would hoped, but using beautiful veggies, taste yummy anyway. This is what I cooked.

"Roasted round courgettes with home made tapanade", "Roasted aubergine with salsa rosso", "potato with mint dressing", "fennel and orange salad", "Jerusalem artichoke with olives and walnuts".

 I love salsa rosso, I sometimes make it, and eat with my buckwheat pasta(or gluten-free pasta) instead of using cooked tomato sauce. Also, it also makes yummy topping for tofu sausages and pumpkin mash. Breakfast, we generally had some fruits smoothies and kaki. But me being naughty, I had either pain aux raisin or pain aux chocolat.....

Don't they look beautiful♥♥♥

These are our snack/lunch when we went for long(?) walk to the light house(please see my other blog!) We got some buckwheat crackers and assorted mini vegetarian pates from the health food shop. It's always pleasure to eat pates!!! Assorted ones like theses are good trial sizes to different flavours.  I don't get bord either! I sometimes get complain from people around me saying "norie, what are you eating? It stinks!" When I hear comment like this, I normally am eating mushroom pate in a tube or veggie pate. It might stink but can't help eating, they are yummy. More tastier and lot less smellier than some shitty meat pate(and cheap) from cheap supermarket(and that's what they eat) anyway! What are they chatting about??? Well, never mind. Some people have passion for complaining, they need to do that to survive. So, let them, and when I'm feeling bord hearing(I don't really listen) it, tell them to shut the f**k up politely. Anyway, I've been dreaming about kaki since we got back...I can't wait for our next adventure and kaki♥♥♥

French Patisseries

How could I resist French patisseries while I was in France. It was pastry chef's dream to look round. When I was a pastry chef in London restaurants, I did think about working in French patisseries in either in London or France. But I talked myself out saying I prefered Italian patisseries and desserts so working with Italian restaurant and Italian chefs were fine.... To be honest, I just love good cakes and desserts, I wouldn't care which, those days, I just didn't have gutts to do anything. Anyway, as usual, when I had some visits to patisseries/bakery, I bought 2 cakes each time. It also took me ages to decide which one to buy. They all look wonderful, I wanted to eat all of them. I was very impressed even small village bakery/patisseries had wonderful products. I just couldn't keep my eyes off. Then I understood why French pastry chefs(who I used to work) were soooo proud of themselves. I remember most of them actually, when they introduced themselves, they always mentioned they were French. I thought that time, "what a twat, did they really need to say that???" Anyway, they were just proud of their products and what they did. And, French do have fabulous patisseries!

This is pain aux raisins from local spar. It looks good!

 These are from one of local bakery. These were one I bought and cained them straight away!

Rasberry and strawberry tart and caramel tart. They both were devine. What I love the most was the pate sucre. Baked till brown, crispy and thin which I love and that was how I was taught to bake. In England, local bakeries tend to use short pastry(even home bakers too) and roll out really thick. I don't like thick pastry. And, underneath the fruits, there was crem patisserie. They were delicious. Really light considering how it was made. Well, caramel tart, base was almost like brandy snaps with nuts, caramel in the middle, topped with butterscoch cream. It was very sweet, but loved it! 

next one I had was...........

Chocalate eclaris from the small bakery in the chestnut village in Collobrieres. Again, even chox pastry was baked till brown! Chocolate crem patisseirie was really chocalatey and didn't taste cheap and nasty ready made custard cream(which often been used round here.). I was very pleased. Breads looked fantastic also.

Next photos are from patisseries in Cavalaire. I didn't buy anything from there, I didn't want to eat too many cakes and clogg myself up again. But I had sugar come-down(always makes me grumpy a bit...☹)

And this is the other local bakery/patisserie shop. Again, I bought 2 cakes from them.

And these are ones I bought and I really enjoyed my tart au citron♥♥♥

Every time I see those photos I can still hear Marcus saying " you have lots of photos of cakes!" yes, I have and  I can look at them all day......

Finally, they are the last cakes I had in France. Pear and frangipane tart and cherry cake form cafe in the airport. I was very happy with my last cakes. Since then, I haven't touched any cakes here. Nothing here inspires me to eat(yet). Instaead, I'm now very motivated and inspired to bake and make some scrummy things!!! I've got a few days off next week, spend some time baking!!!!

French farm shop

Wow, amazing foods, and fantastic farm shop! When we arrived in Toulon, south of France, it was nearly 3pm(i think). I was already thinking about what to eat for dinner. (which is quite normal for me....thinking about food all the time.) I suggested Marcus if we could pop in to green grocers to get some vegetables and fruits. I always get excited when i imagine myself in local shops, choosing vegetables, smelling just baked bread, looking at pretty fresh products and buying them. When we picked up our hire car at the airport, driving off to La Croix Vamier, we were talking about which shop to go. Then Marcus saw a sign for a farm shop. (I'm sure the farm shop was quite near to the airport.... ) Sounds good...Farm shop, by then, I already started thinking about which veggies to buy........ about 5-10mins driving from a roundabout, we found rustic farm shop. We parked our car in the car park there, when i opened the door, I saw....a fig tree! Of course, Marcus and I scrumped some figs.(we had them later, and they were delicious!) This farm shop even had spring water tap! Oh, it reminded me of beautiful Greece! They had all sorts of freshly picked herbs to marinated olives, organic wines to local extra virgin olive oil! They all looked wonderful, I wanted to buy the whole shop! 

We bought some figs too. They were lot cheaper than ones we get here in England. Sure, we made the most of it, we ate lots! (like amount of cherries we ate when we were in Greece. we ate load of them too!!!)

Look at the sweet potatoes! they all look very rustic, none of them shape the same!

Far left, they had shelves for wines, preserves and extra virgin olive oil.

Beautiful french garlic. We bought one, and tasted fantastic!

Lots of pumpkins and butternut squash. Never seen so many!

these were what we bought (part of...). look sooooooo pretty♥♥♥

As far as I can remember, we paid around  just over €25 including a bottle of extra virgin olive oil. We bought locally grown products possible all though our stay in south of France. Dark local grapes were €4.99 for a kilo, green prumpy Italian grapes were €2.99 for a kilo. We thoroughly enjoyed eating local grapes!!! On 3rd day, we went to Cavalaire(next town to where we were and very touristy place) for our food shopping. Then we found...cute green grocers!

Colours there were beautiful, again, they had loads of local products and surprise, surprise, they had "kaki"(sharon fruits). Marcus told me how amazing French kaki was. Here they were, I was finally able to taste! They were very big and ripe, reminded me of ones I used to eat when I was in Japan. Kaki is very Japanese, I remember when I was child, my granny( my mum's mum in Fukushima) used to make dried sharon fruits. I remember looking at them thinking what ugly things they were and scared to eat. I think it was my granny made me eat my first dried sharon fruits, and tasted sooo yummy and sooo soft that I ate loads. Do you know what happened next? I couldn't keep away from the toilet. I did similar thing with satsumas. My brother actually felt really ill by eating 1 massive box of satsumas with me. I was fine, but he was really ill for a few days. Anyway, this green grocers was the only one who had beautiful sharon fruits. Of course we went back every couple of days to get the fruits for our breakfast. When they are in season, I normally get from my local supermarket in town which sells bland and tiny sharon fruits. Skins are too thick, never really go ripe and too small for the price!!!!!!☹ That's why it's wise to make the most of opportunities I get . That my motto anyway.

I can hear figs and the kaki are saying.."norie, eat me! eat me!!" Yum Yum♥♥♥