sakuranbo

I've told you before that I've never had sweet sakuranbo (cherries) grown in Japan.

Well, I found some recently.

The color is definitely different, yeah?!

Now I know to choose the darker colored cherries.

cherry chocolate clafoutis

Bing cherries have hit our markets and their prices aren't too friendly...I got lucky though and snagged some at the market when they were on special.

I made clafoutis using this recipe. This time around I omitted the oil to grease the dish and used muffin papers instead. (What can I say, I'm lazy!)

I also added some 60% chocolate chips to each before baking.

Summer is coming.

making my own sunshine

The weather on Saturday was awful. Rained all day, sometimes in sheets even.

Satoshi had to go to class, so we had a quick lunch at Mickey D's.

Then he went off to class and I stopped into buy some groceries then stayed indoors for the rest of the afternoon.

I've been wanting to make cookies, but most times need to cut the recipe into half or fourths because a)I don't have a large oven and b)I don't need THAT many cookies lying around.

I tried this recipe and cut it into fourths.

Chewy Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies adapted from Food.com
makes 10 to 12 cookies (depending on your scoop)

56 grams butter, at room temperature
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/8 cup white sugar
1/2 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/8 cup all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup oatmeal
1 handful dried cherries
1 handful 60% Ghiradelli chocolate chips
1 handful pecans, chopped

Cream the butter and sugar until smooth.
Add the egg, vanilla and mix well.
Add the dry ingredients and mix until incorporated.
Spoon onto parchment paper.
Bake at 325F (170C) for 13 minutes (I baked them for 18 minutes)
When done, let cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes then transfer to rack.

NOTES: these were good! just amount of chewiness. I ended up with 12 cookies. I'd make these again and it was nice way to brighten up a gloomy day.

ad-lib

I don't know about you, but I am always using gadgets in different ways.

For example, my tomato knife which has a "hook" at the end is my cherry pitter.

Another is a tea strainer that was supposed to fit into my tea pot, didn't, so I use it whenever I wash rice or need to sprinkle or sift a small amount of dry ingredients.

The other day I made some dark chocolate and cherry clafoutis and was looking around for this previously mentioned tea strainer to sprinkle some powdered sugar.

But I couldn't find it.

I spotted my tea strainer for one and loaded some powdered sugar into it.

Shook it over the clafoutis...job well done.

Do you have multi-use gadgets in your kitchen too?

cherry clafoutis

I had been waiting for cherry season here, so I could make clafoutis. But the price of bing cherries from the US has been in my opinion, expensive! and most of the cherries I have seen didn't have that deep blackish color.

So, the other day, a market had a sale on cherries, 95 yen for 100 grams. I got a little less than 200 grams.

I had forgotten what recipe I used the very first time I made clafoutis and found one in Joanne Harris' "The French Kitchen". (After finding this recipe, I went back through my blog archives and found out I used the recipe from "The Silver Spoon".)

Anyway, the original recipe serves 6 so I cut the recipe to serve 2.

If you have some fruits lying around, this is a great recipe to make.

Adapted from "The French Kitchen" makes 2 servings
1/2 teaspoon olive oil
200 grams cherries, pitted
about 41 grams flour
about 16 grams sugar
1 egg
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
100 mililiters milk
vanilla sugar, for sprinkling

Heat oven to 180C (350F).
Grease the dish you will bake this in with the olive oil, I used ramekins.
Place the cherries into the dish.
Put the flour and sugar in a large bowl.
Whisk the egg, milk and vanilla in another container.
Pour the wet mixture into the dry, mixing until you have a smooth batter.
Spoon batter over the cherries.
Bake for 40 minutes until the batter is firm to the touch and golden on top.
Sprinkle with vanilla sugar.

Mmmm...summer is here!

p.s. we also had our first taste of peaches this year and they were sweet, juicy...delish!

fruits of summer

A couple of posts ago, I wrote about laundry. An anonymous reader reminded me about the big clips that are needed to hold your futon (comforter), onto the railings of the lanai.

I wanted to show them to you and luckily the big condo across the street had some samples.

When we first came to Japan, I bought a pair of clips for our futon, then when we moved to the apartment we are in now, I realized the clips I had bought would not hold our futon onto the lanai railing, so I needed to buy bigger ones (insert pouty face)

Changing the subject, what fruits have you been enjoying this summer?

To make these muffin style clafoutis, I used a range of different chocolates (65% Guittard Sur Del Lago, 2006 Gran Couva Valrhona, Madagascar by Nakatani & 65% Guittard Ambanja). Bing cherries were quite expensive this year due to the rise in oil prices (they are imported from the US). I don't think Dhanggit pitted the cherries she used, but I did.

The "muffins" were dense and chocolatey. I want to try this recipe again using muffin papers instead of ramekins, if I can't find fresh cherries, I may use dried ones.

The sakuranbo (Japanese cherry) that I bought wasn't sweet at all, kind of disappointing actually. Overall, I think I may prefer the bing cherries over these.

On the other hand, the suika (watermelon) that I've bought has been really sweet--between 11% and 12% sugar content.

These momo (peaches) smell like they will be were delicious. I'm glad they are not wrapping these guys in saran wrap--I like to smell peaches before buying them.

These fruits are probably the best part of Japan summers.

cherry clafoutis

It is cherry season here. Bing cherries are here from America. In Japanese they called these...American cherry. I've been seeing a lot of cherry clafoutis on blogs recently....here and here and here and having never eaten this, I wanted to try making it.

I found a recipe in "The Silver Spoon". (There was another recipe for it in another cookbook I had, but that recipe called for 3 eggs and I wanted to half the recipe, so I chose the one in "The Silver Spoon".)

I didn't have a cherry pitter, so I improvised and used my tomato knife. I never knew what that hook-like thing on the tip of the knife was for (I tried using it to take the stem of the tomato off with it, but it never really did the job)...so now it is my cherry pitter. I was amazed at how easily the pits came out using this hook. Not much mess either.

You can check out the other blogs for their recipes, or you can use this recipe, it really was easy.

Cherry Clafoutis (Clafoutis alle ciliege)
Serves 6 from "The Silver Spoon"

sweet butter for greasing
scant 1 cup all-purpose flour
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup superfine sugar
1 cup milk
scant 2 cup black cherries, pitted
vanilla sugar for sprinkling

Preheat the oven to 400F(200C). Grease a cake pan with butter.
Sift the flour into a mound in a bowl, make a well in the center, add the eggs, sugar and milk and mix well.
Pour the mixture into the prepared pan so that it is two-thirds full.
Sprinkle the cherries on top and bake for 40 minutes.
Sprinkle with vanilla sugar before serving.

NOTES: As I said above, I halved the recipe and used ramekins instead of a cake pan. I didn't have sweet butter and used olive oil to grease the ramekins. I really liked this--the texture was like bread pudding with warm cherries, very different from canned cherry filling in pies. These cherries were a bit tart, but the vanilla sugar topping helped to balance everything out. (Maybe a scoop of vanilla ice cream would be nice with it too!) Plus, when I opened my bottle of vanilla sugar the aroma was heavenly!


Hope you have a nice weekend!

fruits of summer

More and more fruits are coming into season here. If you remember last month, there was Delaware grapes and Quincy melon.

This month, meet Sakuranbo from Yamagata prefecture. These cherries actually remind me of Rainier cherries (maybe they are of the same variety?) They weren't very sweet and actually a bit tart. I was surprised at the price too, about US$3 for a little over 200 grams.

And white peaches from Fukuoka prefecture. These are called Hakuho. The skins are a bit bitter, but the insides are juicy and sweet.

I had to cut away at the insides to get it off of the stone (it was that ripe!) 2 of these delicious peaches were US$6! Luckily, when I bought them they were in a container with holes so I could smell them before buying.

The fruits and veggies are probably the only part of Japan summers that I enjoy.

Hope you have a good week.

'tis the season...

It is summer, there are lots of fruits in season here.

One in particular is the cherry--very popular now, you can tell because the price is very HIGH!

The prefecture known for producing them is Yamagata. Yamagata is located in the Tohoku area of Honshu, which is in the North-Eastern area, near Niigata.

In Japanese, cherries are called sakuranbo. They are similar to the Rainier cherry in Washington. I got these on sale at a local supermarket, they were having a discounted price for point-card holders.

If you live in Japan--and shop, you'll know that almost EVERY store has a point-card, some give money back after collecting so many points, some give discounted prices to card holders. I think most places have them just to test your memory. My wallet would definitely be a little thinner if I didn't have to carry so many point-cards. And if I could only remember to present them at the check-out, I would probably be able to save a little more $$! But, if you had this many, would you be able to? (and this is only half of what I have!! yipes!)