what would you do?

What would you do if you had an apple that was kind of chalky tasting? Would you throw it out? Eat it as is?

We recently had an apple like that. I had cut it in half and had one of the halves with our breakfast. But because the apple was so chalky and not very sweet, I used the other half to make...apple pie.

With one puff pastry sheet, I used a cyclinder to cut out 4 circles, 2 were nice, the other 2 were made from the scraps, so they weren't too round.

I cut and heated the apple with some butter, sugar and cinnamon and cooked it down until it was almost like a jam.

After filling each circle, I baked it in a 200C (400F) oven for 20 minutes. You could hear it pooffing in the oven too, "poof" "poof"... the results were a delicious, flaky pie perfect for two afternoon teas and two snacks for Satoshi.

Gosh, it is the weekend already...hope yours is a good one!

ugly but delicious

I recently was going through my freezer and found some puff pastry sheets and some really old portuguese sausage (yipes!).

The puff pastry sheets here are quite small only about 10" long by about 6" wide.

On one day for tea, I used a sheet to make these pain au chocolat....from the 4, most of the chocolate oozed out.

And on yet another day for tea, I thawed another sheet out and made palmiers. I got 9 palmiers out of that one sheet.

These treats were ugly but delicious.

pumpkin "pie"

Saturday's dinner was inspired from this book. In it, I found a recipe for Roasted Pumpkin Soup with Crispy Garlic.

I ended up not following the recipe and did my own thing.

Roasted Pumpkin, Onion and Garlic Soup inspired by "Little Book of Soup"

1/4 pumpkin, seeded with skin on
3 tablepoons olive oil
1 onion, halved
salt
1 clove garlic, leave skin on
1 cube consomme
300 ml water
pepper

Put foil onto pan and lay pumpkin, onion and garlic. Drizzle olive oil over the veggies. Sprinkle some salt.
Put into 200C (400F) oven and roast for 30-40 minutes.
In a pot, put together the consomme with the water, heat.
Use a spoon to scrape out the pumpkin after roasting and throw all veggies into a food processor.
Add some of the consomme to the food processor to help liquidize the veggies.
Add some salt and pepper to taste.
Serve with a 1/2 teaspoon of cream.

As the veggies roasted the aroma that filled the room was delicious. This soup wasn't thick, but it sure hit the spot.

In Japan, they call puff pastry sheets, pie sheets. I made some "pies" for us, using cubes of Monbana 70% chocolate with nibs and a squeeze of chestnut paste....delicious gooey-ness!

foodie saturday

My Saturday lesson cancelled due to hay fever (hope you're feeling better soon, Tomomi!), so Satoshi and I decided to check out Shukugawa to see if their sakura (cherry blossoms) were still in bloom since he didn't get a chance to enjoy them yet.

Actually, most of the single cherry blossoms have fallen off the trees. You can see the petals all over the ground and in the streams.

It is quite beautiful too, although the housewife in me often worries about who will sweep or clean this all up...

Luckily, the double cherry blossoms have started to bloom, so we had something to see. They look like pom-poms on the ends of the branches.

We were getting pretty hungry walking up the stream and found a pasta place, Ryu-Ryu to have a quick lunch at. This restaurant is actually a franchise and I've seen them around but this was our first time to try them. They were good and fast!

I had their kabocha (pumpkin) meat sauce. It was a little on the sweet side probably from the pumpkin, still it was delicious.

Satoshi had their eggplant, bacon, garlic and tarako (salted pollack roe) pasta, which he enjoyed.

For dinner, I used the cabbage I received yesterday to make okonomiyaki. Last night, I was thinking about using the cabbage for a stir-fry, but wanted to eat up some of the leftovers we had instead. Also, instead of using the food processor like I normally do when making okonomiyaki, I tried my best to sengiri (julienne) the cabbage. I still have a ways to go to get my sengiri as thin as most people can do it. In some okonomiyaki shops, you can order kim chee as a topping in the okonomiyaki, instead we just ate some on the side.

For dessert, I was inspired by Anita's puff pastry post. I didn't have leftover puff pastry dough like she did, but I did have puff pastry sheets in the freezer, so I took one out and cut an apple into fourths. I only used half of the apple to make 2 pies. I cut the sheet in half and put a whole fourth of the apple into the center with 1/2 tablespoon of sugar and several grinds of cinnamon. Then I wrapped it up like a present and egg washed the top. I baked it for 20 minutes in a 200C oven and what came out was a great dessert!

Hope you are having a great weekend!

odds & ends

Yesterday's dinner was ikuradon (salmon roe bowl). The salmon roe is soaked in shoyu (soy sauce) and mirin (sweet rice wine) for at least a day (I took the easy route and bought the roe pre-soaked). Put some rice into a bowl, chiffonade some o-ba/shiso (perilla), then place the roe on top. Serve with wasabi (Japanese horseradish).

Today was my first time to use puff pastry! It is quite expensive here. 4 sheets for about $5. The market I go to has different items on sale throughout the week. I found out that Saturdays is 50% off all frozen items...which means...puff pastry!!

Awhile back, I picked up a supermarket recipe flyer which gave a recipe to make pumpkin turnovers. (In Japan, puff pastry is called pie sheet. And turnovers are called pie.) Instead of the pumpkin filling, I decided to put my favorite filling: apple and blueberries. (Earlier in the week, I had bought some Australian blueberries.) I made the filling, then took out the puff pastry. I was surprised because every sheet is separated with a non-stick paper (is that normal?)

Anyway, I took one out and thawed it for 10 minutes. I was doing fine until it came time to put the filling into the pastry dough. I guess I didn't roll it out thin enough, or maybe I had too much filling. It was kinda messy when I baked it, because I couldn't really seal it up (probably because I didn't roll it out enough?) and the bottom came out soggy because of all the liquid that came out. Still the aroma was heavenly and it tasted delicious!

Another surprising thing was how big Stargazer lilies bloom. I got these with some other flowers for helping at Satoshi's university baseball event. Bloomed, they are about 8 inches in diameter and are very fragrant.

It's been rainy and cold the past couple of days, hopefully it will clear up tomorrow.