Already November!

Time flies so fast! It’s already November. I’ve been always on the run this year, which I can’t handle the situation really well. At least not yet! My desire to master and control this chaotic life is far from the reality; I’m sort of a slave who is trapped in such a small world of going to work and coming back home late at night.

Well that’s enough. I shall catch up with where I last dropped in this blog.

I still create new things in pastry as well as the same old things. Sometimes it comes from a mistake, while the other things are coming from somewhere in my head.

When I feel “My imagination doesn’t go anywhere beyond”, I go out in nature finding some treasures, especially early in the morning. 

Especially, on this route out in the boonies, I usually find naturally adorable things.

Like a cabbage with a heart-shaped hole on one of the leaves.

Like Fall-colored berries and some Oriental plants.

And a snail stretching out to reach its aim. Why not!? We can do the same thing, can't we?

As a result, I created this Entremet cake for the 30^th anniversary of a happily married couple which traveled to Shikoku, one of the four principle islands of Japan. Darn it, I never traveled so far in Japan! But my cake did.

In October, after work, we had a chance to watch the 2^nd largest firework festival in Japan near our shop/restaurant. It was next door neighbor’s front yard where we went to watch such magnificent firework, which lasted for TWO hours!!!

In October, I had a demonstration of how to make a Halloween Macaron (French macaroon) tower and its decoration at the huge department store in Tokyo, the Ikebukuro Seibu.

So, I made many colorful (color-poisoned) Macarons for this event.

Pears are in season now.　I prepare pears in different styles of cooking. Here’s an authentic poached pear in light syrup with white wine, vanilla, bay leaf, and some spices.

It’s a trial version of a Halloween Macaron tower. This is a mini version which can be made easily at home.

In autumn, the Japanese craves for chestnuts. It’s an amazing phenomenon. It’s a seasonal thing which they seriously look for. So, I make this cake called Mont-Blanc which resembles the shape of the famous French-Italian mountain. If you love chestnuts, you would love this!

Another version of chestnuts dessert. Chestnut mousse topped with chocolate mousse. Yum-yum…

This is yet another Mont-Blanc tart which I created. Three-differently-cooked-kinds of chestnuts are used and well-hidden inside. There are chestnuts cooked in Earl-Grey infused syrup inside the almond cream in the tart base. In the top part, under the crème de marron (chestnut cream), there is a block of chestnut mousse covered with rum-flavored crème Chantilly and Earl Grey flavored chestnuts. Also, I placed Shibukawani (chestnuts cooked with its inner skin attached in heavy syrup) all around outside. Everybody loves this.

In Japan, pumpkins come in many different shapes and colors in autumn. I like to use seasonal ingredients in pastry making. Here, I made pumpkin financiers with lightly-burned fermented butter and real pumpkin. The rich and profound flavor of beurre noisette (brown butter) and pumpkin is such a wonderful combination, needless to say.

This year, November is very mild and warm. We can still enjoy outside pleasantly.  It doesn’t seem foliage changes its colors properly this fall. Well, I don’t get used to Japanese winter, so I might as well enjoy the warm late fall.

After a long silence...

Summer has passed so quickly like just a blink. I didn’t have a chance to update my English blog, since my schedule was over-saturated. Now the huge typhoon has just been passing by, I have a time to catch up with this. Yesterday’s weather was very strange; at one moment, it was brightly sunny, then quickly thick bands of dark-swelling clouds came in and hang for a while, and poured all the water from the very humid air like a raging tidal wave crashing onto a shore. These sequences of weather melodrama have occurred repeatedly all day long! What a day!

Well, back to my pastry creations. I’ve made far more than these photos but of course, I can’t put everything on, so just a little. The first one is citrus florentin.  A typical French pastry is filled with sliced almonds, caramel, etc.  Here is with some orange confits.

On the Quatres-Juillet (the Bastille Day), I made this entremet with summer berries and layers of different kinds of mousses. Yum!

Then I made another French regional dessert called Crème d’Angers with fromage blanc, cream, Italian meringue, fresh cultured yogurt and homemade rhubarb-gooseberry jam.

French macarons are made with Shiso and red currents which suit for humid Japanese summer!

Rose entremet (layered mousse cake) consists of cream cheese, fromage blanc, Damask rose, lychee puree, strawberry puree, Rosé wine and pistachio dacquiose.

A little princess is made out of white chocolate mousse with Madagascar pepper, raspberry mousse, biscuit joconde-cacao and almond dacquiose.

Some more cakes.

These are not ordinary brownies. I made in a Japanese style with Kinako (roasted soybean powder) and Miso which give a mellow but deep flavor.

All in different shades of pink colors is peach and raspberry mousse cake.  If you like a fresh taste of succulent sweet peach, you would love this cake with a touch of acidity from raspberry.

I had a fun time creating this cold dessert. It looks vibrant and cute; indeed it was lovely to eat!

Another birthday cake. This is an Entremet with ginger-milk chocolate mousse inside, and rose-peach mousse and cacao nib mousse topped with glaçage chocolat.  I doodle some tempered chocolate to make some pretty design on the cake.  

Mont-Blanc. Almost all Japanese love this chestnut cake. Mine is special with 7 layers (inside) topped with a Shibukawani (chestnut cooked with inside skin in a syrup) . Inside is a beauty!

It looks like an ordinary apple tart. Apples are cored and cut and caramelized in sugar and butter with a dash of Ceylon cinnamon and lemon juice. But the secret is under these caramelized apple layers. I put Earl-Grey custard cream scented with Calvados. What a heavenly tart it is!

Summer seems gone now, though the temperature remains fairly high around 80’s. But the days are getting shorter and mornings and evenings are much cooler! Welcome to a fall season!

Apricot Fest!

I’m a newbie to Japan, though I am Japanese. This country is still strange to me sometimes. And one of the things I don’t get is that the Japanese doesn’t   seem to like eating apricots. I will never forget the first time I bought Japanese apricots and ate one of them! SOUR!!! It was bitterly sour! I thought it would be a mistake, and continued to try one more. The same result. One more time, and still the same!

I concluded no wonder the Japanese doesn’t like to eat them. It tastes horrible. Wherever I lived, except on the tropical Indian Ocean island, I had wonderful apricots in the US, France, and South Korea. So, I searched, and realized in Japan, they do cook apricots in forms of jam, compote, and such, but they rarely eat raw apricots. However, on the internet, I found sweet apricots especially cultivated for eating raw from Nagano.

The season of apricots is only 2 weeks in Japan, so before people would know about the season arrived, all apricots would be finished. What a pity! Its tangy sweet acidity makes this fruit something special in summer! Besides, I heard the popularity of this magical fruit is dwindling in my home country. Quelle domage!

Anyway, I ordered 3kg of apricots in 2 varieties: one for eating freshly and the other one for cooking.

We made various compotes, a simple jam, cooked in tarts with pistachio cream, and so on with apricots. And we simply enjoyed eating raw apricots!

Apricot jam.  Spread out on a piece of  butter-melted pain de compagne. This jam is also good with a plain yogurt.

 

A cool composition of lemon, lavender and apricots. Do you know that cooking lavender flowers with freshly squeezed lemon juice makes the liquid turning into reddish purple color? It’s beautiful to take a look at it.

In this mesmerizing reddish lavender pool which is still warm, I add some honey to taste and then melt gelatin in. Then I put in a fridge to make gelée at the bottom.

I then make blueberry-apricot jelly on top putting apricot liqueur  and fruits. You just keep it really cool in the fridge and serve!

Apricots and lavender. Truly a French provincial style!

If you would like the tangy-sweet combination of blueberries and apricots, here is a tantalizing macaron parisien with blueberry butter cream and apricot whipped cream with the fruits.

And these are macarons parisiens with Earl Grey and apricot butter cream.

I put apricot compote at the max for the juicy summery flavor in lightly whipped butter cream.

And this is lavender-flavored apricot compote. The lavender is smartly subtle so that it doesn’t kill the zesty apricot flavor.

The taste!? It’s like floating in a dreamy apricot bath!

Really Hot Summer!

It’s already really hot in the end of June. The temperature races up to 32 degrees in Celsius (84F) this morning.  We need to conserve the energy because of the electricity shortage in the Tokyo Metropolitan area.  So, as much as possible, we need to cool down naturally.

Something cold? I love to! I made a vitamin-rich-anti-oxidant drink with red and orange paprika and a grapefruit.  Just cook chopped paprika pieces in water with a dash of salt and a teaspoonful of sugar until soft, process them in a blender, add freshly-squeezed grapefruit juice and honey with some touch of lemon juice for a tangy reviving  flavor.

Here is lavender-lemon Perrier.

I squeezed a lemon for its juice and add a half teaspoonful of lavender. Heat in microwave for 30 seconds.  Add some honey, stir well, and pour ice-cold Perrier in the glass. This is really tantalizing!

Blueberries and raspberries are in season now. But in Japan, it’s hard to find domestic raspberries; almost all raspberries are imported mainly from the US. But there is a thriving raspberry bush in our shop garden which is yielding lots of berries.

 

I made some summer gelée using these berries, wild strawberries, and rhubarbs with Umeshu (Japanese plum liqueur) . This is such a treat in this heat!

 

It’s hard to bake but I have to because of the nature of my business. This is a tart which I love at the moment. It’s filled with pistachio cream and pêche de vigne. Wow, it’s unbearably hot now! I can’t even think any words… gosh.

All natural even in colors.

Lunch today?  Maybe ice-cold Soba & Udon noodles topped with veggies and clams. And don’t forget the sauce!  It’s clam-juice based with Japanese soy sauce dressing and freshly-grated Wasabi.

Now we are going out in the heat for pleasure or torture!? maybe, it’s a bit suicidal!

A la Rose

When I feel a bit tired of my hectic life, I would like to drop a line here. Today is my lazy day; do nothing! Even though I’m tired of my real life, I feel hungry. This is a good sign; if I completely lose my appetite, then it means very seriousJ  To nurse my healthy appetite, I made a pain pérdu á la banane.  I want to put up the recipe soon… it was yummy!

Our 1^st year in Japan has passed so quickly. It has been a hefty roller coaster ride but we made it through ok. What a blessing! We were baptized by many new things with a lot of difficulties and surprises. Amidst of fiascos, we’ve opened our little shop and restaurant, and then my first book was recently published as well.  So, I can say we must have been doing something pretty well???  We still have a long way to go… to establish our roots here.

May is a month of roses in the northern hemisphere. I had an opportunity to receive fragrant Damask roses from an organic nursery in Tokyo. They wanted me to use their organic roses to make something sweet, so here I’ve started.

Pyramid á la rose. It’s an Entremet with 3 layers inside. The layers were consisted of Dacquoise Pistache (pistachio dacquoise), strawberry and lychee mousse and strawberry rose gelée. The outside was topped with organic Rosé and rose-infused gelée and bottomed with fromage blanc and rose mousse with a hint of coriander and pine-scented Madagascar pepper.  There is an almond Dacquoise at the base. It was such a beauty to peek  inside with layers of white, pink, ruby, clear rose  and green.   

Also I made a rose Blanc Manger with fruity Rosé and rose-infused gelée. It was such a treat!

Roses own a special charm; it’s perfect to look at, smell, and eat, too! Eating a rose is something special, n’est ce pas?

A rose garden nearby our shop in Tsukuba is an ideal place to stroll in the morning or at dusk. Enjoying  a quiet moment there is a good idea.

And have something sweet in life.

Take time to smell the roses…