Christmas Dinner at Home

This year is one of the very few times I actually am not working around Christmas. In Tokyo, December used to be the busiest time of the year where everyone suddenly seems to have money to spent again with year-end-parties big and small plus Special Dinner offerings around Christmas, 95% of them couples. So the 24th is not a public holiday the 23rd is, as it is the Emperor's birthday. And even here in Karuizawa, which is preparing for winter from November onwards and goes into "hybernation" (冬眠中, touminchu. I've actually seen shops putting this sign out to show they are on winter break. And it's a common word among the many part-time workers about what they will do in winter, as many will take an non-voluntary extended holiday from January up to the middle of April. Only few are willing to drive on snowy roads to work at ski-resorts or feel enough financial strain to engage in lower jobs like room cleaning in one of the many hotels around here.), Christmas means mostly work, depending on which day of the week it falls. So I decided to do a very common Christmas dish, roasted chicken and gathered information on the internet during the last days. Luckily I chanced on a helpful food-program last week which had chicken stuffed with rice, roasted in a cast-iron pot. Since I wanted to have Hannah eat the same food too, I decided against their flavouring with raisins and marons, but instead opted for a more gentle basil-flavour, took the idea of using sweet potatoes(amongst the usual ones) for the vegetable bed from another blog, and from "Simply Recipes" I got the idea of a honey glaze since I didn't want to use garlic butter. I later returned again to this blog to also find some tips about using the leftovers and bones to make some chicken stock.

I started by cutting some celery into small slices and sauteed them in olive oil in the cast-iron pot. I thew in some sun flower seeds as well and after they where browned I scraped the mixture into a bowl.

  To this I added cooked, warm rice, parsley, dried basil and seasoned it with salt and pepper.

I had prepared the chicken already a few hours ahead by washing the outside and inside with cold water and patting it dry. It was then left on the counter to gain room temperature and for the skin to dry for a crispier finish (which didn't finalize as much as hoped for). I stuffed it with the rice and tied the opening with tooth picks which I secured with some string that followed to tie the legs together. I than rubbed salt and pepper on the whole of the outside and put it on a bed of vegetables for which I used roughly chopped onion, carrot, turnip, and aforementioned sweet potato. Some recipes suggested sauteeing the vegetables first which I dutifully did, because I only have a rather small sized microwave oven and since the pot would stand on the bottom I worried the vegetables wouldn't get enough heat, which turned out to be far off the mark.

I preheated the oven to 270 degree and put in the pot with the chicken breast downwards. After 40 minutes I lifted the iron pot out and turned the bird breast facing up. At this point I brushed the now up facing breast part generously with honey.

 Around 15 min later I turned down the heat to about 180 degrees and roasted it for another 45 min until the  digital temperature reader showed that the inside of the meat had risen to about 75 degrees.

After lifting the bird onto a dish for cutting I realized that a few of the vegetables had been burned black, but enough was left, also these where extremely soft, with the sweet potato tasting the best. I had worried in the beginning that not giving any soup or liquid into the pot might just burn the vegetables, but the chicken dropped off quite some liquid, which was more than enough. It was rather the sidewalls of the cast-iron that became too hot and burned some of the greens. And the breast skin didn't turn out as crispy as I had hoped for. Next time I will turn the bird earlier and lower the temperature earlier too which might help. I also would brush the skin before roasting with olive oil.

What did turn out very nicely was the soft tenderness of the meat, totally different from the usual fry pan cooking, we hardly needed any knife. And the stuffing of rice was just delicious as well.

The arrangement on the plate might look rather rough, nevertheless the taste was great! Hannah enjoyed the food as well, shoving the rice happily into her mouth with her hand.

For dessert I had prepared a chocolate cake, Sachertorte, but spiced it with cinnamon, clove, cardamon and nutmeg. I sliced it once and filled it with roasted walnuts and rum-raisins (that are always at hand in the fridge in this house) . I also had planned to put in some sliced pears as well but totally forgot about it. And so they made part of the topping, together with some whipped cream.

Homemade Hazelnuts spread

 When I started this blog I had a multi-themed style in mind and cooking was supposed to be one of it. Alas, the crammed kitchen in our apartment never seemed to be clean enough for taking pictures in it. But after some serious furniture moving and rearranging on the shelf and inside the drawers I feel much more comfortable to do more of these, so enjoy.

Like the vast majority of German people I grew up with "Nutella", the famous creamy hazelnuts-spread or some cheaper imitation. And like probably many Germans I always thought there is something good in it...It was only less than a year ago that American-Pastry-chef turned Parisian book-writer  David Lebovitz had an article on Facebook describing the reality, it's high sugar content and the psychological usage of Football players and whole-grain bread in the commercials, opening my eyes to see through the farce. He also put forward a recipe, which I changed a bit to my liking, and which should only be seen as a basic "mixture", an invitation for you to try and create your very own Nuts'n Chocolate spread.

My basic recipe























Hazelnuts 100 g
Milk 100 ml

Cocoa powder 15ml
Honey 80 g
Bitter Chocolate 60 g
Butter 50 g
Cinnamon

Coarsely chop the nuts and roast them in a pan without oil until they are browned. You can tell by the nice smell that's starting to come out when they start to brown.

Put the roasted nuts in your mixer and blend until very small, occasionally moving the parts in the corners towards the middle.

Meanwhile heat the milk in a medium pot, slowly adding the other ingredients until they are all molten.

Pour this cream into the mixer and blend again until you have a smooth, rather liquid, cream.

Fill the cream into clean jars or other containers of your choice, put in the fridge and let cool for at least 6 hours. This cream is supposed to melt in your mouth, or on your freshly baked toast, but it might be the case that because of a different chocolate or butter-substitute it won't set enough. In this case just mix in a bid more melted chocolate or butter and cool it down again.

Variations, where the Fun starts

Nuts: Try walnuts for less sweetness, almonds for more, peanuts, cashew nuts, different blends, etc whatever you like or have at hand.

Roasting: Same as with caramel, the darker the nuts, the more bitter the taste gets. So, if you like your caramel slightly burned, you might try the same with nuts.

Sweetness: You can use sugar only or a blend of both but be aware that the creaminess might change.

Chocolate: As with nuts, use what you like, dark and bitter, or milk chocolate, or even white.

Spices: My favorite is cinnamon and a bit of clove, or use your flavor syrup. For a "special" taste, add some liqueur into the milk, but beware that the alcohol might not totally evaporate if you don't heat the milk until nearly overflowing.

The spread consists of solid and liquid ingredients that together give the creaminess. Changing the amount of one of these might thus result in a not so perfect cream at the first try, so be sure to have some chocolate or butter at hand if it is to liquid after a few hours in the fridge.

Hannah's Geburtstag

Ich hatte mir für Hannah's Geburtstag freigenommen, aber leider klappte es bei Hiromi nicht, also machte ich am Ende doch nur ein einfaches Essen, dafür aber mit einem Kuchen zum Selberessen.

Den Kuchen machte ich sehr frei nach einem Rezept für Bananenmuffins mit Rapsöl anstatt Butter und weniger Butter und Zucker, dafür mit mehr Bananen und etwas Apfelmus untergemischt zum süssen.

 

Hannah hatte dann auch viel Spaß damit und hatte sogar einiges abgebissen und gegessen und nicht nur rumgemanscht.

 Anschließend hatte ich ihr dann noch das Puma T-Shirt angezogen welches ich ihr als Geburtstagsgeschenk gekauft hatte. Es ist ja eigentlich ja zwei Nummern zu groß, aber kleiner gab es nicht, und ihr hatte es auch gefallen. Obwohl im Nachhinein denke ich es könnte auch nur der Kleiderbügel gewesen sein, an dem sie Interesse hatte...

Später konnte ich auch noch den Zwetschgenkuchen fertigstellen, den ich Schritt für Schritt angefangen hatte in den kleinen Pausen die Hannah mir ließ. Das hatte aber den positiven Effekt, das der Hefeteig viel besser als sonst durchgebacken war, wahrscheinlich weil er noch einige Zeit ausgebreitet auf dem Blech ruhte bevor ich die Zwetschgen auflegen konnte. Vom Geschmack fast süß, die Zwetschgen hatten nicht den von früher aus Deutschland bekannten sauren Beigeschmack, so machte es auch nichts das wir keine Schlagsahne hatten. Aber "richtige" Schlagsahne haben wir sowieso nicht oft, denn die ist hier doppelt so teuer wie die mit pflanzlichen Ölen gemischte Variante.

A long day

Today was my off-day, meaning I was very busy trying to fit the necessary gardening, Garden House and Family time all into one day's time. Impossible to achieve, but at least I did some of each...

Early morning I set out to our garden to finish the asphalt roofing of the Garden House before the next heavy rain would come. For this I first had to strengthen the beams below the roof, otherwise I would not be able to safely climb onto it, but necessary to attach the roofing. I than cut the sheets of roofing, calculated how much overlapping I could achieve and than started with the first one from the low back end of the roof, slowly working my way up. I didn't want to move in a hurry on the sloped roof and was always careful where to put my hands and feet to balance my body weight  because an accident on the roof is never an easy story, and working alone would make it even more trickier.

 I than did the second job, digging out potatoes. I had first thought about bringing out the whole lot, but the weather now is not real dry, we have thunderstorms more or less close by nearly every day, and after finding some information on the net I took an easier, and time-friendly approach, and dug out only half of the first row to have stuff for the week it will take till my next off-day. They where very different in size, big ones but also very small ones, either they didn't get enough fertilizer in the later time or the bugs eating off all the leafs stopped the growth too early.

In the afternoon I had another two hours to finish the roofing, it had been getting really hot on the black asphalt sheets, indicator to put some insulation below the roof before the next summer...on the picture you can see the two beams I added in the morning from below, the ones that are not sticking out in the front. Before that the 9mm OSB had laid only on the corners and, needless to say, were really sagging in the middle.

For dinner we enjoyed the fresh potatoes, delicious, kind of buttery taste to it, remarkably different from the usual fare at the supermarket.

Hannah had a potato as well, mixed with her tomato spaghetti, and enjoyed it very much.

This a called a ヤマユリ, yamayuri, golden-banded lily. It's the symbol flower of the town and grows wild in different spots, as well as in our garden, two spots each with about a dozen plants in it, beautiful to look at.

Gardening day

Yesterday was my day off, and same since April on off-days, it was bad weather. Not only "bad" as in cloudy or rainy, but also as in "cold!". Mainly for that reason it took me quite a while to get out of the cold house into the cold outside. The other reason was that the weather forecast suggested a turn to the good from midday, but that remained wishful thinking. The thing about living high up (950 m) is that when bad weather hits, you are surrounded by fluffy, cold, misty, clouds, you are inside them, not below. Thus the temperature stays about the same from early morning until evening, because no sunshine comes through. But just driving down to our land next village, the situation changed: it was still rainy and cold, but below the clouds...not much better to be outside, but still not as depressing because you could actually see farther than just 50 meters.
So I hit my potato plants which had grown rather unattended, did the thinning while "removing" a few bugs, than put some mineral fertilizer besides the plants and shoveled some earth on it, creating those potato ridges I remember back from my days growing up on the North German country side...albeit a bit smaller in size.

Fresh dark earth not only smells beautiful, but also looks beautiful, especially when it is surrounded by lots of green ... weeds! The green square is where I planted some caraway seeds. Of course it was fresh, dark earth when I seeded them, but it seems these seeds take time to germinate, and I have not the faintest idea which one are weeds and which one are caraway, also I did plant them in a row, so that should make them recognizable. Just hope they make it in time before the weeds grow too big.
In front of that is a row of red radish, called in Japanese "hatsuka daikon" 20-days radish for their speed of growing. Okay, they are not that fast, but still, it really does take not long to grow into something eatable size. This was my second time to collect the bigger ones, also some of them had already given in to the long period of rain and had split in half. I harvested a few handful and there is still a lot left for next week.
The black earth in the front row indicates where I planted a few... spinach, thats it. I actually had intended to plant carrots, but there was too much gravel still left in the earth and I am not a fan of octopus-like creatures holding onto stones growing in my earth and since it had started to rain rather steadily on my back, pressured for time, I went for the above-earth seeds. For the markers I again used my weather-proof yet natural bamboo sticks, recycled from my wife's Kendo Shinai (bamboo swords) which become soft and dull after too much powerful hitting each other. They are actually recycled recycles, because I first used them for my potatoes, but since those are bigger now than the surrounding weeds I have confidence that I will distinguish them even without markers. 

The main reason that there is so much green is of course that getting rid of all the weeds would leave the earth open to the elements of wind and rain, so it is a kind of "protection" actually. Not to mention that it would take me about 8 days a week to keep them weeds off and would result in a big heap of torn-out weeds in the middle of the property raising  upwards.

Lots and lots of (unwanted) green. And the Mulberry tree is doing nicely, too, thank you. This autumn though I will go to it again with my saw, cutting it back again while trying to put some shape into it.

Well, looks like somebody totally overslept the fact that this is not a dirt-trail anymore but a real road! Okay, actually not yet finished, because a road is supposed to be at least 4 meters wide, and this one is only 3 meters, because someone at town didn't inform one of the property owners about their plans and thus they are still in the talks as to how much to pay to this person to go 1 m closer to his house, which is already very close, because it's the north side and their lot is a bit smaller than ours, to widen the road to a safe-by-law width. As for me, this might as well take some years, so I can enjoy the view of the fields to the back, which will be turned into housing property once this connecting road is fit to be called such and not just a gravel-track with a weed growing in the middle of it.

In the evening I enjoyed the fruits of my labor and some more, because it  isn't really that much yet....! Having said that, the radish and leaf salad tasted great, with some boiled chicken thrown in and a vinaigrette (because French always sounds delicious and ups the level) made of sour-plum "ume" juice that had been sitting in my fridge for quite some time unused but now found it's destination-to-be, some Aceto Balsamico for the sweetness, and rape seed oil. And, spotting the "Italian" written on the plate, I grated some hardened Parmesano cheese on top of it. Goes great with the "お疲れ様/Otsukaresama/Feierabend/After-work beer.