Nemoto Kiko’s Na-no-hana and tomato pasta

I recently got my hands on some frozen na-no-hana (flowering canola), which to me is a real symbol of Japanese spring. So, yes, a weird thing to be buying at the onset of autumn, but I couldn’t resist.

I’d wanted to make a recipe from her book Uchi No Shuumatsu Gohan (Homestyle Weekend Meals) that combines na-no-hana with a tomato-based pasta sauce. Now was my chance!

I had some homemade tomato pasta sauce crying out to be used, so I used that as my base, adding the grilled spring onions and na-no-hana to it. Nemoto Kiko’s recipe follows:

Na-no-hana Tomato Pasta

1 tomato

3 sun-dried tomatoes

the white stem of 1 large spring onion

½ a bunch of na-no-hana (approx 150 g)

160 g spaghetti

3 Tbsps olive oil

salt and black pepper to taste

Remove the stem from the fresh tomato and roughly cube. Soak the dried tomatoes in water to plump, then slice finely. (Omit this step if using oil-packed dried tomatoes). Cut the spring onion into 3 cm lengths.

Heat the olive oil in a frypan and fry the tomatoes over a low heat until lightly crushed.

Grill the spring onion and na-no-hana until lightly browned.

Cook the spaghetti to packet directions, then add to the tomato pan. Adjust flavours with salt, then transfer to serving dish. Top with the grilled spring onions and na-no-hana and freshly ground black pepper.

Serves 2.

Jam Buttons

For a recent playdate I made some Jam Buttons, another recipe from Yamazaki Shizuka. These cookies are a really delicate shortbread, filled with jam – I used raspberry.

Jam Buttons

100 g unsalted butter (room temperature)

35 g icing (confectioner’s) sugar

¼ tsp salt

150 g baking flour

30 g ground almonds

150 g (approx) jam of your choice

Cream the butter, sugar and salt.

Sift the flour and ground almonds together and mix together with the creamed mixture to form a dough. Wrap the dough in clingfilm and refridgerate for 30 minutes.

Roll the dough between two sheets of clingfilm to a thickness of 2 – 3 mm. Cut circles using a 3 cm circle, then transfer to baking sheets lined with oven paper.

Make four holes in each cookie using a bamboo skewer or toothpick, then bake at 160C for 15 minutes.

Cool the cookies on a wire rack, then sandwich together with jam.

Makes 30 3-cm cookies.

Note, these cookies quickly soften due to the jam, so eat them up quickly!