It’s great to cook in Japan because you can easily get ingredients from every corner of the world.
It’s also summer season now, which is that time of the year when I always make my favorite summer pasta, either on the rooftop of my home in Tokyo or at my weekend house at the foothills of Mount Fuji.
I’ve been making this very simple but incredibly tasty pasta for years, with great success.
It’s so unique and it’s perfect for entertaining as it can be made in advance and the quality doesn’t suffer when you do so.
In fact, it should be made in advance so the flavors can blend well together.
I’ve tried other fruits and they just don’t work. This pasta certainly doesn’t come out the same when made with non-Japanese peaches.
Yes, the Japanese peaches are the dealbreakers, and this is why I make this pasta only in the summer in Japan, when Japanese peaches are plentiful, and I’m at my weekend house and making lunch for guests.
Summer is the time people visit each other in the weekend houses in Japan, as these are usually located in cooler climates, and everyone deserts Tokyo from about the third week of July till the end of August.
Of course, lots of people have to come back to Tokyo for work. But they’re back on the highway out of Tokyo like clockwork every Friday afternoon.
One day you’re visiting someone’s house, and another day they’re at yours.
This is when I usually make an organic salad and my summer pasta with peaches as a starter for lunch, served with very cold white wine.
I have several other original pasta concoctions in my arsenal, by the way. Friends say that my vongole pasta, as well as my seafood pasta, are to die for.
But these aren’t seasonal the way my summer pasta with peaches is.
And for a main course, I usually roast a chicken or bake a whole fish in salt. Then for dessert, I often make my own version of sticky toffee pudding, and I serve this with ice cream.
I’ll write about my special sticky toffee pudding in a future blog entry.
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This is from a lunch in South Africa. But I make a pretty good one as well… |
I’d seen a chef in Hokkaido make this many years ago, and I’d replicated it almost immediately afterwards.
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