I haven't had clementine before I came here. 
​According to wikipedia, it is crossing mandarine orange and sweet orange.

First time I knew about the orange was in a movie, Secret life of Walter Mitty.The main character's mom made a clementine cake for him. 
I was inspired by it and made a cake when I saw it.
​Anyways, it was a few years before and was with regular oranges.
This time, about a month ago, I saw a box of clementine and seemed like it was from middle east..I was curious how is the taste of the oranges then bought it.
The clementines were taste so good.Sort of special for me, the balance of sweetness and tanginess were perfect.However..I didn't think I will finish just eating one small box of fresh oranges before they went bad.
I dicided to make marmalade. 

The ingredients are simply, just clementines and the same amount of brown sugar (or white sugar if you like lighter color).
You can use less sugar, but don't decrease too much.
The method is a little bit of work with clementine because they are small and have lots of seeds.
I am writing recipes here as simple and easy..so this is a little bit lazy way than traditional marmalade recipe.
Wash the clementines, take the orange skins off from the fruits. Don't leave too much white skins.
Normally take out of fruits meats from the segments but so, this is "easy" way, juice them with cheese cloth.
Then keep the white skins and pulps, put the juice and sugar into the pot.
Wrap the skins and pulps with cheese cloth and close it. This components are for pectin. 
Chop the orange skins. Very thin julian, or the size of your choice.
Put the chopped skins, the cheese cloth bag in the pot of Juice and sugar, and stew them.
First medium heat, once it went boiling, reduce the heat, simmer it with very low heat for 40min -1 hour or more until the orange skin got softer.

Vancouver's winter weather is mostly rain.This is tough for me because I am originally from Japan, even so I have been in this city for a while, still I can't get over this rainy season.
I like to make nice breakfast or brunch for curing my winter blues - the photo above is vegan soufflee (gluten flee).
The photo below is the first experiment, I put marshmallow on the soufflee, it looks cute but the soufflee dough was dense and wasn't succeed. 

I was thinking to add aquafava form, however.. it would take too much time for quick breakfast.
Then the topping gave me an idea -  how about mix the marshmallows in the dough!
I make vegan marshmallows from scratch, it takes time forever so I usually buy commercial one for quick solution.
The vegan marshmallows has egg replacers and glue-ish staff for the ingredients ..I thought it would be perfect for the soufflee.
Then tried, when I saw the soufflee puffed up in the oven, I had little victory scream.
​The texture was perfect. Airly, formy.
So this is the recipe.Quite easy.
​Recipe & idea courtesy of  ©Tomoko Tahara / Cook hatter  ​
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Yield : make 1 small shallow maison jar  
<wet ingredients >
​1/4 cup vegan marshmallows
1/4 cup vegan chocolate
1 Tbsp coconut oil
1/4 cup almond milk or non daily milk
______________________
<dries>
1Tbsp brown sugar
2 Tbsp spelt flour
1/8 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
______________________
<topping>
some cacao nibs

Perheat the oven 350f
Make the wet ingredients melt with bain marie(double boiler).
Boil hot water in a pot and put a bowl of ingredients on top of the pot,  stir the mixture sometimes, then melt them completely. 
In the mean time, mix all the dry ingredients in a separate bowl.
Then add wet ingredients to the dry bowl, mix. 

Then put the dough in the jar. May fill 1/2 inch below from the jar top and put topping, take it in the oven.
Bake 20-25 min. The photo is when I took the dough out from the oven after 2 min. It would puff up on the centre while in the oven.
​

​

I was craving for a caeser - then made this salad.Charred romaine and mock blue cheese caeser vinaigrette, vegan bacon and croutons.

The challenge was making bacon & vinaigrette - but I will postpone to write about vinaigrette ,
the recipe today is vegan bacon.
All you need is organic firm tofu, coconut oil, salt, miso, shredded garlic, and patient.
Slice the firm tofu in 2mm thin.
Put 3-4 table spoon of coconut oil in a frying pan and heat it up with medium heat.
When it reached the heat, put tofu slices.Don't pile them, just line them nicely, let it fry for a while.Watch out the tofu slices aren't burnt with controlling the heat.
Combine 1 tea spoon of miso,shredded garlic, 3 table spoon of water in a container.

When it reached this texture, flip.

When your tofu slices reached this colour and dryness, add the miso mixture.
Basically, you are making less oil version of "usu-age" tofu.
Usu age tofu is deep fried and puffed sliced silk tofu.
Usually Japanese people don't make them at home, just buying them from stores since it would be too much work to make them at home, as well as they are cheap.Usu age tofu are thin and soft.
This tofu bacon is firm, meaty texture.
​Anyways..

Sizzling! then leave it for a while the tofu suck oil and the sauce.
​Then add salt if you needed.

Done. Cut them in cubes, you will find the texture is nearly bacons!
​Why I didn't cut them before ahead?
I wanted to make inside chewie.
If you like crispy, go ahead to make them cube ahead and fry.
Recipe & idea courtesy of  ©Tomoko Tahara / Cook hatter  ​
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As I wrote the last post, I made a challenge for myself.
Making Japanese new year's meal in vegan.

Recipe for you:
Lotus roots Sunomono "su-basu"
Sunomono is like a japanese quick pickles.Make it on the day and finish it until it's fresh.
Anyways.
Boil "sunomono" liquid. Normally vinegar 3, soy sauce 1, sugar 1. I use brown sugar to make taste deep. Once the liquid got boiling, stop the heat and cool the liquid down.
Make a bowl of vinegar water to soak lotus roots(about 5% vinegar.Don't worry about the percentage, this is just for avoiding the lotus roots getting dark)Peel the lotus roots skin, and soak in the vinegar water right away after peeling.
Then slice them likely 2mm - 3mm thin(you can use mandolin) and soak them right away in the vinegar water.
Heat a pot of water to boil lotus roots.
When the water reached full boil, put a little bit of salt and the lotus roots slices, boil them 3-4 min, then take them into running water to cool them down.
Put the boiled lotus roots into the sunomono liquid and leave it with a small piece of kelp for 30 min - a few hours.If you desired, put sliced carrots or boiled mustard seeds.
Recipe & idea courtesy of  ©Tomoko Tahara / Cook hatter  
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This is belated but happy new year to all.
I made myself a challenge - make traditional Japanese new year's meal "Osechi" in Vegan.
Will update but this is one of the dish.
"Tazukuri" - usually make it with dried baby sardines, this is made with dried lily flower.
The lily flower has sort of fermented sour flavour, it matched perfectly with the sauce.
Cooking method is so simple - just dehydrate the lily flower on the pan and add sauce to be caramelized.
 The sauce : soy sauce, sugar, sake and sesame seeds.
Recipe & idea courtesy of  ©Tomoko Tahara / Cook hatter