Recipes from our farm

Kasamatsu Farms Online Store

This is the official online store for Kasamatsu Farms, an organic farm in the mountains of Kanagawa, Japan. All our produce is safe and grown by us. We practice permaculture and provide everything from organic greens to eggs of free-range chickens. We are also small-scale certified egg farm.

Kasamatsu Farms

Here are a couple of time-tested recipes that you can try with our produce.

PLEASE NOTE that we use organic compost and NO PESTICIDES so sometimes, there might be a bug or two hiding in the vegetables, especially in our leafy green vegetables. Please wash them nicely in cold water prior to eating.

Curly Kale:

Make a KALE SALAD. Take the stalks off and wash and chop up the leaves and massage it with olive oil until it gets darker and softens. Then squeeze some lemon on it and drizzle some maple syrup (the magic item that makes my kids love this salad). Salt and pepper it. Optional: add dried fruit (cranberries, raisins, whatever you got) and some nuts (walnuts, pine nuts... up to you) to make it even healthier and yummier.

Trick: If you have some leftovers, chop it up, freeze it, and put it in our smoothie.

Red Russian Kale:

STIR-FRY. This is great in a salad with the recipe I just described above as well, but we really recommend you just stir-fry it in a frying pan with some olive oil. Salt and pepper to taste. Optional: add some garlic or spicy red pepper in it to give it a nice punch.

Customer recipe: Add quinoa and cherry tomatoes and sautee them.

Dried Shiitake Mushrooms:

Use it as SOUP STOCK and ingredient for your soup. We throw in a handful into our pot of miso soup in the beginning. The umami is undeniable.

We've had our friend and customer put it in his pasta with our kale for making some peperoncino. That sounds great, too!

Eggs:

Try it RAW or as an OMELET. The yolk of our chicken eggs are a bit larger than store bought / mass-produced eggs. What that means is that your omelet will have a strong yellow hue. Apparently many high-end Japanese restaurants that serve omelets use these eggs. Our kids also love to consume it as TKG (tamago-kake-gohan/raw egg on rice with a drizzle of soy sauce).

Clearwater lettuce babyleaf:

Great for sandwiches as well as in salads. At home, we have added them to soups as well. Literally has zero bitterness and is quite small and delicate, so would do well in hor d'oeuvres. How about some Clearwater Lettuce Babyleaf with some egg salad on some sliced baguette?

Egg salad on toast with lettuce, and radishes:

Although I've always liked egg salads, I've never made them until recently. Kids devour them and I must admit they are great to keep in the fridge from the night before to put it on your bread the following day with some fresh veggies. Here's my egg salad recipe in a nutshell: Boil 8-10 eggs. Cool. Peel, and chop. Add about 1/2 cup mayonnaise, 1 teaspoon of yellow mustard, and about 1/4 cup chopped green onions or Italian parsley. Sprinkle paprika, and also salt and pepper to your liking.

Voila! That's it. The radishes definitely add a nice crunchy and juicy taste to it.

Salad Turnips

This is one of those vegetables where the vegetable itself doesn't have too strong of a flavor scent that you can use in western dishes, as well as Asian dishes. In our household, we often quarter it and then massage them with salt for a bit. Drain well. If needed, rinse it off a bit. Add sesame oil and dried shiso (yukari).

When we cook pizza, we roast turnips in the pizza oven. All we do is halve it, drizzle olive oil on it so it won't burn, and salt and pepper it. This is one of the best way to eat salad turnips, as it brings out the sweetness of the turnips.

Swiss Chard

Stalks look like celery except it comes in such beautiful rainbow colors. We usually chop them up and add them to our soups, or saute them. When I saute it, I add some minced garlic in butter and olive oil, and in the end, add a drizzle of white wine and lemon juice. Grate some Parmesan cheese at the end, and it becomes a great side dish to go with some pasta.

Beets

I didn't grow up eating beets, and neither did my husband. But we quickly grew to love it. We think the best way is to roast it (even in small Japanese toasters, you actually can.) It keeps all the juice and sweetness, and their distinct texture. We then put them in salads, pastas, and have eaten them just as is. The stalks are like skinny Swiss Chards, and you should not waste that either. Beets are actually a vegetable of the spinach family - meaning the leafy parts are just as good and nutritious.