When Maxence and I traveled to Japan two years ago, one of the treats I indulged in on a daily basis was the onigiri, the ubiquitous rice ball that is a staple of the Japanese diet, eaten as a nicely portable snack and packed for lunches outside the home* and also called musubi or omusubi.

We mostly bought them from konbini, the 24/7 convenience stores that pepper the streets of Tokyo, and on one occasion from a specialized shop that sold nothing but onigiri (imagine that!), and always I reveled in the unique satisfaction one gets from biting through the thin, crisp layer of seaweed and into the cool, plump, clean-tasting rice inside.

I have been making my own easy onigiri on a regular basis at home since then**. All it takes, really, is getting the right kind of rice (sushi or japonica rice), cooking it properly (rinse well*** and boil in one and a half its volume of water), stirring in some kind of flavoring (I mostly make “mixed-rice” onigiri), and scooping the still-warm rice into my hands to form small mounds.

The flavorings I add in most often are ready-made furikake (various dehydrated flakes designed to adorn rice) that I buy from one of the Japanese markets in Paris, or gomasio (a mix of toasted sesame and salt), or salt and seaweed flakes. In the pictures that illustrate this post, I used a happy mix of toasted sesame, purple shiso furikake, and some river seaweed.

I do like naked onigiri, but I like them even better with toasted nori wrapped around them, on the condition that it’s added at the last minute so it will retain its crisp texture rather than become chewy. Konbini onigiri come in this clever (but not very green) packaging that isolates the seaweed from the rice until you pull it open from the sides to reunite them; I just keep the rice balls and the seaweed strips separate, and wrap each onigiri just before eating.

These easy onigiri are a swell option to consider if you pack your lunch to bring into the office, or if you plan on having a picnic on a patch of green somewhere. I’ve also found it to be a good way to upcycle leftover rice the next day: add a touch of boiling water from the kettle to reheat and re-moisten the rice, stir, and proceed with the seasoning and shaping.

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* The wonderfully knowledgeable Makiko Itoh has written just about everything you could possibly want to know about onigiri in the following posts: Onigiri shapes, Onigiri FAQ, Onigiri revisited and More about onigiri.

** I also buy them ready-made from Aki Boulanger (16 rue Sainte-Anne, Paris 1er), K-Mart (8 rue Sainte-Anne, Paris 1er), and Nanashi.

*** And here I’m always super careful not to let even a single grain of rice escape into the sink, thinking of Tara‘s wonderful Tales from High Mountain, in which she is taught an old Japanese proverb that says, “If you waste rice, you will go blind.”

Onigiri from an onigiri shop on Aoyama-dori, Tokyo

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For the first installment of our new Draw Me A Fridge series (all the details here), Alexia met with Bertrand Grébaut, chef of the Paris restaurant Septime.

A former head chef at Agapé (where he was awarded a Michelin star in record time), trained by Passard and Robuchon, Bertrand Grébaut opened up his restaurant Septime in April 2011. The long waiting list hasn’t shortened since, nor has the impeccable, friendly service of his team wavered.

AC: What are your fridge staples?

BG: Oh, this is quite embarrassing — our fridge is rather empty! Actually, we keep plenty of bottles of sparkling water in there — all sorts of brands. In our freezer, we have a small carton of chilies that my girlfriend got from her restaurant supplier (Editor’s note: Tatiana Levha, Ex-Astrance, Ex-Arpège, is the pastry chef behind the signature desert of the Foodstock festival held on May 12, 2012). We use the tiniest pinch of it when we prepare a dish. Those chilies are so spicy that this carton will last forever!

We also keep a really nice tomato sauce in there. Actually, we always have an excellent burrata in our fridge that I get from the Italian coop (Editor’s note: Coopérative Latte Cisternino 108 rue Saint Maur 75011), as well as some cured meats. We also always have some super fresh parsley and cilantro — we use them with everything. And soy sauce. And although it does kill me a little bit to admit it, I am a sucker for industrial mayonnaise and instant noodles!

AC: Do you handle the grocery shopping yourself?

BG: We do our shopping at Marché Popincourt and Marché d’Aligre, as well as at small neighborhood food shops. We don’t eat at home often. I spend my entire week cooking, so when the weekend comes, I make sure I get out there and see what the other chefs are up to.

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With the help of (and based on an idea by) my friend Alexia Colson-Duparchy, I am pleased to launch a new series on Chocolate & Zucchini titled Draw Me A Fridge, in which she will be grilling personalities from the food world and beyond about what’s in their fridge. Those who feel inspired will be providing a doodle to illustrate it.

But first, meet Alexia Colson-Duparchy!

Raised on quinoa and wild rice from her early days, long before they were on the savvy foodies’ radar, food never left Alexia indifferent. It wasn’t until she flew away from the parental nest and moved to the land of poutine (Quebec) that she realized that when you invite a bunch of friends over for dinner, well, you better start cooking.

She discovered the luxury of a well-stocked fridge when she started to work as a lawyer and aspired to a) eat things other than greasy slices of cold pepperoni pizza at her desk; and b) maintain some sort of a social life. Her successive moves to the lands of bobotie (Cape Town), fish and chips (London) and laham mashwee (Abu Dhabi) and back to oeuf mayo (Paris) only amplified her natural curiosity for other people’s vision of culinary delights.

Today, she plans on using this column to bring peace to the world, one open fridge at a time!

While I adore fresh fava beans {a.k.a. broad beans}, I find it hard to justify the time commitment they require.

Mind you, I’m not against making an effort in the interest of great flavor. But unlike fresh pea pods, which are a delight to pop, these particular pods are rather tiresome to rip open, and between the blanching and the peeling that follow, I’m frazzled before I’ve even started to cook the actual dish.

I used to restrict my fava bean eating to restaurants, where I was happy to pay for someone else’s thumbnails to get grimed with green gunk.

Because of this, I used to restrict most of my fava bean eating to restaurant settings, where I was happy to pay for someone else’s thumbnails to get grimed with green gunk.

But then I started subscribing to a vegetable delivery service, and the late spring to early summer crop often includes young fava beans, so I had to devise a counter-strategy.

I found two: the first one is inspired by the way the Japanese prepare edamame, boiled soy bean pods. It’s effortless, and the fava pods can then be served warm or cold, in little bowls, as an appetizer or a side, for each eater to shell and eat himself.

The second consists in tossing whole fava bean pods with olive oil, salt and pepper, and roasting them in the oven. The pods become soft and golden, and you can easily tear them open to collect the sweet beans inside. Even better, if they’re young enough you can eat the whole thing, pod and all, a fact sure to appeal to the thriftiest of us.

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