Tomie's Cuisine

Grew it, shelled it, roasted it, baked it 🌰🍐

Our pear and hazelnut frangipane tart is on the blog, and this one comes with a few things we learned along the way. We started with nearly 500g of hazelnuts in their shells and ended up with 200g of kernels. Homegrown hazelnuts also changed how much butter our frangipane needed!

On the blog you'll find:
🌰 How to shell, roast and grind your own hazelnuts, and how many in-shell hazelnuts you need
🧈 Why we use less butter than in a standard almond frangipane
🥧 What to do if your frangipane splits
🧊 How to store and freeze it

Full recipe: link in bio 🔗

Team shell-your-own or team shop-bought ground hazelnuts? Tell us below 👇

Twelve hundred years old, and still sacred. 🌲
On Day 8 of our 19-day Nakasendo walk from Hosokute to Ōi, this ancient cedar at Okute's Shinmei Shrine stopped us in our tracks. Storm damage brought it down, but instead of clearing it away, they left the trunk in place, sheltered under its own small roof and bound with shimenawa rope. It's still treated as sacred ground.
Getting there meant climbing through snow-quiet cedar forest and over Biwa Pass, where 730 metres of Edo-period stone paving survive almost exactly as travellers left them centuries ago. At the summit, a weathered Batō Kannon, guardian of the old road, still watches over travellers just as it has for centuries.
By the time we reached this rest stop near Ena, our packs (and our legs) had earned the break.
The full write-up of Day 8 is linked in bio, plus a free GPX track for the day.
If you're planning your own Nakasendo walk, we've released our Nakasendo Field Guide in EPUB and PDF. Each day includes everything you need to plan it yourself: distance, walking time, weather, post towns, downloadable GPX tracks, and the full story of what that day was really like. Get it now at a discount while we publish the last journal entries. 🗺️

#中山道

540km. 69 post towns. 19 days. Seven prefectures, Kyoto to Tokyo.

We covered the whole Nakasendo in early spring 2025 and wrote down everything: the route, every place we stayed, the wrong turns, and the bear bells we searched three towns to find.

It's a proper field guide now — and you can read part of it for free.

Sign up as a free member, and we'll email you a preview of the guide to download as an EPUB or PDF. No cost, no card.

Want the whole thing? It's half price at £5 while we finish writing the last journal entries:

→ The complete field guide, in EPUB and PDF
→ 21 GPX tracks — one per day plus a full-journey file, handcrafted and field-tested
→ Google My Maps links for every day
→ Our full accommodation guide: 19 honest reviews with real prices, booking links and alternatives
→ 3-day and 7-day versions, if three weeks off isn't realistic

Days 9–19 of the journal are still being written. Buy at £5 today, and you get everything that's ready now, plus an email the moment the rest goes live.

Link in bio.

#中山道

Every September, our garden hands us a basket of pears and a bowl of hazelnuts. 🍐🌰 (The hazel tree comes from our Tomie's Cuisine the Nobonsai garden at RHS Chelsea 2024, designed by .method 🌿)

This year's hazelnut haul was just under 500g in the shell. No packaging, no food miles, just what the garden gave us.

It can only mean one thing: our Pear and Hazelnut Frangipane Tart is coming back, as it does every year. The full recipe (with step-by-step photos, as always) is landing on the blog soon.

Have you ever picked a hazelnut straight from the tree? Swipe to see what they look like in their frilly husks 👉

Subscribe to our newsletter from the link in our bio, and you'll get the recipe the moment it's published!

Our fridge is never without a batch of hummus. 🥙
And it's never just a dip in our kitchen. Swipe through, and you'll see it doing double duty as a sauce under grilled chicken thigh, a spread inside a wrap, and a base alongside grilled salmon and greens.
Classic hummus, or the vibrant roasted beetroot version: cook and chill your chickpeas (and roast your beetroot) the day before, then blend it all up in minutes the next day.
A little planning now means a batch that's ready whenever you need it.
Both recipes are now on the blog. Link in bio.
How do you serve yours?

Back in February, we flew to Japan for my brother's wedding, and I ended up cooking for the after-party. 👰‍♀️🤵‍♂️
Hummus isn't common in Japan, and ready-made versions are hard to find, so I made a big batch from scratch for my brother, who used to buy it all the time when he lived in the UK.
It disappeared fast, and so many guests asked for the recipe that we knew we had to share it properly.
We've posted our go-to method on the blog, along with a vibrant roasted beetroot version.
Once you've made a batch, it's the easiest thing to have on hand for a quick snack or lunch.
Full recipe on the blog. Link in bio!

Two things would have made planning our Nakasendo hike much easier, and we've made both for you.

The first is our full accommodation guide. 19 places to stay, from Kyoto to Tokyo, with honest reviews, what we actually paid, and the alternatives we considered for every stop.

The second is our GPX bundle. 21 files covering the exact 540km route we walked in spring 2025, tested in the field across 19 days and all 69 post towns. Compatible with Garmin, AllTrails, Komoot, Apple Watch, and more.

Both are available for £10 as a one-off bundle at Tomie's Cuisine. Tap the link in bio.

#中山道

Sun, at last. ☀️
Day 8 of our 19-day Nakasendo walk took us from Hosokute to Ooi, 20.71km through Biwa Pass, our first real stretch of sunshine in days, and it showed us everything from a 730m stone-paved mountain pass to a jizo statue that's been headless for over 250 years.
We also made a last-minute dash to a museum dedicated to Hiroshige's ukiyo-e prints of this very trail, with about 30 minutes to spare before closing.
Link in bio for the full article, and subscribe for the free GPX track for every day of the route. 🗺️
#中山道