I was trying to recreate brandade, a French salt cod dish that we had at Avec. Other than making me realize what a god-awful amount of calorie-packed olive oil goes into the creamy dip-like concoction, the thing wasn't working too well. The salt cod chunks refused to become creamy, however hard I attacked them with my bamboo spatula till all the other pots and pans on the stove started to rattle and dance. The cod chunks even resisted the glorious power of modern industrial machinery--my stick blender, refusing to kiss goodbye to their pulpy selves. After adding salt and pepper, the brandade-wannabe did taste decent, but it definitely wasn't interesting enough to be the centerpiece of the evening's meal.

That paused a serious problem. My plan was to accompany that brandade with bread and a bowl of ratatouille. Inspired by the awesome Pixar animation of the same name, I had bought a whole bunch of beautiful summer veggies: summer squashes, yellow squashes, Italian eggplants, orange paprika and some cherry tomatoes. All those, along with an onion and a few garlic cloves, had gone into a big pot and was simmering quietly by the obstinate brandade. Though the ratatouille looked beautiful, now that the brandade is out, I didn't have a "main" dish. I thought about taking a few ladles of ratatouille and turning it into a pasta sauce, but then I realized that I didn't have tomato paste or tomato sauce. Hmm.

1/3 pound of ground pork, leftover from the day before, was my savior. I sautéed the pork in a medium-sized pot, scooped out some of the summer veggies out of the ratatouille pot and threw them into the pork pot. Add a few cubes of Japanese curry roux, and voila, I had a decent Japanese-style curry to serve with some sticky rice. Pretty much everybody loves curry in Japan (especially meat-and-rice-craving hungry guys), and both Patrick and I are fond of the dish as well, so it worked out fine.

Curry was brought to Japan toward the end of the nineteenth century by the British, who, during their rule of India, had grown fond of the Indian cooking. The curry that the British taught the Japanese to cook had most likely been an Anglicized (and simplified ) version of the original Indian cookery, but it underwent further modification to suit the Japanese palate. At the time, the Japanese government was looking for ways to incorporate meats into Japanese diet, in order to build a body fit for an Western-style military. (Most Japanese people then had an aversion to eating meats, based on their Buddhist beliefs.) Along with sukiyaki, curry proved a handy tool for the government; first served in the Imperial Navy's mess halls, the Japanized curry gained popularity and spread out to the civilian society. Once a fancy dish served only in high-end Western restaurant for urban connoisseurs, curry is now one of the cheap and easy "national foods" of Japan that everyone, regardless of gender, age and class, eats monthly, if not weekly. Just like I did, many Japanese wives and mothers turn to this reliable dish in a pinch. After all, it's one of the rare dishes that are likely to delight most everybody in their household (except for, perhaps, their already skinny daughters on a vanity diet).

I'll have to use that mediocre brandade for something today--I'm thinking of Jansson's Temptation, a Swedish potato-and-anchovy gratin. Pray for me that it'll be edible...