It's been such a rainy August a mushroom sprouted up in my Greek oregano planter on the back porch! It would be nice if this were a Chanterelle (which I've never had--yet)...

Meanwhile, I've been worried about the declining service, especially on weekends, at Julius Meinl recently. Here's a review on Gapers Block's Drivethru, which I hope would help them get their acts together. I really don't want to see them close their doors--since that's where I first met Patrick!

With the exception of canned tuna, I've always been afraid of canned fish. My father used to bring home cans of mackerel in miso and sardines in sweet soy sauce to accompany his evening beer, and sometimes he offered a piece or two to me. At the tip of his chopsticks, these fish pieces glittered with oil and gooey sauce, reflecting the fluorescent lamp above our dining table. Often spattered with stray bits of strangely metallic skin and unidentifiable mixture of bones and guts, the fish out of the can never looked attractive to my child's eyes. My revulsion reached the crest when the fish was shoved just under my nose, where the fishy smell became almost overwhelming. I would recoil from the offending piece and make a face, as my father, now tipsy, placed the piece in his mouth, loudly lamenting his daughter's lack of appreciation but his face betraying his amusement.

So, it's a mystery that I started buying tinned seafood lately. The first was the smoked oyster in a tin that I picked up at a Vietnamese market along Broadway. Perhaps because the smoked oyster pasta came out well, I became bold and bought a tin of sardines next. And it was no ordinary tin of sardines--it was "Sultan's" sardines in chili oil, imported from Morocco.

There's a good chance that I was knocked out by the awesomely nostalgic package. It conjured up an image of a small village store with dust-covered merchandise slumbering in the darkness, sheltered from the sweltering heat outside. The Arabic writing on the other side of the box only added to my exoticism. The problem is--exoticism wasn't quite enough to make me open the tin. Once I opened it, I'd have only so many hours to use the fish before it goes bad. So, the tin sat in the cupboard for a few weeks before I finally made up my mind to use it.

When I opened the tin, I was surprised by the generous size of the fish inside. Somehow, I was expecting anchovy-sized fish cluttering the space, but instead, what I found was two plump pieces of sardines almost bursting out of the tiny container. Despite the annoyance of scales left on the fish, the small nibble I had of the sardine was fantastic. I had expected it to be fishy, oily, salty and maybe somewhat stale, but it was none of these. Thinking that I could eat this right out of the can, maybe on crispy toasts, or with grated daikon and ginger, I started cutting the cabbage--the other main ingredient of the evening's meal.

Sultan's Peperoncino (Spaghetti Peperoncino with Cabbage and Moroccan Sardines) (for two)

• 1 tin Moroccan sardines in chili oil
• 3-4 large cabbage leaves, chopped
• 6 oz spaghetti (I used whole wheat, just because)
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoon crushed dried chili pepper (fresh ones would be nicer)
• 1 1/2 tablespoon olive oil
• salt to taste

In a large pot, boil plenty of water. When the water is boiling, add a generous pinch of salt and add spaghetti. Cook to al dente.

Meanwhile, heat olive oil in a pan and fry the garlic and chili pepper. When it starts to smell nice, add the sardines. After a minute or two, add the cabbage and stir-fry them, crushing the sardines into bite-sized pieces. Salt to taste.

Transfer the pasta into the pan, mix, and serve when the pasta has a nice coat of olive oil.

Since the sardines weren't super-salty anchovies, the pasta came out to be a little milder than I'd expected. It could have used some more salty kick, perhaps, but it was a pretty nice comfort meal. I'm still not sure if I would gladly join my father in his occasional fish-in-a-tin drinking spree, but I'd be definitely buying these Sultan's Moroccan sardines again and again. Next time, I want to try cooking something Japanese with them--perhaps my father can enjoy it with me.

It's probably been fifteen or so years since the Japanese found the joy of combining the traditional flavors of soy sauce, sugar and fish stock with the all-encompassing richness of mayonnaise. I remember how (pleasantly) surprised I was when I first had a bite of mayonnaise-based salad made with burdock and carrots; it tasted somewhat like the conventional kimpira gobo (shredded burdock and carrots cooked with soy sauce and sugar), but the mayonnaise made it entirely new. It was almost Western, a far cry from what to my child's eyes appeared to be a shabby, unexciting veggie dish that made it on to the dinner table almost weekly. Of course, the addictive taste of the fat in mayonnaise was what captivated my then-childish palate, but the combination was widely embraced by the Japanese, young and old, male and female.

The burdock salad, purchased from a then-sprouting convenience store for a quick picnic lunch some fifteen years ago, blurred the boundary between Japanese nimono-style dishes and Western salads in my head for ever. And evidently the same thing happened on a much larger scale. Today, when you visit delis in "depa-chika" (large-scale food courts in the basements of department stores--a fantasy land for any foodie indeed), you'll see lots of crossover dishes like the mayonnaise-based burdock salad. Some use traditional vegetables in a new way (eating daikon raw, as a salad, for example, used to be unthinkable, but now it's a mundane dish) while others combine Japanese and Western flavors and methods. I'm not sure which of the two countries--U.S. or Japan--is more intent in creating new food trends, but surely Japanese vegetable dishes have undergone a tremendous expansion in the last decade. What used to be unthinkable merely ten years ago are now commonplace, and quite a few home cooks are still experimenting with the inspiration they get from commercially produced noubeau Japanese. (Note to self: I should look through some Japanese cookbooks here and see if any of these new ideas show up in them.)

Using a lotus root in a "salad" would be unthinkable for my heptagonalian grandmother (although she might enjoy it once she tried; she's quite adventurous when it comes to food). For her (and for me for a long time), lotus roots are something that we'd find either in kimpira or in nimono (mainly root veggies and sometimes chicken simmered together in soy sauce, sugar and fish stock). But now, I make lotus root salad, as a part of my mundane dinner table, and often to present leftover nimono with a more enjoyable flair.

Lotus Root and Hijiki Salad (for two)

This recipe calls for some leftover "hijiki no nimono," but if you don't have it at hand, you can substitute it with the same amount of rehydrated hijiki and vegetables of your choice (like carrots and beans). If you do this, you might want to increase the amount of noodle soup mix a bit.

• 3-4 inches lotus root*
• 4 tablespoon hijiki no nimono
• 1 green onion, chopped
• 1/2 tablespoon Japanese noodle soup mix ("dashi")
• 1 tablespoon mayonnaise
• 1/2 tablespoon sesame seeds

First, peel the lotus root. I always use a peeler because the lotus root has a uniquely brittle texture that makes it difficult to peel it with a knife (plus the holes inside mean that if I peel too thick, I'll make holes on the surface). Cut it lengthwise and slice into 1/10 inch thickness (see the photo above for an idea). As you cut the lotus root, throw the pieces into a bowl of water to prevent discoloration.

In a saucepan, boil some water. When the water is bubbling, add lotus root pieces and boil for five minutes. Drain.

In a bowl, mix lotus root, hijiki no nimono, green onion, noodle soup mix and mayonnaise. Sprinkle with sesame seeds and serve.

Lotus roots have a delightful crunch when lightly cooked. In fact, I think the best way to eat lotus roots is to enjoy that crunch, which is so often lost when the lotus roots show up in traditional nimono dishes that involve long and slow simmering. Although this salad-style preparation is very new in the scope of the Japanese cooking, I suspect this might be one of the best--or at least one of the fittest for the contemporary Japanese taste.

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* When buying lotus roots, look for ones without dark, soggy patches on the skin. Fresh ones are mostly uniform in color (sometimes with tiny speckles scattered evenly). Looking at the cut surface often helps: if the cut surface is dried up and/or soggy and brown, the lotus root probably isn't very fresh. If the store has them in sizes too large for you, try breaking them at the joints. (I'm a little fond of the "pop" they make when they snap...) To make your peeling job easier, choose one that's more or less straight, without too many dents and bumps, too!

That might have been the unhealthiest salad in my life. Though it was called a salad, it involved few vegetables: a handful of endive and a few strings of haricots verts (green beans). More prominently featured were a nice, runny poached egg and bits of lardon, the fattiest part of pork bacon. And to complete the cholesterol-laden scheme, it was on a bed of French fries, for god's sake. But was it tasty? Hey, do you even have to ask?

The Salad Lyonnaise at La Tache was, as I said, an antisalad. There's no illusion that it's going to be good for your health: unlike the chicken fingers on a bed of nutrientless iceberg lettuce drenched with fatty ranch dressing (that some restaurants try to push into the "healthy eating" category), it doesn't even pretend to be healthy. If you weigh the thing, it'll run something like this: 80 grams of endive and green beans; 250 grams of fries and bacon. But that doesn't matter, really, because you don't go out to eat healthy. You go out to eat tasty.

This salad was probably one of the best salads I've ever had, and it also might have been one of the best fries. (This is kind of a fun thing to say, actually.) I don't know what they fry their potatoes in, but they were packed with flavor. The greasy fries were balanced by the slight bitterness of the endive and the refreshing acidity of the "truffle vinaigrette," creating such a full combination of flavors. Bits of lardon added smoky and salty punch, and the runny egg yolk held everything together. It was a fantastic salad--if I dare to call it one. The other dish I had at La Tache--a crab cake appetizer--was way too oily and salty for my taste, but if only for the Lyonnaise salad, I'd go back to the Andersonville bistro. (Patrick's quail was quite nice as well, with its wild flavor largely intact but well complemented by the fresh and dried figs.)

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La Tache
1475 W. Balmoral, Chicago, IL
773.334.7168
Our waitress informed me (after I excitedly told her how good the salad was) that it's on the Sunday brunch menu as well--that sounds like a divine idea, to start a Sunday with that satisfying salad!

I have a sneaking suspicion that I've been writing this blog as if I were a knowledgeable expert of Japanese cooking--which I'm definitely not. I somehow learned to cook in my mom's kitchen, first by watching her cook, then "helping" her cook (this was more likely to be "interfering" with her cooking, in retrospect), and finally cooking things on my own from time to time so that my mom could take a day off (although she had to wash all the utensils and dishes afterward; I never learned the good cook's trick of washing soiled pots and pans as I cook). Doing so, I picked up a lot of the basics of Japanese home cooking, but naturally, I missed a lot of it, too. A part of the blame lies with my mom's (naturally) limited repertoire, while another falls on myself, who didn't pay enough attention (or wasn't in the kitchen at all) when my mom was cooking some of her dishes.

One such staple that had been missing from my knowledge was "hijiki no nimono." A short, deer-tail-shaped seaweed, hijiki is most traditionally simmered ("nimono") with root vegetables like carrots and burdock, thin fried tofu and shiitake mushrooms (and sometimes soy beans). Although I love hijiki no nimono, I never learned to cook it. Strangely enough, it was after I moved out of Japan to Chicago that I got motivated enough to figure out how to cook the seaweed.

Having my mom around was definitely handy. I just had to ask her how she does it, although her direction was, as is always the case with experienced cooks' directions, a hair too vague: "enough soy sauce mixed with a little bit of sugar--well, it depends on how you like it, too" wasn't exactly precise. But having eaten the simmered seaweed many times in my life, and having cooked other Japanese food of similar flavor profile, I did get a useful enough idea of the cooking method out of her direction. The first batch I made was on the salty side (and the volumetric expansion of the dried hijiki when rehydrated rather startled me; I ended up making a gallon of hijiki that time) , but the second batch, which I made last night, was pretty good, um, both in flavor and volume. For an expat, being able to reproduce one's favorite foods from the home country is almost a survival skill mainly boosting one's emotional well being, so I'm happy.

Hijiki no Nimono (Japanese hijiki seaweed simmered with root vegetables)

• 1/4 cup dried hijiki
• 1 carrot
• 1/4 burdock root (gobo)
• 1 thin fried tofu (abura-age)*
• 3 tablespoon Japanese soup stock mix (men-tsuyu)**
• water
• 1/3 inch ginger, minced
• 1/2 tablespoon sesame oil

1. Soak the hijiki in plenty of water 1 hour before you want to start cooking.
2. When the hijiki is rehydrated, discard the water and rinse the hijiki in a strainer.
3. Cut the carrot and burdock into match-stick thickness and 1/4 inch length, about the size of the individual hijiki. (This was the most patience-testing part for me!)
4. Cut the thin fried tofu just like the carrot and burdock. (If it has the nasty taste of the oil gone rancid, you can rinse it off by pouring boiling water over it.)
5. Heat sesame oil in a saucepan and fry the minced ginger over medium-low heat until the ginger starts to emit that appetizing smell.
6. Sautée the carrot and burdock on medium-high heat until mostly cooked, then add hijiki and stir-fry for a few minutes.
7. Add thin fried tofu and soup stock mix, turn the heat to low and simmer for five minutes.

This should last in the fridge for five days or so. (I'd say a week, but I don't want to be sued or anything...) When I get tired of eating the same thing every day, I mix it with scrambled eggs, or with steamed rice. Hijiki's umami works great in these leftover killers.

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* If you've had "inari zushi" or simply "inari," you've seen the "abura-age." It's the brown-colored pouch that wraps the sushi rice. For some reason, no general (i.e., non-Japanese) Asian grocer seems to carry this item, even though many of them carry the thicker version called "atsu-age." Unless you're an ultra-purist, you can substitute the elusive abura-age with the more common "atsu-age." Or, as a tasty alternative, chopped up fish cakes sometimes show up in this dish. ** If you don't have a Japanese soup mix at hand, use 1 tablespoon each of soy sauce and sugar instead. Soup mixes contain "umami" ingredients, but since hijiki, as a seaweed, contains a similar "umami" essence, soup mix isn't a must for this recipe.

It's probably been close to two weeks since we went to the crane-in-a-dumpster Greek restaurant out in Niles, for it was way before our move to the new apartment. ("Crane in a dumpster" is a Japanese expression meaning a gem in an unexpected place; "crane" here is that elegant, migratory bird, not the construction equipment that might be more closely associated with a dumpster.) Anyway, Mykonos on Golf Rd. is one of my favorite Greek restaurant in the area. Serving up consistently fresh seafood and good broiled meats at reasonable prices, Mykonos could very well be better than at least some of the mainstays in Greek Town.

Our visit on that day, though, was somewhat troubled: Mr. Waiter was a bit short on his English ability, and brought me a huge plate of fried calamari, instead of the baby squids grilled with a dash of lemon. The mustached guy, probably in his late forties or early fifties, looked more fitting to be fishing out in the blue Aegean Sea on his impeccable white boat--or maybe contemplating the next move on the chess board while sipping ouzo at a shady sidewalk table of a café--than waiting tables at a restaurant in the ocean-less Midwestern suburb. Since he was obviously doing his best, I didn't feel like sending the plate back to the kitchen. So I took the huge heap of fried calamari, which I was sure I wouldn't be able to finish in one sitting. Munching my way through the crunchy and tender, I was already starting to think what I would do with the leftover.

Somehow, by the end of the meal, my mind was set on transforming the Greek calamari into something Thai. (Don't ask me why.) The next day, I heated up the now-soggy calamari in the oven toaster till crisp again, and made some dressing by mixing equal parts of sweet chili sauce and lime juice. To accompany the fried calamari, I roasted a summer squash, sliced into medium-sized discs. With a handful of sliced red onion and a bunch of cilantro (both of which were added to the dressing, after being finely chopped) and another handful of Vietnamese pink mint, the Greek calamari successfully morphed into a refreshing Thai dish. (I have to admit, I felt a funny pride in this transformation.)

And even better yet, I finally got to use the antique (?) Japanese (?) tea cup we picked up at the Volo Antique Mall. Its orange trim looked quite nice against the otherwise ordinary, greenish glass plate!

It's been a week since we moved into our new apartment, but I seem to be still not in the pre-relocation rhythm of cooking-eating-blogging. For one thing, we haven't had a steady Internet connection since our move: our new landlords have been very generous to let us use their wireless connection, but somehow it's been flaky, to say the least. We had our phone line finally hooked up yesterday, but the AT&T person Patrick spoke to today told him (out of the blue) that we wouldn't be getting Internet until the 19th, God knows why.

I have been cooking, though; I made pretty good fried rice with the sweet, aromatic Chinese sausages I picked up after my fingerprinting sojourn with the USCIS (there was a sizable Asian market in the same shopping mall where the USCIS service center was located) on Wednesday, and on Thursday, we had Korean-ish stir-fried squid with kimchi. But the most noteworthy was (if any of my cooking ever is) the "relocation soba" we had on Monday, the day after we surrendered our old apartment.

Relocation soba, or "hikkoshi soba" in Japanese, is a customary meal after one moves from one place to the next. Usually a simple bowl of soba in warm dashi soup, or the same soba served chilled with cool dashi accompanied by wasabi and scallions in summer), hikkoshi soba is supposed to be shared with one's new neighbors. The Japanese can be quite fond of puns and jokes when it comes to what to eat for special occasions, and the hikkoshi soba isn't an exception.

Eating long noodles together with one's new neighbors is a way to wish for a good, long-lasting relationship with them in the new community. Although not too many people, especially city dwellers, engage in this ritual any more today, I'm sure it used to serve as an ice breaker, too, where the new neighbors would offer their help and share knowledge of the neighborhood while the newcomer would try to hide his skeleton in the cupboard from the plying noses of the new neighbors.

The same logic--long soba noodles corresponding to long something else--holds true for another special occasion: the New Year's Eve. Traditionally, the Japanese eat soba as the last meal on the New Year's Eve, usually waiting for the 108 gongs of temple bells that cleanse away our 108 worldly obsessions (yep, we have that many!). The idea here is to wish for the family members' longevity for years to come. We didn't share our relocation soba with our landlords/neighbors (who, I suspect, might have been amused if we had, but were away on vacation), hopefully the not-so-stunning soba I boiled up will bring us many fun years at our new apartment. (And hopefully we're getting the Internet back sooner than on the 19th! I'm quite tired of not knowing anything that's going on out in the world...)