Oh, boy, it's been a while.
During my absence, I found a new hobby--one that's not entirely unrelated to my love of good food. Since mid September, I've been taking a weekly class of pottery making, at a local studio. It was as much a result of boredom as that of frustration. I'd wanted more Japanese-style bowls and plates for my food (and for my food porn), but not too surprisingly, good ones are exceedingly rare in Chicago. Especially after the much-lamented closure of the Japanese ceramic shop in Mitsuwa, finding up-to-date ceramics at a reasonable price have been pretty much impossible. So, I thought, why don't I try making them myself? To begin with, we could use some ramen bowls.
Of course, it didn't go as planned. What I discovered during my first few days at the pottery studio was that it wasn't me who determined the shape of the finished product; it seemed that the clay itself decided to take one shape, and once it knew what it wanted to be, there was no way I could force it to become anything else. I cranked out a lot of lopsided, thick-walled bowls of varying sizes, in addition to quite a few outright dead ones (which, thankfully, could be recycled). Ramen bowls were at least a few months away, I decided, with a bit of amusement. And I meekly obeyed the commands of the wild, assertive lumps of clay on my throwing wheel.
The first trick I learned, therefore, was to "let live." Since most of my bowls came out uneven, I soon realized that I need to take their lopsidedness and turn it into something interesting, if I didn't want to start all over again. When one part of the wall had significantly more clay than the rest, I pinched the thick part to make a pour spout; when my finger got caught on the rim of a small dish, I squished the rim even more to give it an artsy flair. That sort of thing.
After a month and a half, I'm surprised to see how much progress I've made. Not that I'm a great potter by any stretch of imagination, but my bowls turn out much more even and they do listen to my commands more. It's not just the clay becoming whatever it wants to be, but now I can, at least sometimes, guide it to take more or less the shape I have in my head. And most of all, it's been such a fun.
Oh, and I've managed to make a few bowls that I can actually use on the dinner table, too. This shallow bowl with Tenmoku glaze is one of them:
Daikon Sprouts, Jamaican Pepper and Chicken Salad for two
Instruction would be just a line: toss all the ingredients together and serve. Daikon sprouts ("kaiware" in Japanese) have a very refreshing flavor akin to that of the shredded daikon you find next to your sashimi. Don't forget to rinse them thoroughly, though--there was a huge outbreak of E-Coli in Japan, blamed on daikon sprouts about a decade ago. This incident, much like the recent contaminated spinach incident here, drove all the daikon sprouts off the supermarket shelves. It took years for the supermarkets to muster the courage to carry them again, and those were sad years--I love the wasabi-like, refreshing flavor of the daikon sprouts. The slight bitterness of the pepper is quite nice, though not absolutely necessary, in this salad.
Bitter melon was unknown to the mainland Japanese until very recently. Although bitter melons have been grown in southern Kyushu as well as in Okinawa, it was only after the Okinawan food boom in the late '90s that the most Japanese people came to contact with this easy-to-grow, fun-to-cook vegetable. Nowadays, though, it seems that quite a number of the mainland Japanese are addicted to the biting bitterness of bitter melons. When Patrick had a stir-fried bitter melon in oyster sauce at a restaurant in Chicago's Chinatown, he, too, got addicted.
I myself am not too big on bitter melons--or so I thought. The bitterness was a bit too much for me. But the other day, I saw a large heap of pretty good-looking bitter melons at H Mart, and decided to get one for my beloved husband (haha). Since I had some pork belly and fried tofu at hand, I decided to cook gôya champloo, an Okinawa-style stir-fried bitter melon, for dinner. (Gôya refers to bitter melon in Okinawan language/dialect.)
It turned out surprisingly well: I actually liked the dish. And it wasn't "despite" the bitterness, but "because of." It was easy to make with relatively cheap ingredients, too, and I suspect that I might start buying more bitter melon that I would have imagined just a few days ago.
Gôya Champloo (Okinawa-style stir-fried bitter melon; for two generous servings)
Cut the bitter melon lengthwise in half and remove the pulp, using a spoon. slice them into about 1/5 inch thickness. Soak the cut bitter melon in salt water, if you prefer mild bitterness. (I soaked my bitter melon pieces for about 30 minutes, and it nicely cut down on the bitterness.) Cut all the ingredients as shown above.
Heat the oil in a frying pan, and start with the pork belly. Once the pork is mostly cooked, set it aside. Add carrots to the pan, followed by bitter melon. When the vegetables are mostly cooked through, add the fried tofu. Stir-fry carefully, so the tofu won't break into tiny bits. Then put the meat back into the pan.
Season with soy sauce, dashi powder and salt. Quickly follow the seasoning with beaten egg. (Give the egg a bit of time to cook before stirring here.) Sprinkle with bonito flakes, give it one last mix and serve.
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NHK, the Japanese national TV network, broadcast a drama series set in Okinawa, and within that drama, they introduced a silly little character called "gôya man." It's an anthropomorphized bitter melon with an yellow helmet--and, well, it's pretty cute. If you feel like it, go to Japanese google and copy and paste this: ゴーヤーマン.
I'm not that concerned about what MSG might do to my (and Patrick's) already chemical-ridden body, but I wanted to do it from scratch. It's the stock-making that's I'm talking about. Stock-making (or dashi-making) is considered the very basic of the Japanese cooking, but I'd never done that before. Like so many other Japanese amateur cooks, I'd relied, all my life, on powdered dashi-like substance and liquid soup base mix, which contain a substantial amount of MSG. They're very easy to use, and are quite tasty; some of them, especially the liquid ones, taste better than the real, made-from-scratch dashi that my grandma and aunt used to make. My mom has been using the same evil substances as I do for a long time, so I don't quite remember what her made-from-scratch dashi tasted like, which explains why I don't have any aversion to using the pre-made dashi powder and soup mix. Although made-from-scratch dashi used by high-end Japanese restaurants is mindbogglingly better than the pre-made one, it seemed that unless you're an experienced cook, you're better off using the dashi powder and soup mix.
But somehow, not knowing how to make dashi from scratch and having never even tried it have become a skeleton in the cupboard for me. I've grown apprehensive that some day, somewhere, someone will pop out of the bush and accuse me: "You keep a food blog as if you knew something, when you don't even know how to make dashi? And pretend that you're interested in Slow Food? Noooonesense!" Well, not really, but you know what I mean. It's like being a French cook who always uses bouillon cubes and canned chicken soup stock. It's like building an elaborate castle before laying a solid base structure. I just don't have the basics done.
So, yesterday, I finally looked up some dashi-making methods and tried it myself. Luckily, Japanese-style dashi doesn't require the same intensive labor as the Western-style chicken stock. All you need is a pot, water, bonito flakes, a bit of kombu, a strainer, a stove and maybe ten minutes--all of which I had at hand.
From what little I read about dashi-making, the following seems to be the consensus.
1) Wipe away any dust from the surface of the kombu (kelp).
2) Soak kombu in cold water for a while.
3) Bring the kombu-water to a boil, and retrieve the kombu just before it reaches the boiling point.
4) Add a handful of bonito flakes (katsuo-bushi), give it ten seconds and turn the heat off.
5) Wait till all the bonito flakes have settled on the bottom, then strain.
I more or less followed the direction, except for the last bits about giving only ten seconds to the bonito flakes and waiting for them to settle. Somehow, I didn't notice these two points, so I probably boiled the pot for a minute or two after throwing in the bonito flakes. Then I didn't give time for them to settle before straining the dashi. It smelled good, though--the intense, aged aroma of the bonito flakes had a subtle lining of the sweet and earthy aroma of the kombu. Excited, I used half of the dashi for the miso soup (with daikon, oyster mushrooms, wakame and green onions), while putting away the other half for later use.
The result was a little bit disappointing. The dashi didn't stand up to the relatively powerful flavor of the miso. The soup wasn't as flat as it would have been without the dashi, but it wasn't as satisfyingly complex as my usual one made with the powdered dashi. Five possible reasons came to my mind:
a) The two points where I didn't follow the direction somehow ruined, or didn't extract enough of, the bonito flavor.
b) The ingredients I used for the dashi were sub-par (this is quite likely, since they were one of the los cheapos I picked up from Mitsuwa long time ago).
c) The dashi I made wasn't suitable for miso soup.
d) I didn't use enough dashi.
e) I cooked the miso soup for too long, letting the flavor evaporate into thin air.
While I suspect the less-than-expected result was a combination of all the factors, but I also think that c) might be a larger part of it. The dashi taken from bonito flakes and kombu this way is called "ichiban dashi," meaning "the first stock." Subtle but elegant in flavor, Ichiban dashi is usually used for dishes where you enjoy the flavor of the stock itself, with minimum additional flavoring agents. For something like miso soup, which requires a potent dashi to stand up against the powerful flavor of the miso, other kinds of dashi is recommended.
Niban dashi, or "the second stock," is made from the bonito flakes and kombu recycled from the process of making the ichiban dashi, combined with some fresh bonito flakes and kombu. Niban dashi has more robust and less subtle flavor than ichiban dashi, and is used for nimono and sometimes for miso soup. For miso soup, however, the best dashi seems to be one taken from niboshi (boiled-then-dried baby fish), which imparts a stronger flavor than bonito flakes. (It really depends on the family and the palate; my grandma, for one, always used freshly shaved bonito flakes for her miso soup.)
Though my first attempt at real dashi-making was less than satisfactory (I didn't even mention that to Patrick at dinner table!), I'm determined to try more. Before I run to the store for better-grade bonito flakes and maybe some niboshi, I'll fix the problems a), d) and e). But the scary fact of all is--sort of reminiscent of the MacDonald's and company--that it's probably much cheaper to use the powdered dashi and liquid soup mix than to make good dashi from scratch with decent ingredients. Is this economy crooked, or what?
Continue reading "Trying My Hand at Dashi-Making"Pickled nozawana was one of the few things that I'd been craving for since I moved to Chicago. It's very difficult to find a fresh one, since the pickle turns sour pretty quickly and (not surprisingly) it doesn't seem to be produced in the U.S. So, I was literary elated when I found a bag of fresh-looking pickled nozawana at H Mart yesterday. It'd been more than four years since I had my last ration of this wonderful pickle.
As you can see in the photograph, fresh pickled nozawana has this beautiful, deep but vibrant green hue. When it turns sour, the green becomes dull and an unconcealable tinge of brown sets in. Not that there aren't people who prefer aged nozawana that's turned sour (quite a few Japanese people do, in fact), but I'm just not big on that sour taste in aged pickles in general.
Nozawana is a crunchy, leaf vegetable that belongs to the turnip family. For something in the turnip family, it grows rather big: a fully grown nozawana can reach three feet. Preferring chilly and misty climate of the highland, nozawana is a specialty of the village of Nozawa, and grown in the surrounding Shin-etsu region. Although I did come across a few American seed companies (such as the Kitazawa Seed Co. in California) that distributes nozawana seeds, I've never seen one being sold fresh anywhere around Chicago.
Nozawana has a distinctive flavor that's difficult to describe. (Well, well, this shows my limitation...) The closest vegetable I've had in the U.S. is the generically called "potherb" stir-fried with shredded pork, served at the Lao Szechuan (a surprisingly stylish website they have!). Whatever they're calling "potherb" has a different texture from nozawana--the one at Lao Szechuan seems denser and less crunchy, but the flavors are very close. Strange for a vegetable, both nozawana and the "potherb" have a hint of meaty umami. My amateur's guess is that they have some amino acids that produce this complex, meat-like flavor.
Guessing aside, nozawana is just really tasty. If you find one on a restaurant's menu or in a Japanese grocer's fridge, grab and try it. I'd planned an American-style dinner for yesterday, but the nozawana changed it all: I had to have rice, with the nozawana, so I did. Ah, I could have eaten the whole bag in one sitting, with maybe three bowls of rice! I didn't need anything else (although I did behave myself and had a balanced meal). I hope Patrick wasn't too taken aback by my uncharacteristically ferocious defense when he tried to snatch the last piece of nozawana--I just had to have that one, too. It's mine. It's all mine...
My happiest day would be when one of the area farmers start growing nozawana and sell them in farmers' markets...
Continue reading "(My Personal) Pickled Nozawana Craze"I was a weird kid who loved to flip through my mom's old cookbooks. She didn't have too many, perhaps three or four in all, that she had picked up in the early days of her married life in the mid-'70s in Tokyo. Looking at them now, most of the dishes featured in these old cookbooks have almost no appeal to my (spoiled) eyes. The presentation is painfully outdated (thick stoneware plates with brown lines around the edge--an unmistakable mark of the '70s), and what must have been exotic dishes, made with what little imported ingredient available at the time, now appear lacking in authenticity. The strangely genteel instructions, combined with the kind explanations of exotic ingredients and novel preparations (that have since become mundane) are almost quaint.
It was evidently not so for the ten-year-old me, for quite a few of the entries have marks--ranging from simple circles to stars and flowers--that I penciled in as I leafed through these cookbooks. My hope was that my mom would look at the marks, realize that I wanted to try those particular dishes, and cook them for me. That rarely happened, for my mom was not an eager cook (though she was and is a good one), but a few of the recipes she did try stuck around, in one form or the other.
One such is the Toban Djan Pumpkin, a dish that blurs the boundary between the Japanese home cooking and the Chinese cooking. It takes one of the staple veggies in Japanese cooking--pumpkin--and combine it with a Chinese chili bean paste. Back when the recipe was included in the cookbook, toban djan (Lee Kum Kee makes one) was probably not an everyday condiment in a normal Japanese housewife's kitchen. (Accordingly, the editor of the cookbook accompanied the recipe with a little expose of what it is.) Toban djan was beyond my ten-year-old culinary imagination, so I didn't mark it as "I want." Then, years later, when I was flipping through the cookbook (again), I found the recipe. Being a lazy ass, I asked my mom to try it (even though I was more than old enough to cook it myself), and this time she did.
It was so good that it's been in our repertoire ever since. We've both tinkered with the recipe over time, and our version features celery, which was not in the original recipe but gives an indispensable flavor twist to the dish in my opinion.
Toban Djan Pumpkin (for two)
Remove the pulp from the pumpkin and cut it into thin, bite-sized chunks (see the photo). Slice the celery diagonally.
In a pan, heat some oil and fry minced ginger and toban djan. (Be careful not to inhale the über-spicy toban djan fume--I accidentally did once, and it was pretty agonizing.) When the ginger and toban djan start to emit that appetizing aroma, add celery, then pumpkin and stir-fry, till the vegetables have turned a little translucent and have a nice coat of aromatic oil.
Add water, bouillon powder, sugar and green onions and simmer till most of the water is gone. I usually keep the lid on during this process, but when I want the water to evaporate faster (say, before the pumpkin lose all its shape), I take it off.
The heat of the toban djan compliments the earthy sweetness of the pumpkin, while (I thin) the celery and ginger somehow bridge the two very different flavors. It's good right off the stove, but it's also wonderful chilled on hot summer evenings--a good reason to make more than one serving and refrigerate! My mom used to be a bit taken aback by how her gluttonous daughter (thats me, yeah) kept looking through the same four or five cookbooks all the time, but thanks to my gluttonous obsession, we now have a pretty good pumpkin recipe to spice up our autumn table.
Below is the "before" photo of the beautiful Japanese kuri pumpkin.
Continue reading "When a Child's Obsession Pays"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.
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!
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)
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 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...)
What I didn't realize while in Japan was how many aromatic ingredients the Japanese traditional cooking relies on. When I thought of Japanese cuisine, I usually wouldn't think of herbs and spices--I was more inclined to associate them with exotic cuisines like Thai and Indian, not my mundane Japanese food. But living in a foreign country, where the mainstay of Japanese herbs and spices are hard to come by, has made me realize that there are, indeed, a lot of aromatics involved in the Japanese cooking. And by gory, good ones are hard to find.
Ginger is probably the easiest to find, although the "shin-shoga," fresh ginger shoot just growing out of a thin, not-yet-plump ginger root (that looks a bit like fa fingerling potato)--a delicacy that powerfully signifies the advent of early summer--seems impossible to find. Dried spices like sansho (prickly ash) are also stocked in Japanese markets. When it comes to fresh herbs, things get a bit tougher. Fresh herbs--like cilantro-like mitsuba, sharp and tangy kinome (young leaves of sansho; prickly ash), and pale but potent myoga--are sometimes found in Mitsuwa, a large, suburban Japanese market, but they're invariably expensive and I can't say they're the freshest of all. Citrus fruits are the worst: the USDA doesn't seem to like the idea of importing of citrus fruits of any kind from abroad (which is not surprising, considering the danger of the citrus canker). So, if I wanted yuzu, sudachi, or kabosu, which all have generically citrusy yet unique flavors, I don't have any choice but to go for overpriced and odd-tasting bottled juices.
Until very recently, shiso was one of the elusive herbs. (It's the green leaf with rugged edges and pointed tip that you sometimes find on your sushi plate.) Granted, many Japanese people grow their own shiso (including my green-thumbed mom whose green genes I don't seem to have inherited), and I could grow my own--if only the apartment were a bit sunnier. Granted, too, shiso is available at Mitsuwa for not so bad of a price at about $1 for 10 leaves. But somehow, getting the shiso from Mitsuwa doesn't seem to work for me. Perhaps it's the precise calculation that each leaf costs 10 cents that makes me reluctant to use them extravagantly. Combined with their short shelf life (about three days before dark marks appear), my strange reluctance to use them in large quantities often leaves three or four dark, soggy leaves perishing in my fridge. So, as much as I like their minty and floral aroma, I've mostly stayed away from shiso. Until recently, that was.
When I was studying the perky herbs in the Tai Nam food market on Broadway the other day, I saw a bag of "pink mint" and picked it up. On the front, the leaves were green; on the back, purple. They looked like a smaller and little bit sturdier version of the beloved shiso leaves. I snuck a glance up and down the aisle, and seeing that there weren't anyone around, I pinched the tip of a leaf that was sticking out of the package. Sure enough, the leaf smelled exactly like shiso. I picked up a package, biked home and started cooking. This time, with a large bowl full of pseudo-shiso bursting out of the tight plastic bag, I felt I could be extravagant with them.
I had a handful of shiitake mushrooms and about half a pound of ground chicken in the fridge. An idea quickly formed in my head. I started by chopping up a generous--truly generous--amount of pink mint. The back side of the leaves were beautiful--its purple, tinged with green and a hint of gold, was almost ethereal. I admired the color for a moment, then mixed the chopped shiso leaves with ground chicken, an egg, some corn starch, sesame oil, salt and pepper. Stuffed onto the shiitake mushrooms and sautéed in a pan, the shiso-infused chicken meatballs became a refreshing and satisfying entrée. For the sauce, I mixed equal parts of soy sauce and mirin with a chopped pickled plum. There was so much pseudo-shiso that I even used them for garnish (gasp!). It felt good to use my favorite Japanese herb without worrying about the cost and calculating how many there are left in the fridge.
As it turned out later, pink mint (or tia to in phonetic Vietnamese) was a popular Vietnamese herb among the ex-pat Japanese people craving for the familiar taste of shiso. It was kind of funny to see so many food blogs scattered all over the world--from Bangkok to Paris--by Japanese cooks substituting shiso with tia to. So many of them expressed delight when finding this superb substitute for the familiar herb, often after a long search and an even longer dry spell. Though I don't know any of the bloggers personally, I felt a strange connection, maybe even a camaraderie of some sort, with the fellow ex-pats. All thanks to my unplanned move to a foreign country full of ethnic immigrants.
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...
Japanese food is very healthy.
Is that what you generally take to be true? Apparently it is, for many Americans. I've been slowly reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a recent book in which Barbara Kingsolver, the author, documents her year of thriving on locally grown foods, including ones from her own garden. This otherwise very informed author ventures to say that Japanese kids prefer boiled and salted edamame over Twinkies for their snack food of choice. Excuse me? As far as I know, most Japanese kids reach for sweet or fried snack food over such "healthy" veggie alternative, any day of the week. (God knows I grew up on cookies, chocolate and potato chips!) They may not have Twinkies there, but they have plenty of other oh-it's-bad-for-you snack foods that sell extremely well. I have to wonder where she got that wild idea. ("Unless there's a group of people without the genes that crave for sugar and fat, everyone more or less would go for Twinkies; we're hard-wired for those flavors associated with high calories," Patrick said, and that's true.)
And of course, she's not alone in that belief. Maybe it is generally true that the average Japanese eating habit is healthier than the average American eating habit, but it seems bizarre to me that so many people automatically associate Japanese food with healthy eating. Because, every so often, it's not so.
A bowl of katsudon in the food court of Mitsuwa Marketplace.
Take this bowl of katsudon, for example. A favorite lunch item for many a Japanese corporate soldiers, katsudon features a piece of center cut pork, breaded and deep-fried in oil, then cooked briefly in soysauce-and-sugar broth, topped with an egg, some onions and served on a thick bed of rice. I haven't met a single Japanese person who doesn't like this dish, and it's a comfort food for me, too. But, the horrifying truth is, an average bowl of katsudon packs, perhaps not so surprisingly, over 1,000 calories and about 60% of your daily fat allowance. And forget about vegetables; a few cooked-down pieces of onions are all you get. (If you're lucky, it might come with a small dish of pickled cucumbers and daikon, but that adds to the sodium intake, too, while most of the vitamins are probably long gone.) Katsudon is no healthier than a Big Mac, and we love it.
Sushi, which is considered to be healthy in the U.S., is also a nutritional suspect in Japan. The fish part is fine. The rice part is the problem. Sushi vinegar has so much sugar and salt dissolved in it that diabetics and those with high blood pressure are often advised not to eat too much sushi. (My father was, for one.) And let's face it, where are the veggies for which the Japanese cooking is so prized?
Well, maybe I'm being too harsh on the eating habits of my own people. We do seem to place less emphasis on fatty meat than an average Western cook. But we do have our own culinary problem, which is (traditionally) the excess intake of sodium. Miso soup, pickles and salted dried fish--it all adds up pretty quickly. The Japanese may not die from colon cancer in massive numbers, but we do die massively from strokes and heart attacks. Different food cultures have different healthy problems inherent in them, and fantasizing an exotic food culture to be purely healthy without acknowledging its dubious side(s) seems not just dangerous but a little symplistic. I was in fact surprised by Kingsolver's innocent remark, for throughout the book, up till the (doomed?) 303rd page, she kept me admiring her wide range of knowledge about how food is grown and how it's preserved, with an occasional social and economic expositions of American industrial food production.
I suppose everybody fantasizes about exotic food, in one way or the other. And it's perhaps quite telling that many of us in this society attaches health claims to our fantasies of exotic food and the culture that accompanies it.
We Japanese love to massacre modify different Western cuisines to make them suit our taste. (You might remember the soy sauce-based mushroom spaghetti I wrote about a while back.) One of the frequent victims is the Italian food--there are quite a few spaghetti dishes that you don't see anywhere outside of Japan, or outside of Japanese cooks' kitchens. We might add miso to a simple tomato sauce to give it an extra depth of flavor. "Natto," fermented soybeans, also makes its appearance in spaghetti dishes. We might even use "shiokara," various seafood, often squid, marinated and fermented in its own innards (I know it sounds gross, but a good one can be fantastic) as a base for the sauce.
Though I'm not a huge fan of "natto spa," as this type of spaghetti is often called, I am deeply in love with another perennial Spaghetti Giapponese: spaghetti with spicy pollack roe. Spicy pollack roe, originally from Korea, is raw pollack roe preserved in salt and red chili, and is usually eaten with a bowl of rice or as an accompaniment for sake. Mentaiko, as it's called, can be a little bit daunting for someone with an aversion to oceanic flavor (I had to overcome my initial revulsion, too, since mentaiko smells pretty fishy), but once you get over it, it can be quite addictive. Mentaiko loses some of its wild fishiness when it's cooked, so spaghetti with mentaiko (or "mentai spa" in short) is one of my favorite dishes that involve this ingredient.
I don't know who invented the "mentai spa," but it's a pretty simple dish. In fact, I might venture to say that its simplicity faithfully reflects the simplicity of Italian pasta dishes. The main ingredients are the spaghetti, mentaiko, butter, soy sauce and nori (seaweed you find wrapped around your "maki" sushi). It's simple, but the fishy, salty mentaiko, the fatty, rich butter and the aromatic nori blend extremely well with each other. And it's ridiculously easy to make; it's one of the easiest meals to cook, even if you don't know how to cook at all. Indeed, there's no knife involved, either, other than the butter knife you might use to transfer the butter from the butter case to the pan.
Spaghetti with Spicy Pollack Roe (for one)
First, boil the pasta in plenty of water with a pinch of salt. While the pasta is cooking, squeeze the pollack roe out of its thin skin. To get the tiny roe out of the fragile skin, I like to cut one end of the roe sack and pull the sack between two chopsticks tightly held together, but if you aren't used to using chopsticks, you can also do this by breaking the sack open and scrape the roe out with a spoon. When the pasta is al dente, drain the water from the pot, remove it from heat, and add butter, pollack roe and soy sauce. Mix well. The pollack roe cooks by the heat of the pasta. Place the pasta on a plate and top it with shredded nori and shiso leaves, cut into thin strips.
The other day I made this spaghetti for lunch, for the first time in many, many years, and totally fell in love with it again. The punchy heat and fishiness of the mentaiko had morphed into incredibly delicate hint of spice and oceanic flavor, and the butter's dairy richness held it all together. (Just writing this makes my mouth water... Ah!) For folks out there with higher seafood tolerance, I highly recommend this Japanified Italian recipe. Oh, yeah, you should eat it with a pair of chopsticks, too!
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Mentaiko can be found in freezer cases in Japanese or Korean markets. They may come in fancy packages, since they're a bit more expensive. (I think I bought mine, a fake-wood box of 7 oz for $12 or $16.) They're expensive, but you really don't need a ton of them to give flavor to your dishes, so a relatively small package should last you for a while. I got mine at the H Mart (801 Civic Center Drive, Niles, IL).
Using a Japanese eggplant and a little bit of daikon radish that we picked up from the Green City Market on Saturday, I made "asazuke," Japanese-style light pickle. Though it's called a pickle, it's more like a salad than a pickle; it takes only 20 minutes or so in the fridge for the veggies to be ready for din-din. Well chilled and spiced, asazuke can be a refreshing side dish for any summer meal. The added salt dehydrate the veggies a little, making it easier to eat a lot of vegetables than in their bulky, raw state.
Daikon and Eggplant Asazuke (for two, and a bit of leftover for tomorrow)
Slice the daikon and eggplant into 1/8 - 1/10 inch thickness. You can make them thicker or thinner, depending on how fast you want the pickle to be ready. In a hurry, make them thinner; I like to keep them crunchy, so I usually stick to this sickness. Place them in a small ziploc bag, sprinkle salt, kobucha, minced ginger and hot chili pepper over them. Shake the bag so that all the veggie slices are mixed with the condiments and spices, and "knead" the bag a little. Push the air out of the bag, seal it and place it in the fridge until dinner time. When dishing out, squeeze out the excess water by hand.
I added shredded shiso (perilla) leaves on top. Though it's not absolutely necessary, its sweet, faintly fennel-like aroma was quite wonderful on the pickle that combines the refreshing tang of the ginger and the heat of the red chili.
I've done this with normal radishes, and they work pretty well. Also good in this dish are cucumbers (ones with tender skins, like Japanese or Persian cucumbers are the best), carrots and even celeries. Just like cucumbers, you would want eggplants with their skins on the tender side. If the ones at hand seem to have tough skin, you can also peel them partially (so that the remaining skin looks like purple streaks on the white fresh), which is what Japanese professional chefs often do with their eggplants to make them look nicer.
* Kobucha--or kombucha--is a kind of instant drink made from powdered kelp (kobu, or kombu). Since kobu has a ton of natural umami compounds, kobucha is often used as a flavor enhancer in contemporary Japanese cooking. For example, I've used this in a simple mushroom spaghetti. Though you don't have to use kobucha for the pickle (traditional recipe doesn't call for one), with kobucha you can get additional depth of flavor that's unachievable with just veggies and salt.
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By the way, my post about the unassuming yet delicious Georgian bakery, Argo Bakery, is on Gapers Block Drive Thru today.
Yesterday, I posted a super-easy recipe for shiratama dango, dessert rice dumplings from Japan, on Gapers Block Drive Thru, here, but I wanted to follow it up with a slightly more complicated presentation of the same versatile dumplings. (For the explanation of the shiratama dango and how to make them, see that post.)
The traditional way to enjoy shiratama dango (which roughly translates to "white pearl dumplings") is to dress them with a mixture of soybean flour, sugar and a touch of salt, or with the ubiquitous sweet red bean paste. I modified the sweet red bean paste for this recipe.
Shiratama Dango with Roasted Jewel Yam Paste, Orange Ginger Syrup (for three to four people)
First, roast the whole jewel yam in an oven for 5 hours at 200 degrees. Slow-roasting the yam will bring out its sweetness and condense its otherwise subtle flavor. When it's cooked through, peel it by hand and mash through a strainer into a small saucepan. On a low heat, mix 3 tablespoons of sugar into the yam paste, and let the moisture escape for a while, stirring constantly. Cool the paste in the fridge.
For the syrup, heat 1/4 cup of water in a small saucepan. Throw in sliced and crushed ginger, dried orange peel and 2 tablespoons of sugar. Simmer down until the liquid becomes syrupy. Cool the syrup in the fridge.
When the paste and the syrup are nice and cool, start the dumplings. Mix water into the shiratamako (sweet rice flour) little by little. The best way to mix them is to use your hand, and when the dough is "tender as earlobe," stop adding water. (The above amount is just for an idea. Adjust the amount for yourself, aiming for a dough that's not powdery but doesn't stick to your hands too much. Drier dough is easier to handle.) Meanwhile, boil 2 cups of water in a saucepan. When the dough has the right texture, form it into small balls--about 1 inch in diameter--and flatten them between your palms. Make a dent in the middle so the dumplings will cook evenly.
Drop the dumplings one by one into boiling water. They'll sink to the bottom at first, but they'll float to the surface when they're done. When they come up to the surface, take them out with a slotted spoon and cool in a bowl of cold water. (Don't put them in the fridge, because excessive chill makes them toughen.) Assemble the dumplings, yam paste and ginger syrup in a nice dessert bowl and serve. The dumplings have a tender yet resilient texture, and retain the subtle hint of its rice origin in flavor. The kicky heat of the ginger is pretty nice in this otherwise sweet dessert. Best with hot green tea!
Chili, originally grown in Latin America and "discovered" by the European invaders during the 15th and 16th centuries, is probably one of the most widespread ingredients in the world. It seems that a myriad of different chili "peppers" are cultivated and used pretty much everywhere in the world. (Though chili is often called a pepper, the two species aren't related.) Japan is not an exception; since the introduction of the red chili in the late 16th century, the spicy fruit has become an indispensable part of the Japanese traditional cuisine. According to an Wikipedia article, soon after its introduction to Japan, chili replaced black peppers, which had been introduced from Persia via China and widely used as the source of spicy heat. The fact that black peppers were more commonly used for seasoning udon noodles seem rather odd to the modern Japanese ears, because we're now so used to using chili for that purpose that using black pepper in udon almost sounds exotic and innovative.
Red chili gave rise to a very popular spice mix, "shichimi to-garashi." "Shichimi" means "seven flavors," while "to-garashi" means "foreign spicy stuff." In a culinary tradition that doesn't have too many other spice mixes, shichimi (as it's often called) is a curiosity. Because red chili was imported as a medicine, the shichimi was born in a pharmaceutical district of Tokyo called Yagenbori. ("Yagen" is a mortar that apothecaries used to grind medicinal herbs and spices.) In 1625, an apothecary mixed red chili with Szechuan peppers, mandarin orange peels, black sesame, poppy seeds, etc., all of which had purported medicinal value, to create a condiment with a health appeal. Thus created, shicnimi became a mainstay in the urban Edo culture where people sprinkled it generously in their soba noodles for an extra kick. I use shichimi in miso soup, especially when it contains chicken or pork; on soba and udon; and most frequently on kimpira veggies.
Amazingly enough, after nearly 400 years, the descendants of the original shichimi maker are still in the same business in Asakusa district of Tokyo. Their spice store, Yagenbori Nakajima Shoten, is considered to be one of the three most revered shichimi producers in Japan. Unfortunately, most people, including myself, rely on national brands like S&B, photographed above, for everyday use, but the flavors and aromas are much stronger in the freshly ground and freshly mixed shichimi sold at traditional shichimi stores.
When Patrick and I visited Sanja Matsuri (a huge, energetic festival in Asakusa) last year, we saw a stall selling the traditional shichimi. With boxes of colorful ingredients--red chili, golden sesame seeds, green nori and so on--and the old vendor guy in a traditional artisan outfit, the stall made me feel as if I'd slipped into the bustling streets of Edo, 300 years ago. The wonderful thing about these traditional stores and stalls is that you can have them make your shichimi according to your own taste. If you want it more citrusy, they'll add more orange peel. If you like heat, they'll increase the ratio of red chili. Furthermore, each store has its own recipe: Yawataya Isogoro in Nagano prefecture, for example, uses ginger and shiso, which gives their mix a refreshing fragrance. I believe there is a permanent stand along the Nakamise mall that leads up to the Asakusa Temple (Senso-ji), so if you'd like a taste of traditional Japanese spice mix, and happen to be in Japan, check out that store. Otherwise, shicnimi is available in small jars at Japanese grocery stores, and many of the Asian grocers as well.
If you like variety, you might be a little weary of the onslaught of all these barbecue-get-togethers. If that's the case (or even if you're totally fine with lots of invariable barbecues), you might try different marinades for the meat you slap onto the grill. America has lots of amazing barbecue sauces, but so does East Asia, where I came from. I recently made a Korean-style barbecue marinade at home, and it was soooo good I'm going to share it.
To make about a cup of Korean BBQ Marinade, you'll need the following:
The key to a well-rounded marinade is to sautée the onion and garlic thoroughly, until their stinging raw smell dissipates. First, purée the chopped onion and garlic cloves in a food processor, and fry them in heated sesame oil, slowly on low heat. Meanwhile, mix all the other ingredients in a separate bowl, and add chopped prunes in the mix. Purée this mixture as well. When the raw smell is gone and replaced by that nice, sweet-ish aroma of cooked onions, add the mixture into the saucepan. Mix well and cook for about 15 minutes, on low heat. Stir occasionally to prevent burning.
I marinated strips of beef rib meat in this sauce for a few hours, fried them in a pan, and added some more of the sauce at the end of the cooking. Using shredded daikon, shredded carrots, mizuna and boiled spinach, I made this Korean barbecue into a slightly healthier fare, but I could have accompanied the meat with grilled veggies as well. The sauce had that spicy, sweet and complex flavor of the pre-made Korean BBQ sauces that I sometimes crave, so I was very happy.
To be specific, the Korean BBQ sauce I'm talking about is the Korean BBQ sauces made and sold in Japan. Korean BBQ is called “yakiniku” in Japanese, meaning, simply, “grilled meats.” Yakiniku shows a heavy influence from the Korean-style BBQ; its origin is considered to be the grilled meats that the Korean people, who had been brought over to Japan for forced labor during the WWII, cooked for themselves after the war. (Discriminated and massively underpaid, they used cheap or unwanted organs.) This grilling method and marinade soon spread, and developed into something uniquely Japanese over the years. The boundary is decidedly blurry; Some considers yakiniku to be Korean, others see it as a part of the Japanese everyday food. One thing for sure is that the yakiniku marinade in Japan deviates a little bit from the "real" Korean BBQ sauces used in Korea; nevertheless, it is the less authentic Japanese ones that I thirst for.
Since all the ingredients have been cooked with lots of salt and sugar, the sauce should keep in the fridge for at least a week. I know this marinade requires a lot of "exotic" condiments (like toban djan and mirin), so if you have any question about where to get them, what the hell they are, and what to substitute them with, feel free to leave a comment! (Or, you can be totally lazy and get the pre-made ones in Asian grocery stores, too. Pre-made ones are pretty tasty, and I used to use them exclusively, although I might not go back to the habit now that I've discovered the joy of making it myself.)
Now...what I want is a charcoal grill and an apartment with a porch to cook the meat marinated in this sauce. And a beer. Then my life would be sooooo peachy.
If you've ever been to grocery stores that cater to East Asian people, you might have seen a peculiarly long root vegetable called burdock. Called "gobo" in Japanese, burdock roots are one of the staple vegetables on Japanese tables. Burdocks have a wonderfully earthy, slightly pungent flavor that anything else I know has. This strong flavor seeps out, as burdocks cook with other veggies or meats, and permeates the entire dish. Burdocks have a texture similar to parsnips', and when cooked quickly, burdocks retain their crispiness.
Today, I had a bit of leftover beef turning unappetizing gray in the fridge, so I decided to make "kimpira gobo" with a fresh burdock root and the beef. In a nutshell, kimpira gobo is a side dish made with burdocks and carrots, quickly fried and flavored with sesame oil, soy sauce and sugar. Although it doesn't always use meat, kimpira gobo would be a good disguise for the not-so-fresh-anymore beef, because it also uses ginger and aromatic red chili mix called "shichimi."
Kimpira Gobo (Quick-Fried Japanese Burdock)
To prepare the burdock, you don't have to peel it. Indeed, with its tough texture, it might be pretty difficult to peel it (I've never tried). Instead, you can just wash it vigorously with the rough side of a Scotch-bright type of sponge, until the soil-colored outer skin has been scrubbed off. (Compare the colors of the burdocks in the two photos.)
The traditional way to cut burdocks for kimpira gobo is either to thinly julliene it or to shave it into tiny leaf-shaped pieces (this method is called "sasagaki," meaning "shredded like bamboo leaves"). Since I'm pretty bad at doing the "sasagaki" method, I usually julienne my burdocks. This time, though, I used the "rangiri" method, which maximizes the flavor-intaking surface area (see the photo). You place the knife at a low angle, and roll the burdock about 70 degrees before you make the next cut. (This sounds so precise and scientific, but it really isn't!) Cut whatever beef you had at hand into little bits, if it's not ground.
Heat the sesame oil in a small saucepan and fry the chopped ginger until it starts to release its distinctive aroma. Add beef and fry, and when it's about done, add burdock and fry over medium heat, stirring constantly. After about five minutes, add the soy sauce and sugar and mix well. Turn the heat down and cover the pan to let it simmer for another five minutes. (The steam cooks the burdock through.) When the burdock is cooked through, sprinkle some shichimi or red chili pepper flakes and sesame seeds (if you'd like).
Hey, this isn't going to make a meal, you might say. And you're right. Kimpira gobo alone isn't going to make a meal. It's going to be a part of a meal with probably rice, miso soup, maybe a broiled fish, and perhaps another veggie dish (like the easy cucumber salad I wrote about here). Since kimpira gobo keeps in the fridge for nearly a week, Japanese cooks simply pulls it out every once in a while to add a dish to the meal. They usually have multiple backup dishes like this (called "sozai" or more politely "osozai") to fall back on. When their family starts to complain about the monotony, they might chop it up and mix it in Japanese-style omelette (called "tamagoyaki") or use it to make seasoned rice (called "takikomi gohan" or "maze gohan"). For weekend breakfast, I like to make scrambled eggs with it.
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Burdock buying tip: Many of the burdocks available here have grown too much and/or have been too long out of the soil. These have much tougher texture and are better avoided. For a fresher and more tender one, look at the cut bottom of the burdocks and choose one without a brown "ring" inside--this brown ring appears when the burdock gets old. If the flesh has started to break up in the middle, don't buy it--it'll be stringy.
Continued from the previous post about the recent history of Japanese eating habits.
The recent Japanese interest in "other" "ethnic" cuisines, especially those from Asian countries, is rather similar to the ethnic food boom in the United States. Eating at ethnic restaurants and cooking ethnic food at home are considered to be the proof of one's awareness and appreciation of the exotic beauty. Being able to appreciate the exotic is, in turn, an expression of one's truly "international" character--something that has been much hyped about in Japan in the last few decades (as is evident in their feverish desire to master the English language). And oddly enough, the Japanese interest in once-neglected regional food of their own country may be seen in the same light.
Even during the westernization of the Japanese eating and cooking habits, certain types of Japanese cuisine survived as a much revered tradition. Sushi, which is originally a Tokyo fast food, spread to the entire country, and enjoying expensive, super-fresh sushi remained firmly grounded in the Japanese eating habits. Similarly, things like "kaiseki ryori," an elaborate, myriad-course meal with its origin in tea ceremony, continued to be deeply revered as a very-special-occasion meal. But these did not include ingredients and cooking methods indigenous to most of the regions within Japan. Regional cuisines were (considered to be) merely down-home, grandma-style cooking, which one would only enjoy when back at home. You would never have run into a trendy restaurant that served regional food. There were certainly restaurants that specialized in regional cuisines, especially in urban areas where people from all over Japan craved for the down-home cooking of their regions, but these establishments were usually not hip or trendy. This type of down-home regional restaurants still abound in Japanese cities, and remain to be great places to appreciate the wide variety of regional specialties (and sometimes, oddities).
In the past decade or so, however, the scenery has changed dramatically. The Japanese epicureans have found a new fountain of exotic food in their own country. They did not abandon French, Italian and other conventionally "cool" cuisines, but they started to pay much more attention to the different regional cuisines and ingredients within Japan (along with Thai, Vietnamese and other Southeast Asian cuisines in particular). The recent explosion of interest in traditionally produced vinegars (which was the starting point of this long series of posts) is just one aspect of this re-discovery. It is a full circle, in that the Japanese, who once pursued Western cuisine and followed the standardized national cuisine, started to look back into the regional origins of their cooking and eating habits. But in a few significant ways, it's not just a completion of the circle of capricious culinary trends.
First, the regional cooking and ingredients are now very much a part of the consumer economy, which attaches all sorts of fantasies to its commodities to sell them. So, even though the regional cuisines might have been a part of the mundane (for those who come from the specific regions), they are now exotic food in the eyes of the Japanese consumers who have lost (or never even had) the tie to the foods' origins. Closely tied to this commercialization of the regional cuisines is the tremendous change in the way the Japanese people assign meaning to food and eating. Perhaps it is just a nostalgic fantasy on my part to imagine a time when food didn't carry any meaning beyond subsistence and familial (and/or communal) sharing, but the degree of fantasization that now surrounds food and cuisines seems rather unprecedented in the Japanese history.
As I've touched upon earlier, the consumption in restaurants , and re-creation at home, of certain food items, be it a Thai curry or a specialty from Hokkaido, mean that the eater or the creator has a cool lifestyle with a flair or two. It also means that the eater or the creator can afford that luxury, both economically and psychologically. (Leisure is a psychological state, as much as an economic one.) Being able to "enjoy small moments in life" seems to be one of the hallmark of the "cool" lifestyle among the Japanese food bloggers. Procuring (often over the internet) regional specialties and cooking it up in a recently popularized traditional method seems to fit perfectly into that ideal. It doesn't take an exorbitant amount of money, unlike going to a high-end French restaurant in Shinjuku. Rather, it takes connoisseurship and creativity--two highly prized attributes (at least as far as I can tell through reading various Japanese food blogs and comments left on them). For the most part, the people who support the renaissance of the regional condiments, cooking methods and ingredients are common people with mortgages to pay, children to raise, and/or retirement plan to worry about. With relatively small amount of money, regional condiments and ingredients can give them the edge that’s lacking in the mundane.
To be continued, yet again, till a future post on the role of internet and "otoriyose" boom in the regional food renaissance...
It's hot. I know it's not that hot, relatively speaking, but I feel pretty hot. I suppose I've become sufficiently Chicagonized...
It's so hot that our dinner table frequently features chilled noodles. I used to buy pre-made package of chilled noodles (called "hiyashi chuuka," meaning "chilled Chinese noodles") from Mitsuwa, but recently I've been experimenting from scratch. My staple sauce for Chinese fusion chilled noodles has been varying mixtures of aromatic herbs and spices in soy sauce, vinegar and a bit of sugar and sesame oil, but recently I tried a different, less saucy version.
I used the shrimp noodles from the Viet Hoa Plaza (link via Chicagoist). These thin wheat noodles contain powdered shrimp, and release a subtle, oceany flavor when cooked. Because I wanted to make the sauce a lot simpler than my usual fair, I figured that extra shrimpy flavor in the noodles would be a nice addition.
Chilled Shrimp Noodles in Oyster Sauce with Sichuan Peppercorn (for two; approximate amount, as usual)
It seems too simple to proudly present as a recipe... All you need to do is to boil the shrimp noodles, rinse them under cold running water (to give them a nice, resilient texture) and toss them in the sauce. The only twist I gave was a mixture of ground Sichuan (Szechuan or Szechwan) peppercorn and red chili peppers; I used a pinch each and pounded them in a mortar with a pestle. (For a Szechuan cole slow I made with this aromatic spice, see this post.)You can add whatever veggies you'd like to serve with it, but for this meal, I used a tomato and a few scallions.
The combination of two ocean-derived flavors--oyster sauce and shrimp noodles--turned out to be pretty good. Since most oyster sauces have sweetness added, this deceivingly simple list of ingredients can create a fairly complex mix of flavors. I really liked the dish; it was a nice departure from my usual fair of soy sauce, vinegar and lots of garlic and ginger. I'm definitely making this again this summer.
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Our Sichuan Peppercorn came from the always reliable Spice House.
1512 N. Wells St., Chicago, IL
312-274-0378
Okay, this was going to be the last of the three-part vinegar story, but it's spiraling out of control, stretching into the recent Japanese history and what not... I'm going to post the first half of it here.
So I'm back to vinegar. In the previous post, I left off the topic with a remark about the increased interest in traditional regional cuisines in Japan in recent years. (The first part of the vinegar sequence, one about a successful PR campaign by a large producer is here.) This trend may be seen as a grand culinary circle that started with homogenization and Westernization in the Meiji Restoration era now coming to a completion with a renaissance of regional food traditions of the old days.
Japan, though small, was divided into even smaller regions, especially before the Meiji Restoration in the mid-19th century, by a bunch of different factors. One large factor is geographical: steep mountains and wide rivers often drew natural boundaries beyond which people did not interact. In the long, relatively peaceful years under the Edo Shogunate (which lasted for about 250 years without too many disturbances), the shogunate promoted this regional division, with the hope of keeping its subjects from forming horizontal alliances behind its back. The idea was to keep the "han" (smaller geopolitical entities led by feudal lords who exercised certain amount of autonomy within their boundaries but were under direct control of the shogunate) separate from each other. This policy of geographical isolation somewhat matched the feudal lords' need to keep their subjects under control. People were not free to travel, and both the shogunate and the individual han's established checkpoints ("seki" or "seki-sho") at strategic junctions along the road system to control the flow of travelers, ranging from samurai's on business to merchants, itinerant theaters and pilgrims.
This strict restriction of travel, combined with the natural obstacles, kept different regions in Japan fairly unique and isolated until very recently. Geographical, political and economical isolation enabled these regions retain their linguistic and cultural variations, and these included, of course, food and cuisine.
All this started to change when the Meiji government abolished the "han" system and established prefectures under direct control of the central government. In order to strengthen the nation's economy and military to face the imminent threat of colonization by the Western countries (the Japanese officials had seen the colonization of China after the First Opium War, 1840-42 with alarm), the central government tried to integrate the previously fragmented country into a powerful and coherent nation state. (Much like the case in Italy around the time of its unification, ordinary Japanese people probably didn't have the sense of "Japan" as a nation. Their loyalty was tied much more strongly to the "han" to which they used to belong.) Food and cooking may not have been the newborn government's primary concern, but this march toward integrated nationhood did have a significant impact on the regional food cultures.
For instance, the Meiji government promoted the consumption of meat--once a taboo in the Buddhist tradition--in order to transform the physique of the Japanese into one that’s fit for a Western-style military. If this kind of deliberate governmental intervention in the field of food and cooking was rare, the increased inter-regional commerce and human interaction accelerated the homogenization of Japanese cooking. Although there still exist a wide range of regional cuisines in the present-day Japan, something that could be called “national cuisine” has come into being in the past century. (Long after the Meiji Restoration, the power of cooking shows and cooking magazines for housewives throughout the 20th century was tremendous in this homogenizing process.)
As was the case with the meat-eating habit, the birth of the standard Japanese national cuisine was often paired with the desire for Western-style cuisine and westernization of lifestyle in general. From the era of the Meiji Restoration (which promoted the slightly hypocritical combination of “Japanese in spirit and Western in practicality” (”wakon-yosai”) all the way after the World War II, all things Western were cool in Japanese eyes. The hostility between Japan and the Western world in the first half of the 20th century dampened the trend a little, but when the United States took over Japan in 1945, the Japanese people were ready to go back to their worship of the West. The particularly Japanese interpretation of Western cuisine (called “yoshoku”), which I discussed a little in the post about okosama lunch, was born in this atmosphere in the early 20th century. Going to restaurants that served “yoshoku” was the coolest thing to do for urban intellectuals for a long time. And in a way, it still is. High-end French and Italian restaurants are still among the most revered places to eat and to be seen among the Japanese who are increasingly more interested in cuisines other than French and Italian.
To be continued (again)!
Where did the shiitake mushrooms go? The last time I saw them, they were happily waiting for their time in a brown bag on the counter top. They were now nowhere to be seen. Did I throw them away by mistake? I didn't remember doing that, but since I know my formidable power of forgetfulness, I figured I tossed out the brown bag without thinking much about it.
"I think I threw out the shiitake mushrooms by mistake," I told Patrick, who was reading something about the Mac's developer conference on Monday. "It's so stupid; I don't even remember doing that, but the bag isn't here, so I think I did it."
"Was that in a paper bag, on the counter?" asked Patrick. He sounded a little anxious. Yeah, I said. "I think I tossed it in the trash," he confessed. "I thought that was the bag of the muffins we ate for breakfast."
He shook the brown bag before tossing it, but the slightly dry, rustling noises of the shiitake mushrooms convinced him that they were the paper muffin cups. Ouch.
So, there went the main ingredient for our Spaghetti Giapponese con Fungi--the easy dinner I planned for the evening. This flavor loss was significant, but I still had some oyster mushrooms and normal white mushrooms, so I decided to stick with the plan, with a bit of alteration.
Originally, I was going to sautée the mushrooms in butter and shallots, add salt and some turning sake, and mix with the pasta. Now that the most significant flavor agent is gone, I had to find something to patch the gap with. What I decided upon is "kobucha," a sort of instant drink made from kelp*. Kobucha usually comes in an airtight can with a tiny plastic spoon, and you dissolve a spoonful of the powdered stuff in hot water and drink it. The drink has a slight green tint, just like green tea. Since its basic ingredients are powdered kelp (kobu, or kombu), salt, sugar and flavoring amino acids, kobucha is widely used to enhance the umami (one of the five basic tastes; the sensation of the full richness of flavors) in Japanese home cooking. I don't like kobucha as a drink, but I'm quite fond of the oceany flavor that it adds to the otherwise straightforward dishes.
So, here is what I did with the pasta with one missing mushroom:
Ingredients (approximation, as usual):
Method for Spaghetti Giapponese con Fungi:
I used just enough olive oil and butter to sautée the mushrooms without getting them burnt, and there's no cream or cheese involved (although you could add them and make it a richer dish). Most of the flavor comes from the mushrooms and shallot, enhanced by the powdered kelp in kobucha. It's a rather simple pasta, but it's chock full of flavor. Although its ingredients are rather oriental (especially if you manage to protect shiitake mushrooms from the evil hands of your significant other :P), but the simplicity is (I think) similar to that of real Italian pasta dishes we enjoyed while in Italy. This went quite well with the light rose, a leftover wine from a few days before.
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* In the U.S. and in Europe, the word "kombucha" is used to refer to a Chinese-origin fermented tea that is drunk for health purposes. I don't know how this confusion started, but the these are two different drinks.
This is a continuation of yesterday's post about the increased consumption of vinegar in Japan and its relation to a PR campaign by a large producer. While I poked around online for information about the Japanese vinegar consumption, I came across a short report prepared by the Development Bank of Japan. This report, though only three pages long, turned out to be a vault of interesting vinegar facts I had no idea about.
In Japan, most of vinegars are made from rice, which is first brewed into sake, using yeast. The alcohol in this sake is then converted into vinegar by introducing various acetic acid bacteria. Old records suggest that the production method of vinegar came from China in the 4th century (along with that of rice-based sake). From the Asuka court in Nara, vinegar started to spread in the Kansai (Western Japan) region, but the spread was slow. Some cities in Osaka and Wakayama became known for different methods of vinegar production, but it was not until Edo period that the use of vinegar became popular among commoners all over Japan. Even now, the Southwestern Japan consumes much more--according to a study, four times more--vinegar than the Northeastern Japan.
In addition to the East-West gap in the consumption of vinegar, there's another complicating factor that we shouldn't ignore when talking about vinegar in Japan. Although there are a few national producers of vinegar (Mizkan, Tamanoi etc.), there are quite a few local producers that make vinegar in traditional ways specific to their regions. One concentration of such producers is in Fukuyama, Kagoshima. Instead of converting ethyl alcohol into vinegar in an accelerated "force-ventilation" method, vinegar makers in Fukuyama let brown rice and wheat ferment naturally in gigantic clay pots. Because of the long fermentation period, the Fukuyama vinegar has a dark cherry wood hue. (This type of vinegar is called "kurozu", black vinegar.) It takes about 3-6 months for fermentation and an additional year or so of aging before kurozu can be shipped out. There are other kinds of regional specialty vinegars, many of them in the Southwestern part of Japan.
In recent years, these regional specialty vinegars have been in the media spotlight. There seems to be two trends merging together to push this trend: the boom in the "health food" industry and another boom in the locally produced specialty food in general. When I did an Amazon.co.jp search for "vinegar," six out of the first 24 results somehow claimed health and aesthetic benefits of eating (and drinking!) vinegar. Three approached regionally produced vinegar as a part of a general quest for high-quality specialty condiments. (Five promoted the use of vinegar as cleaning agent in eco-conscious households, one was a straightforward vinegar recipe book, and others were mysteriously irrelevant results.)
Vinegar has been "discovered" as a new health food that supposedly lowers bad cholesterol, fights allergies, lower blood pressure, accelerates weight loss (a bit thing in already-rail-thin Japan), beautifies skin, and generally betters body condition. Although these healthy claims have never been conclusively proven, many Japanese people have turned to vinegar for a miraculous cure for what ails them (or may ail them in future, if, god forbid, they don't drink vinegar every day!). In this regard, traditionally produced vinegars are regarded as more beneficial than mass-produced ones, because they often contain more of the stuff that's supposed to do good to your health.
The other half of this rather sour phenomenon is the increased interest in regional specialty food in general, but this post is long, I'm getting tired. So that part is for tomorrow...
"Light & Zesty Simmered Chicken" (tori no sappari-ni) is what it's called. It may not look good (it doesn't), but its combination of acidity, saltiness and sweetness is indeed refreshing on a hot summer evening. A typical recipe calls for the following (and I followed this recipe myself):
16 chicken wings
1 cup vinegar
1 cup soy sauce
6 tablespoon sugar
1 clove garlic
1 inch ginger
1/4 cup water
You basically dump everything in a pot (after browning the surface of the chicken, that is) and let it simmer for about an hour to make this dish, but what truly stands out is the exorbitant amount of vinegar that the recipe requires. When I first saw the recipe, I was stunned. A quarter of that amount would probably be enough, I thought. Then I realized: this particular dish was probably made popular, if not invented, by Mizkan, the largest producer of vinegar in Japan. Mizkan produces about half of the vinegar consumed in Japan, so it makes sense that they want Japanese housewives to empty a whole bottle of vinegar for just one family dinner.
I went to their website, and sure enough, there was what seemed to be the original recipe of all the variations you could find online. Many Japanese food bloggers say that they learned about the recipe through a variety of media outlets that Mizkan has used: TV commercials; Mizkan's online recipe book; cooking segments in late-morning and early-afternoon news shows; newspaper ads; and affiliated web sites about health and/or food. Some bloggers say that they followed the recipe they found on the label on the vinegar bottles.
Many bloggers say that they've modified the original recipe to use much less vinegar and soy sauce. This may sound like a failure for Mizkan, whose interest it is to increase the amount of vinegar consumed in Japan, but it is not so. The point of the PR campaign was to introduce the use of vinegar in nimono (simmered-down method of cooking), in which vinegar was almost never used. (The traditional usual suspects for nimono are soy sauce, sugar and some type of stock base.) Many bloggers confess that they'd never thought of using vinegar for nimono before they saw the Mizkan recipe. There may be regional variation, but where I grew up, vinegar's main use was for marinating veggies, making sushi rice and concocting sauces for fried fish. With an exception of sushi rice, these dishes don't require much vinegar--a few tablespoons at the most--and in my mom's kitchen, a bottle of vinegar lasted for a long time. Now that they know they can use vinegar in nimono and add refreshing zest to it, many Japanese cooker-bloggers proudly declare that they keep a bottle of vinegar at hand and turn to it quite often. Some even go as far as stocking more than one kind of vinegar--something completely new in the Japanese down-home cooking.
The Japanese used to consume less than 200,000 kiloliter of vinegar in 1970. In 2003, 450,000 kiloliter of vinegar was used in Japan. The consumption of vinegar more than doubled in 30 years. A graph created by the South Kyushu branch of the Development Bank of Japan (available here, but in Japanese) shows a steady rise of vinegar consumption throughout this period, rather than an explosion in recent years, so it's not entirely fair to attribute all of it to Mizkan's recent PR campaigns. And yet, looking at the online "personal" recipes very similar to Mizkan's version and reading their accounts of how they became interested in cooking this unfamiliar dish, I'm inclined to think that Mizkan's campaign played an important role in increasing the Japanese consumption of vinegar.
There's more about vinegar and PR in Japan, but this post's long enough already, so I'll save that for tomorrow. Stay tuned.
Last night was so hot I didn't have too much appetite well into the night. (Apparently, when it's too hot, our brain thinks that the heat comes from the post-eating digestion, and therefore get the false idea that we've eaten already. Those "holiday pounds" aren't just a result of turkey roast--they're accumulated throughout the colder months!) Though I'd stir-fried shrimps and fresh asparagus from Green City Market with olive oil, shallots and lemon, what I really wanted was this:
It's a simple but very good dish, made with daikon radish, kmnbu (kelp), abura-age (thin pouch of fried tofu) and shiitake mushrooms. Because the kombu and shiitake release a ton of umami, it only takes a tiny bit of other flavoring, like soy sauce and sugar. I usually add ginger to most of my nimono (simmered-type dishes), but for this one, I don't use ginger. The point is to make it as gentle as possible, so you can savor the full extent of the kombu and shiitake goodness. I think this is sort of Kyoto-style, but I may be wrong; Kyotoans have lots of very subtle techniques when it comes to cooking. I, on the other hand, tend to cook Kanto-style (or Tokyo-style), with soy sauce and sugar often overpowering everything. The ancient Japanese living in Kyoto (those around 8th century onward) looked down on the "Easterners" as inelegant savages, and the difference, if not outright hierarchy, in taste still seems to live on.
The only twist I added to the normal recipe for this taki-awase (literally it means "simmered together") was to grill the abura-age prior to adding them to the broth. I thought it might give them a nice, nutty flavor, but the difference was negligible after the abura-age simmered in the thin broth.
When we were just about ready for dinner last night, the light suddenly went out. And stayed out for about an hour or so. We figured it was probably the wind gusts, but it was kind of fun to have dinner with candle light. Finishing the last bit of preparation with only a candle light was, though, pretty exciting. (And I had to photograph the leftover this morning.) It was a chilling reminder as to how much we rely on electricity...
It's going to be HOT today--the highs predicted to be in the mid-90s. Argh. But then again, Chicago's hot day is nothing compared to hot days in Japan, thanks to the usually low humidity. It's hot, but not stifling. (I was brutally reminded of this difference when I went back to Japan for the first time in three years, on the first day of that year's real hot day. At 7 am, it was already steamy, and by the time we arrived at the Tsukiji fish market on foot around 7:30, my back was a cascade of sweat. Yuck.)
To survive the appetite-killing, hot and humid summer, which lasts from mid-July to late September, Japanese people heavily rely on a variety of chilled noodles. Some traditional ones include udon (thick, wheat-based noodles), soba (delicate, buckwheat-based ones), hiyamugi (spaghetti-thin noodles made of wheat) and somen (even thinner, wheat-based noodles). All of these could be served hot or chilled, but in summer, we eat them overwhelmingly chilled. There's been some foreign influences as well, mainly from neighboring China and Korea. Hiyashi Chuka (chilled Chinese noodles) uses ramen-like noodles and features refreshingly sour, vinegar-based sauce, while spicy, chewy Kankoku Reimen (Korean chilled noodles; naengmyon) has recently achieved a prominent position in the summer chilled noodle war.
I love all kinds of chilled noodles, but here's a basic one: Hiyashi Udon (chilled udon). Since this is my food blog, the recipe is going to be slightly cheat-esque, as usual. You need udon noodles, and pre-made all-purpose sauce mix.
First, boil a large pot of water. Just like you would do when boiling pasta, you should use a lot of water to boil udon. This prevents the noodles from rubbing against each other excessively, which can create slimy coating around them. Follow the instruction on the udon package as to how long it needs to be boiled.
Meanwhile, make the sauce. Traditionally, the sauce comes on the side, and the noodles are dipped in the sauce as you eat them. But this method leads to a lot of leftover sauce, so I usually make a more concentrated version of the dipping sauce and pour it over the noodles. The instruction on the sauce mix bottle usually assumes that you're using it as a dipping sauce, so you can just increase the proportion of the sauce mix to the water, in order to make the pourable sauce. Some aromatic ingredients I mix in this basic sauce are pickled plums (chopped and made into a smooth paste), wasabi, green onions, ginger, sesame paste (tahini sauce could be used), etc. (but not everything at once!). Pickled plum sauce is especially nice in hot summer months, because it adds just enough sourness to the dish to make it refreshing when your body's too hot and exhausted to feel hungry.
Now, when the noodles are done, strain and wash them under cold, running water. This process eliminates the slimy stuff on the surface, while instantly firming up the noodles, giving them a nice, resilient texture. Shake the water off the noodles and place them on plates, then pour the sauce over it. I used some chopped scallions and ground sesame seeds this time, and added flavored boiled eggs (a leftover from this meal. (The two dishes in the background are simmered ferns and spicy stir-fried baby bok choy.)
As I'm sure I'll be cooking many more of the chilled noodle dishes, there'll be a few other recipes showing up here. Stay tuned...
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Some places to get udon noodles and noodle soup mix are as follows:
Mitsuwa Marketplace
100 E. Algonquin Rd., Arlington Hts., IL
(847)956-6699
H Mart
801 Civic Center Dr., Niles, IL
847-581-1212
Sea Ranch
518 Dempster St., Evanston, IL
847-492-8340
Cost Plus World Market
Various locations
Mitsuwa is probably the best place for variety, since it's a large Japanese supermarket. H Mart, a humongous, mainly Korean supermarket, has a decent selection of Japanese noodles and sauce mixes, although it could be difficult to find them in the maze-like clutter of the store. Sea Ranch is a small chain of Japanese grocery stores, and while they can't have everything in their tiny stores, they usually have a few Japanese noodles and sauce mixes to choose from. I've seen at least one kind, each, of soba and udon in Cost Plus World Market, but I'm not sure if they stock Japanese sauce mixes. Some normal supermarkets and higher-end ones like Whole Foods might have a few varieties, too.
For all of you Japanese food aficionados, who bought a bottle of sushi vinegar (sushi-zu) to make sushi and never managed to use it all, I have a solution.
So what's sushi vinegar, to begin with? To make sushi rice, tradition dictates that you steam the rice with konbu (kelp) stock, and add a mixture of vinegar, salt, sugar and mirin when the rice is cooked. But nowadays, many Japanese amateur cooks simply cook the rice normally (i.e., sans konbu stock) and pour pre-mixed sushi vinegar that contains all you need: konbu extract, vinegar, salt, sugar and mirin, as well as flavor enhancers in some cases. I keep one at hand, even though I never make nigiri sushi (sushi with raw fish on it--too risky and too skill-intensive) and rarely make chirashi zushi (sushi rice mixed with pre-cooked ingredients).
The reason I keep a bottle of sushi vinegar around is that it can be used for things other than sushi rice. The other day, I used it for a faux-Chinese sauce for sautéed red snapper. It was pretty hot well into the evening, so I wanted something light and refreshing; the kick of the vinegar in sushi vinegar would be nice.
First, I made the sauce (the amount is approximate; you can modify it to your taste):
1 tablespoon sushi vinegar
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1/3 tablespoon sesame oil
1 green onion, chopped
2 pinches crushed red pepper
Then, I heated some oil in a pan, and threw in 2 green onions (cut into 2-inch pieces) and about 1 inch of ginger (thickly sliced). When they start to produce that wonderful aroma, I spread the pieces evenly on the pan, and placed the red snapper fillets on top of the green onions and ginger. It was the first time I did this half-sautée, half-steam method, but it worked well: the flavors of the green onions and ginger got transferred to the fish as it cooked, and this method requires a bit less oil than placing the fish directly onto the pan (in which case I would use more oil to prevent the fish from getting too intimate with the pan).
When the fish was done, I placed it on the plate and spooned the sauce over it. Served with steamed rice, the faux-Chinese red snapper was pretty good. As I planned, the vinegar shooed away the humid heat of the day, and the aromatic green onions and ginger added refreshing kick. With this sauce, I could eat two bowls of rice! (I didn't, but I could.)
The sushi vinegar I currently have is from Mizkan, a 200-plus-year-old vinegar maker in Japan. Its ingredient list is a bit more cluttered with dubious stuff (high fructose corn syrup, especially) than I would like, but it's convenient, and it's tasty. I've seen other brands at Mitsuwa; next time I buy a bottle, I'll check the ingredient lists and go for a less dubious one.
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Mitsuwa
100 E. Algonquin Rd., Arlington Heights, IL
(847)956-6699
Other Asian supermarkets, like H Mart, should have sushi vinegar available, though I haven't checked. It may even be around in Whole Foods and Trader Joe's (though, again, I haven't checked).
The NY Times article on equipping a no-frills kitchen for under $200 is predictable but interesting. While there are points I would go about differently, Mark Bittman's success in keeping the cost under a spartan limit is pretty impressive, too. But he missed one thing. One BIG thing. And that's not surprising, at all.
The missing thing is the saibashi--cooking chopsticks. They're basically a longer version of normal chopsticks, except that they aren't elaborately coated or decorated. Usually made of wood or bamboo (mine are the latter), the saibashi is a wonderful all-purpose tool in any Japanese chef's kitchen. I use them for almost anything: mixing sauces, tossing salads, stirring noodles in boiling-hot water, stir-frying veggies, turning meat over a grill, transferring food from a pan to individual dishes, whisking eggs, picking up piping-hot tempura from the frying oil, scraping off cookie dough from a mixing bowl. And I didn't even have to try hard to come up with this list. In a pinch, when my pot holder has gone AWOL, I even use them to slide out the hot baking pan from the oven, though I suspect this isn't really their intended use. Without these four sets of saibashi, I won't survive a day in my kitchen.
And of course, Bittman wouldn't have included saibashi in his kitchen essentials, because he doesn't cook (I presume) like the Japanese. (Instead, he included stainless tongs.)
Just Hungry points out that a "no-frills" kitchen would vary culture to culture, and if one cooks differently from Bittman, her kitchen might look quite different from his. This is a point well taken, and (sort of quietly) reveals the unconscious ethnic bias in Bittman's article. I don't plan to be hysterical about his lack of social awareness or ethno-racial sensitivity (it's just a short article, after all), but it does make me feel a bit ambivalent, especially given the newspaper in which the article appears. In the same section (Dining and Wine), New York Times enjoys, celebrates and consumes the very diversity of food and cooking within the United States. Then why this apparent disregard of "other" cooking traditions in this specific article? I don't know the answer to this, but it is, at least, quite interesting to see how cultural differences manifest in assumptions about cooking and, thus, what one should have in one's kitc