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.

On Memorial Day, the aroma of char-grilled burgers wafting from our neighbors' backyard (all the way up to our third-floor apartment!) was a torture. It made us crave for a few little things, all of which were denied for one reason or the other: a cute little Weber grill (no place to store), a place to grill (back porch too small, smoke detector too sensitive), etc., etc....

We thought about going to the Moody's and have a beer or two with their burgers in the outdoor patio, but this was a bad idea, too. I had a bunch of super-fresh veggies we got from the Evanston Farmers Market on Saturday, and considering I wouldn't be cooking on Tuesday, I wanted to use them now. Oyster mushrooms, in particular, were screaming to be cooked while still perky. Plus I had a chunk of fatty pork ribs (deboned) from Mitsuwa, and there was a dish I wanted to try with it. (What I did with the oyster mushrooms, I'll post tomorrow.)

The recipe (link in Japanese) I followed was Vietnamese, but a very similar dish, called "kakuni," exists in the traditional cooking of Kagoshima, a southern prefecture on the island of Kyushu in Japan. An excellent producer of the renowned Kurobuta (Berkshire black) pork, it is no surprise that Kagoshima has developed this simple but delectable dish of fatty pork simmered in soy sauce and raw cane sugar. Kakuni was never a part of my Tokyo-born mom's repertoire, but ever since I had a collapse-under-my-chopsticks tender kakuni in an izakaya (Japanese style tapas bar), I've been a faithful lover of this simple dish. (Kakuni goes superb with shochu, barley- or sweet potato- based liquor, another Kagoshima specialty. And thus, kakuni is often found on izakaya menus.)

The only reason I forwent Japanese recipe over the Vietnamese one is that I wanted to experiment more with the Vietnamese coconut caramel that I picked up a few weeks ago (and made an awesome fried rice). I was stunned to find the god-awful amount of sugar the recipe required, but since it was the first time I cook this dish myself, I faithfully followed the sucroseful recipe for two:

1. Marinate chunks of deboned pork ribs in 1 tablespoon of Nam Pla (or Nuoc Mam), 1 tablespoon of sugar, 1 tablespoon of caramel sauce, a clove of minced garlic and black pepper. Let it sit in the fridge for an hour.
2. Sautée the pork in a frying pan so that all the exterior is nicely browned.
3. Pour the remaining marinade into a pot. Add 3 tablespoons of Nam Pla, 2 tablespoons of sugar, one dried hot pepper, and place the pork in the pot. Add some water so that the pork chunks are half immersed in the sauce. Simmer for an hour or so.

I boiled two eggs and grilled (without oil) some sliced sweet potatoes and added them into the simmering pot at the end of the cooking time, but this is a tasty but dispensable flourish if in a pinch. (The original recipe only calls for pork and eggs. The idea of sweet potatoes came from the fact that Kagoshima, the birthplace of kakuni, also produces a lot of sweet potatoes, only some of which are brewed into shochu.) As the kakuni simmered down, the wonderfully rich aroma of fish sauce and caramel filled the kitchen and then the dining room, and mostly dispelled the annoyingly enticing smell of the backyard barbecue. I quickly made a few other dishes with the fresh veggies from the farmers market, and by 5:30, we were enjoying the fatty pork and sweet potatoes. By 6, we were happily intoxicated. Intoxicated enough, indeed, to watch an episode of A-Team, which both of us adored as kids. But alas, a bottle of Stella Artois was not nearly enough to stop me from remarking: "I have no idea why I loved this show! This is awful!"

We promptly switched to a few episodes of The Black Adder. No barbecue, but it was a good Memorial Day feast. At least there weren't any severed enemy heads on our table...

-----------------
Takkatsu is the best place to sample how good Kurobuta can be in a breaded-and-fried form. (Full review coming soon, since we love this place.)
161 W. Wing St., Arlington Heights, IL
847.818.1860

I recently discovered an "atomic bomb of Vietnamese cuisine," as Patrick has put it.

We picked up the condiment in question in the South East Asian aisle at our beloved H Mart. When I spotted its rather simple label that said "Coconut Thin Sauce," I figured it would taste like coconut, which I absolutely adore ever since my childhood in the tropical Bangkok. The ingredients list was überclean: coconut, and water. It was cheap, too, at $1.19 for a little squeeze bottle. So we picked one up. Why not?

When we got home, I squeezed a drop of the sauce onto my palm and licked it. The sauce was pretty thick; I don't know why it's called "thick" sauce. It didn't taste like coconut, either. All the coconut flavor must have wafted out when the coconut juice was simmered down to its thick, brown reduction, I thought. Although the sauce was not what I'd expected it to be, it had an awesomely complex flavor of very good caramel sauce. Curious, I went online. According to the explanation on a Vietnamese cook's food site, Nuoc Mau Dua (as it's called in Vietnamese) is a caramel sauce widely used in Southern Vietnamese cuisine.

So what to do with this sauce?

I had half a head of purple cabbage approaching a sorry state in the fridge, so I decided to make fried rice with it. For seasoning, I simply mixed about a generous tablespoon of the coconut thin sauce with a bit less amount of Nam Pla (Thai fish sauce). The Nam Pla I have (from the Thai Kitchen brand) is extremely salty, so you might need more if you have a less salty version--just taste test the sauce before adding it to the food.

I sautéed minced garlic in oil, added cabbage, and stir-fried it for a few minutes. I spooned some sauce into a beaten egg and added that to the pan, while stirring. In went the rice, chopped green onions and cilantro, and when the rice grains were nicely separated from each other, I poured the sauce over everything. An appetizing aroma of bittersweet caramel and Nam Pla immediately rose to my nostrils, but it wasn't done yet. I turned the heat off, and crushed some roasted soy beans (in lieu of peanuts) to sprinkle over the fried rice.

I probably shouldn't be giving so many pats on my own back, but good god, it was divine. The bitterness of the caramel sauce added that extra depth that's hard to achieve in an amateur's kitchen. (I've used the combination of sugar and Nam Pla many times, but the caramely goodness just can't be beat with this very similar yet very different combination.) The fried rice tasted like it had been cooked in a real Vietnamese restaurant. I wish I had dried mini shrimps and real peanuts (instead of soy nuts) for real South East Asian flair, but even without these flavor enhancers, the coconut thin sauce more than held up this simple dish.

Apparently the Vietnamese cooks often keep a jar of (either home-made or store-bought) caramel sauce at hand, and that's what they use for their magnificent ginger chicken in clay pot (Gai Kho). I'm definitely going to try making that soon, for it's one of Patrick's favorite foods in the world (and I'm yet to try it). Nuoc Mau Dua is cheap, just about the easiest to use, and packed with butt-kicking flavor bursts, so I'm going to keep it around in my increasingly condiments-cluttered small kitchen.

------------------
H Mart
801 Civic Center Drive, Niles, IL
847.581.1212

I got mine at the H Mart, but I'm sure the sauce is available in many Asian grocery stores that cater to the Vietnamese clientele. Viet Hoa Plaza at 1051 W. Argyle St. might be your good bet, too.