Blue Lotus

The True Meaning of Christmas

I don't know how Santa Claus knew that we were celebrating Christmas a day early, but somehow he did. That's Santa for you!

No, the extra stocking doesn't signify a recent addition to our family: it's there to hold the goodies that wouldn't fit into a certain good little boy's stocking.

We unloaded our stockings while sipping mimosas in the new wine glasses Hideaki got me (we traditionally open one present on New Year's Eve, and these glasses are what I opened last night). They are Riedel Riesling glasses and I would have loved to have used them properly right away, but I had to make do with champagne and orange juice (yeah, poor me). Tomorrow I'm off to Nasu for 5 days to work at a ski camp tomorrow and as soon as that's over I'm spending New Years in Osaka, so no these babies won't know Riesling until next year. But I managed to enjoy the morning nonetheless, especially after we moved on from the stockings to the under-the-tree presents.

Yup, I enjoyed myself. The effects of alcohol on an empty stomach followed by copious amounts of sugar and gratified consumer greed are quite remarkable, aren't they? A little chocolate drool would have made this picture even better, but I think it's not bad as it is. I'm goint to print this out to use next year, in order to teach my students the True Meaning of Christmas.

I got some wonderful presents and I wish I could show them all, but I've got some serious cleaning up and packing to do. I'll mention a few of the best though: a goat and three guinea pigs. The goat is from my parents, sent in my name to a family in need. It will provide milk and manure (and perhaps eventually a really good stew) while costing very little to keep, as it is hardy and eats just about anything. The piggies will go to a family in the Andes where they, and their prolific offspring, will become "an important source of protein". This comes from family friends whose daughter Krista I've been best friends with since kindergarten, and is especially traumatizing meaningful because both Krista and I had guinea pigs as pets when we were little. Our guinea pigs were cute little things that brought us joy and love, taught us important lessons in responsibility and the sanctity of life, and even starred in a school science fair project (and the occasional Barbie Doll pageant, or maybe that was just me). But somehow we never imagined that Spike and Stumpy could also have been roasted on a spit to make a tasty and nutritious snack.

I hope all of you has as satisfying a holiday as I did!

Merry Christmas!

Well, Christmas dinner is over (it was wonderful but I was so busy cooking and eating that I didn't take a single picture) and our stockings are hung-- we have high hopes that they will be full to the brim when we wake up tomorrow. And to all of my readers, I wish you a Merry Christmas! I hope you have a wonderful holiday and that wherever you are in the world, Santa finds you.

In the spirit

It finally feels like Christmas around here! The tree was extra late this year, especially by Japanese standards (where most people who put up Christmas trees do it in late February and take them down December 26th). And it gave me a lot of trouble as it went up, falling over a few times and breaking the stand-- that's why it's a bit disheveled and lopsided. Now that I know that the Ikea here sells live Christmas trees, this may be the last year I have to use this crummy fake tree. But fake or not, it really creates a festive feeling and seeing it all lit up makes me feel like a kid again.

These are the lights I put up in the bedroom window-- completely overshadowed by the ultra-bright street-light out front and the shop down below. But I still kind of like them, and a few days after they went up two other apartments sprang lights in their windows-- a first for this building. Maybe next year everyone will do it!

Check out this meal I had at a student's Christmas party. The beef was so tender I didn't even use my knife, and it was all even more delicious than it looked. Below shows the full spread, with everything but the sushi rolls at front and the tall Christmas-tree like cake at the back home-made. Nice, huh?

We normally eat steak on Christmas Eve, but the timing is all screwed up this year so we're doing it tonight. Christmas is not a national holiday but until this year we've always been able to celebrate right on Christmas Day, since my classes are always finished for the year and Hideaki worked night shifts at home (usually with American holidays too). This year he's a regular salaryman and since Christmas falls on a Tuesday we're moving things forward a bit. Luckily it's a long weekend-- on Monday the Emperor's birthday is observed, so that will be our present-opening Christmas, and tomorrow will be turkey-dinner Christmas.

And tonight is our de facto Christmas Eve, which means wagyu steaks! They're pricey even here in Japan, which is why this steak is a bit on the small side and completely overshadowed by the side dishes. But it tasted great and was worth every penny.

Dessert was from the bakery- a snowman made of sweet chocolate chip buns dipped in white chocolate, and some kind yule log type thing (it was filled which chocolate cream, which I don't like so I didn't try it). It's amazing all the Christmas-themed stuff you can buy here considering it's not even a real holiday here. Maybe when the Emperor finally kicks the bucket they'll change the late-December holiday from his birthday to Christmas-- it's only a two day difference and it would make so much sense.

Meanwhile, it's winter solstice-- time for a yuzu bath!

Almost ready for Christmas

Now that I'm fairly confident I'll have Christmas dinner under control, it's time for baking. I don't make cookies or other sweet things very often as I have little willpower (not to mention I work at home and have nobody to pass out cookies to) I'll happily finish off an entire batch in a few days, with predictable results (guilt, a disappointed husband wondering where all the cookies went, guilt again, weight gain, more guilt). But Christmas is a great excuse to bake, because there are more people around to share with and besides, what would the holidays be like without tonnes of cookies?

Above is an attempt to create a somewhat healthy holiday snack: chocolate dipped pretzels (and almonds too). I used Ghirardelli's 60% cocoa chocolate chips, and regular pretzels, both bought in huge bags at Costco, and considering that pretzels are low-fat and dark chocolate is chock-full of anti-oxidants, this is practically a health food. Super easy to make, too: just melt chocolate in a double boiler, add pretzels, mixed to coat, lay them on waxed paper and set them in a cold room (or the fridge if you are lucky enough to have central heating). Almonds are the same, but should be toasted and cooled first.

And here are the traditional Christmas cookies: gingerbread and sugar cookies, made with my sister-in-law and niece last week. The sugar cookies were flavoured with lemon and mandarin peel and taste just wonderful, but turned out a bit soft-- probably due to a mixture of my baking inexperience and the different flour used in Japan. The citrus sugar cookie recipe can be found on Epicurious here.

Quite frankly the cookies tasted a lot better before the icing went on. I've never liked icing but it's easy to forget that fact, especially when you're following an icing recipe that calls for 6 cups of icing sugar. Yes, we halved it, but we still had tonnes leftover so we ended up over-decorating the cookies. Oh well, they do look cute, or at least some of them do. You may notice that we didn't just stick to traditional gingerbread boys and girls: there's a dachshund accessories Tokyo-style, a bikini girl that looks an awful lot like I did on the beach this summer (big, pale and doughy), her toned and tanned companion (which doesn't look like anything at all I've seen on a beach recently, but a girl can fantasize can't she?) and a three-eyed alien visitor in a silver space suit.

I'm hoping to get a few more batches of cookies in, and desperately wishing I had a real oven so I could make my Mom's famous forgotten cookies, which are little meringues with chocolate chips and walnuts and are cooked by leaving them in a hot, but just turned off, oven all night. I really have to nip this kind wishful thinking in the bud, because there are just so many things from home I'll never be able to recreate here, and if I start pining I'll turn homesick in no time...

Roast chicken, take five

I think I finally have it: the perfect, or as near to perfect as my crummy little oven will allow, recipe for roast chicken. I've been roasting chickens at the rate of once a week since early November in search of a Christmas dinner-worthy roast chicken (forget turkey: won't fit in my oven). Luckily both Hideaki and I love chicken and the resulting leftovers-- especially chicken soup-- so we haven't tired of it yet. But I do admit I'm glad the experimenting is over, and am looking forward to lots of fish once Christmas is over.

The Thomas Keller recipe was extremely appealing as I'm a big fan of super-simple recipes, but it just isn't right for my oven. Following the instructions resulted in amazingly tasty meat but white and flabby skin-- great for an every day meal, but not to wow guests at a holiday dinner. Increasing the cooking time or temperature helped the skin somewhat, but the meat was less tender.

So I gave up and tried brining, using this recipe from Food Network Canada. And boy am I glad I did: it was fantastic. After soaking for a day in a brine of salt, brown sugar, herbs, and garlic, the bird was dried off, trussed and laid on a bed of quartered carrots (the recipe called for halved, but Japanese carrots are BIG), with a quartered onion thrown in as well.

As this was a big bird and it was sitting on top of fat carrots, the top was just a centimetre away from the heating element and I was worried about it burning. So I took advantage of the extra "collar" of skin and fat that my butcher leaves at the chicken's neck. I trimmed it and found it was exactly big enough to cover the breast, so I laid it on top to protect it. As you can see in the picture below, it shrunk down to a third of its original size. I wonder if I should fasten it with toothpicks or tie it with string next time?

It doesn't look so bad, right? The underside was still lily-white, and although the rest of the skin browned it wasn't crispy. But I've accepted those two little problems, as there's really nothing to be done about that save buying our own house and installing a proper oven. Or moving back to Canada.

The meat was tender and juicy and perfectly flavoured: I was worried that it would be too salty, but it was just right. I didn't follow the recipe for gravy, as I prefer a proper roux to cornstarch and like to use the pan drippings (why throw those away?). It was superfluous without potatoes though, as the chicken was already tender and tasty enough. The big surprise was the carrots. My husband is not a carrot fan but loved these, saying they were like a whole different vegetable. The roasting (not to mention the absorption of copious amounts of fatty chicken goodness) really did transform them. The onions were good too, and potatoes would have been lovely (but aren't mashed potatoes essential to a Chrismas dinner? Can I do both?). The brussel sprouts, not so successful. But they did taste better than they looked.

The leftovers were made into soup, with onions, carrots, celery, soy beans and orzo (and a sprinkle of cheese on top). I liked how the carcass and leftover meat made a stock that salted itself: the salt from the brining was exactly enough to flavour it, and the only seasoning I added was pepper. Served with a salad of baby greens, tomatoes, shrimp and pumpkin seeds, and a few hunks of bread for dipping. Oh, and a successful batch of roasted brussel sprouts. No more experimenting needed: I'm ready for Christmas dinner!

寄せ鍋

OK, so you'll have to see a few more cell phone pictures. It's all well and good to have a newly fixed camera, but if your photo software is on the blink it can be rather hard to upload them.

Don't you love how everything always breaks at the same time? Last week while our camera was being repaired our computer crashed, and although my husband was eventually able to revive it with most programs attached, my ACD See software didn't make it. I'm having a bit of trouble tracking down all the passwords and licence codes and other stuff necessary to re-install it, so there'll be no new pictures till I get that all sorted out with.

So now that I've revealed myself as a computer illiterate doofus, let's move along. Here are the most recent dinner pictures I could salvage:

Yose-nabe (mixed hotpot) with gammo-doki (deep-fried tofu balls); mizuna greens, negi (long onion); shungiku (chrysanthemum leaves); shiitake; thinly sliced pork; tara (cod) and fresh tarako (cod roe). With grated daikon for dipping and pickled hakusai (napa cabbage) to eat on the side. Tarako is a normally sold heavily salted and is rather rare sold fresh. This came packaged with the tara and there was a choice of either tarako, shirako (cod milt) or tara no kimo (cod liver).

Here it is in the pot, being cooked in kombu dashi (a light kelp broth). And below, shungiku, shiitake, tarako and pork ready to eat. The tarako was interesting but nothing special, softer and milder than prepared tarako. I liked the texture but there wasn't much taste--I guess salting it really brings out the flavour. The liver scares me a bit, so next time I'll go for the milt.

Together again

My camera is back. I didn't even bother to announce that it was gone so you probably didn't notice, but a few weeks ago I sent it in to Pentax to be repaired for the third time.  Not that it's a particularly faulty camera-- I've had it for over 4 years, after all. I think for a digital camera that pretty much qualifies as an antique, at least here in Japan. Plus, I'm a klutz and all the problems with this camera were almost certainly caused be me dropping it, knocking it about and failing to store it properly.

So it was a very pleasant surprise when we found out that the Pentax people were fixing my camera for free, and an even more pleasant when it arrived today looking brand-new, with a brand-new exterior. All the scrapes and dents--surely evidence that I was too hard on my camera, making the free repair all the more surprising-- are gone and it looks like I just bought it. Look how shiny it is! If only I could take a picture of my camera with my camera.

So now that my camera is back you won't be seeing too many more pictures like this:

This was taken with my cell phone on a recent trip to Inokashira-koen Park. Look how white I am! Look how fuzzy the tree is! I processed this to be as dark as possible without everything turning black, and this is as good as it gets. Yikes.

Other pictures aren't as bad (as long as I keep my pale face out of them). Though the trees were quite bright and colourful in real life, I kind of like the odd contrast and colours in this one. Reminds me a bit of an old hand-tinted black and white photograph.

豚肉のえのき巻き

• Chikuwa to mizuna itame: chikuwa (grilled fish paste) sauteed with mizuna greens
• Kabocha squash roasted with with ponzu (citrus soy sauce) and sesame oil
• Steamed white rice
• Goma suiton no miso shiru: miso soup with goma suiton (flour dumplings with sesame), shiitake, tofu, carrot and mitsuba (trefoil)
• Wakame seaweed and sakura ebi (tiny dried shrimp) dressed with soy sauce
• Sauteed shiitake, enoki and shimeji mushrooms
• Buta niku no enoki maki: thinly sliced pork wrapped around enoki mushrooms and negi (long onion), braised in sake and soy sauce

It's been a while since I served niku maki (pork or beef rolls). This time I used a thicker cut of pork than usual (sold for buta no shouga yaki, or ginger pork) and gave it a longer than usual braise. The results were very nice, with soft and tender meat that reminded me of rouladen.

The kabocha was less successful. My husband was weirded out by the unfamiliar texture and flavour: when kabocha is prepared as a savoury dish it is most often simmered with dashi, soy sauce, mirin and sugar, so the caramelized edges and citrusy flavour seemed strange to him. The sesame oil was definitely a mistake but I kind of liked it and will try it again with olive oil as a western dish. Or maybe it would be fine with a Japanese meal if it was made with soy sauce and butter. It's hard to object to that combination.

秋刀魚の開き

• Sanma no hiraki: hiraki style (split, salted and partly dried) sanma (Pacific saury), grilled and served with grated daikon and soy sauce
• Hiyayakko: cold tofu topped with soy sauce and katsuobushi (bonito flakes)
• Mixed lettuce salad with cherry tomatoes and walnuts
• Kyuuri no asazuke: quick pickled cucumbers
• Miso soup with kabocha squash, abura-age (fried tofu) and mizuna greens
• Takikomi gohan: glutinous rice cooked with vegetables

Sanma's peak season is over, which means it is carrying less fat and is therefore less flavourful . But when sold hiraki style it is still delicious, as the drying process intensifies the its flavour. Also called hiraki-boshi, hi-boshi (which indicates it has been dried naturally in the sun) and ichiya-boshi (meaning it has been dried overnight), the preparation is used for a wide variety of fish and is usually reasonably priced. Not only does it deepen the flavour of fish, it keeps longer than fresh fish and is a snap to prepare: just grill it as it is, no cleaning, salting or other preparation required.

But somehow I tend to overlook this style of fish, only buying it when it's on sale (I'll pick it up regardless of my dinner plans, as thanks to its long shelf life it will keep until I'm ready to serve it) or when none of the fresh fish is appealing. Which is a shame, as hiraki style fish is delicious in its own right. Tonight's dinner reminded me that I should buy it more often.

Poached eggs

Above is my very first attempt at making poached eggs. It may seem strange that in all of my 34 years I've never poached an egg before, but egg cookery is still quite new to me. For most of my life I've hated eggs and only in recent years have I started to like them. I'm still not crazy about egg salad and hard-boiled eggs, or eggy foods like mayonnaise and custard (or at least the dessert variety of custard). But in its savoury and soft-cooked forms, I now know that there is no more perfect food than an egg. And its low price, not to mention its versatility and relatively long shelf, is such a bonus. So I've vowed to expand my egg repertoire.

These turned out a bit oddly shaped and had the odd string, but they held together and were cooked to perfection so I'm pretty proud of myself. I made them into sort-of Eggs Benedict, with Hollandaise sauce from a package (baby steps, folks), cherry tomatoes, negi (long onions) and bacon. Which ended up burning to a crisp as all my attention was on the eggs.

Now that I know how to poach an egg, my next mission (aside from learning to make Hollandaise from scratch) is to master tamago-yaki, the thick rolled omelet that is such a Japanese home cooking essential that I'm ashamed to admit I've never made it before. Tips would be highly appreciated!

Mentaiko spaghetti

What to do with a large amount of poor-quality mentaiko (spicy cod roe): make mentaiko spaghetti.

I recently bought a tub of very cheap mentaiko because, well, it was very cheap. Turns out it was cheap for a reason, and now I've added mentaiko, and presumably tarako (the non-spicy version), to my list of "you get what you pay for" foods. Cheap mentaiko is artificially coloured (check out the bright red stuff on top of rice in my last post, and the pretty bubblegum hue of the pasta sauce above) and has the wrong balance of salty and spicy-- either too much or too little of either. Worst of all, it lacks the rich creaminess and oceany flavour of good roe.

So my cheap mentaiko was no good over rice, but I figured that when mixed with other ingredients, as in a pasta sauce, it would be fine. Mentaiko spaghetti is a favourite around here, and I usually just make an ultra-simple sauce of melted butter and mentaiko. This time I added the roe to a basic bechamel sauce in the hopes that the extra creaminess would cover the mentaiko's faults. It worked, and topping it with some finely shredded nori seaweed added some of the briny flavour I was missing. And I'm really glad I didn't have to throw away the mentaiko.

Still, I'm not crazy about heavy or creamy sauces, so next time I'll go back to my simple butter sauce and make sure I use good mentaiko to start with.

So what are your ideas for using up poor quality ingredients and other shopping mistakes?