A Fish Out of Water

丸ごとトマトの味噌汁

Here's a nice early-autumn dinner we had recently. From top left: maitake-niratama (maitake mushrooms and garlic chives stir-fried with egg); umeboshi (pickled ume plums); tori no kurozu teriyaki (chicken teriyaki with black vinegar, served with green peppers); simmered mystery squash; marugoto tomato no misoshiru (miso soup with whole tomato); steamed rice; kabu to abura-age no nibitashi (simmered turnip roots and greens with fried tofu).

The last time I posted about a meal with the soup I had a few questions about it. It's actually really easy to do and very yummy, with the tomato adding a pleasent sweetness, amplifying the umami of the miso and dashi, and giving an unexpected but nice kick of acidity. Plus if you use really good tomatoes you get that lovely garden-fresh tomato flavour. Try it for yourself: the recipe follows.

丸ごとトマトの味噌汁 (Marugoto tomato no misoshiru: Whole Tomato Miso Soup)

2 small tomatoes
400 ml dashi (instant or freshly made)
2 Tbsp regular miso, or to taste
1 or 2 stalks of hosonegi (thin long onions, also known as bannou negi or konegi- substitute thin green onions)

Prepare the dashi in a small pot. Wash and core the tomatoes.

Pierce the core of one tomato with a fork.

Holding the tomato over an open flame and turn to evenly char skin.

It is not necessary to completely char the skin; it should be blackened in some areas and have a crack or two. It shouldn't take more than half a minute.

Set aside to cool, repeat with other tomato.

Peel the skin off of both tomatoes, taking care not to damage the flesh.

Add the tomatoes to the dashi, bring to a simmer over medium heat, then turn to low and cook until tomatoes are soft, about five minutes. Do not boil or overcook, or tomatoes may disintegrate. Meanwhile, thinly slice the hosonegi.

Stir in miso and taste, adding more if needed. Transfer each tomatoe to a soup bowl, ladle broth over and garnish with the hosonegi.

Note: if gas range is unavailable or if using a large number of tomatoes, peel them in the usual way: dunk into rapidly boiling water for a few seconds, remove to a bowl of ice water, and peel.

Serves 2

Dinner

A nice late summer dinner: chikuwa to ingen no itame (sauteed green beans with chikuwa, a fish paste product); steamed rice; kabocha no nimono (simmered kabocha squash); asupara no nikumaki (asparagus pork rolls); and marugoto tomato no misoshiru (miso soup with a whole tomato). Shuma got rice, plain boiled pork, plain green beans and a piece of the kabocha (the same as we had, seasoned with soy sauce, sake and sugar which explains why he only got one little piece).

The tomato soup is a new favourite. Tomato and miso go surprisingly well together, and the resultant broth is full of sweetness and acidity from the tomato, saltiness from the miso, and umami from both.

 

 

アボカド鮭丼 (Avacado sake don)

A typical summertime weekday lunch, requiring no heat (thanks to frozen rice, reheated in the microwave): hiyayakko (cold tofu) topped with sliced okra, katsuobushi (bonito flakes) and soy sauce, and avocado sake don (rice topped with salmon sashimi and avocado). For Shuma, rice, avocado, tofu and shirasu (partially dried baby fish).

To make the avacado sake don: Slice a chunk (about 100 grams or so) of salmon sashimi, add to a bowl with a cubed avocado half and about five shiso (perilla) leaves, thinly sliced. Splash with soy sauce and ponzu, to taste. Fill a donburi (large rice bowl) with hot rice, top with salmon avocado mixture. Done!

 

Maboudoufu

Hideaki mentioned it'd been a while since we'd had maboudoufu (tofu in spicy meat sauce), and since it's his birthday month I took the hint and and made it. Here it is, served with rice, cucumbers dressed with black vinegar and sesame oil, and tsuru-murasaki no nibitashi (simmered malabar spinich, my new favourite vegetable). Shuma got rice, tofu, raw cucumber and plain ground pork- he ignored the tofu, not surprising since it was his first time trying momendoufu (cotton tofu, the firm kind)- he's only just started to like kinudoufu (silken tofu).

Here's the maboudoufu recipe I posted a few years back. It's a bit spicier than the Japanese version, closer to the Szechuan original.

Nerima Blueberries

A few Saturdays back we took Shuma for his first fruit-picking excursion (also our first in Japan). He's ten months old now, and that might seem a little young to be putting him to work, but we believe it's time he started earning his keep.

For years now we've been noticing little blueberry patches here and there in our area but never seemed to find the time to go picking during the short season. I've also seen the berries themselves on sale at the local JA (Japan Agriculture, the national farmer's co-op) store and at little honour-system roadside stands, but balked at the price: 600 yen for a tiny 200 gram package. Outrageous!

And then this year at the JA there were posters and brochures for Nerima-ku blueberries. Nerima is the ku, or ward, that we live in, and was famed for its daikon in the Edo era, and is recently known for producing the most cabbages of any ward or city in Tokyo. Not exactly exciting stuff, so apparently the ward is trying to re-brand itself with blueberries.

There are now 25 blueberry farms (orchards?) spread throughout the ward, mostly concentrated in the west end. And aside from selling the berries at JA shops and farm stands, each farm is open on certain days of the week for picking, at the price of 200 yen per 100 grams. Still pretty outrageous but cheaper than buying them already picked and possibly cheaper than imported berries. And after trying it for ourselves, it's totally worth the money when you factor in the entertainment value and the fact that they are a million times more delicious when freshly picked.

The brochure is unfortunately only available in PDF format, page by page (scroll down and click the page with 7 and 8, which shows the farms nearest to us- we picked at number 7, Konishien). But it's nicely down, with lots of information about blueberries and maps of the farms including local sights. And this being Japan, Nerima blueberries have their own "image characters": Blueberry Kuma Sankyodai (The Three Blueberry Bear Siblings). Big Brother Bear is named Burun, he's cheerful and good at making jam; Little Sister Bear Rirun is a bit shy and loves fireworks; Little Brother Bear Berun is a mischevious glutton who loves climbing trees.

So back to picking. All farms charge the same price, but they all vary on days and times they open (and I think you need a reservation to pick at each one). Some places provide plastic tubs, some ask you to bring your own; some farms have a 1 kilogram limit and some don't. At all farms it's strictly picking only, with no eating allowed (unlike traditional fruit picking in Japan, in which you a heavy entrance fee and eat everything as you pick it). But I did see plenty of other pickers eating, and we snuck a few too.

Shuma was a really good picker, and even grabbed and ate a few when we weren't looking. He just knew exactly what to do, it was amazing. Maybe because it was early in the season (some bushes looked like they hadn't yet been picked at all), but it was really really easy, and within a few minutes we had this much:

Which doesn't seem like much, but knowing how much they cost we were trying not to go crazy. The other pickers, who were equally divided between families with kids and lone obaachans (grandmas) were totally filling their buckets, and probably paid two or three thousand yen for their takes. I can only guess they were making jam or giving them away to friends and family. We ended up with 400 grams, for which we paid 800 yen. My inner cheapskate protested, but it was fun and provided a week's worth of breakfasts for all three of us (especially Shuma, who is in a blueberry phase and will eat nothing else in the morning) and a few desserts. And they were really good, in that Japanese fruit way: very very sweet. I still prefer the more tart and intensely flavoured Canadian berries (especially wild ones!) but it was very hard to complain about these.

Here is what I made with the last of the blueberries: a no-bake cheesecake.

It's made with mascarpone, cream cheese and yogurt, with a standard graham cracker crust and a simple topping of blueberries lightly cooked with sugar. So, so good! Oh, and that was a total lie up above- we ran out of Nerima berries before I could eat dairy (I've just started the gorging-on-dairy phase of an elimination diet to see if the dairy products I eat effects Shuma), so I had to buy more blueberries at Costco. But I fully meant to make this with our freshly picked berries, and I will someday. I will also work on presentation, but it's only my second time making (and liking) cheesecake and there no complaints.

Spring Supper

I've been in Japan so long I forget what people eat for Easter, so last night I just made a dinner that celebrates spring: green pea soup; sauteed gyouja ninniku (Japan's version of ramps); and pasta with shrimp in meyer lemon cream sauce. Dessert was a strawberry crisp with too much soupy juice to bother taking a picture.

The pasta was made with this recipe from the Toronto Star, with the only substitutions being cavatappi pasta instead of linguine and a splash of chardonnay to make up for the paltry juice of my little meyer lemon. What a fantastic recipe! Maybe it's because it's my first encounter with Meyer lemons (I finally found one, a tiny little thing grown in Shikoku), but yum.

The gyouja ninniku was simply sauteed in butter and flavoured with salt and pepper, my first time giving it such a simple treatment. Now I know why there are so few recipes for ramps out there: they don't need much done to them. The soup was just frozen peas breifly cooked in stock made from the shrimp shells, pureed and garnished with a dollop of homemade yogurt. (That "homemade" is not meant to be show-offy, by the way- yogurt is one of those products, along with nattou and orange juice, that is very hard to find these days, thanks to the earthquake.)

 

Nikomi Ramen

Nabe (hot pot) is my favourite thing to eat in cold weather, but we didn't eat nearly enough of it this winter- and how could we? A squirming baby in our laps does not go well with a konro (portable gas range) at the table. But once Shuma was big enough for a high chair it was safe to cook at the table once again. We were all about nikomi ramen this season, a simple nabe using unfancy ingredients and instant ramen noodles. What's special about this dish is that while nabe is usually finished by cooking noodles (usually udon, but ramen is occasionally used) or rice in the leftover broth, nikomi ramen involves cooking and eating the noodles together with the other ingredients. No waiting until the end for what many people consider the best part of the meal.

In this case we used chicken thigh, carrot, kombu (kelp), shiitake and maitake mushrooms, shungiku (chrysanthemum greens), atsu-age (fried tofu), and cabbage. And for a taste test, two kinds of ramen noodles: the regular dried instant kind, and fresh.

Here it is being cooked in a broth of dashi (kelp stock), sake and soy sauce.

And here are the fresh noodles: nice, fat and toothsome, but with the disadvantage of clouding up the broth a little.

And the instant noodles, perked up with a topping of chili peppers and sesame. A little on the mushy side, but with the advantage of being, well, instant.

The verdict: the fresh noodles were way better, and the extra time needed to cook them is not much of a drawback considering nabe is supposed to be a slow, leisurely meal. But the instant noodles didn't suck either.

This is one of the coldest springs ever, so I don't think we're done with nikomi ramen quite yet.

Happy Pancake Day/International Women's Day/Birthday!

On the phone with my parents this weekend, my Dad asked if I knew what was coming up this week. "Pancake Day?" I asked, enjoying the few seconds of silence as they tried to figure out if I was joking or not. I was, of course, because yesterday was my Mom's birthday.

But I'm rather proud of myself for remembering Shrove Tuesday, a holiday that isn't celebrated here in Japan so I tend to forget about. We did Breakfast For Dinner (actually Breakfast For Breakfast for Hideaki, who's on night shift), with pancakes and lazy strawberry compote (strawberries + sugar, mixed in the morning and left to sit all day). There was also bacon, and would have been eggs if I hadn't been overwhelmed by the amount of pancake batter I wound up with by following this recipe. I mean, just looking at the ingredient amounts I knew I was in for a big batch, but I was totally unprepared for the ridiculous amount of pancake batter I got. We ate until we were stuffed and then I filled the freezer with pancakes and there's still a bowl of the damned batter in the fridge to use in the next few days.

And what happens to old pancake batter? Will I end up with crepes? Won't be much different from these pancakes, which were much less fluffy than promised (not complaining- I like thin pancakes too, and these were very soft and light). I don't know what went wrong- did something get lost in translation when converting those ridiculous Imperial measurements into metric? Should I just admit that the homemade substitute is a pale imitation and stop using recipes that call for buttermilk?

Anyway. Happy Pancake Day, and Happy Birthday Mom, and also Happy Birthday Cuzzin Jen, Nephew Aaron, Friend Emi, and (oh shit who am I forgetting?) everyone else who has a birthday around now.

Also, speaking of holidays not celebrated in Japan, Happy International Women's Day!

 

Spontaneous Nap

A few days ago Shuma had his first unplanned nap. He's never been much of a napper and instead sleeps really well at night and takes very short little catnaps after feedings during the day. I do try to put him down in his crib or swing chair a few times a day to encourage napping; sometimes it works and usually it doesn't. But this time I had just put him down for a minute while I went to do something, and after a minute of crying he suddenly went quiet. When I went to see what was wrong, this is what I saw:

Yes! Expecting it to be a short sleep, I made use of my unexpected free time in the kitchen:

Making cookies. I'm such a good houswife! Really though, what else could I do with a short amount of free time? And it did turn out to be short, and thanks to my stupid tiny Japanese convection oven, which can only take one tray at a time, I only managed half a batch before Shuma woke up, crying even harder than before.

But that only meant there was another tray of cookies to bake during the next nap. Yay! And lots to eat. These are double chocolate walnut cookies, and I don't quite have a proper recipe but basically just take your regular chocolate chip cooke recipe, add a tablespoon or so of cocoa powder and some chopped walnuts, and that's it. Very yummy.

Mackerel rundown

So this month's theme has turned out to be not much of a theme at all, thanks to an uncooperative baby and shopping difficulties. But congratulations to Julie, who guessed that Jamaica was the theme (and even figured out the town where my parents were visiting- Negril).

I love Jamaican food and was really hoping to cook lots of it this month, to remind myself of my many happy visits there. Unfortunately it's rather hard to find some key ingredients here- it's not that they're all completely unavailable, but I can't really justify a trip to the city (even train fare is something to worry about these days) to track down hard to find items. Also, the boy is in a clingy mood lately and I've been limiting my cooking to quick and easy meals.

But the meal above doesn't contain any particularly exotic ingredients. It's pumpkin soup (using kabocha instead of Jamaican pumpkin); mackerel rundown (mackerel cooked in coconut milk with hot peppers, thyme, tomatoes, onion and garlic); rice and peas; and boiled dumplings.

It's the first time I've made- or even tried- rundown, as it seems to be more of a home-cooking dish than a restaurant dish. It's apparently supposed to be served with boiled green bananas, yams, breadfruit, and/or dumplings (boiled or fried), and since the first three are hard to find here (yes, you can't even buy green bananas- they're sold already ripe) I went with boiled dumplings and added rice and peas.The rice and peas may look strange to a Jamaican but it seemed to go well. Hell, the whole meal may look strange- I have no idea what it's "supposed" to look like.

But it was delicious! Not quite authentic, as I couldn't find any fresh hot peppers (I ended up buying something called bannou tougarashi, a pepper from Kyoto, which had no heat at all), but I'm very pleased with how it turned out, especially the rundown. Now I know what to do when mackerel is on sale!

 

Salmon-don

Leftover steamed vegetables; abura-age to negi no nibitashi (fried tofu simmered with long onion); salmon-don (chopped salmon sashimi over rice). The latter two dishes were inspired by a recent episode of the NHK cooking show Kantan Gohan and turned out to be super-easy and tasty. The original recipes (in Japanese) are here and here, and here are my versions:

 

Salmon-don

2 Tbsp soy sauce
1 Tbsp sake
2 tsp mirin (sweet cooking sake)
200 grams sashimi-grade salmon
1 stalk negi (long onion), white part only
A dash of sesame oil
Two bowls of steamed white rice
A handful of kizami nori (thin strips of nori seaweed)*
2 egg yolks, optional

Add the soy sauce, sake and mirin to a microwave-safe bowl, microwave 30 seconds, let cool.

Chop salmon into small pieces, finely slice negi. Add salmon and negi to a bowl, pour in the soy sauce mixture and a dash of sesame oil, mix well.

Sprinkle the bowls of rice with kizami nori. Arrange the salmon mixture over nori, top with egg yolk.

*Kizami nori can be bought already sliced, or you can just make it with sushi nori: cut nori into 2 cm wide strips, cut strips widthwise into thin slices.

 

Abura-age to Negi no Nibitashi

3 sheets abura-age (fried tofu)
1 stalk negi plus green half of negi from recipe above
200 ml dashi
1 Tbsp soy sauce
1 Tbsp sake
1 tsp mirin

Bring a kettle of water to boil. Place abura-age sheets in a strainer in the sink and pour the boiling water over them, rinse with cold water to cool. Squeeze out excess water then slice widthwise into thin strips. Slice negi diagonally into 5mm slices.

Bring the dashi, soy sauce, sake and mirin to a simmer in a pot, add abura-age, bring back to simmer and cook for one minute. Add the negi and simmer until wilted.

Remove the abura-age and negi with slotted spoon and arrange in bowls, serve.

Still cooking

Recently somebody (I'm talking about you, JoeinVegas!) left a comment saying he knew this would turn into a baby blog. I was sure this would never turn into a baby or mommy blog (in fact I remember promising exactly that right on this blog), but there you go. Guilty as charged. But how did you know, Joe?

To be fair though, I don't think my blog was ever really a food blog- it had too much other stuff thrown in. I guess it's a regular "a slice in the life of" blog, and for a little while it's going to be very much baby focused, reflecting the fact that I myself and very much baby focused. To those who aren't keen on endless pictures of babies (and I know I wasn't before this particular baby came along), I apologise. Come back in a little while and there might be something a little more interesting.

And just to show that I do still manage to cook, here is a recent dinner:

Steamed rice with shimeji tsukudani (shimeji mushrooms simmered in soy sauce); steamed vegetables dressed with ponzu (citrus soy sauce): red and white skinned potatoes, broccoli, golden cauliflower, sweet potato, kabocha squash, renkon (lotus root) and negi (long onions); and miyeok guk (wakame seaweed soup with beef).

Miyeok guk is a Korean soup based on the highly nutritious wakame, said to be good for helping nursing mothers increase their milk production. So it is often eaten by new mothers, as well as pregnant women and on birthdays. This was the first time I made it, although I'd had it once before- this summer my brother's girlfriend Sherry made it for me when I was home visiting.

It's a simple soup but really really tasty and will show up on my table often from now on. I think it deserves a post of its own, so more about it another time.

Anniversary

A few weeks ago we celebrated our 11th anniversary. I was all set to tell the story of our wedding and took a bunch of pictures of our old wedding photos (we were wed in the pre-digital era, unfortunately, so getting the pictures online is not an easy process) and then I was hit with a bout of lethargy which kept me away from the computer. I don't know if it's directly pregnancy related, or if this summer's endless heat wave finally got to me, or what, but I've stopped loving being pregnant and now just want this baby to come out. So the wedding story (stories actually, as we ended up having four different celebrations) will have to wait, and all you get for now are the pictures.

We celebrated our anniversary in a very small way. Hideaki brought me a little bouquet of flowers, and I cured this year's first batch of ikura (salmon roe), which was put to use in the dinner above. Clockwise from top left: edamame (green soybeans); kyuri no asazuke (quick-pickled cucumbers); nasu to myouga no nimono (simmered eggplants with ginger buds); okura to myouga no misoshiru (miso soup with okra and ginger buds); and umi no oyakodon (mother-and-child seafood over rice).

Oyakodon (mother-and-child over rice) usually refers to a chicken and egg dish, but this seafood version uses salt-grilled salmon and salmon roe, with a garnish of shiso (perilla).

For an anniversary lunch out we went to our favourite local seafood restaurant, Marufuku. Hideaki had the kinmedai furai teishoku (deep-fried alfonsino lunch set). Alfonsino being a high-mercury fish I only snuck a few bites, and man was it ever good. It was also very rich though, and I couldn't imagine eating a whole plate of it.

I chose the sashimi moriawase teishoku (assorted sashimi lunch set), which came with a salad and chawan mushi (savoury egg custard), not shown, and the tray above: pickles, rice, miso soup and a beautifully arranged plate of sashimi. Clockwise from left: suzuki (sea bass); maguro (tuna); sawara no aburi (seared king mackerel); shake (salmon); and buri (yellowtail). It was all excellent, particularly the sawara, which is not a fish I eat often for some reason. Researching it later I discovered that it's very high in mercury, which was a bit of a surprise- I'm pretty careful about mercury but I guess because I don't come across sawara very often it just wasn't on my radar. And here I was worried about the tuna (I gave most of it to Hideaki) and alfonsino.

Actually, I've just checked the the Japanese government's mercury guidelines, and sawara tests as low in mercury (the high mercury listing mentioned above is American). Who to believe? I don't think the very small amounts of tuna, king mackerel and alfonsino I ate have any chance of harming the baby (and all the good stuff from the fish would outweigh any harm anyway), especially given how careful I normally am. But how frustrating to have two official sources give such vastly different information! I swear, once this baby is born I'm going to have the biggest mercury feast ever.

Marufuku
03-3925-1345
4-2-2 Higashioizumi, Nerima-ku, Tokyo
Open weekdays 11:30am-12:00am, Sundays and holidays 11:30am-10:00om, closed Mondays

Birthday cake, curry and tea

Hideaki turned 41 last week, kicking off a month and a half of celebrations: his birthday, our anniversary, the baby's due date, and my birthday. From now on late summer and early autumn will be a busy time, but I do NOT want to be one of those families that celebrates everything all together. That's just lame.

It's hard to justify spending money on a present when there's so much to buy for the baby, so I decided my gift would be to make him a cheesecake. This was actually supposed to be a great big sacrifice, because I hate cheesecake and would be putting all the effort into something that only he could enjoy. I was in for a few surprises though, the first being that cheesecake isn't that hard to make.

Or maybe it's hard to make well- you can see that it's a little messy and I've gone outside the edges a bit with the filling. But for a first attempt by a cheesecake hater, it's not bad. This is an unbaked cheesecake (who wants to bake when it's 35 degrees?) made with mascarpone, cream cheese and cream, based on this recipe (substituting lemon zest for orange zest and omitting the orange slices). Yup, it's a kid's recipe, but perfect for a beginner like me.

I topped it with with nectarine slices macerated in a bit of sugar and lemon juice for a few minutes, and if you can ignore the mess on the crust it almost looks pretty. And it tasted amazing. That was the other surprise- I don't hate cheesecake! In fact, I quite like it. I probably still don't like the baked kind, or the unbaked kind if it was made with gelatin and lots of sugar, but this was delicious and I think I'll have to buy a cheesecake ring so I can make this again properly.

All Hideaki wanted for his birthday dinner was curry rice, and I was happy to oblige as I don't think I've made curry all year (I went off curry in my first trimester and even after my food aversions ended I didn't feel like cooking it). I made what we call keema curry, which is  based on Japanese style keema curry, which is very loosely based on actual keema curry. Our version uses ground pork, garam masala, and lots of onions and tomatoes and I love it because it cooks fast and doesn't need any of that nasty store bought Japanese curry roux. I'm sure it is nothing at all like real keema, but the name has stuck and that's that.

On the weekend I took the birthday boy out for high tea at the Peak Lounge in the Park Hyatt. I love their high tea and we figured this was our last chance to enjoy it for a very long time. He started off with an iced cappuccino, which I'm sure is hardly traditional but hit the spot on a very hot day (I had one later and it was the best iced cappuccino I've had).

The waitstaff were very nice, cautioning me not to fall down those stairs seen above when we entered (Japanese people are very concerned about pregnant ladies on stairs), bringing me a pillow for my back, and not seeming at all disturbed that I had way more caffeine than a pregnant woman should.

The weather was not quite clear enough for excellent views, but a blue sky and the buildings of west Shinjuku weren't bad to look at.

I started with a pot of Assam, and although I know nothing about tea I can tell this was good because that sugar cube in the picture went unused (I normally can't drink hot tea without loads of sugar).

The food began with the classic three-tiered serving of sandwiches, scones and cakes.

The sandwiches were shrimp and tomato, ham and cabbage and I forget the last; all were tasty.

The scones were mango and plain, both delicious and the proper British style that I love (I can no longer eat the giant, dry North American coffee shop kind). The mango ones were nice but I'd just as soon have both plain.

Served with the traditional red currant jam and clotted cream.

The cakes were very well made but were more of a treat for Hide. I may like cheesecake but I'm still not a big cake person.

After the above treats were gone we were periodically brought trays of sweet and savoury snacks to choose from, and we were soon stuffed. I forgot to take pictures of these supplementary treats, but I did make another discovery: I like panna cotta. I don't know if it's a pregnancy thing or not, but it seems I'm losing my hate for gooey, rich creamy things. I'm also not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

So that's one celebration down, three more to go. Just think, the next birthday we celebrate will be an actual birth!

The Peak Lounge
03-5323-3461
Park Hyatt Hotel 41st Floor, 3-7-1-2 Nishi Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo
Open weekdays 11am to 10:30pm, weekends and holidays 10am to 10:30pm

Biwa Jam

This is a basket of biwa, a fruit I'd never heard of until I came to Japan. Called "loquat" in English, it's a distant relative of the apple with soft flesh, an edible peel and a sweet, mild, pear-like flavour. It's originally from China but has spread throughout the warmer countries of the world, and has long been grown in Japan. Nagasaki and Chiba are top producers and biwa products are popular souvenirs for visitors to those prefectures.

It's now considered rather old-fashioned here and few people bother to plant biwa trees these days, even though they seem to produce a lot of fruit without a lot of effort. I sometimes see biwa trees in older gardens where the fruit often goes unpicked (I've noticed the same thing with other "old fashioned" fruit fruit here like figs and pomegranates), which always makes me sad.

In Japan it is available fresh in May and June and doesn't keep very well, so should be eaten the day you buy it when it's nice and juicy. It's best served chilled and as-is: just peel the the skin with your fingers and eat the flesh, avoiding the large seeds in the middle (it's messy work though, so if you're Japanese you'll want to serve it peeled and sliced). Biwa tends to be a little pricey, with a small package of six or so going for 500 yen and up, and as it's not the most exciting fruit in the world I rarely think it's worth buying. But it's definitely a nice treat once or twice each season.

The biwa shown above are not prime specimens: they were sold at a discount due to being old and shriveled. I decided to buy them and as they were too far past their prime to eat fresh I made a small batch of jam. It was easy and set very well, as loquats are high in natural pectin, and tasted nice, if a little bland. Next time I might try adding some spice or mixing in some other fruit (cinnamon and/or would be nice for the spice, and cherries might work well as they're in season at about the same time). It's such a simple recipe that I thought I'd share it here, so read on if you'd like to try making this for yourself.

Biwa Jam

1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) biwa
500 ml (2 US cups) water
500 to 700 grams sugar
2 lemons
Optional spices: 1 stick cinnamon, 1 knob fresh ginger, grated

Wash fruit and cut lengthwise around the seeds, twist to open in half. Remove seeds, stem and blossom ends with fingers, and cut away any bruised or blemished parts. Don't remove the peel- that's where the pectin is!

Chop the halved biwa roughly and add to a non-reactive pot. If using a cinnamon stick, add it now. (Note that the pictures show halved biwa in the pot, but as I discovered it takes a long, long simmer to break down the the fruit and I ended up using an immersion blender to help break up the skin. It was messy work and not recommended!) Add about 500 ml water, or enough to barely cover, and simmer until pulpy, about one hour. Add more water if needed.

While the fruit is simmering, zest and juice the lemons. A citrus juicer and microplane grater make quick work of this, but if you don't have those don't fret. In a Japanese kitchen you can use an oroshigane (daikon grater) to zest the lemon (hint: run lemon juice over the grater to remove any stubborn zest that sticks to it), or you can just use a peeler to remove the zest (just the yellow part, don't peel off the white pith), then chop it finely. To juice a lemon without a juicer, simply cut it in half and stick a fork into the flesh, taking care not to pierce the skin. Holding the lemon over a dish, squeeze around the fork until you've got all the juice out.

Once the fruit has broken down add the lemon zest and juice. If you're using ginger, add it now. Add sugar to taste. Biwa is a sweet and mild fruit, so too much sugar will overwhelm it- I used 500 grams, but you could use more or less.

Increase the heat and boil until a small amount of jam sets on a frozen spoon or small dish. Ladle the jam into clean, sterilized jars (I filled up five 200ml jars, but this will depend on how much the fruit has cooked down). Screw on lids and set in a quite place to cool. Store any jars whose lids don't pop in the fridge and eat quickly.

Yakiniku

Yakiniku is often translated as "Korean Barbeque", although it's not really barbeque (usually being cooked indoors over charcoal or a gas flame) and, at least as served in Japan, is not truly Korean. It's not something I want to eat often, but when I do it's a craving that's hard to ignore. Recently I've really been craving it, and not being able to afford a visit to a yakiniku restaurant (good yakiniku is pricey) decided to do it at home. It's really easy to cook at home but we haven't done so in years as yakiniku at home has one major drawback: it creates a lot of heat and smoke, so can really only be done in the spring or fall, when it's warm enough to open all the windows but not so warm that the extra heat of the grill will make you sweat.

Luckily my craving came along during good yakiniku weather so I was free to indulge myself. This is how we do yakiniku at home:

From left: sanchu (lettuce used for wrapping cooked meat); kimchi (spicy pickled napa cabbage); kashira (pork cheek); a plate of three kinds of meat: kalbi (boneless beef rib, top), buta rosu (pork shoulder, left), and gyu momo (beef round, right); and namul (Korean style seasoned vegetables): zenmai (fern shoots, left), daikon and carrot (top) and mung bean sprouts (bottom). In the bottle and little dishes is yakiniku sauce. It's a lot of food, and lest you think us total gluttons let me assure you that we shopped with leftovers in mind, and didn't actually eat everything shown that night.

The sauce and namul were homemade but the kimchi is store-bought and all meat came sliced as shown and labeled yakiniku yo (for yakiniku), sliced at exactly the right thickness. Regular supermarkets sell convenient yakiniku sets with a few types of meat in the same package, but we had done the day's shopping at a discount market with no fancy sets but very very good prices. The pork was heavily discounted and the beef was half price, the only way we could afford good wagyu (Japanese top-grade beef). Eating yakiniku in a restaurant usually involves smaller portions and more cuts of meat, and a bigger emphasis on beef, but when you do it yourself it's hard to include everything.

Yakiniku often includes vegetables, but with us they tend to get neglected in favour of the meat and end up burning. So this time we skipped them, figuring the sanchu, kimchi and namuru added enough healthiness.

Here's a better look at the kalbi. The word kalbi comes from Korea, where it's actually pronounced galbi and usually served in long strips with the bone, requiring scissors be kept at the table to cut the strips down to size. In Japan kalbi is a little more refined: it's nearly always boneless and pre-sliced and often from very good well marbled beef, like the meat above. This is shinshu-gyu a brand (yes, beef here has brands: think Kobe beef) from Nagano that is fed on apples.

Here is the gyu momo, buta rosu and kashira cooking on the teppan (tabletop grill).

And this is some grilled kalbi, dipped in the yakiniku sauce. Since everything is cooked little by little at the table yakiniku is always a leisurely meal, and we spent almost two hours on this meal. When we were finally stuffed we cooked the leftover meat and packed it away in the fridge, marinated in yakiniku sauce.

And it made a very nice lunch a few days later, the meat reheated and served over hot rice and the namul (served in the tub that kimchi had come in) on the side.

Recipe: Pretzels with Mascarpone Honey Dip

Hideaki discovered a wonderful tsumami (drinking snack) recipe just in time for holiday indulging: pretzels with mascarpone honey dip. It's as simple as it is delicious, and the recipe—although it hardly needs one—can be found at the bottom of the post.

He found the recipe in a magazine I'd bought for him, a men's magazine called Pen, with a headline this month of "Otoko no Ryori Kyoshitsu" (Cooking School for Men), and I'd bought it hoping to inspire him to cook a bit more.

The same day I bought him the magazine we got a catalogue in the mail from Hiraki, a bargain-priced shoe company known especially for their 380 yen sneakers. Needless to say I'm a loyal customer so I immediately sat down to read the catalogue while Hideaki flipped through his new magazine.

Once he was done with the cooking feature, he was reminded of why he never buys men's magazines: the rest of the rag was full of ridiculous looking, overpriced clothes, accessories and gadgets. He was especially tickled by the trekking boots shown above (in the middle of the picture, next to the suitcases), which sell for 367,500 yen (just over $4200 Canadian). Now, I've heard that extremely high quality shoes can last a lifetime, and that some people are happy to pay thousands for hand made shoes, and I get that. But we find it hilarious that this magazine thinks there are people out there who consider it reasonable to pay four thousand dollars for shoes to wear while out in the wilderness, which is full of mud and dirt and jagged rocks and streams and such. Maybe there are a few, but more likely than not none of these shoes will ever trod on anything grittier than a Tokyo sidewalk.

Just for fun, we calculated that you could buy 185 pairs of similar looking shoes from Hiraki (or 2041 pairs of their cheapest 180 yen sneakers, shown above at top left). Which really sums up what I think of pricey designer goods: are they better than the cheap crap that regular people buy? Probably. 185 times better? Not a chance.

So back to the recipe. It didn't look especially promising to me, mostly because I thought I didn't like mascarpone cheese. It turns out that I simply don't like what mascarpone tends to be used for: gooey, sweet desserts. Not that this recipe isn't gooey and sweet, but it has the genius edition of salty and crunchy, thanks to the pretzels, and that really brings it to a different level. The magazine says it goes well with Belgian beer (by which I think they a mean dark and rich brew like Chimay) and it does indeed, although I prefer it with dessert wine (Sauternes would be perfect but the Peter Lehmann Botrytis Semillon that I picked up for about 2000 yen at Kaldi is nice too).

Just four ingredients are needed: mascarpone cheese, walnuts, honey, and pretzels. Mascarpone is fairly popular in Japan and can be found in most larger supermarkets and import shops like Seijo Ishii. The supermarket kind comes in a small container that is perfect for a generous serving for 2 to 4 people, the larger container found at Kaldi and Costco will make a few servings. Pretzels are a little harder to find, but Kaldi, import shops, or—if you don't mind buying a 6 pound bag—Costco should have them. Quantities aren't given in the recipe, as you can use whatever proportions suit you. I like lots of nuts and just a drizzle of honey, but you might want more or less of either.

Pretzels with Mascarpone Honey Dip

Walnuts, whole if possible
Mascarpone cheese
Honey
Pretzels

Toast walnuts: heat walnuts in a dry pan (not nonstick) on medium, stirring often, for a few minutes. When golden brown, remove from pan and let cool. Nuts can also be toasted in oven or microwave, click here for instructions. Toasting is optional so skip it if you're in a hurry, but it's worth doing.

When nuts have cooled, chop or crush them into small pieces. The funnest way to crush them is to find a heavy glass or small bowl that is comfortable to hold.

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With the walnuts in a flat-bottomed bowl, crush them with the bottom of the glass, giving the nuts a stir occasionally to ensure that they are crushed evenly. Stop when the nuts are about half a centimetre, or of whatever size you like.

Mix the mascarpone with the nuts. If I'm going to use up all the cheese at once I usually just do mix right in the mascarpone container (the Japanese supermarket type comes in the perfect size for this) but this time I'm only using half, so I'm mixing in a bowl.

When mixed, spoon it into a pretty bowl and drizzle with honey. Serve with pretzels.

Recipe: Mentaiko Spaghetti

I went to Tsukiji Shijo, better known simply as Tsukiji, recently and came home with a few treats. I've been there many times before, but this was my first visit purely as a shopper, and it turns out to be a completely different experience from visiting as a tourist. I discovered that the world's biggest fish market is much more than a giant labyrinth of wholesalers offering picturesque fresh seafood to middlemen, but a great place for the retail shopper to find good prices on everything from sashimi to prepared seafood to dried food like beans and kombu (kelp). I came away with a bargain-priced jar of nametake (enoki mushroom preserves, a product that deserves a post of its own), a bag of fresh mussels (what a thrill it was to discover that they do exist in Japan) and a package of very good and very cheap Hakata mentaiko (spicy cod roe from Hakata, Kyushu).

Mentaiko, also called karashi mentaiko, consists of whole cod (or, more likely these days, polluck) roe sacs preserved with salt, sake, kombu, and red chili peppers (a similar product called tarako is the roe preserved without the peppers). Other ingredients are often added, and cheaper mentaiko will contain plenty of MSG and food colouring. It is almost always used in one of two ways: as a topping for white rice, and an ingredient in mentaiko spaghetti.

Mentaiko spaghetti is probably my favourite yoshoku , and is definitely one of the cleverest (yoshoku means "western food" and is a category that includes any European style food that is tweaked for the Japanese palate; it is not meant to be authentically European). The combination of pasta, fish roe and butter is as unexpected as it is delicious, and mentaiko spaghetti is enormously popular both at restaurants and at home, loved by every age group (although non-spicy tarako spaghetti is favoured by kids).

It's also amazingly easy to make, but you wouldn't know that by the amount of ready-made mentaiko sauce sold at the supermarket, or by the huge variety of recipes out there. But the truth is it takes just minutes to make and there are only three essential ingredients: pasta, butter and mentaiko. I'm amazed by all the recipes, in both English and Japanese, that call for unnecessary additions: some of them, like cream and mayonnaise, are merely unnecessary, while others (garlic, onions, wine) are distracting or even clash with the mentaiko (wasabi, pepper). And I can't believe how many recipes call for additional salty ingredients like soy sauce or powdered soup stock, since it's already a salt-bomb of a dish.

I've never been a fan of Harumi Kurihara (billed in the English-language press, not very accurately, as "Japan's Martha Stewart"), but seeing her English recipe for mentaiko pasta makes me like her even less: she calls for both soy sauce and kombucha powder, along with regular salted butter. Kombucha, by the way, is an extremely salty kelp-based drink that in its commercial form is chock-full of MSG. Um, no thanks!

All you want to taste is butter, mentaiko and pasta, and this holy trio has enough salt, spice, creaminess and umami that you don't really need anything else. In fact, for a basic mentaiko spaghetti those three ingredients are all you need. The pasta is always spaghetti in Japan but you can use anything; I prefer spaghettini. Unsalted butter is preferred but salted butter won't make too much of a difference (if you're worried about salt just don't salt your pasta water). For the mentaiko, use the best mentaiko you can find: a good rule of thumb: the less lurid the colour, the higher the quality. Proportions are highly flexible, use more or less of anything and it will still turn out fine.

Here is the recipe, for two people:

Ultra Simple Mentaiko Spaghetti

2 to 3 Tbsp butter
200 to 250 grams spaghetti or other long pasta
2 sacs of mentaiko

Remove butter from fridge, bring to room temperature in a large bowl or soften in the microwave. Cook the pasta. Open the mentaiko sacs with a knife and scrape the roe from the membrane with a spoon. Discard the membrane and add the roe to the bowl with the butter, mix well. When pasta is finished, drain very briefly and add it to the bowl. Toss to mix and serve.

That's it! Of course there are ways to dress it up a bit, and it's especially nice to add toppings. Below are ingredients for the slightly fancier mentaiko spaghetti I made with the mentaiko I bought at Tsukiji. From left: salt for the pasta water; olive oil to stretch out the butter if you're worried about cost or cholesterol; mentaiko (this was sold in chunks rather than whole sacs, I used about half of the amount shown); spaghettini; shiso (perilla, also known as beefsteak leaf), and butter.

Shiso is a classic, but there are a number of toppings you can use. From left: negi (long onion, you can also use green onions or chives); yakinori (the seaweed used to wrap onigiri and sushi rolls), which will need to be snipped into thin slices; ishinori, another kind of nori in a crumbly form; and shiso. You can use just one of the above, or a combination of shiso and nori or negi and nori (don't use shiso and negi together though, it's a bit of a clash).

So here's my fancier but still very simple recipe, for two:

Ultimate Mentaiko Spaghetti

2 to 3 Tbsp unsalted butter (substitute regular butter)
200 grams (7 ounces) spaghetti or other long pasta
1 Tbsp salt, optional
1 package (about 10 leaves) shiso or a 10 cm piece of negi
2 sacs (about 120 grams/ 4 ounces) of mentaiko
1 onigiri-sized sheet (or half a sushi-sized sheet) yakinori, or a pinch of ishinori
Olive oil to taste, optional
1/2 cup reserved pasta water, optional

Melt butter gently in a large pan, turn off heat and let cool. Put pasta water on to boil. When it's ready add the salt and pasta, cook until al dente.

Wash shiso and shake to dry, cut off stems.

Keeping the leaves in a neat stack, roll them up tightly, cut the roll in half, and slice into thin strips. Set aside. If using negi, slice thinly and set aside.

Score the top of the roe sacs, without cutting all the way through.

Use a small spoon to scrape the roe from the sac membrane.

Remove as much roe as possible. Discard the membrane (it's edible but too tough to add to the sauce).

When butter is cool enough to touch, add the roe.

Mix the mentaiko into the butter, making sure there are no lumps. If you're using a lot of mentaiko and it's not mixing well, add olive oil or more butter (make sure it's not hot: hot butter will cook the mentaiko, which will toughen it and prevent it from sticking to the pasta).

Meanwhile, scoop out about half a cup of pasta water and let sit to cool.

If using yakinori, prepare it now (preparing it too early will cause it to wilt). With scissors, cut it in half widthwise and then lengthwise, stack the four long strips together and snip them widthwise into thin matchsticks. Set aside.

Drain pasta very briefly, then add it, still dripping, to pan. Toss to mix well. If the sauce seems too dry and isn't mixing well, add a little of the reserved pasta water or a splash of olive oil (or if you're a complete hedonist, more butter).

Divide the pasta between two plates, top with the shiso chiffonade or sliced negi and the nori. Serve hot.

Eating through autumn

It's my favourite food season and I've hardly had time to cook, but here's a handful of dinners from the past few months:

Corn on the cob; horenso to abura-age no nibitasi (spinach simmered with deep-fried tofu); mugi gohan (white rice with barley); kenchinjiru (miso soup with tofu, shiitake, konyaku and root vegetables); sanma no himono (air-dried Pacific saury) with grated daikon. An September meal combining the last of summer's fresh corn with sanma, the ultimate autumn fish (sanma is written 秋刀魚 in kanji, which reads as "autumn sword fish", referring both its season and its shape and colour).

The sanma was dried at home using a drying net given to us by my brother-in-law this spring. I haven't had a lot of time to try it out so I'm still in the experimental stage- you can see that the fish has curled up and become misshapen. The process involves buying fresh whole fish, cleaning and butterflying them, soaking them in brine, then drying them outside for a period ranging from a few hours to a day, either in the full sun or in the shade with a breeze. There are so many variables you'd think something could easily go wrong, but every attempt has been delicious, if a little funny looking. So making perfect himono is difficult, but making good himono seems practically fool-proof. It's probably somewhat of a lost art, at least for the home cook, and although it's easy to imagine that every housewife once knew how to make hoshimono, I very rarely see drying nets hanging from balconies or windows (and when I do it's usually a restaurant rather than a private home).

So why bother with himono? The fish isn't completely dried like salt cod or other dried fish in the west, so the goal isn't long-term storage. Rather, allowing the sun or air to remove some of the moisture of the fish intensifies its flavour and substantially increases its umami (savoury flavour component, aka "nature's MSG"). It firms the flesh and softens the bones, so that when the fish is properly grilled small bones can be eaten rather than picked out and discarded. And it does give a longer shelf life to the fish, allowing oily fish like horse mackerel and saury to be stored in the fridge for up to a week, rather than a day or two when fresh.

Mugi gohan; yakinasu (grilled eggplant) and hiyakko (cold tofu) topped with thinly sliced negi (long onion), grated ginger and katsuobushi (bonito flakes); kyuri no asazuke (quick salt-pickled cucumbers); tonjiru (pork soup with root vegetables). The autumn element here is the eggplant, and although tonjiru doesn't really have a season it is hot and hearty so it shows up more often in the cold months.

White rice; butter lettuce and mizuna greens salad with myoga (ginger bud) and tomatoes; shishito no okakak itame (shishito peppers sauteed with bonito flakes); daikon no happa no itame-ni (sauteed daikon and daikon leaves); miso soup with wakame seaweed, tofu and myoga; hambagu no kinoko sosu kake (hamburger patty with shiitake and button mushroom sauce). Myoga, shishito and mushrooms of all types are available year-round but are considered to be foods of late summer (shishito), autumn (mushrooms) or both (myoga, which has a summer version- natsu-myoga- and an fall version- aki myoga). 

Kinoko to bacon no bata-shoyu itame (shiitake, shimeji and eringi mushrooms and bacon sauteed in butter and flavoured with soy sauce); sanma no himono; mixed baby greens with tomato and tofu; yakinasu; ikuradon (rice topped with salmon roe and shiso). Another home-made himono, this time a little over-dried; the ikura is a souvenir from our trip to Hokkaido. In addition to the mushrooms, sanma and eggplant, the ikura is classic autumn food, and while prepared ikura is available year-round this is when it's at its cheapest and most plentiful.

 

Kinoko no takigohan (rice cooked with mushrooms); tamagoyaki (thick omelet); spinach topped with katsuobushi; goma suiton no miso shiru (miso soup with sesame dumplings). Suiton are flour dumplings normally added to soups, usually plain but sometimes mixed with tofu and black or plain sesame seeds. I didn't grow up eating dumplings so I don't know how Japanese suiton compare to other ones, but they remind me of the "spinners" found in Jamaican soups.

Tomatoes with feta cheese dressed with basil and olive oil; bow-tie pasta with cabbage, bacon and mushrooms. I'd never heard of pasta with cabbage until I came to Japan, where it's a very popular combination (especially when paired with bacon). Now I can't get enough of it. The tomato dish is one my Mom made a few times on my last visit that I fell in love with. If feta was cheaper and easier to find I'd be eating this all the time.

Linguine with spinach, pine nuts and bacon. Spinach and pine nuts is another favourite combination, especially with- what else- bacon. I'd eat this all year but as a helpful commenter pointed out last year, pine nuts are an autumn food.

Spinach dressed sesame seeds; sanma no himono; miso soup with shiitake and shikaku mame (winged bean); kibi gohan (rice with millet); and umeboshi (pickled plums) and ginnan (ginkgo nuts) to share. Yup, sanma again. It isn't the only fish that can be dried as himono, it's just that it's very cheap at the moment. The shikaku mame are new to me, discovered on a recent trip to Ogasawara, the group of islands far south of Tokyo. It has a nice crunchy texture and a mild bitter asparagus flavour, and miso soup is probably not the best way to use it.

The ginkgo nuts were gathered my me in the park, a smelly (they STINK!) job that is immensely satisfying, as it results in free food. They get washed, dried and then roasted, or in this case cooked in the microwave inside a paper bag, much like popping corn. They are served with Ogasawara sea salt, another souvenir.

Food

As a companion to my recent catch-up post, here is a post all about what I've bee eating since my blogging semi-hiatus. We start all the way back in May, just after our trip to Kushiro to visit Hideaki's brother. I had returned to Tokyo first for work reasons, and when he came back a few days later he was loaded down with souvenirs from his brother, all of them edible. So we ate like royalty for over a week after the trip, starting with this meal:

Mentaiko (spicy pollock roe); ikura no shoyuzuke (salmon roe preserved in soy sauce); noyasai no nibitashi (blanched wild greens flavoured with dashi and soy sauce); kyuuri no kombuzuke (cucumbers quick-pickled in salt and powdered kelp); kogomi no itame (sauteed fiddle heads), and hiyayakko (cold tofu) and spinach topped with katsuobushi. The mentaiko and ikura were gifts from BIL (my brother-in-law), the wild greens (a watercress-like plant of unknown species) were picked by Hideaki in Hokkaido and cooked by BIL, and the kombu powder was also from BIL. Kombu, like ikura and mentaiko, are a meibutsu (famous product) of Hokkaido.

The meal was finished off with white rice (merely a vehicle for the mentaiko and ikura) and two types of salt-grilled fish: sake (salmon) and saba (mackerel), both gifts from BIL.

The next day's dinner started off with three Hokkaido cheeses (bought by BIL on a visit to the cheese maker): monvizo, scamorza and tenerello. All were delicious and although on the mild side seemed closer to European cheeses than Japanese, and I never would have guessed they were made domestically if I hadn't already known.

The cheese was followed by a salad; the same mentaiko and ikura as before; sliced shiso (perilla) to eat over rice with the roe; a trio of pickles; soramame (fresh fava beans); and more of the the mackerel and salmon from the Hokkaido.

The next Hokkaido-themed meal was jingisukan, the Mongolian hotpot-like dish named after Genghis Khan. We started by cooking onions, green peppers, kabocha squash, shiitake, and eringi mushrooms on our electric skillet.

When the vegetables were partly cooked we added bean sprouts and marinated, thinly sliced lamb. The lamb was from--you guessed it--my BIL, and came frozen and already flavoured in a slightly sweet and spicy soy based sauce..

 

The skillet was covered and the jingisukan steamed until the lam was cooked, then it was stirred up and eaten with rice. We already love lamb and have even made jingisukan at home a few times, but this was the best ever.

Another BIL souvenir: Sanpouroku, a confection made in Obihiro, west of Kushiro. It's a variation of bamukuhen, Japan's version of the German baumkuchen, that takes the resemblance of the cake to a tree (the German name literally means "tree cake") one step further. The outside of the cake is glazed with white and milk chocolate in a marbled pattern resembling the bark of shirakaba (white birch), a tree that grows abundantly in Hokkaido.

We got one cake each of plain and chocolate, and both were as tasty as they were pretty.

This is something we bought for ourselves, being curious to try nama caramel, Japan's latest sweet obsession. Literally "raw caramel", it seemed to be an arsenal caramel that is very soft and rich tasting, and is usually sold at shockingly high prices. I think we paid about 1000 yen for the box shown above, which is a bargain by Tokyo standards (there were cheaper caramels at the souvenir shops in Kushiro airport but a quick check of their ingredient lists showed that were of inferior quality).

It turns out that nama caramel is exactly what we thought: a very rich, soft caramel. It was certainly delicious, and obviously made with quality ingredients, but it's basically just a soft caramel. I don't get what all the fuss is about or why people are willing to pay so much money for the stuff.

The last souvenir from Hokkaido was horumon, which means "throw-away bits" and refers to intestines, both beef and pork. It's eaten as horumon-yaki (grilled intestines) and is very popular in Hokkaido. When well prepared it's very good, even for people like me who aren't into organ meats, but it stinks to high heaven during cooking so we decided to have a barbeque in the park to eat it.

It came with a spicy dipping sauce, so we cooked it plain, along with asparagus, kabocha and eringi, then dipped it before eating. It looks kind of burnt above, but as it's very very fatty it's better to overcook it a little to let as much fat out as possible and to make it nice and crisp. Luckily we were the only ones barbequing that day (Japanese tend to consider barbeque a summer and autumn thing, so May is not the right season for it), but I'm sure more than a few passersby had to breathe in some unpleasantly flavoured air.

Next up: scallops and sazae (turban shell). The scallops were left on the half shell and cooked in sake and soy sauce, and the sazae were chopped up and poached in the other scallop shell halves in the same sake and soy sauce. Man, I love Japanese style barbeque!

Wanting to return to simpler food, but still not ready to take a seafood break, we went to a local soba (buckwheat noodle) restaurant. I had nishin soba: soba noodles in hot broth topped with nishin (dried herring) and mitsuba (trefoil), negi (long onion), and kamaboko (steamed fish cake). This is probably one of my favourite ways to eat soba, but I usually only get to eat it on New Year's Eve (soba is a traditional new year's dish, and my husband's family always eats it with nishin).

We had a more down-market version of soba at Hanamaru Udon, a popular fast food chain that specializes in sanuki udon (a regional style of udon, or wheat noodles). Hanamaru's main draw is its low prices: it's possible to buy a small, plain bowl of noodles for 105 yen, and although few people could be satisfied by such a small serving, you could still order a larger bowl with a few toppings for well under 500 yen.

You also aren't limited to udon and can opt for soba instead, which we did on this visit. Above, I ordered a medium sized kake soba (soba noodles in hot broth topped with negi) withe shungiku (chrysanthemum greens) and uzura tamago (quail egg) tempura on the side. At the do-it-yourself topping station I added katsuobushi (bonito flakes), sesame seeds and shichimi (seven spice mix).

The tempura is served cold so I usually avoid it, but I make exceptions for things that tend to keep their crunch, like shungiku. The uzura tamago was recommended by my husband, a Hanamaru Udon regular, as the ultimate noodle topping.

He was right. The eggs was cooked hanjuku (soft boiled), and the yolks oozed into the broth to add a rich, sweet flavour. It was a very fancy touch that made my meal seem like I'd paid a whole lot more than 400 yen for it.

400 yen doesn't quite pay for a latte at my favourite Kichijoji cafe medewo and dine (OK, I've only been there a few times, but it's still my favourite). But there's nothing wrong with splurging every now and again for a tasty cup that comes decorated with a bunny.

The shrimp dish above is based on Epicurious's garlic shrimp recipe, using shelled shrimp instead of the shell-on shrimp called for in the recipe (I'm not a fan of shelling shrimp at the table, especially in a greasy, messy dish like this) and skipping the garlic chives, which seemed redundant. The shrimp themselves were fantastic and I couldn't believe such a short ingredient list could produce such an amazing flavour. But after a few bites we realized we were going to have way too much sauce left over--we did have bread ready for dipping but we would have needed loaves of it to use up all the garlicky oil.

So I boiled some pasta (angel hair--we were too hungry to wait for anything else) and added a few cherry tomatoes and basil leaves, and it became a delicious pasta sauce. Maybe some day I'll come across whole serrano chiles and reasonably priced long-grain rice in Tokyo, and thus be able to enjoy the original recipe as it was meant to be served, but until then this will be my go-to shrimp past recipe.

Sadly I have no idea where I got the recipe for this chilled tomato soup. The soup is a slightly chunky puree, perhaps with roasted peppers or other vegetables, and that's basil oil on top, but I've completely forgotten where the recipe came from. It was really good and I remember thinking it would be fine hot as well, so I'd really like to make this again. Can anyone help?

During my five weeks of summer camp I ate lots of kid-friendly Japanese cafeteria food. At one of the camps we cooked all of our own meals, but the other four we made breakfast only and ate at the campsite's cafeteria for lunches and dinners. The food was served buffet-style and was pretty good, with far more vegetables and healthy options than you'd find at a similar place in Canada, but camp counseling is hard work and I was rarely successful with my plans to avoid the fried foods and second trips to the buffet.

Above, from plate on left: napolitan spaghetti (a Japanese classic made with tomatoes--or more often ketchup--along with onions, green peppers and ham); fried fish of some kind; and marinated cucumbers, bean sprouts and carrots; fruits mitsumame (a dessert of canned mandarin segments and agar jelly cubes); salad; miso soup with negi and tofu.

From plate on left: marinated tomato, mitsuba greens and thinly sliced omelet; nimono (braised dish) of chikuwa (grilled fish paste), takenoko (bamboo shoots) and sato imo (taro potato); yakisoba (fried noodles) and fried mackerel; dessert of yogurt and canned peaches; salad; and miso soup with cabbage and abura-age (fried tofu).

From plate on left: fried squid tentacles; yakisoba; macaroni salad; cabbage rolls; miso soup with abura-age; and salad.

From plate on left: chicken and lettuce salad; fried fish; rolled cabbage; napolitan spaghetti; hamburg steak; green salad; miso soup with nameko mushrooms.

From plate on left: green salad; marinated harusame (glass noodles) with ham, wakame seaweed and thinly sliced omelet; ramen; curry rice.

On outings we had bento (lunch boxes) made for us. I ate the prettily packaged one above for four weeks.

Inside was white rice topped with karikari-ume (crunchy pickled plum) and black sesame seeds; six pieces of kara-age (Japanese style fried chicken); star-shaped tater-tots; some kind of vegetables below the taters; a slice of orange, and pickled daikon. It was delicious the first time but less so the fourth, and I never thought I'd say this but I'd be happy if I never had cold fried chicken again.

At least that bento had some vegetable matter--check out the one below:

Rice topped with thinly sliced beef and two giant tempura shrimp. Oh wait, I think the beef was gyuudon style (cooked with onion and flavoured with dashi and soy sauce), so there might have been a few molecules of onion. This was actually really tasty but left me feeling dirty and ashamed.

In September we were invited back to Kushiro (I'll blog about that soon) and came back loaded down with more Hokkaido souvenirs. We got two types of ikura: shoyuzuke (cured in soy sauce) and shiozuke, shown above. The shiozuke was unlike anything we'd tried before: it was dry, very firm, and had a very clean but strong flavour. It was even wrapped up in cotton fabric, presumably to absorb any excess liquid.

The shoyuzuke was easy to serve, since it naturally goes well with rice. Above: potatoes with butter and miso; flaked Hokkaido salmon; yakinasu (grilled eggplant) topped with katsuobushi; komatsuna greens flavoured with soy sauce and sesame seeds; miso soup with tofu and myoga (ginger buds); and ikuradon (rice topped with ikura and nori seaweed).

Thinking the shiozuke ikura might go better with western style cooking, I made Lemon and Salmon Roe Pasta, another Epicurious recipe as a special dinner for my birthday. I don't make cream sauces often so I stuck exactly to the recipe, and while it was good I think it was designed for people who don't really like salmon roe, as the lemon completely overwhelmed the roe. It was a nice idea though, and the dill went really nicely with the ikura, so I'd make it again without the lemon.

On my birthday Hideaki surprised me with flowers and sweets from Planetes, our local cake shop. He really shouldn't have--just cooking me dinner would have been enough (and he did cook dinner, of course--gyoza), but I didn't mind at all. From left: assorted chocolates, coffee and chocolate macarons, and almond snowballs (perhaps my all-time favourite cookie).

I had meant to lovingly photograph everything before eating but only managed to snap the chocolate macaron.

This had a very good shell-to-filling ratio and the perfect texture, slightly crisp on the outside, slightly chewy on the inside. I could have eaten a dozen of these.

We had a post-birthday lunch (we're very big on birthdays around here) at our favourite local restaurant, Marufuku. I had the kinmeidai no nitsuke (poached alpnonsino) set lunch, which came with salad and chawanmushi (egg custard), not shown, and pickles, rice and miso soup. Very good as always, especially considering the price (about 800 yen). But the real reason I went was the oysters:

This is the first time I've visited when they've had raw oysters on the menu since I fell in love with them in Kushiro this spring. I used to only be able to eat them cooked, and we'd often order them at Marufuku deep-fried, but this time I just had to have them raw. They were from Miyagi in northern Japan and were huge, but cost just 100 yen each. They came topped with negi, momiji oroshi (grated daikon and hot chili pepper) and splash of rice vinegar and soy sauce, and I was a bit nervous because I'd previously only had them in Hokkaido, perfectly plain, and I was worried that maybe I only liked that particular kind of oysters or wouldn't like them with fancy toppings.

But they were delicious. Quite different from the Akkeshi oysters I'd had in Hokkaido, but lovely in their own way, and really elevated by the toppings. These five were gone in no time and I was tempted to order more, until I realized I was getting full--these were actually big enough to be filling.

I'm looking forward to long life of oyster eating, and it's great to know I can find such cheap and tasty ones right here in my neighborhood.

Spring Dinner

This was one of the few meals I've cooked this season that really took advantage of the delicious ingredients that show up in the spring, in this case new potatoes, new onions and fresh bamboo shoots. Clockwise from left: tako to daikon no nimono (octopus braised with daikon), shinjaga no nikkorogashi (new potatoes simmered in dashi and soy sauce with new onions), yaki-takenoko (sauteed bamboo shoots), rice, miso soup with wakame seaweed, bamboo shoots and mitsuba (trefoil), and daikon no happa itame (sauteed daikon leaves and peels with sesame seeds). The new potato dish is a favourite, and because it's easy and makes good leftovers I make it often. Recipe here if you're interested.

The tako to daikon no nimono is not really a spring dish, but a simple and hearty simmered dish like this is welcome at any season.

Takenoko (bamboo shoots) are definitely a spring ingredient, and the difference between the pre-boiled shoots available throughout the year and the fresh ones are dramatic. Freshly cooked bamboo shoots have a fresh and delicate aroma and a crunchy texture that don't survive long-term storage, but I usually only get around to preparing them about once per year.

I think I mentioned in a previous post that spring vegetables tend to require lots of work, and bamboo shoots are a perfect example: most types are inedible fresh and need long and careful preparation to remove their ample aku (bitter properties). They must be be partly peeled, then trimmed and scored, then simmered for an hour or so in water with rice bran and a dried chili pepper or two. And then they have to sit around in the simmering water for at least another hour until cool enough to handle (taking them out too early turns them bitter), then peeled and sliced. And only then are they ready to be cooked.

I like them best simply simmered in dashi and soy sauce, but since I already had two simmered dishes I decided to add the smaller bits to the soup, then sautee the rest in sesame oil, finishing with soy sauce and sake, and garnishing them with kinome (prickly ash leaves, from the same plant that gives us sansho pepper).

It was a lot of work for one meal, but with my first crunchy, fresh-tasting bite I knew it was worth it.

Spring dinner

Now that spring is here the markets are overflowing with spring vegetables, and although the sight of them should cheer me it usually makes me feel rather guilty. They all look so fresh and pretty, and I know they are tasty, but many of them require a lot of preparation. Bamboo shoots need hours of work, butterbur requires 10 fiddly steps, and everything else needs soaking, parboiling, or other fussy preparation. So I tend to hurry by those edible heralds of spring and head straight for the year-round, fuss-free vegetables.

But when I've got a little extra time to cook dinner I can be easily seduced, and when these greens called out to me, I answered. On the left is kogomi (fiddleheads) and on the right are some rather ratty-looking gyouja-ninniku, which I've never noticed before but looked a lot like ramps. Neither were particularly cheap, but at 130 yen for the kogomi and 300 yen for the gyouja-ninniku (reduced in price because they were a bit old) they weren't prohibitively expensive either. I'd never cooked with either, but I do know that kogomi is one of the few haru no sansai (wild spring vegetables) that don't require a soak in ashes or baking soda or other weird preparation, and as for the gyouja-ninniku, as a reader of food blogs I've been exposed to dozens of posts about ramps, and figured finding a recipe would be no problem. So into my shopping cart they went.

It turns out that kogomi are from the ostrich fern, Matteuccia struthiopteris, prized all over the world; recipes abounded in both English and Japanese and the preparation was as easy as I'd hoped. The gyouja-ninniku, however, turned out to be Allium victorialis var. platyphyllum, which are different from Allium tricoccum, or what are called ramps or wild leeks in North America. Thinner bulbs and leaves, and the stalks were purple on only the outer layer, which had to be removed. But otherwise they are quite similar, both popping up for a brief time in the spring and much loved by gourmets, and I decided to go with a western recipe rather than a Japanese one.

Dinner turned out to be a celebration of spring: new potatoes simmered with onions and dashi, fiddleheads sauteed with garlic, and spaghettini with ramps. The recipe for the potatoes is here, and I've just realized that new potatoes contradict what I said above about the difficulty of cooking spring vegetables: they are one of the easiest things in the world to cook, easier even than regular potatoes. So thank goodness for new potatoes.

The pasta was based on the recipe described in this Gourmet article, which is actually more of a description than a recipe. I didn't blister the whites because they seem much more delicate than the more bulbous ramp whites, and I added a pinch of red pepper flakes at the beginning and some of the pasta water at the end. The bread crumbs were panko that I'd toasted with olive oil, and the cheese was grana padano. And normally when I read a description like I've just given, of all the substitutions and changes someone has made to a recipe (the comments that go with Epicurious.com recipes are full of hilarious examples), I imagine the results were awful, but this was delicious.

The gyouja-ninniku didn't have any of the earthiness that ramps are said to have, and tasted like a mild version of nira (garlic chives). I'd like to try this again if I can find fresher examples, and am curious to see how they're prepared in Japan.

The fiddleheads were parboiled and sauteed in olive oil and butter with garlic and parsley, flavoured simply with salt and pepper. They were good and had a wonderful crunch, but tasted incredibly mild, with none of the bitterness I'd expected. I actually wish there was a little bitterness too them, or some earthiness or something (this has to be the first time I've wished a vegetable was more bitter). Obviously the parboiling had been unnecessary, so I'll try these again with a different preparation to see if I can get more flavour out of them.

So what do you do with spring vegetables?

Unseasonal cooking

Cooking according to the seasons is not only trendy at the moment, it's a good and noble thing for the home cook to aspire to. Using what you have on hand, however, is equally noble, and while eating through the stored food clogging up your kitchen may not be trendy, it's something that plenty of people are doing in these tough times. The two approaches to cooking often clash, and when expiry dates and limited shelf lives are taken into consideration, economy trumps seasonality.

This pumpkin has been my secret shame for the past five months. We bought two big ones for Halloween last year and only ended up having time to carve one, and once Halloween had passed and I eventually had time enough to carve it, it just felt silly. Who carves a jack-o-lantern in November? So it's been sitting my living room for months, being hidden in the bedroom or bathtub when students and other visitors came, the way you'd hide a porn stash when your mother visits.

I'm no expert, but I know a few things about winter squash. Like the fact that certain varieties, including pumpkins, will last for ages under the right conditions. And that those right conditions do not include a Japanese summer. And that some varieties of squash actually improve in flavour and nutrition under long term storage. And that carving pumpkins are definitely not one of those varieties (there's really nothing at all you can do to make it worth eating). So I knew I had to use the pumpkin before summer hit, and that I wouldn't be able to actually eat it.

So I remembered I'd seen a recipe for stew served in a roasted pumpkin I'd seen on Epicurious last year and thought it was a nifty idea. It seemed ideal for company, but a little bit scary: would the pumpkin really hold the stew without leaking? Would its retched flabby flavourlessness affect the stew inside? Could I actually fit a pumpkin inside my little oven? So this seemed like a good time to practice, just in case we ever actually have company over (unlikely given our far-flung location and the rarity of entertaining in the home in Japan, but a girl can dream).

The pumpkin turned out to be way too big for my oven, and even after cutting it in half I managed to burn the cut edge. I could have roasted the top of the pumpkin separately to act as a lid, but as this was just a practice run I didn't bother. So it doesn't look as cool as it's supposed to (check out the picture in the recipe linked above), but it turned out better than I thought. Amazingly there were no leaks, so the bowl under the pumpkin was completely unnecessary. And out of curiosity I cut off a piece of the pumpkin to see if the roasting had improved it, but nope. I might try it with a kabocha or other yummy squash next time, maybe for individual bowls that can be eaten once the insides are gone.

I didn't follow the Epicurious recipe for the stew inside--it seemed just a tad too complicated for a weekday meal--and instead filled the pumpkin with lamb stew. For extra frugal points I used frozen Costco lamb found in the back of my freezer, kabocha and carrots from the supermarket discount bin (ever-so-slightly past their peak but perfectly usable for stew) and some alarming potatoes found at the very bottom of the vegetable drawer. They had sprouted so many roots that I could barely see the potato, and I actually had to do a bit of googling to make sure they were safe, having heard that sprouted potatoes are poisonous (verdict: they're not, as long as you stick to the actual potatoes and remove the sprouted bits). Not only were they not poisonous, but they were the best potatoes I've ever cooked in a soup or stew. They absorbed a good amount of flavour and didn't fall apart as usual, retaining their shape even after several days of being stored and reheated as vegetables. I don't know if it's because the potatoes were so old, or if it was the hours of soaking I gave them (as they were a bit dry and wrinkly), or if the lamb had extra fat that the potatoes soaked up, or what, but all I know is that I'm never throwing away sprouted potatoes again.

The pumpkin seeds were roasted, with three that had sprouted (the only sign of the pumpkin's advanced age) started in a planter in hopes that they'll grow up into beautiful pumpkin vines that produce more pumpkins in the autumn. Not that I have any idea how to accomplish that on my balcony, but throwing out a sprouting seed just seemed wrong somehow.

Another find in the freezer was a turkey, one that never had a chance to be cooked during the busy Christmas season last year. (I'm starting to see a pattern here: maybe I should start checking my schedule before stocking up on holiday food and supplies.) It just barely fit in my oven, and even after covering the breast with tinfoil to protect it from the top of the oven (which is where the heat comes from on my stupid convection oven) there was a large black patch on top. So although it looks way less impressive carved up, that's the only picture I took.

Served with gravy, roasted vegetables, and sauteed rapini. It was every bit as delicious on a cold March day as it would have been at Christmas.

The carcass and leftover meat went straight back to the freezer, with half eventually made into turkey soup. The stock was made with the bones and a few month's worth of carrot, onion and celery scraps from the freezer, and the soup was a simple one with turkey, carrot, onion, celery and new potatoes, topped with grana padano cheese (this was to replace the parmesan cheese rind that I was sure was in the freezer but couldn't find, which would have made the soup taste amazing).

When I make soup I usually make a huge amount, and to prevent us from getting bored of the same soup for days I add to it a little each time it gets re-served. On the second day I add a can of tomatoes, which makes it so good I'd rather do it from the first day, but for the sake of variety I resist.

On the third day I add pasta, in this case alphabets (although I vastly prefer orzo). At this point the flavour is often getting thin and the meat and other ingredients are getting scarce, so I usually add fried and crumbled bacon along with cabbage, spinach or another quick-cooking vegetable. Here the soup still had enough stuff in it so I didn't bother, but I could have stretched it another day or two that way.

Halloween and Christmas don't really belong in March, but I'm glad I got to celebrate them again. And I'm enjoying the freezer space and not having to scramble to hide the pumpkin when someone comes over.

Mentaiko

Mentaiko (polluck or cod roe preserved with salt and red pepper, often called "spicy cod roe" in English) is one of my favourite foods in the world, but we don't eat if often because it's expensive. Or at least the good stuff is expensive, but as I've discovered the cheap stuff is cheap for a reason and just not worth buying. And then there's the really good stuff, mentaiko so rare you can't buy it in stores: you have to buy it where it's made, or by mail order, or have a very kind person send it to you as a present. Which is how we got this stuff:

It arrived in a refrigerated delivery truck, shipped from Hakata (a city in southern Japan famous for its mentaiko) inside two boxes. The inner box is meant to look like the wooden container mentaiko used to be sold in, and was actually reinforced on the inside with real wood. Typical Japanese packaging, with incredible attention to detail but rather excessive (and a real bitch to tear apart for recycling).

Inside were seven sacs of roe (you can only see six here because I'd already taken one out for sampling). These were bigger and more beautiful than anything I've ever bought, and according to the package made without artificial colouring (cheaper mentaiko is often dyed red).

There's a lot you can do with mentaiko, but the best thing to do with top quality roe is simply serve it over rice. So that was the first thing we did, and it was delicious. It tasted rich without being fishy, had a good level of spice, and although the texture was creamy, each roe managed to hold up well and pop in the mouth. Unfortunately it also had a strong sake odor, which my husband liked but I wasn't crazy about.

The rest of the mentaiko was served in ways that would reduce the sake smell. Here is rice with yakimentaiko (grilled mentaiko), cooked whole and sliced. The picture didn't turn out well so it's hard to see, but it is cooked on the outside and pink in the centre: I love the contrast of the creamy inside and firm outside. Yakimentaiko is also a great filling for onigiri (rice balls), which is exactly what happened to the leftovers from this meal.

My other favourite way to eat mentaiko is as mentaiko spaghetti. This is one of the simplest recipes in the world (although the dish has a million variations, some of them quite complicated), and involves nothing more than scooping out the roe from a sac or two of mentaiko, mixing it with melted butter, and tossing with spaghetti. Toppings, like chiffonade of shiso (perilla), crumbled nori seaweed or the sliced negi (long onion) shown here, are optional.

For a dish with such a short ingredient list, mentaiko spaghetti is ridiculously good. I'd eat it all the time if I could, and next time we're lucky enough to get a box of mentaiko I'm stocking up on spaghetti and butter. Or maybe I should just move to Hakata.

Tsumami

On Sunday Hideaki and I went to a local cherry blossom festival, which suffered from a lack of actual cherry blossoms; this spring has been cold in Tokyo and most sakura are blooming late. The festival wasn't a complete bust though: they were giving away sake, and we won a bottle!

This is the same sake we bought last year, called Oizumi and made from local spring water. We quite liked it and I was a bit bummed that I wouldn't be able to afford a bottle this year, so we were thrilled to win it.

When you drink in Japan, especially sake, it is mandatory to serve tsumami (drinking snacks). Also called otsumami (and for that matter, sake is also called osake; the "o" is an honorific), these snacks are flavoured more strongly than regular food and tend to be served in small amounts, and are eaten slowly while enjoying the alcohol. Some tsumami, like nuts, are good with nearly any type of alcohol but most are thought to go with a specific type, like edamame (green soybeans) with beer or cheese with wine. For sake seafood is big: think shiokara (fermented squid) or grilled himono (dried salted fish).

The two tsumami shown above are typical. On the right is hiyashi tomato, which literally means "cold tomato" and has a thousand variations; this one is drizzled with fragrant sesame oil and ponzu (citrus soy sauce) and sprinkled with crushed sesame seeds and black pepper. On the left is maguro no tsukudani (tuna simmered in soy sauce), and is one of the best examples yet of my recent drive to save money by using up all the excess food that's taken over my kitchen.

I've had frozen tuna in my freezer since last year, a gift from my sister-in-law from a trip to Miura Hanto (the Miura Peninsula in Kanagawa, famed for its tuna). We ate it at first as sashimi and it was delicious, but there was such a large amount we had to freeze most of it, and not knowing what to do with frozen raw tuna I kind of left it in there until I forgot about it. When I noticed it again recently I was relieved to see it had no freezer burn, and when I won the sake I knew I'd finally found a use for the tuna. It turned out so good that I wish I had a freezer full of frozen fish! If you'd like to try making it yourself, read on: the recipe is at the bottom of the post.

This picture probably looks odd to most Japanese people, since you're not supposed to drink alcohol--especially sake--with rice. Apparently tsumami are just snacks and once you have your real meal (which in Japan always includes rice) you have to stop drinking, since sake is made of rice and you wouldn't serve two kinds of rice with a meal, would you? Or something like that. But the fact is that most tsumami are also really good with rice, and since we really liked the sake we included the tsumami with our dinner and kept on drinking.

From left, maguro no tsukudani, hiyashi tomato, asazuke (quick pickles) of cabbage and cucumber, hiyayakko (cold tofu topped with soy sauce and bonito flakes) and gobo to toriniku no takikomigohan (rice cooked with chicken and burdock, also from the freezer).

And now for the recipe. First I should note that if you should not use really good fresh fish: save the good stuff for sashimi and use either non-sashimi grade fish or sashimi grade fish that is too old to serve raw. It also doesn't have to be tuna: buri (yellowtail), kajiki (swordfish) and other firm fleshed fish can be used as well. Finally, you could simmer daikon, negi (long onions) or other vegetables with it; I will definitely use both next time. Oops, one more thing: the flavourings are highly adjustable: eliminate the water to make the flavour stronger, add more water to make it weaker, and add more or less sugar to your liking. Taste as you go and adjust as you like.

Maguro no Tsukudani (Tuna simmered in soy sauce)

450 grams (1 pound) of tuna, in blocks
1 knob fresh ginger
120 ml (1/2 cup) sake
120 ml (1/2 cup) soy sauce
75 ml (1/3 cup) water
2 Tbsp mirin (sweet cooking sake)
2 Tbsp sugar

Cut the tuna into bite-sized pieces. If it is getting a little old put it in a sieve and pour boiling water over it and let drain. Peel the ginger with the back of a knife and slice thinly.

Add the sake, soy sauce, water, mirin and sugar to a pot and cook over medium heat until the sugar has dissolved. Turn the heat to low, add the tuna and bring to a simmer, then half cover with a lid and let simmer, stirring carefully once or twice and making sure liquid doesn't evaporate. Cook 30 minutes to 1 hour or more; the tuna is ready when it is infused with flavour and softened slightly. If excess liquid remains you might like to remove the tuna to a bowl and simmer the liquid on medium until reduced to your liking, then return the tuna to the pot and stir to coat with the sauce.

Serve hot or room temperature with sake. Will keep several days in the fridge (and will actually get softer after a day or two, so try not to eat it all at once).