Blue Lotus

Bukkake udon

I'm always reluctant to post about a style of noodles called bukkake, because whenever I do I get comments and emails asking if I've made some kind of spelling mistake, and kindly explaining what bukkake "really" means.

Well let me pre-empt that this time: bukkake means to pour, throw or splash liquid onto something, and is most often used to describe a style of udon (wheat noodles). Bukkake udon is a shallow bowl of cold udon, splashed with a small amount of mentsuyu (soy-based noodle broth) and a few toppings. I knowwhat the other meaning is, thank you very much, and thanks to the wonders of the internets so does the entire rest of the world. Except, of course, the average Japanese person, to whom bukkake means nothing more than a quick bowl of noodles. So get your minds of the gutter, folks. No emails, rude comments, helpful explanations, jokes, giggling, or other tomfoolery will be tolerated.

Now, with that off my chest (sorry), here's a recent dinner:

Bukkake udon topped with ground sesame seeds, katsuobushi (smoked bonito flakes), wakame seaweed, umeboshi(salt-pickled ume), and shichimi(seven spice mix); walnut, wakame, spinach and mizuna salad dressed with ponzu and olive oil; maguro-kake tofu: cold tofu with a topping of chopped tuna sashimi dressed with soy sauce, sesame oil, sesame seeds and shiso(perilla). On the left is zaru udon(cold udon on a basket with dipping sauce) for Hideaki, who wanted something simple.

Bukkake udon is easy to make so is highly recommended for those new to Japanese cuisine. Here's how it's done:

The noodles are boiled as per package directions (I always shave a few minutes off the recommended cooking time as I like my udon chewy), drained, and rubbed with both hands while soaking in cold water. This last step is called momi-arai(literally "rub-washing") and gives the udon a firm chewy texture and also fully removes excess starch, making the noodles slippery rather than sticky.

The drained noodles are added to a bowl and splashed with mentsuyu--bottled is fine, either full strength or diluted with water. Dashi-joyu(soy sauce with dashi) can also be used.

Then the toppings are added: other than those listed above, you can use thinly sliced negi(long onion); thinly sliced shiso; tenkasu (little balls of fried tempura batter); a raw egg yolk, a whole raw quail egg, or an onsen tamago (hot spring-poached egg); nattou(fermented soy beans); grated ginger; grated daikon; or pretty much anything you can imagine. Try different combinations to find one you like (other than the one above, I really like negi, egg yolk and tenkasu). Just try not to add too much stuff at once, as the udon should be the main focus of the dish.

Ribs

I gave blood today, for the first time in five years (not counting my failed attempt a few years ago). As usual it took them forever to find a vein, but in the end they called in the head nurse and she was able to work magic. I managed to get through the whole thing without fainting, but I did feel a bit weak afterward so I made myself a hearty dinner to restore my energy.

Soy-glazed ribs, asparagus dressed with ponzu, corn and new potatoes. I followed this Chinese barbequed baby back ribs recipe from Epicurious, and it turned out fairly well. It promised tender ribs with just an hour of baking in the oven, and while the meat didn't end up with that lovely falling-off-the-bones texture it was sufficiently tasty. A cook who is short a couple cups of blood shouldn't be expected to come up with a perfect meal, so I think I did pretty well.

Oh, by the way that's a can of Yona Yona Ale, a nice beer from a microbrewery in Karuizawa, Nagano. It went straight to my head and I probably shouldn't have drunk it so soon after donating blood, but my husband picked it for me on his way home from work and I figured that not drinking it would be rude or something. We like to give little souvenirs to each other once in a while, and I'd hate to discourage him from doing his part.

Making ume jam

I liked the ume jam my student made so much that, knowing it wouldn't last very long, I decided to make some of my own. I couldn't find a recipe in English and the Japanese recipes and instructions I found online all varied quite a bit, which had me a bit confused. Normally I wouldn't worry so much because jam is a relatively simple thing to make, but ume (Japanese apricot, the fruit of Prunus mume) is bitter and toxic in its raw form and needs certain preparations to make it safe and tasty.

So I winged it, and what follows is not the ultimate ume jam recipe--this is more of a proto-recipe, and is in desperate need of refinement. But since the season's ume are nearly gone (and I'm out of jam jars and lids) it will have to do for this year. Hopefully my lovely readers will have some helpful tips and next year I'll get it right.

 

I used one kilogram of yellow ume and 500 grams of granulated sugar. I washed the ume and soaked it in salt water for three hours, then rinsed it, drained it and removed the stem remnants. Unlike with making umeshuI didn't have to worry about getting the ume completely dry.

The ume were added to my Le Crueset pot (any enamel, glass or stainless steel pot would work) and covered with cold water, then brought slowly to the boil.

 

The ume began to soften and the skin started to break as the water heated up, and as soon as it boiled the fruit was drained.

 

I had planned on giving the ume two boils but I realized that the fruit was so soft that another boil would have disintegrated them. So I decided they'd had enough and transfered them to a bowl to mash them (not wanting to damage my pot with the metal potato masher).

 

I gave the fruit a good mashing with a potato masher, which helped loosen the pits but didn't completely separate them. Ume are clingstones, so in this way they are closer to plums than apricots. Maybe I should check some plum jam recipes for tips about removing the pits.

 

Stuck as to how to proceed, I poured the ume into sieve and tried to push the pulp through with a wooden spoon. This helped separate the pulp from the pits, but what came out the other end was too smooth--I like a chunkier jam.

 

So for the rest of the pulp, I simply squeezed the flesh from the pits with my hands. Probably not the best way to do it, and it made quite a mess, but it did get the job done.

And here is the half chunky, half smooth pulp. It looked good already so I had a little taste, but it was unbelievably sour. Definitely a sour plum flavour, so I and understand a little why ume are often called plums in English.

The sugar was added and the heat turned on. I started out with 300 grams of sugar but after a taste ended up using the whole 500 gram bag. People who like a sweet jam would want to use more, maybe a full kilogram for a very sweet result.

 

I brought it slowly to a boil and then simmered it for 15 minutes, stirring constantly. 10 would probably have been sufficient but since I'd only given the ume one boiling I wanted to be extra careful.

 

It made a bit of foam, which was removed with a ladle. I got tired of that so in the end I just added a small pat of butter, which made the foam completely disappear.

 

Meanwhile, I had jars and lids boiling in two pots. They were all from home, having once contained strawberry, cherry and other jams made with my family on visits back home. The lids presented a bit of a conundrum, as I know you are not supposed to reuse them. But mason jars with double lids don't exist in Japan, and while jam making is popular here it's not done with long-term storage or safety in mind.

In fact, home-made jam in Japan is closer to what we'd call compote or refrigerator jam back home, with a soft, runny, ungelled texture. Little sugar is used (most Japanese have an aversion to overly sweet flavours), the cooking time is short, and the jam is poured into whatever containers are available, usually not sterilized. It kept in the fridge and meant to be eaten quickly. Very quickly--I've received a lot of home-made jam here in Japan, and it almost always goes moldy before I can finish it.

So I figured that compared to the usual Japanese jam-making methods, re-using my double lids was a minor sin. I only ended up with 5 jars and I'm sure it will be used up quickly.

 

Next time I go back home I will stock up not only on lids, but add a wide-mouth jam funnel as well. I had a bit of trouble ladling the jam into the jars and spilled a bit on the rims, which is another no-no. But after sealing the jars I heard five loud pings, confirming that all of the jars sealed.

 

And this is what I ended up with: 5 jars of beautifully coloured ume jam. It set perfectly-- ume must be very high in natural pectin. I'd never made jam without adding Certo and had always thought added pectin was necessary for all jam, so it was amazing to see this jam gell all by itself.

I just had to try some, so after the jam cooled down I spread a bit on an English muffin. And now I finally understand why ume are called Japanese apricots. The colour, smell and flavour were pure apricot! Well, a very tart apricot--maybe the offspring of an apricot and a lemon. The jam is delicious, and in addition to the apricot flavour it has a pleasant marmalade-like bitterness (I'm not sure that's the proper flavour or if it's a fault that resulted from only boiling the ume once). I just  if only I could find proper jars and lids I'd be out buying more ume to make several more batches.

So I'll be trying this again next year, and also will try it with the ume leftover from my ume liqueur. And in the meantime I'd love to hear some ume jam making tips, or just some jam tips in general. What kind of jam are you making this year?

Panko crusted rack of lamb

My first attempt at a whole rack of lamb. Lamb is surprisingly easy to find in my neighborhood, but is usually only sold thinly sliced (for yakiniku or Mongolian bbq), or cut into little ribs or pricey chops. I've always wanted to try cooking a bigger cut, so now that there's a Costco nearby I knew I had to try rack of lamb. I followed an Emeril recipe for Mustard crusted lamb found on the Food Network site, substituting panko for regular breadcrumbs.

It was very easy to do, even easier than cooking individual lamb chops since after the initial preparation I just chucked it into the oven. I often complain about my little convection oven but for simple stuff like this it works just fine. Better than a real oven, really, because it doesn't heat up the whole apartment. I should use it more often.

Served with a salad of baby greens and chickpeas, new potatoes and asparagus dressed with olive oil and soy sauce. The sauce was made with mustard, soy sauce and the ume jam my student gave me, and the ume flavour went beautifully with the lamb.

The lamb turned out incredibly tasty, tender and succulent, and I loved the crunchy panko crust. But holy cow was it ever fatty! I do like my meat on the fatty side but this was a bit too much. The ume helped offset the richness but iot would have required a gallon of sauce to fully cut all that grease. I don't know if the chops I usually buy are less fatty than this, or if more fat is rendered from pre-cut chops during cooking than is rendered from a whole rack, or what. The chops I normally buy are from New Zealand and this rack was from Australia, so I wonder if that has anything to do with it? The rack was well trimmed, by the way, with only the thinnest layer of fat on the outside--the offending fat was in the middle of the chop (you can see some of it in the picture above). There seems to be no way to remove it before cooking since it's not on the outside of the chop, and I'd imagine that trying to render the fat out by cooking would result in tough, overcooked meat.

I'd like to cook this again, because other than the excess grease it was excellent. But is there any way to reduce the fat, or make it a little more palatable?

Three dinners

We're not eating anything terribly exciting these days, as I'm trying to serve smaller, simpler dinners during the week in order save time and help both Hideaki and I lose a little weight. I don't know how successful I'll be with the latter goal, but as for the former I'm loving spending less time in the kitchen during the week--and still having good food to eat without having to resort to take-out, delivery or instant food. Sometimes dinner is nothing more than a hearty soup or a big salad, and sometimes it's a bit more substantial, like the following three meals.

 

Asparagus dressed with sesame sauce; tofu topped with chopped okura (okra), shiso(perilla), katsuobushi (bonito flakes) and soy sauce; thinly sliced kombu(kelp) simmered in soy sauce with soy beans; miso soup with ground chicken, carrot, daikon, shiitake and mitsuba (trefoil); brown rice.

This was a fairly frugal meal as the shiso and mitsuba come from my thriving (so far) balcony garden, and the kombu was used twice: first to make the dashi(kombu and katsuobushi stock) for the miso soup, and then in the simmered dish.

 

Mugigohan (white rice with barley) topped with matsumae-zuke (a sticky pickled mess of kombu, dried squid, carrot and herring roe); corn on the cob; mizuna salad; shake harasu no shioyaki (salmon belly, salted and grilled).

This meal reminded me of how easy it was to eat good, simple food in Japan. The corn was boiled in plain water and eaten without salt or butter--somehow it's possible, even in Tokyo, to buy corn so fresh and good that it doesn't need any adornment at all. The salmon also had nothing added, although it came salted. It was farmed, like nearly all supermarket salmon in Japan, but so good and rich that it needed no sauce.

Carrot, cucumber and chickpea salad; chicken curry with jukoku-mai gohan (rice with 10 grains).

Even my curry is healthy these days, using chicken instead of beef or pork and made without the lard-laden blocks of curry roux typically used here. The jukoku-mai gohan (don't ask me to name all 10 grains, but some of the ones that I know are barley, millet, and black rice) made it even more virtous.

Oxtail ragu

Oxtail ragu with fettuccine egg noodles, a recent freezer-cleaning meal. 

I've fallen into the habit of making chicken stock every week or so, which comes in handy for hearty soups that can be made in huge batches and reheated throughout the week. With Hideaki now coming home any time from 7:30 to 10:00 (and that's earlyfor a salaryman in Tokyo) it's really nice to have something in the fridge ready to eat at any time.

At the same time I've been conducting freezer excavations in order to clear up space for future visits to the new Costco in nearby Iruma. I recently found treasure in the form of a small bag of oxtails, so the next time I made chicken stock I also made stock from the oxtails, and then put it aside until I could figure out some way to use it. And a few days later I made one of my nicest cleaning-out-the-freezer dishes ever: the oxtail ragu shown above. I didn't follow a recipe but it was quite similar to the sauce in this recipe, with a few differences as I was starting with already cooked oxtails and some very nice tail stock.

I wonder what other treasures lay buried in my freezer?

Neba-neba soba

Neba-neba soba: cold buckwheat noodles flavoured with mentsuyu (a soy-based broth), topped with grated nagaimo (yam), nattou (fermented soybeans), shiso (perilla) and myouga (ginger bud).

If you're from North America, sticky, slimy and slippery are probably not words that make you say yum. But in Japan those textures, embodied in the word neba-neba, have a lot of fans. Neba-neba foods are considered the ultimate health food: low in calories, packed with vitamins and minerals, and packed with proteins and acids like pectin, mucin, alginic acid and chondroitin sulfate. A myriad of health benefits are attributed to slimy foods, ranging from lowering cholesterol to relieving natsu-bate (summer fatigue).

Besides nagaimo and natto, popular neba-neba foods include okura (okra), nameko mushrooms, melokhiya (moroheiya or okra bush) and seaweeds like mekabu, mozuku and kombu. These are all delicious in their own disctinct way but their slippery texture puts them in a special category, and they are often served together with other neba-neba foods.

The neba-neba soba above is pretty basic, and I usually like to add chopped fresh okra and a quail's egg or egg yolk (raw eggs are slimy in their own way and thus go well with other sticky foods but are somehow not really considered to a be true neba-neba food). But no matter what exactly is in it, it's hard to beat a bowl of neba-neba soba for a quick, healthy warm-weather meal. 

Wakashi two ways

This is wakashi sashimi, which I bought for a recent dinner, as it came from the supermarket. Wakashi is one of the dozens of names given to yellowtail (you may already be familiar with hamachi and buri) depending on location and size of the fish. In the Kanto area the fish is called wakashi at its youngest stage.

I'd never tried wakashi before but it looked a lot like buri, which I love, and was also very cheap so I thought I'd give it a try. Unfortunately neither my husband or I were impressed, and although it was obviously very fresh it had an overly fishy flavour and a yucky soft texture. I didn't hate it but I definitely didn't love it, so I put it in the fridge for the next day's dinner.

And this is what it turned into the next day: tatsuta-age. I gave it a quick soy sauce and ginger marinade and deep-fried it. Now that's more like it: the marinade and cooking (and a squeeze of lemon before eating) took care of the fishiness, and the softness was lovely when contrasted with the crisp coating.

Normally tatsuta-age calls for bigger pieces, but for with my lack of frying skills the small slices were perfect: they cooked up so fast there was no time to screw them up. Next time I see wakashi on sale I may just buy it again, and I know exactly what I'll do with it. If you want to do the same, here's the recipe:

Tatsuta-age

Tatsuta-age is most often made with chicken (thigh, skin-on is preferred) but is also popular with pork and oily white fish like yellowtail, mackeral and saury. For fish a simpler marinade is preferred, but with chicken I like to add lemon juice and sesame oil and for pork try adding garlic and sriracha.

• 450 grams meat (fish fillets such as yellowtail and mackeral, bonless chicken breast or thigh, or pork shoulder)
• 2 Tbsp soy sauce
• 1 Tbsp sake
• 1 Tbsp mirin
• 1 knob ginger
• optional marinade ingredients: crushed garlic, freshly squeezed lemon juice, sriracha or other hot sauce, sesame oil
• kakakuriko or cornstarch for dredging
• oil for deep-frying
• lettuce or cabbage and lemon slices for garnish

Prepare the meat for frying: for fish, remove bones from fish, for chicken, remove excess fat (leave the skin on or remove it as you like). Cut into slightly larger than bite-sized pieces.

Pour the soy sauce, sake and mirin into a ziplock bag. Peel and grate ginger, squeeze the juice from the grated ginger into the bag, discard ginger. Add the meat to the bag, squeeze and shake to distribute the marinade evenly. Seal the bag, removing as much air as possible (this creams a vacuum that helps the meat absorb the marinade faster, some people even use a straw to suck all the air out). Let fish marinate in fridge for 20 to 30 minutes, chicken and pork for 30 minutes to 1 hour.

Add about oil about 3 cm (just over 1 inch) to a deep pan or round-bottomed pot--a wok works great--and heat to 170 to 180 C (340 to 360 F). Meanwhile, dump contents of bag into colander, drain well. Add several tablespoons of katakuriko to a bowl, dip the pieces of meat a few at a time, tossing to coat well.

Add to the hot oil and fry, a few at a time, until golden brown. Drain on paper towels and serve on lettuce leaves or slice cabbage with slices of lemon.

Salmon, chicken, meatballs,

Salmon with yogurt-curry sauce (recipe here); orzo with green peas, shiitake and parmesan; tofu salad. The salmon was fast, simple and tasty, and one more reason why Mark Bittman's blog Bitten has become a favourite.

Chicken stuffed with spinach and pine nuts; rice; miso soup with daikon, asparagus and green onion; quick-pickled spring cabbage.

The chicken was based on another Bittman recipe (chicken thighs stiffed with chard), but with a few changes: (spinach instead of chard (never seen it here), no raisins (Hideaki isn't into the fruit-and-meat combo) and soy sauce instead of salt to make it work better with a Japanese meal. Very nice, but the uneven thickness and shape of the thighs (the chicken's, I mean) made it hard to secure after rolling, so I'll be using cooking twine rather than toothpicks next time.

Nachos with refried beans; salsa; albondigas soup (recipe here).

Long ago I got a recipe called Mexican Meatball Soup from my sister and I've always assumed it was Tex-Mex or completely made up, perhaps because the booklet the recipe came from was full of just those sorts of recipes. Not that it actually matters though--it was a really good soup. I've been craving it recently, and when I couldn't find my recipe I went online to see if I could find something similar, and to my surprise it does seem to be an actual Mexican dish. Called Sopa de Albondigas, it's a simple but hearty soup with meatballs made with rice and mint, which give it a unique flavour and wonderful soft texture.

I settled on a recipe from Simply Recipes, another favourite food blog, and also followed her recipe for refried beans (using a mix of kidney and soy beans as pintos aren't easy to come by here). She also has  recipes for salsa--both the fresh and the cooked kind--and nachos, just in case you don't already have those.

Chicken legs and oxtails

A nice springtime dinner: green pea soup, roasted asparagus, baked chicken leg (the only kind of bone-in chicken regularly available) with lemon and garlic, and rice. Everything turned out great and for once I have recipes, or at least links to recipes. 

Pea soup with creme fraiche(I used home-made yogurt instead of creme fraiche, which doesn't exist here) is from Epicurious, and the lemon chicken  is from the excellent blog Simply Recipes (which also has a recipe for roasted asparagus, a dish that really only needs a recipe the first time you make it).

A less successful recipe was David Chang's (of Momofuku fame) oxtail soup. It was tasty but overly greasy with a hint of an organy/bloody flavour--very slight and probably not a bad thing for a true beef lover, but it was a bit unpleasent for me. I had been wary of the recipe's lack of usual stock-making instructions, with no pre-soak or barboil for the tail bones and no removal of scum or fat from the stock: the tails are simply roasted and then simmered. So although I did skim the foam and try to remove some of the fat, it was obviously a mistake not to give the tails a quick boil first, and next time I'll be sure to follow my instincts.

Daikon peel sauteed with kombu (kelp) leftover from flavouring rice; kimchi; hiyayakko (cold tofu); mizuna greens and red pepper salad; oxtail soup with daikon; rice (not shown).

The next day, with more fat removed and poured over rice, the soup was even better. In fact it was so good that all my complaints from the day before were forgiven. I'd like to try this again--but maybe with a more traditional Korean recipe (anyone have a good one), and next time I won't bother serving the rice and soup separately: they really belong together

Gyu-suji dinners

A dinner for a cold spring day: mugi-gohan (barley rice); asparagus dressed with sesame sauce; sauted daikon greens with soy sauce and sesame seeds; spinach salad with carrots, cherry tomatoes and walnuts; gyu-suji to tofu no nimono: beef tendon simmered with tofu, daikon and konnyaku (devil's tognue jelly).

After a day of simmering the tendon was soft and gave up a wonderful flavour, and the next day it was simmered more and the liquid reduced to deepen the flavour and further soften the tendon. It was great on the second day, but on the third day it was even better:

Okara to kyuuri sarada (tofu lees with cucumber); leftover gyusuji to tofu no nimono; fuki (butterbur) simmered with abura-age (deep-fried tofu); asari no akadashi (red miso soup with clams); sakura-ebi gohan: rice with sakura-ebi (tiny pink shrimp) and green peas).

It's amazing how just a few hundred yen's worth of scraps kept us fed for three dinners (and a lunch or two for me). Not only the tendon, but the daikon greens (which are often thrown out) and the okara (which is given away or sold very cheaply at tofu shops, with the remainder being thrown away or used for animal feed).

Test drive

So this was the first meal I cooked in my new pot: kofta in tomato sauce. A pot roast or some kind of long braised dish would probably have been more appropriate but it was a weeknight and I didn't want to wait until the weekend. The dish consists of meatballs braised in a spicy tomato sauce, finished by poaching eggs right in the sauce. I used this Fragrant tomato and beef kofta recipe from Lex Culinaria, using a mixture of minced lamb (ground lamb is very hard to find here so I had to chop it up myself) and ground beef for the kofta.

It was a fairly quick recipe so I didn't expect the new pot to make much of a difference, but it really did. I was amazed at how fast the sauce reduced and how well the spices blended together: a half-hour simmer produced a sauce that tasted like it had been cooked for hours. The only problem was that it retained heat so well that I ended up cooking the eggs through, so I didn't get the runny yolk effect I'd hoped for. So I guess this pot will take a bit of getting used to.

I served it just like it was curry rice and that's exactly what my husband thought he was eating, as the spices were quite similar to a curry mix. Kofta is new to me and apparently comes in all sorts of different forms, and I'm looking forward to trying more. But this was a very nice introduction, and a great way to test out my new pot.

New toy

Look what I just bought!

Isn't she a beauty? I've long wanted an enameled cast iron pot, which here in Japan means just one thing: Le Creuset. Japanese cooking doesn't have a lot of dishes that need long simmering and none that require roasting in the oven, and when Japanese cooks make western food they mostly seem content to use the same cheap aluminum pots and pans they use for Japanese cooking. So there is not a huge selection of heavy-duty western cookware available here, and in a very niche market Le Creuset reigns supreme. So denied a chance to buy a cheaper brand, I've been forced to do without.

Until a local shop, which doesn't even normally carry Le Creuset, had a 20% off sale. With the 22cm pot--the largest size that will fit in my oven--on for 15,680 yen (for you yanks that's a 3 1/2 quart pot for about $150). A very good deal, and yet I didn't buy it right away as it's still a major expense. We only have a bit of extra money these days and a long list of things I need/want to spend it on. So I hemmed and hawed and agonized for several days. I asked my husband for guidance, but instead of forbidding or encouraging me to buy the pot, he said I could do whatever I wanted. Some help he was!

But Le Creuset rarely goes on sale in Japan, so on the last day of the sale I headed back to the store and bought it. And this morning it arrived (I had it delivered, because I didn't relish the thought of carrying it for the 50 minute walk home), looking even more lovely than I remembered.

Unfortunately, I can't understand the Japanese instructions and warnings that came in the box. I'm pretty sure that it doesn't need to be seasoned and is safe for all heat sources, but I'm just wondering if there's anything I need to know before I put it to use. So if there's anyone else out there with a Le Creuset or similar pot, any warnings or advice? And while I'm at it, do you have any favourite recipes you'd like to share?

I have a feeling this is the start of something beautiful...

Pasta and noodles

Perhaps my favourite category of food, if it can be considered a single category, is noodles and pasta. I love carbs in all forms but noodles are just extra special-- there's something comforting about them, yet the endless ways they can be cooked makes them exciting. I could eat noodles or pasta every day for the rest of my life but with the amazing variety of both the noodles themselves and the sauces (or soups, or toppings) that accompany them, I'd never ever get bored.

Recently I have indeed been eating noodles or pasta every day, or at least almost every day. Mostly it's stuff I've blogged before (like tomato-based sauces or simple spaghetti with eggs) so I don't bother taking a picture, but here are a few I thought I'd share:

This is kamo-nanban soba (soba noodles with duck and long onions), one of my favourite soba dishes. I often order it at soba restaurants but have never made it before as duck can be hard to find and tends to be pricey. But when I saw a single duck breast on sale recently I knew it was time to make my first attempt.

The broth turned out perfectly, with a rich ducky flavour and thick slippery texture. The duck itself was less successful: although I'd sliced the breast thinly, the pieces were rather tough, so I postponed the meal until the next evening. But the long simmer and overnight sit in the fridge that usually manages to tenderize the toughest cut of meat failed to help the duck-- it went from hard and chewy to slightly less hard and stringy-- and almost flavourless to boot. But the broth, having absorbed all of the duck's flavour, was fantastic so I can't complain too much.

I was afraid something like this would happen, as when I was checking out recipes online I noticed that they all called for ai-gamo (which I believe is a kind of hybrid duck), but what I had bought was hon-gamo (true duck). So next time I'll try it with ai-gamo and see if I can't get both tasty broth and tasty duck.

A bit about the name "kamo nanban soba": kamo (or gamo when used in a compound word) means "duck", and nanban means "southern barbarian". I assumed the dish is so named because visiting barbarians (the name nanban was used for foreign traders of entering Japan from the south, especially Southeast Asians and Europeans) introduced the practice of eating duck to the Japanese, to whom meat was officially forbidden until relatively recently. But while searching for a recipe online I discovered one site that claims that negi (long onions) were called "nanba" or "nanban" in the Edo era, and a dish called nanban soba, consisting of negi and soba in hot broth, was popular.

It sounds a bit dubious, since the word "nanban" is already used to name a few dishes originally introduced or inspired by foreigners (like the escovitch-derived nanban-zuke). But then again, the two other "nanban" soba dishes, tori-nanban soba (soba with chicken) and kare-nanban soba (soba with curry broth) are chock-full of negi. So who knows. I'm probably the only one intrigued by food etymology mysteries like this anyway.

Next up is fusilli with asari clams. I believe the classic pastas for vongole sauce are linguine and spaghetti, but somehow I love it with fusilli (heck, I love any sauce with fusilli).

Clams are in season now, and while I love them enough to never tire of them, it's nice to occasionally have a break from my two favourite ways to eat them (which are the pasta above, and steamed with sake). So here is asari udon (udon noodles with asari clams). It is really just udon noodles topped with my regular steamed clams (the clams are steamed in sake, then splashed with soy sauce, a small pat of butter and finely chopped negi) with just a little more liquid than usual. But a small change makes a completely new dish, and now my clam repertoire has expanded.

Butter

In February I tried to buy unsalted butter for cookies, and when all my local supermarkets were sold out I wasn't surprised: it was just before Valentine's Day, a time when virtually every female in the country was busy making sweet treats for their sweethearts. I was able to make do with regular butter but later I became a bit puzzled. Not only did unsalted butter never return to supermarket shelves, but regular butter soon disappeared as well. I shop at irregular hours so I just assumed that I was unlucky or that butter had recently been featured on a health-related TV show (a sure-fire way to cause a product to sell out nation wide) and would soon reappear.

But it didn't, and only recently did I find out that there is a butter shortage in Japan. It's really hard to believe: we're not at war, the economy hasn't crashed, and dairy cows aren't being wiped out by disease or severe weather. But then again this is Japan, where agricultural management follows a mysterious set of rules created by senile wombats from the 5th dimension. Or at least that's what I suspect. I remember a few years back when massive amounts of produce was destroyed because prices were getting too cheap, only to have shortages and sky-high prices a few months later. Anyone else remember those 800 yen cabbages?

Anyway, last week we finally ran out of butter, and at the supermarket I got an idea. Most other milk products were still widely available, including cream. And I remembered when I was in kindergarten we made butter by pouring cream into glass jars and shaking the hell out of them. I don't remember much from that age, but I do remember that I loved making butter. It was fun and I found the transformation of liquid cream to solid butter just fascinating. I also loved the taste: we ate it on saltine crackers and I thought it was the most delicious thing I'd ever had, and butter on crackers remained a favourite snack throughout my childhood. A few years later I was hooked on the Little House in the Prairie books and again became fascinated by Laura Wilder's description of Ma churning cream into butter, pioneer-style. So butter making is something I've always wanted to try again.

And I finally had a good excuse to do it. So today I made up my mind to buy cream and make butter, and set out to the supermarket. And wouldn't you know it, they were fully stocked with butter, for the first time in months. Not to be deterred, I bought both a stick of butter and a 200 ml carton (the only available size) of heavy cream.

I meant to use a glass jar so I could see what was going on inside, but after testing the cheapo jar I'd bought at the 100 yen shop I realized it wasn't fully leak proof. So I just shook the cream right in its own carton, and less than 45 minutes later I had butter.

It was a very pale colour and rather mild tasting-- apparently the cream can be cultured first to make a fuller flavour, so I might do that next time. Still it was sweet and buttery enough to be totally worth the effort, and was very nice on a toasted English muffin with tomatoes and an egg.

If you'd like to try making butter, the fastest way is with a mixer: Cooking for Engineers has good directions. But if you're like me and are attracted to more low-tech ways of doing things, then this is how to shake cream into butter.

You'll need:

• small carton of heavy cream (the heavier the better, and make sure there are no thickeners or whipping agents added)
• large metal clip
• clean marble or large bead
• salt, optional

Open the carton and pour a few tablespoons out to make some air space. This is a good time to make yourself a nice big cup of coffee, as it will help you use up the poured-off cream and will also give you the energy you'll need for all the shaking. Drop in the marble, close the car