Blue Lotus

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 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 leftover--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).

Gyoza

One of the benefits of having an unemployed husband is that he has way more time to help out around the house. He now cleans, does dishes, and does almost half of all cooking and other food related stuff. I love the little things, like how he brings me coffee while I'm working, or how he's got my cereal preferences down perfectly. Which doesn't seem like much but it's an amazing feat considering the intricately constructed bowl I prefer: a mix of granola (for crunch), brown rice flakes (for flavour) and All Bran (for fiber) with chopped walnuts, raisins and fresh banana, all layered just so according to how well they keep their crunch once milk is added.

But he can do more than pour cereal: he now cooks actual meals, something he hasn't done regularly in a long time. A recent meal was gyoza (Japanese style jiaozi, or potstickers), something I've been bugging him to make for ages, and although he used store-bought wraps rather than homemade they were just as delicious as I remembered. He also made a sukju namul (a Korean style appetizer made with bean sprouts) and a simple soup with hakusai (Chinese cabbage), carrot and meatballs made from excess gyoza filling. He also made sure there was a cold happoshu in the fridge, because few things are as good with beer (or beer-like beverages) than gyoza and sukju namul.

This was the first batch, perfectly cooked until crisp on the bottom.

Inside the gyoza: ground pork, nira (garlic chives), ginger and garlic. They are dipped in a mix of soy sauce, rice vinegar and hot sauce.

The second batch was finished with a very thin batter of flour and water, which resulted in a paper-thin layer around each gyoza that was pure crunch.

Look at all of that crispy brown goodness!

I plan on pestering him mercilessly until he cooks them again. And this time he better make the skins from scratch.

More budget cooking

The first rule of budget cooking is to use what you have, and that means not only using up leftovers but going through your cupboards and using all those canned, jarred and boxed foods you forgot about the instant you put them away three years ago. Well, I'm a champion hoarder and based on a recent kitchen excavation I think we could survive for a month without shopping if we had to. I've already been through some of the stuff and am happy to have re-discovered a few ingredients, like beans (and also sadly discovered, after encountering a batch of beans that just wouldn't soften, that they have a surprisingly short shelf life). Another recent discovery is polenta.

I thought I hated polenta, and the opened and half-used package I found at the back of the cupboard was actually used to make tun cornmeal, a Jamaican dish. But I remembered how much I loved the tun cornmeal and figured Italian style polenta couldn't be much different, and decided to try it.

And now all I can think of is "Polenta, where have you been all my life?" Yup, I really liked it and feel silly for not appreciating it before. What's not to like: it's cheap, healthy, comforting and delicious. It's also still a bit of a mystery food, and I had no idea how to prepare it or incorporate it into a meal, so I just cooked it with some sauteed onions and garlic, turned it out in a baking dish to set (similar to tun cornmeal up to this point), cut it into squares and sauteed it in olive oil, then cut it into strips and placed on top of a salad. Odd? Maybe, but I liked it. I also liked it earlier on, when I ate the leftovers that didn't fit in the baking dish straight from the pot, still hot and porridge-like.

My husband is less keen on it, and I think maybe he felt the same way I felt years ago, the first time I tried polenta and hated it. He did like the crunchy bits on the outside, so there's hope.

The polenta salad was followed by fusilli in tomato sauce. I recently bought a huge amount of pasta from Costco, perhaps a full year's worth, and this fusilli is part of that stash. The sauce started with the leftover sauteed mushrooms and onions from the carbonara I made a few days ago and finished with canned tomatoes from Kaldi (Kaldi has better tomatoes than Costco, usually for 99 yen per can but sometimes on sale for 90 or even 70 yen).

I ended up with plenty of leftover sauce, which means I had leftovers within leftovers. I do like to be frugal and reuse things but there's got to be a point where it just gets unsafe, so I knew I had to use the sauce up quickly.

Which turned out to be easy, seeing as I also had plenty of leftover cooked polenta. I lined the bottom of two oven-proof dishes with the polenta, spooned over the leftover sauce, topped them with some grated grana paderno (also bought at Costco, in a huge block that will likely last half a year) and baked them. Is there any kind of leftover that isn't improved by being covered in cheese and baked? Maybe, but I don't want to know about it.

This was actually a lunch for one, and the other dish is in the fridge waiting for a hungry person to bake it. It's a leftover within a leftover within a leftover, so I hope that person gets hungry soon...

814 Yen

Below is the booty from a recent shopping trip to a local grocery store, one I haven't been to in ages (since they stopped carrying lamb). It's small, not very conveniently located, and has unimpressive produce and seafood sections, but they do have a discount produce shelf that is usually well-stocked with slightly aged or damaged produce. This is one thing I love about Japan: the discount stickers get slapped on for the tiniest of flaws, whereas back home produce practically has to actually be rotting before it gets moved to the discount area.

The discounted produce was two packs of shiitake for 138 yen each, a few of them starting to go soft but still definitely usable; a package of brussels sprouts for 80 yen, slightly brown on the cut portion (but I've never seen the full priced version, usually 400 yen for the same amount, without brown bottoms); shelled soramame (fava or broad beans) for 100 yen, a bit old but no worse than what usually happens to them in my fridge after a few days, and how could I complain when the same amount is usually at least 400 yen (and still and still need to be shelled); and five ponkan (a tasty variety of mandarins) for 200 yen, half the usual price due to one of them being a bit soft (but again, the same condition as it'd be after a bit of time in my fridge, and it turned out to still be totally delicious). The two iwashi (fresh sardines) were not discounted but were going for 79 yen each, a very good price. All went towards that night's dinner (and dessert, in the case of the ponkan), with leftovers.

The soramame and brussels sprouts were parboiled then sauteed in olive oil with garlic and parsley (bought on sale on a previous shopping trip). The iwashi were sliced into boneless fillets then marinated in ponzu, good extra virgin olive oil and black pepper, then served over spinich, mizuna greens and arugula salad (I prepare big batch of mixed salad greens every week or so with whatever greens are the cheapest). I'm not quite sure what to call the fish: ceviche, carpacchio, sashimi? But it was tasty.

The bones and scraps leftover from the iwashi were simmered to make stock. With the addition of a few chunks of meat pried from the bones, the crunchy bottoms of the mizuna greens, a few  wilted cherry tomatoes and some parsley it became a soup. Not a fancy or photogenic one, but tasty.

The mushrooms were sauteed, along with button mushrooms (usually the most expensive mushroom available but bought cheaply on a previous shopping trip), with onion and coppa di parma ham and then mixed with parsley, beaten eggs and grana paderno cheese and tossed with spaghetti. The result was spaghetti carbonara with mushrooms, as tasty as it was cheap to make. Eggs and onions are always budget friendly, and although this dish can be made with very good--and pricey--reggiano parmigiano cheese and prosciutto or pancetta, making it with grana paderno and coppa di parma (parmigiano and prosciutto's poor cousins) makes it much cheaper. Actually, bacon is the most most sensible pancetta substitute, but I had some coppa di parma that I'd stuck in the freezer a while back when it had reached its expiry date. This was a great use for it.

From this meal, I had enough leftovers to make a few more meals: the sauteed vegetables went into the next day's bento (yes, I now make a bento for myself once or twice a week). I had so much of the onion/mushroom/ham mix that went into the pasta that I removed half before adding the eggs; it became the base of a tomato sauce three days later. And the pasta itself made two small servings for lunch the day before that.

Nearly every single thing used to cook this meal was bought on sale or as discounted damaged goods (like the produce); comparison-shopped for the cheapest possible price (like the salt and onions); a leftover or part of a double use item (such as the fish scraps and mizuna bottoms); or something that I'd been tempted to throw away as it was at the end of its life (like the cherry tomaotes and coppa di parma). It was so satisfying to turn it all into a tasty meal, with more to spare. I'm going to have to be quite a bit more frugal in the next few months, but at the same time with Hideaki home to help out around the house I have more time to shop, which means I'll be finding better bargains. It also helps that we have shelves and shelves of hoarded food. I'm totally up for the challenge of budget cooking, and think I may even enjoy it.

Back to food

There hasn't been much food around here in recent months so I think it's time to show you what I've been eating lately. And lately it's been lots of stews and nabe (hotpots), which are warming, easy to make and usually can be stretched into several meals: perfect for cold weather and a period of my life when I'm busy and not really into cooking.

We'll start with the gyusuji nikomi (stewed beef tendon) above, which was simmered for hours until tender in soy sauce and sake along with daikon, shiitake, negi (long onion), shirataki (konnyaku, or devil's tongue jelly, noodles), and eggs. Served with rice and chopped okra mixed with katsuobushi (bonito flakes) and soy sauce, this was a healthy meal: beef tendon is so extremely flavourful that we only ate a very small amount of meat but enjoyed its rich flavour in the food it was simmered with.

It made a few days worth of leftovers. Here tofu and stronger seasonings have been added, making it good for eating with rice. And when the solid ingredients were gone we ate neko manma, a slightly naughy indulgance. Neko manma literally means "cat food" (manma being baby talk for solid food) and it refers to the dish that results from mixing the leftovers of a meal together, which is then fed to the cat. It's usually rice mixed with miso soup or the liquid from stews like the one above and happens to be an absolutely delicious way to finish a meal, but it is bad manners both to mix food and to add stuff to rice (people here have a weird thing for the sacred purity of white rice and would drop dead with shock if they saw a westerner pour soy sauce directly onto her rice). So even everybody loves eating this way, they all know it's bad manners and continue to call it cat food. Even when there's no cat and they have every intention of eating it themselves. Anyway, try neko manma for yourself, but do it at home--this is not something to do in company.

Here is oden, a stew of daikon, and any number of other foods, usually fish or tofu related. The bowl above includes egg, hampen (steamed fish cake), yaki chikuwa (a steamed and grilled tube of fish paste), yakidoufu (grilled tofu), chikuwabu (a chewy tube of wheat gluten), konnyaku (devil's tongue jelly), and daikon. There was plenty more in the pot and this is just a small sampling of oden, but you can probably imagine that it's warming and healthy. But it's also far more satisfying than many healthy foods thanks to all the variety (and also thanks to the delicious broth, made with kombu and katsuobushi and flavoured with sake and light soy sauce). It can be a very budget-friendly food, and this meal is especially so: the daikon greens were sauteed in sesame oil, flavoured with soy sauce and sesame seeds and added to the rice, and a side dish was made by simmering the daikon peels with the kombu (kelp) and katsuobushi (dried bonito) used to make the oden broth. The greens and used kombu and katsuobushi tend to get thrown out in modern Japanese households, but taking the time to turn them into something edible is so rewarding.

Here are the ingredients to one of the many nabes I made this winter. Hakusai (Chinese cabbage), salmon, ground chicken mixed with garlic, ginger and other seasonings (to be spooned into the broth as meatballs), thinly sliced pork, grated daikon, shungiku (chrysanthemum leaves), atsu-age (fried tofu), negi (long onion) and shiitake.

Here are some of the ingredients ready to eat, cooked in kombu dashi (kelp stock) at the table. The good is added to the broth and taken out to eat litle by little, with the stock being monitered: extra stock will be added when it gets low, and periodically the foam that rises to the top will be skimmed off (the pot above is due for a skimming).

With some nabe the food is plucked from the pot, placed in a bowl and eaten as-is, but we usually add flavourings. In the bowl is grated daikon and ponzu (soy-based citrus sauce), and the food gets dipped in that before eating. Eventually the stock becomes so tasty from all of the ingredients that little extra flavouring is needed, and when the ingredients have run out udon noodles or rice is cooked in the leftover broth. In our house this is usually done the next day or the next day after that as we like to stretch the nabe into a few meals. We also cook extra ingredients in the nabe and serve them the next day as a kind of stew, so when you see the huge amount of ingredients in the pictures above and below don't assume we ate it all at once--we're not total pigs.

Another nabe, a bit classier but featuring many of the same ingredients. The hakusai, shiitake, tofu and pork are the same as usual (they show up for practically every nabe at our house), and there are a few special ingredients, including a mystery green (there are so many types of leafy greens in Japan that I haven't even tried half of them, and totally forget what this new one was) and enokidake mushrooms.

Kuzukiri, noodles made of kuzu starch. They are flavourless but are very good at absorbing flavours and have a nice jelly-like texture. They are pre-soaked before being added to the nabe and left to simmer for several minutes, and when they're ready they must be eaten quickly before they turn too soft.

Fresh oysters. This is not my favourite way of eating oysters but they add such a wonderful flavour to the broth.

Buri (yellowtail) sashimi. I sliced it myself with my knew knife, and while I wouldn't call this an expert job it's the best I've done so far. The sashimi can be eaten as-is or dipped in the nabe.

And there it is ready to eat. The sashimi to be eaten up that night, but the other ingredients lasted for another meal.

The next day udon and egg were added to the broth to make this rich udon soup. I almost like this better than the original nabe.

And that's a brief summary of our recent dinners. There is still a month or two of nabe and stew weather and I intend to make full use of it, and at the same time I'm looking forward to lighter spring fare. Hopefully you'll be seeing more yummy stuff on this blog.

Breakfast, and Breakfast for Dinner

This weekend I noticed that half a carton of cream leftover from Valentine's Day was about to expire so, remembering how I made butter during last year's butter shortage, I sat down for a good bout of shaking. And ten minutes later (it works way faster when the carton is only half full) I had a small amount of very tasty butter. There was also a bit of buttermilk, which I supplemented with some of the water used to wash the butter (enough juice leached out of the butter and into the water that it looked and tasted pretty much the same as the actual buttermilk, so what the hell--if it looks like buttermilk and it tastes like buttermilk, it's buttermilk).

I used the butter for breakfast, which made a regular plate of fruit and toast extra special. The buttermilk stayed in the fridge until tonight, when it was used to help celebrate Pancake Day.

You may know this holiday as Shrove Tuesday or Fat Tuesday, but where I'm from it's Pancake Day or Pancake Tuesday. Or maybe it's just my family that calls it that--I'm not really up on my religious terminology. In any case, as an atheist I don't do lent and Shrove Tuesday is, unsurprisingly, not celebrated in Japan, so with nothing to remind me I've managed to miss almost every single Pancake Tuesday since I first got here. But this year I remembered and heathen or not, I wanted pancakes.

Thanks to the buttermilk, these were some of the yummiest pancakes I've had. This was my first time to cook with real buttermilk and it really does seem to make a difference, because the pancakes were so fluffy and flavourful. I also loved how the two holidays ended up linked together: the cream used for Valentines day was turned into the butter and buttermilk used for Shrove Tuesday. True, the two holidays have nothing to do with eachother and are completely meaningless to me, but I think it's neat anyway.

This being strawberry season in Japan, I made a no-cook strawberry maple sauce to go with the pancakes, and because all the fresh fruit seemed just a little too healthy I added some bacon and scrambled eggs for balance.

The meal brought me back to my childhood, not only to Pancake Tuesdays but the occasional Breakfast for Dinner that I always thought was such a huge treat. Maybe I haven't really grown up, because I still think that there's nothing better than pancakes for dinner.

Happy Pancake Day!

Valentine's dinner

Valentine's Day dinners, like all romantic meals, pose a bit of conundrum: the point of the meal is both to delight the senses and to seduce, but filling up on rich food is hardly conducive to romance. The traditional dinner date is, in my opinion, timed all wrong: you get dressed up, go to a nice restaurant, get a little tipsy, and eat something fancy. And by the time you get into bed the buzz has worn off and you feel all full and bloated and lethargic. Shouldn't it be the other way around? Why can't the romance happen first, when you're still energetic and flat-bellied?

Actually, this reverse date is exactly what we've been doing in recent years, and it works out just fine. But there is still room for improvement, and I've discovered something important: there is no more romantic a setting than your own home. No pesky waiters, no crowds of people, you get to choose the music, and with some candles, good wine and a little work in the kitchen you can easily produce a meal and atmosphere that is as good as, if not better than, a restaurant's. You can even dress up, although dressing down is more fun (I favour a modest lingerie/apron combo). Best of all, you can interrupt the meal any time, and the bedroom is only steps away.

With that in mind, my Valentine's dinner was designed with an intermission between the appetizer and main course, which is about as perfectly timed as can be.

We started with Prosecco (no budget for champagne, alas) and arugula, baby spinach and red cabbage dressed with walnuts in a balsamic and mustard dressing, along with pan fried oysters. I was worried Hideaki wouldn't like them, because he's new to oysters and so far only likes them deep-fried. On a secret test run last week they tasted a bit too oystery so this time I marinated them in ponzu and garlic first, and then cooked them as usual by dredging them in flour and frying them in butter. It worked: the marinade cut a lot of the brininess without completely killing the oyster flavour, and he declared them the best oysters he's ever had (a bit less impressive than it seems, as he's only been eating them for a few years). I imagine oyster purists would think garlic and butter are abominations, but I liked them just fine.

The main course was steak in cream sauce with shiitake, enoki and maitake mushrooms, with new potatoes and brussels sprouts roasted with carrots. The steak was wagyu (Japanese beef) and looks huge, but is cut very thinly as is the norm here. It would have been lovely all by itself but the sauce was nice too, even if I did over-thicken it a bit.

Dessert was an apple strawberry crisp, a combination that I've never seen before. It's probably due to the fact that in most places the two fruits have completely different seasons, but they actually go quite nicely together. And the seasons aren't so far off, since strawberries are almost exclusively grown in greenhouses here and have somehow become a winter and spring fruit.

At this point we were stuffed, but having already concluded the main business of the evening we were free to loll about on the sofa watching Lost on DVD. Now that's romance.

Breakfast with my Valentine

Valentine's Day is s holiday I feel slightly embarrassed about celebrating, as if I should be eschewing the corporate mandated chocolate frenzy in favour of a lifestyle in which I express my love for my husband all year round, in ways that don't involve buying things. The thing is though, I do show my love daily, and just because we've got an every-day-is-Valentine's-Day thing going on doesn't mean I have to boycott Valentine's Day. I just have a thing for holidays, especially holidays involving food, and if one day a year I celebrate my love in an official manner with chocolate, candle-lit dinners and other cliched ways, well, what's wrong with that? So I've come up with a compromise, a way to balance my dislike of made-up commercialized holidays with my love of special occasions: I go ahead and give my sweetheart chocolates, a fancy dinner and plenty of romance, but skip the store-bought stuff.

(If it seems a bit strange that it's me doing all the celebrating, you need to know that Valentine's Day is done a bit differently here in Japan. There are two differences, the first being that there are no cards, lingerie, jewelry or flowers: it's all about chocolate. The second is that it's the women who give and the men receive.)

I usually make some kind of chocolates or cookies, and this time I made an old favourite: mini mochaccinos. These are two layer chocolates with a coffee kick, very easy to make but rather impressive looking. I got the recipe ages ago, from somewhere in my mom's cookbook and magazine collection--I've long forgotten both the source and the original name (and if any of you can think of a more catchy name that "mini mochaccinos, please let me know). I think the recipe is pretty much unchanged, except for a bit more coffee flavour and the optional addition of the heart-shaped tart crust.

Unfortunately I'm not much of a baker so these crusts were store-bought (yup, I broke my own rules), but they really make these chocolates extra special. As a bonus it also makes them a bit easier to eat, as the bottom dark chocolate layer is rather soft and tends to melt faster than the firmer white chocolate, causing sticky fingers.

As you can see, the dark chocolate on the bottom, white chocolate on top and sprinkle of cinnamon makes them look a bit like cappuccinos or mochaccinos, hence the name. The addition of the tart shell adds another texture, and the combination of the three--the crisp tart, soft creamy chocolate and firm white chocolate--is so nice that I think I should learn how to make a basic tart crust, so I don't have to rely on the pre-made kind.

We're in the middle of a warm spell--it's supposed to get up to 20 today-- so I served the mini mochaccinos with coffee on our balcony, followed by breakfast. Yes, the egg is heart-shaped (done by frying the egg inside of a cookie cutter placed on a frying pan), but I did resist the urge to carve the tomatoes and strawberries into hearts. I'm not that bad. It was such a treat to eat in the sun, and I know it will get cold again but it feels like spring has arrived. Perfect weather for falling in love again.

Mini Mochaccinos

• 175 g bittersweet chocolate, chopped
• 75 ml whipping cream
• 2 tsp instant espresso powder
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 125 g white chocolate, chopped
• approximately 20 small paper candy cups or 15 small tart crusts
  
• approximately 20 coffee beans
• cinnamon for dusting

In a double boiler or a bowl over a saucepan of hot water, melt the bittersweet chocolate with the cream, stirring often. In a separate bowl, dissolve the espresso powder in the vanilla, then stir into the chocolate. Pour the melted chocolate into the candy cups or tart crusts, filling halfway, refrigerate 20 minutes or until firm.

While the chocolates are cooling, clean and thoroughly dry the pot or bowl that was used to melt the chocolate. Use it to melt the white chocolate, making sure not to splash any water in the bowl: even a drop of water or other liquid will cause the chocolate to seize. When the white chocolate is melted, poor over the firmed chocolate in a slightly thinner layer.

While the white chocolate is still soft, sprinkle each mini mochaccino with cinnamon (for an extra-fine dusting put the cinnamon in a fine tea strainer, shaking gently to sprinkle), and top with a single coffee bean in the middle. Refrigerate until firm.

There's always time for dessert

I've been as busy as a beaver recently, with no time to do or eat anything interesting (let alone blog about it). But somehow I've been able to find the time for some very nice desserts. I think it might be time to re-examine my claim that I'm not much of a dessert person.

I was late to hop on the macaron bandwagon, partly because the dayglo-bright colours of the ones I saw on other blogs were a turn-off, and partly because I had them confused with macaroons. I'm not even quite sure what macaroons are, but I'm pretty sure I hate them, so it wasn't until a student brought a box of macarons to share with a class last year that I actually tried one and realized that they are the best dessert in the entire world. It turns out that I'm not a big fan of the fruity colourful ones: it's the dull brownish ones that are the best. Especially caramel. Above is my most recent macaron purchase: chocolate, cafe au lait, pistachio and caramel.

This is the pistachio up close. It was actually my least favourite of the bunch. (I've just realized that if I want something pistachio flavoured, pistachio ice cream is a better choice. Or pistachios.)

And here's the chocolate: my second favourite flavour. These came from Henri Charpentier, who makes the best macarons I've tried so far. Every macaron fan in the world seems to be on an obsessive hunt for the best ones, and everyone seems to have different criteria. But in terms of crust texture, sweetness level, filling-to-crust ratio and overall flavour Henri Charpentier is the champion.

I don't eat macarons often, but that's more to do with the fact that they don't sell macarons out here in the suburbs than any concerns about my health. In fact, macarons are practically a diet food: they're tiny and frightfully expensive, so it's hard to over-indulge. They also weigh next to nothing, and really: how could something composed of roughly 95% air be bad for you?

I've posted about Planetes, a nearby cake shop, before. On a recent visit there were no cakes or tarts that caught my eye (I really am not much of a cake person) so I went with a handful of snowball cookies and two chocolates. The snowballs, my favourite cookies in the world, were wonderful.

I ended up giving the chocolate on the top, called "caramel noir" to my husband as it was gooier than I expected, but the praline cream on the bottom was lovely.

My husband got something with layers of soft creamy goo that I wanted nothing to do with.

It was pretty though, especially the bubbles in the first layer after the chocolate top was taken off.

Finally, some dessert actually made at home: apple crisp. The top has a mixture of apples and those lovely Italian plums which have long disappeared from the market (I think this was back in October). The tartness of the plums was a perfect foil for the sweet Japanese apples. 

For my husband, who is not into tartness, I skipped the plums and mixed the apples with a little of the dulce de leche I made last month, and dotted some more on top. This was decadent and delicious, and although I preferred the first crisp I can happily make do with this until the plums come back again next year.

Dulce de leche

Living in Japan as I do, I can only watch from afar as food trends sweep North America. They rarely make it here, and I find myself variously wishing they would (beets, chipotle peppers, Pink Berry style frozen yogurt, Fair Trade goods) and hoping that they never will (cupcakes). But some trends pass right by without me ever getting wind of them, and that almost happened with dulce de leche, a caramel-like delicacy that everyone seems to know about except me. It was only from a Japanese blog (via a couple of Japan-based English language blogs) that I found about about it, and I'm so glad I did.

There are a number of ways to make it, but the method introduced in the above-mentioned blog is the most appealing due its amazing simplicity: you simply boil a can of sweetened condensed milk for a few hours. Although the condensed milk manufacturers and other official food people warn not to do it, as there is a risk of the can exploding, it seems that is still the method of choice for home cooks, especially in South America, where dulce de leche originated. And after doing a little research it seems that following proper procedure will prevent a sticky explosion.

All you do is take a can of condensed milk (not evaporated milk: it must be sweetened), remove the paper label if there is one, put it in a deep pot and cover well with water. Don't open the can, and make sure there are at least a few inches of water covering it. Then cover the pot with a lid and boil for two to four hours, checking periodically to make sure the water level stays above the can (if it gets near add more water). Two hours of boiling will get you a thinner, saucier texture, and four hours will result in a more solid texture. When the time is up, remove the can with tongs and let it cool for several hours--do not open while it's hot. That's it! Those who are worriedabout letting the water get too low can use a pressure cooker, which completely eliminates the risk of explosion, or search online for a "safe" recipe (which basically involves cooking milk and sugar--or the contents of a can of condensed milk--over a double boiler--where's the fun in that?).

I made some yesterday morning, boiling for four hours. That may seem like a long time but I had the morning off and in the kitchen anyway making jam, so letting a pot boil took no extra effort at all. I hadn't fully researched and didn't know the boiling time varied so much, so I went for the full four hours (I was actually hoping the longer cooking time would result in aricher, more caramelly flavour, but apparently that's not how it works).

And last night we tried it for dessert. I let Hideaki have the honour of opening the can, and because he didn't know a thing about it he was shocked to see the color. And although I was expecting it, I was surprised too: it really was a caramel colour. 

We each took a tiny spoonful to taste, and ending up digging in several more times. The flavour was wonderful and the only thing that stopped us from eating the whole can was the texture--a little too firm, reminding me of the icky fake gelatin-thickened pudding we get back home. This type of dulce de leche is definitely meant to be used as a spread or in cooking, and next time I will try a shorter boiling time to get a softer texture.

But the taste was beautiful, and spread over a lightly toasted baguette it was divine. Spread over a lightly toasted baguette and then re-toasted until the edges got a bit bubbly: well, I tend to run out of adjectives when trying to describe really good food, so I won't even attempt it. But I'm pretty sure I had my first mouth orgasm. It was that good.

Dulce de leche, I don't know where you've been all my life, but now that you're with me I'm a happy girl.   

JapanSoc it!

35

I'm typing this on the brand-new keyboard Hideaki gave me for my birthday on Saturday (along with the wrist rest--is that what it's called?) . I've been after a new one for ages since our old one was so disgustingly dirty that there was actual mold growing in between the keys, but the real reason he got it was my recent back problems--he figures the ergonomic design will be better for me. I'm not sure if a keyboard and wrist rest will cure my back, but it's certainly a pleasure typing with them.

I suppose this means I'll have to stop eating and drinking in front of the computer, since food spills were a major contributing factor to the previously mention mold. Or maybe I'll just stop spilling.

My big day started off with the above breakfast, which would have been good no matter what simply because I wasn't the one who made it. But it was also tasty and a little bit decadent: whole wheat English muffins with butter (a real luxury since Japan is still experiencing a butter shortage), a perfectly fried egg, and potatoes sauteed with shishito sweet peppers.

We then headed out for lunch in Kichijoji, where I knew I'd be able to satisfy one of several cravings (pizza, Indian, yakitori) I've had recently. It was hard making up my mind, but I finally settled on pizza, so we tried La Befana. It was our first time, and I've seen mixed reviews of the place, but our favourite Italian place doesn't do pizza so we thought we'd give it a try. And we were pleasantly surprised: it may not have been the best pizza we've ever had, but it was tasty and the setting was nice.

Hideaki chose the 1200 yen lunch set, which came with salad and a drink, while I went with the 1700 lunch set that came with a small antipasto plate instead of salad. A typical lunch set in Japan usually comes with a pretty sorry excuse for salad, often just a few sad iceberg lettuce leaves and bottled dressing, and I thought I'd avoid that. And my antipasti (delicately braised winter melon, marinated kabocha squash, fried smelts dressed with tomato sauce, salami) were good, but it turns out the salad was good to, with an excellent dressing. I'll save my money and get the cheaper lunch next time.

My pizza was the Siciliana, a sauceless pizza topped with mozzarella, anchovies, tomato, olives and capers. It was good but the anchovy flavour was barely detectable, something I find common in Japan--as if restaurants are afraid of offending anchovy haters, which makes no sense at all since only anchovy lovers would order something with anchovies in it in the first place. But the crust was properly thin, bubbly and the tiniest bit burnt, with just the right soft but chewy texture. Next time I'll either go with a margherita or bring my own anchovies. Hideaki had the Panna with cream sauce, mozzarella, mushrooms and ham, which was fantastic. He definitely made the best choice.

Another loss for me in our ongoing competition over who makes the tastiest order, a game I am increasingly losing. Which only makes sense as with his new out-of-home job Hideaki eats out way more than I do, thus getting lots more practice. I'm pleased to report that he still sucks at picking movies, so I still have one champion title to cling to (do other couples have competitions like this, or is it just us?).

Anyway, it was a nice place. We sat on the sunny patio, which was pretty and comfortable, although the dog-friendly policy was taken a little too far (a girl beside us had her designer chihuahua on her lap during most of her meal, and she was letting it put its paws on the table and lick her cutlery--gross!). They do more than just pizza, but we were too stuffed to try any pasta or dessert, so we'll be going back to try more.

And that was pretty much it for my big birthday celebration. At my advanced age I'm no longer able to just hang out like I used to, and after a quick walk around Inokashira park and a bit of window shopping I was ready to go home. No hopping from restaurant to cafe to bar like the old days, and the desire to browse through clothing stores, bookshops, bead stores and the like is gone--when you know you won't find anything good/that fits/that you can afford, why bother. So like the couple of old farts that we are, we headed home while it was still daylight and spent the rest of my birthday on our living room sofa.

La Befana
0422-71-4800
1-10-11 Minamicho, Kichijoji, Musashino-shi, Tokyo
Open daily 11:30 to 2:30 and 5:00 to 10:30

Sanma time

Yay, it's sanma season! The fish markets are once again full of this fish (called Pacific saury or mackerel pike in English), a delicious and beautiful fish that is at is best in autumn. Here is my first sanma of the season:

Sanma no shioyaki (salt-grilled saury) with daikon oroshi (grated daikon radish) and sudachi citrus; shiitake and shimeji mushrooms sauteed with butter and soy sauce; kombu to daikon no itame-ni (soy sauce braised kelp and daikon); steamed rice; shake no furikake (flaked salmon); miso soup with okra, myouga (ginger buds) and atsu-age (fried tofu); mizuna greens dressed with katsuobushi (bonito flakes).

I'll probably be sick of sanma by the time winter rolls around but for now I'm thrilled to be eating my favourite fish again.

Houtou

It's been months since I did any real cooking, and I'm starting to miss it. The heat of summer is gone and I'm no longer pressed for time, so I have few excuses left. And while my back still hurts if I bend over my low counters for too long, chopping a few vegetables is hardly going to kill me. So after weeks of salads and quickly thrown-together meals, it's time to get cooking again.

My first attempt was spurred by a souvenir from my boss: a package of houtou (flat udon-like noodles) picked up on a trip to the country. Houtou is actually a meibutsu (famous product) of Yamanashi prefecture but is a country dish found all over the Kanto area including Okutama in western Tokyo, where these noodles came from. There are a few variations, but hoto is always made nikomi (noodles boiled together with broth and other ingredients, as opposed to boiled seperately in water) style, with a hearty miso flavoured broth and plenty of vegetables, including kabocha squash. The kabocha is key, but any other number of vegetables can be used, and chicken or pork are often added as well. Houtou is properly served in a large cast-iron pot and ladled into smaller bowls for eating.

Lacking the proper pot I made do with my donabe (clay pot), but I didn't forget the kabocha--it's one of my favourite vegetables. Because the package included a little pouch of miso to flavour the broth with, this barely counts as cooking: I just chopped up some daikon, negi (long onion), shiitake, kabocha and atsu-age (fried tofu), simmered them in dashi (kelp and bonito stock), and added the noodles and miso flavouring. But it was just enough work to count as home-made, and boy was it good.

Originally this was supposed to be a one-dish meal but I decided to make kombu to daikon no itame-ni (daikon and kelp braised in soy sauce) with the daikon peels and kombu leftover from making the dashi, and the spinach intended for the broth became horenso no goma-ae (spinach dressed with sesame seeds). I guess I really have missed cooking, and the houtou prep just wasn't enough. The extra time it took to make the side dishes caused the kabocha fell apart, but I like it that way so no big deal. And the houtou looked awfully monochrome (the melted kabocha turned the whole thing orange) without the spinach. But while this may fail as an aesthetically proper Japanese meal, it was perfect comfort food.

Houtou is worth seeking out if you're ever in Yamanashi (home of Mount Fuji), and if you're not here's a basic recipe that includes directions for the noodles themselves.

JapanSoc it!