Blue Lotus

Golden Week begins

Today was Showa no Hi, the birthday of the former emperor Showa (Hirohito's posthumous name). Why exactly we celebrate his birthday I'm not sure, but this was the first of four public holidays that make up Golden Week and I'm not about to complain.

Hideaki and I made a visit to Kichijoji to run some errands and while we were there had a quick lunch at a Chinese place called Kisshousaikan. We both had lunch specials, with me getting kurozu no subuta (sweet and sour pork with black vinegar) and my husband had pork stir-fried with matchstick potatoes. Both were excellent, and the potatoes were a surprise as I'd never had them cooked that way before, and had no idea what they were when I first tried them (I hadn't heard my husband's order), thinking maybe they were zasai pickles or bamboo shoots. They were soft and giving but had a slight bit of a firm crunch left: very nice. Both our lunches came with egg drop soup, zasai, salad, rice and annin-doufu (almond jelly) with mango sauce, all of which are surprisingly good, considering they are usually afterthoughts with this kind of set lunch.

On the way home we stopped at Planetes for a treat to bring home. My raspberry tart got banged up quite a bit on bumpy ride home but Hideaki's "chocolate royal", while arriving home a bit worse for the wear, stayed mostly intact. It contained three rich layers of chocolate, plus the chocolate fans and gold leaf on top: very decadent. My tart, while not much to look at, was super and had the perfect crust. Really, it's mostly the crusts that I buy tarts for--if they just sold empty crusts I'd buy them by the dozen. Not that I mind the filling though (and besides, if I only bought the crusts I'd miss out on the raspberries, and lord knows how hard they are to find in Tokyo).

So about this Golden Week. The holidays don't all run together, so unfortunate should like my husband are back to work tomorrow for three more days until the holidays resume, but a few lucky folks like myself have the whole week off. I'm headed tomorrow to the in-laws in Osaka, where I'll hopefully be able to keep you updated with a moblog post or two.

Wishing you all a week as golden as mine!

Kisshousaikan (Japanese link)
0422-41-0628
Uchida Building 3rd Floor, Kichijouji Minami-cho, Musashino-shi, Tokyo
Open daily 11:00 to midnight (last order 11:00)

Patisserie les Planetes (Japanese link)
03-5933-1233
5-8-20 Oizumigakuen-cho Nerima-ku Tokyo (Also outlets in Omiya and select Tokyo department stores)
Open 10:00 to 7:00, closed Wednesdays

Out

Another round-up, this time featuring stuff I've been eating out.

Last month I had a nice coffee and book swap in Kichijoji with Ms J, a commenter on this blog. Among the many coffee shops in the area we chose a place called medewo & dine, which has an odd name but turned out to be a nice place: spacious and bright, with the tables so far apart that we didn't even notice we were in the smoking section. The lattes were good too, and came decorated with the cutest latte art I've ever seen. I thought maybe the rabbit was for Easter, but it seems to be a regular design. I hope I get the sneezing cat next time.

Earlier this month a friend and I couldn't find a cheap dinner in Shibuya, so we settled for our regular standby Tenya, a fast food chain specializing in tempura. They now have ochazuke (rice with hot tea), which is a favourite food of mine. It's quite common at izakayas or other drinking places, but not normally found at fast food type shops so I was pleased to see it on the menu. This is ume-chazuke, topped with chopped kari-kari ume (crunchy pickled plums), nori seaweed, shio-kombu (salted kelp), arare (rice puffs) and mitsuba (trefoil).

The seasonal tempura came with takenoko (bamboo shot), sakura ebi kaki-age (a large disc of tiny pink sakura shrimp with onion and mitsuba), hanpen (fish paste), green beans, and shrimp. It was good, especially the kaki-age, and not a bad deal for 970 yen.

We were in Shibuya, by the way, to work out at a fancy gym that we had a trial coupon for. Called Wow'd, it had great views: that's Shinjuku up above. The place was full of nice new equipment and thin young women in expensive outfits--I felt a bit conspicuous in the crumpled and ill-fitting gym clothes I'd found stuffed at the back of my closet. .

We tried a belly dance class (harder than I thought) and a great stretch class, and during those two hours not once did any of the other women talk to each other. The complete silence while waiting for the classes to begin was especially creepy, and if I had been alone I would have fled.

Another cheap fast food place is Ringer Hut, specializing in Nagasaki champon: stir-fried vegetables and seafood over noodles. On a recent visit I got the Nagasaki sara-udon set, with the stir-fry served on crunchy fried noodles and a side of gyoza. It's not the finest food I've ever eaten but it's tasty, filling, healthy (at least compared to a burger and fries), and very cheap: the set only cost me 680 yen.

After my disappointing Fillet-o-fish a few months back I've been on a quest for a good fish burger. At Mosburger I finally found it.

A generous fillet, properly crunchy, with a toasted bun and the right amount of sauce (just mayonnaise and onions actually). The cheese is just as unnecessary as it is on the McDonalds version, but you get a whole slice here. Strangely, there was also mustard on the bottom, which I thought would be weird but tasted alright. The fries could have been a bit crispier but were piping hot and properly soft and fluffy inside. At 590 yen for the burger, small fries and a drink, it's only slightly more expensive than McD's version. Which means there is no reason for me to ever set foot in a McDonald's again (at least after 10:30am: I still love their breakfasts).

My first official visit to Tokyo Midtown (a year after it opened-- can you tell I don't get out much?) was with Shan, another person I met through this blog (and also at the eGullet get-together earlier this month). We lined up to get into a trendy cafe, something I thought I'd never do. But this was no ordinary cafe: this was the sit-down section of the Jean-Paul Hevin chocolate boutique.

The line wasn't really all that long, and it gave us time to figure out what we wanted as every single thing on the picture menu we were given looked fantastic. By the time we sat down I had settled on the above chocolate tart with an espresso (I'd forgotten that espressos at fancy cafes come with a little chocolate or two, so I got a bit of a chocolate overdose). It was so, so good that I won't even bother describing it, because I know I won't do justice to it. Suffice to say that whoever this Jean-Paul guy is, he knows his chocolate. It cost me 1200 yen, which could got me a lavish meal for two at any of the fast food joints above, but as special treat it was completely worth it.

medewo & dine (webpage in Japanese only)
0422-23-8208
2-13-6 Kichijoji Hocho, Musashino-shi, Tokyo
Open daily, 11:30 to 11:30 (last order 10:30)

Tenya (webpage in Japanese only)
Locations throughout the Kanto area, shop list here (in Japanese)

Ringer Hut (webpage in Japanese only)
Locations throughout the Kanto area and western Japan, shop list here (in Japanese)

MOS Burger (webpage in Japanese only, but corporate site and Singapore site in English)
Locations throughout Japan, shop list here (in Japanese)

Jean-Paul Hevin Tokyo Midtown
03-5413-3676
Tokyo Midtown Galleria 1st Floor, 9-7-4 Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo
Open daily 11:00 to 9:00
Other locations in Japan listed here

Still blooming

The cherry blossom season is remarkably long this year, and although I was stuck at home with a cold while the blooms were at their peak, there were still a few left to see when I recovered. Sadly my camera is acting up, yet again: it won't focus in regular pictures, and the middle of the frame is blurry as you can see above. My lens is clean the camera continues to work fine for close-ups, so I'm not sure what's going on. I guess I'll have to send it in for more repairs. Or is it finally time to buy a new camera?

Many of the cherry trees at our local park are not regular somei yoshino (the most widely planted variety of sakura), but a fruit-bearing type that bloom a little bit later and produce tart little wild cherries in June. They have more colour than somei yoshino and also have a bit of a fragrance, but because they bloom at the same time as their leaves sprout they are a wee bit less impressive. Still, a cherry blossom is a cherry blossom, and a park full of these is plenty beautiful.

But even though the sakura are almost gone doesn't mean they can't be celebrated. This is Japan, and there's always something to buy. This sake is produced by a local merchant's association just for this season and is called "Ooizumi", which is the same name as our neighborhood but switches the kanji around-- the first character is replaced by the kanji for "sakura".

I think it is brewed elsewhere but the bottle says it's made with local underground spring water. I didn't know we even had local spring water, but I've always wondered why our neighborhood was called what it was: Ooizumigakuen means something like "university campus of the big spring", yet there are no universities here and I've never seen a spring, big or little. But I guess somewhere around here there's a spring, or a well leading to a spring. And now half of the mystery is solved.

I bought this sakura anpan at a local bakery. Anpan is a popular snack consisting of a bun filled with anko (sweet red bean paste); this sakura version is topped with a preserved cherry blossom.

Inside, instead of the regular dark red anko it stuffed with shiro-an (white bean paste) mixed with preserved cherry blossoms. The blossoms turn the shiro-an a lovely shade of pink, and add a pleasant salty floral flavour.

And of course, the traditional two-toed cherry blossom viewing socks. Actually, I think those are ume (Japanese apricot blossoms), but close enough.

So there you have it. There is not a single holiday or seasonal even that doesn't involve commercial products for sale, so if you happen to miss the cherry blossoms themselves, don't worry. There's still plenty of stuff to buy.

eGullet get together

On Friday I met up with five other members of eGullet, an online food site with a very active forum. This was only the second time the Tokyo-based members had organized a get together and because I'd missed the first I was really glad to have been able to make it this time.

We ate lunch at Sasanoyuki, a famed tofu shop in Uguisudani that for 317 years has operated not only as a restaurant but as an official supplier to the Imperial Family. With such a pedigree you'd expect the place to be expensive, but the prices are surprisingly affordable, with courses running from 2000 yen to 6500 yen. All but one of us went with the cheapest option, which was this:

From bottom right: two dishes of ankake-doufu (tofu in a thick, sweet soy-based sauce garnished with mustard); a simmered dish of sweet black beans, koya-doufu (spongy freeze-dried tofu), and koma-toufu (a special kind of tofu that has been previously boiled to produce air bubbles); goma-doufu (sesame tofu); ganmodoki (deep fried tofu dumpling); momen-doufu (cotton tofu) with a dip of soy sauce, thinly sliced long onion and grated ginger; and a little dish of edamame-doufu (tofu made with fresh green soybeans), takenoko (bamboo shoot), ikura (salmon roe) with uni (sea urchin) sauce.

The meal finished with pickles and uzumi-doufu, which is a variation of ochazuke (rice with hot tea). Rice was topped with tofu resembling soboro (flavoured minced meat) and thinly sliced fuki (butterbur), and finished with thin strips of nori seaweed and hot dashi (Japanese stock). The 2600 yen course was the same, with one additional dish and dessert.

Next we took the subway to Ginza and had dessert at the Pierre Marcolini Cafe. The place is divided into two take-out shops and two sit-down cafes offering the famed Belgian chocolatier's chocolates and ice creams. We had wanted to sit in the chocolate cafe but ended up in the ice cream cafe as that was the only place our group would fit. I was hardly disappointed at loved my dessert: a scoop each of banana and caramel ice cream, topped with a chocolate decoration (which wilted by the time I got around to taking the picture) and two crunchy caramel decorations. This is not the kind of dessert I need to make a habit of, as it cost about 1300 yen. But for a special treat I'd gladly go back, and maybe even wait in line for the chocolate cafe.

Sasanoyuki (Japanese/English)
03-3873-1145
2-15-10 Negishi, Taito-ku, Tokyo
Open 11:30 to 9:15 Tuesday to Sunday (holiday Mondays are open, Tuesdays following holiday Mondays are closed)

Pierre Marcolini (Japanese only)
03-5537-2047
5-5-8 Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo
Open Monday to Saturday 11:00 to 8:00 (last order 7:30), Sundays and holidays 11:00 to 7:00 (last order 6:30)

Easter

This morning I grabbed my trusty glue gun and put together a quick present for my niece Marya: a basket of chicks.

I had originally planned to give her some pysanky (Ukrainian Easter eggs) but it's been so long since I've done them that all the eggs I made ended up being practice eggs, either cracked or not good enough to give away. Maybe I'll have better luck next year.

Hideaki and I met his sister and her family for brunch at Roti, a restaurant in Roppongi. I ordered eggs benedict, because someone had to-- it wouldn't be a proper brunch without them. The other grown-ups ordered steak and eggs, a burger and fries, and a spinach and feta omelet.

Marya had the fluffiest pancakes ever, of which she took two bites before moving on to her dad's fries and four bananas from the breakfast bar. We were all happy to help finish off her pancakes, not that our own food wasn't excellent: it turns out Roti does a very nice brunch, and since Tokyo is sadly lacking in brunch places we'll definitely be back.

They also do desserts well too, and this blackberry crumble was good enough to keep us away from the nearby Stone Cold Creamery which we'd originally planned to visit for dessert.

Then it was back to Marya's place where we spent a few hours decorating eggs. We were all concentrating on our eggs so hard that there are no pictures of us at work, just the finished eggs.

Then it was time to play. Which of course means watch Marya play, but unlike last time she deigned to let us help put together the train tracks, and Hideaki was even allowed to touch the train a few times. Progress is definitely being made, and in a few years we may actually get to push the train around for a lap or two. It's such a cool train track set that we joked about buying a separate one for the adults so we could play too, but I'm guessing Marya wouldn't stand for that.

Then we all went out for a dinner of soba, a nice way to soothe our tummies after such rich food for brunch. I had tsuke-toro soba, which were cold buckwheat noodles with a dip made of soy-based sauce, grated yam, raw egg and and nori seaweed.

We were then given a bag of Easter goodies and sent on our way, and when we got home we had some of them for dessert:

Hot crossed buns! I didn't think it was possible to find them, but apparently the bakery Andersen carried them for a few weeks before Easter, or at least they did at the Aoyama branch. Thank you sister-in-law!

Valentine's Day goodies

No romantic dinner for Valentine's Day yesterday, as I had a late class. Instead, dessert:

On the right are the double-chocolate walnut cookies I made for my husband for Valentine's Day (there is just no way an amateur photographer like me can make them look good in a picture, but trust me they taste far better than they look). On the left is a little something my husband brought home.

They aren't for me though. Valentine's Day in Japan is a bit different than in other parts of the world: women give gifts to men, and the gifts are almost always chocolates or chocolate-related sweets. Giftees are not limited to romantic partners or beloved male family members but are can also be male classmates and colleagues. These coworker gifts have become so common that they are pretty much expected and are now jokingly referred to as giri choco, literally "obligation chocolates". Many women resent being pressured into forking out money on treats for all the guys at the office knowing that when White Day (March 14th, the day when men are supposed to give something sweet back to the ladies) comes around few of the men will bother to return the favour.

With my husband working from home until recently, he hasn't received these giri choco in years so I've kind of forgotten about them. So when I came home from work Thursday night and saw a cute little box of chocolates on the kitchen table, my first reaction naturally was "Wow! My very first ever Valentine's Day present from Hideaki!"

Luckily I realized what they were before I said anything, sparing the poor dear any embarrassment. It turns out the chocolates are from a boss and very delicious (he graciously allowed me to try some). And then he heaped praise on my cookies, having scarfed down five of them in place of a proper dinner. I certainly am lucky to have such a generous and appreciative husband.

Maybe next month from now I'll get my very first ever White Day present...

Almost ready for Christmas

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

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

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

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

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

More birthday eating

Recovered from his cold, Hideaki made my real birthday dinner tonight. A few weeks late but worth the delay:

• Shio-aji yaki-soba (fried noodles flavoured with salt rather than the usual sauce) with pork, cabbage, carrot and white shimeji mushrooms, topped with katsuobushi (bonito flakes) and aonori seaweed flakes
• Egg-drop corn soup
• An ice-cold can of Ebisu beer

My perfect birthday meal. But that's not all: he included a bouquet of flowers in the deal, as well as dessert:

A chocolate cake from Planetes, our local cake shop. I'm not a big cake person, but if there's no whipped cream or custard or other gooey stuff I'll happily eat it. This is quite a small cake, but rich and chocolatey enough that a little piece is plenty satisfying.

Fresh figs

Fresh figs are rather new to me. I've been enjoying them in tarts for a few years, but it wasn't until last year that I actually bought and ate a whole one raw. It was a revelation, and made me wonder why it took so long to try them.

Perhaps it's because I grew up in Canada, where figs don't grow. I'd never even seen a fresh fig until I came to Japan, had no idea what they looked like. Although I occasionally encountered dried figs growing up, they were mostly in the form of Fig Newtons, which for some reason were never in the house. The only place I could eat them was at school, where I'd have to a trade for them. And since my mother so seldom packed cookies or other trade-able goodies, Fig Newtons were a rare treat. How I envied those kids whose parents regularly packed Fig Newtons in their lunches! The only kids I envied more were those who brought packets of Jell-O powder for dessert, dipping a spit-moistened finger in the package and pulling it out, dusted with a colourful coating of sweet, sweet powder. They'd then stick their finger in their mouth and suck all the sweet Jell-O goodness off, with an expression of pure bliss.

Now that I look back I can't help but think that sending ones kids off to school with a package of Jell-O is verging on child abuse, and I no longer resent my Mom for not doing so. But I'm not sure if I'm ready to forgive her for failing to supply me with Fig Newtons.

So I have many figless years to make up for, and now that I know that fresh ones are even better than dried, Japan seems to be the perfect place. Domestic figs are in season for a relatively long time in early autumn (thanks to Japan's long North-South configuration) and are no more expensive than any other fruit of the season. Not knowing what to do with them was what prevented me from buying them for so long, but last year so many food blogs featured fresh figs that I was inspired to try them. I just ate them all raw, not wanting to screw anything up. Baby steps.

This year I knew it was time to take it to the next level. I started simply:

Fresh figs roasted with Gorgonzola and pecans. No sauce, although I did drizzle a few with honey. These were lovely, although walnuts would have been nicer. Sadly my husband, a fan of neither figs nor Gorgonzola, had to leave the room while I ate.

Next I poached them whole in a sweetish Riesling, with honey, vanilla, lemon peel and cinnamon. After letting sit in the poaching juices for a day, this was just heavenly. And it was even better the next day, paired with a scoop of vanilla ice cream:

For the sauce, I just removed the cinnamon, vanilla and lemon peel from the poaching juices and reduced it to a syrup. It turned a very pretty colour and was so delicious that I'll double the poaching liquid next time, just so I can make extra syrup.

Figs are still in the markets, so I think I'll have time to cook with figs once more this season. Any ideas?

Planetes

I haven't splurged on a special treat for a while, but when Hideaki landed a new job (he starts next month!) I knew it was time. So I headed to our favourite local cake shop, Planetes, and picked up a few tasty items.

Above is mine (I think it was called something like poire a la lavendre). It is mousse with pear, red currant, and pistachio, flavoured with lavender. The lavender was very subtle and more of a fragrance than a flavour, and while I'm normally not a bit mousse fan I really enjoyed this.

Below is Hideaki's treat: puff pastry filled with vanilla custard, candied chesnuts and whipped cream, topped with chesnut cream.

端午の節句

The 5th day of the 5th month is Tango no Sekku (the Boys' Festival), also known as Kodomo no Hi (Childrens' Day), a day families all over Japan celebrate their male children. It is a national holiday, usually marking the end of a week-long string of holidays called Golden Week.

Since we don't have children, we don't need to follow traditions like hanging koi-nobori (carp streamers) outside or displaying a kabuto (samurai helmet) in our living room. But I figured I'd show my appreciation for the boy of the house by bringing up a little treat.

The lines for the traditional chimaki (sweet mochi wrapped in bamboo leaves) and kashiwa-mochi (sweet mochi wrapped in an oak leaf) were long, so I bought some cute fish-shaped sweets instead.

These simple wagashi (Japanese sweets) were made of a thin, pancake-like wrap folded over a piece of sweet mochi (sticky rice cake) and stamped with eyes and scales. They are supposed to look like koinobori, and this is the only time of year they are sold (although you can find similar sweets shaped like different fish throughout the year). They were delicious and we weren't satisfied with just three to share. Three each would be better-- remind me next year.

Happy Easter!

Look what the Easter Bunny brought! These are the classiest Easter chocolates I've ever received, and I'm surprised to see how sophisticated the Easter Bunny has become. This is a far cry from the giant chocolate bunnies with those creepy yellow candy eyes, or those awful tooth-achingly sweet Cadbury creme eggs (I do miss the commercials with the clucking rabbits though-- do they still run those?).

Another surprise: it turns out that the Easter Bunny is 80cm tall and looks just like my niece Marya. Not at all bunny-like, but much cuter than I imagined.

Easter is not really celebrated in Japan, and because we're all too busy to cook an Easter feast at home Hideaki and I met Marya and her parents at the Tokyo Hilton, one of the few places in town to offer an Easter brunch. It actually wasn't very Eastery at all, with no ham or lamb or any kind of special Easter food at all except for hot cross buns. Those were really yummy (I don't remember ever eating them back home), and the food was OK, but the best part was watching Marya. She was far less interested in the food than in hanging out in the play area with the other kids. Little flirt that she is, she got on especially well with an older blond boy, who gallantly shared his cup of popcorn with her. It was very cute to watch and neither of them seemed to notice or care that they spoke different languages and looked quite different from each other. It's amazing how young children are so oblivious to that stuff.

I, on the other hand, am not oblivious at all, and freely discriminate based on colour. And I am no fan of white chocolate, so the milk chocolate chick on the left is all mine...

ひな祭り

Today we celebrated Hina Matsuri (Hina Doll Festival) with Marya and her family. On Hina Matsuri, families with girls will display a special set of dolls, serve special food, and generally celebrate having girls. I forgot to take a picture of the lovely pair of dolls that were displayed, but Marya is a bit of a doll herself so I think you'll forgive me.

Here she is trying to decide what to eat first, among a selection of arare (sweet rice crackers) and cookies. Atsuko, Marya's mom, made the cookies: they are shaped like sakura (cherry blossoms) and have three differently coloured layers, like hishimochi (another traditional sweet with pink, white and green layers). Atsuko, being health conscious, avoids artificial dies so the colours are much softer than they would normally be, but the cookies were still beautiful and very tasty.

There are plenty of foods associated with Hina Matsuri. Aside from the arare and hishimochi mentioned above, there is amazake (a sweet sake with fermented rice, served hot), chirashizushi (scattered sushi), ushio-jiru (clam soup) and sakura-mochi (rice cake filled with sweet azuki bean paste, wrapped in a cherry leaf). And we had them all, except for the hishimochi and chirashizushi!

We hung out and played for a while, and Marya showed us her new bike. She hasn't quite got the pedaling down yet, but she's quite the speed demon!

For dinner we mostly avoided Hina Matsuri food, instead eating fun stuff that Marya, who's just 2, can eat. We had a salad of thinly sliced daikon, kaiware-na (daikon sprouts), bacon, and mushrooms; kara-age (fried chicken); chawan-mushi (savory egg custard); and sekihan (rice with red beans).

There was also ushi-jiru, with clams, namafu (wheat gluten cakes) shaped like ume (Japanese apricot blossom) and mitsuba (trefoil). It was all delicious, and all made by Atsuko, who must have been working for days to prepare everything.

For dessert there was home-made sakura-mochi, topped with a salted sakura blossom. The store-bought kind is usually bright pink, but I really prefer this softer dusty-pink colour, which Atsuko made with a natural die.

Finally we finished with pomegranates. I haven't had one in years so it was a real treat-- especially since we had them Iranian style. They came with plastic bags and straws, and we had to seal up our pomegranate in a bag and squeeze it for several minutes, without breaking the skin. When the insides were crushed, we stuck a straw through the bag and into the pomegranate and drank. There was a surprising amount of sweet juice in there, but even after we were done we tried squeezing some more to get as much out of it as we could. No idea if this is actually how it's done in Iran, but it was fun and really delicious.

Valentine's Day cookies

Valentine's cookies for my husband: chocolate chip cookies made with chunks of dark chocolate and pecans, and reverse chocolate chip cookies with dark chocolate dough and chunks of white chocolate and pecans. Both recipes from The New Canadian Basics Cookbook. The cookies are delicious and have just the right level of sweetness (I find most North American cookie recipes too sweet). The texture is perfect too-- firm with crisp edges and softer centres, and they are also a bit on the flat side, which I love.

The reverse chocolate chip cookie recipe is easy enough to share here: just adapt your usual chocolate chip cookie recipe by substituting the same amount of white chocolate chunks for chocolate chips, and adding cocoa to the flour (125 ml/half a cup cocoa to 500 ml/2 cups flour).

I used chunks instead of chips because good chocolate chips are hard to find in Japan, while good chocolate abounds. So I just bought bars of high quality chocolate and chopped them into chunks. And the result was so good I'll be doing this every time from now on, and recommend you try it too. Chocolate is best cut with a sharp knife at room temperature; chunks under 1 cm are best.

I'm not much of a baker, but I do know that thicker cookies are preferred and the flat shape of these would probably be considering a flaw. I'm assuming the flatness is due to some kind of mistake I made, but I was careful to chill the dough well before baking and I also tried increasing the oven temperature after the first flat batch, but they still spread out and flattened. So I'm thinking that I might have under or over-creamed the fat with the sugar, or used too much fat (it was an equal mix of butter and shortening). Any ideas? Like I said, I like my cookies flat, but I would like to try to make them properly next time.

Eating in Nasu

This was a long weekend in Japan, and my friend Emi invited me on a trip to Nasu, a resort town in Tochigi Prefecture just North of Tokyo. I couldn't miss my wine class on Saturday so I went up on Sunday and just stayed for one night. We stayed at Epinard Nasu, a large resort hotel that Emi had some coupons for. And because it was such a short trip, it feels like all we did was eat. Not that that's a bad thing, as we had some excellent food, but there are probably lots of other things to do in Nasu.

Well, we did manage a few long soaks in the hotel's onsen (hot springs). They had several different baths, including 2 rotenburo (outdoor onsen) with a view of a Japanese-style garden with a koi (carp) pond and a little rocky waterfall (pictures here). It was lovely enough just to sit there and take in the garden, but when it began to snow it was just fantastic. Imagine sitting in boiling hot water while snowflakes fall on your face and shoulders-- quite a nice sensation.

But back to the food.