A Fish Out of Water

Kushiro Day One

This Golden Week Hideaki and I were whisked away to Kushiro, where we spent the holidays visiting his brother. Kushiro, though the largest city in eastern Hokkaido, is not a major tourist destination, but my brother-in-law was able to show us some fantastic places and feed us some even more fantastic food. It started with ramen at a local place called Maruhira Ramen, which has just two items on the menu: shio ramenshoyu ramen and . I went with the shio (salt flavour), shown above, and Hideaki had shoyu (soy sauce flavour), below.

It was very simple but amazingly good, like what I imagine ramen to have been like 50 years ago. I've never really understood why Japanese people are willing to stand in line for food, but the 10 minute wait inside the tiny cramped restaurant were totally worth it.

Next we went to Yonemachi Koen, a small park with a lighthouse overlooking Kushiro harbour. Most of the city's shoreline is industrialized so this wasn't the most beautiful view in the world, but it was a good look at the city.

The houses are a bit bigger than in Tokyo but not as large as I expected them to be, given how large and unpopulated Hokkaido is. They were also extremely utilitarian, and the only attractive houses I saw were a few wooden ones built when Kushiro was first settled, most of them falling apart.

Then it was off the Kushiro's NHK building where my brother-in-law works. NHK (Nihon Hoso Kyokai) is Japan's public broadcasting organization, and because it was nearly abandoned due to the holidays we got a quick tour of the place.

This is a view of Kushiro River from NHK's rooftop. Note the two little buildings with false fronts on the bottom right: these were once stores of some kind, likely small businesses run by a family that lived in the back. This style of architecture could be seen all over Kushiro, most of the stores sadly no longer in business. Kushiro's economy is in rough shape, partly due to the flood of young natives who head for Sapporo, Tokyo and other bigger cities.

Here we are in the news studio.

Next we drove east to Akkeshi, stopping on the way at Moritaka Bokujo for a soft-serve ice cream cone made from local milk (Hokkaido is famous for, among many things, its dairy products). This was probably the best soft-serve I've ever had: smooth, not too rich or sweet, tasting of milk and nothing but.

Akkeshi is the name given to the bay and the brackish lake it is connected to, both rich in sediments and plankton which make it an ideal area to raise shellfish. Oysters are available year round, thanks to the different temperatures of the lake and bay which allow the farmers to move their oysters around as the seasons change. Along with oysters, other seafood is caught and raised in Akkeshi, chiefly asari (littleneck clams).

We visited Hidetoshi Nakajima, acquaintance of my brother-in-law's who is apparently legendary in the oyster world. A fourth generation oyster farmer, he raises both clams and oysters, with oysters of the local kaki-emon variety his specialy.

This tray holds asari of a size typically found in Tokyo.

The next tray contained much larger clams, so big we assumed they were hamaguri (a larger type of clam). But we were mistaken, and apparently the locals like the big asari while the smaller ones are shipped off to Tokyo and other places.

Three of these big ones were expertly shucked by the owner and handed to us. I was hoping it was just for inspection, but when I realized we were meant to eat them I had flashbacks of being tricked into eating live clams and oysters as a child. I had wandered into the garage where my dad and our French-Canadian neighbor were sitting around a couple of buckets, each with a beer in one hand and a knife in the other. Apparently the neighbor had just come back from the east coast and was sharing the shellfish he'd brought, which must have made my dad very happy. I liked seafood at the time and I think I was eager to try some, and while I don't remember if I liked it or not I do remember I was horrified to learn that the clams I'd just eaten were alive (or had been alive until very shortly before I'd swallowed them). I felt like a dirty trick had been played on me and the idea of raw shellfish has grossed me out since then.

But it would have been rude to refuse, and the sight of Hideaki, no fan of raw shellfish himself, bravely downing his clam gave me courage. I popped the clam into my mouth fully expecting to be grossed out, but instead found it to be tasty: the fresh, pure flavour and softly chewy texture were quite different from cooked clams. I was in no hurry to have another though, because as good as it was I still think clams are better cooked.

We turned to the oyster tank, and with growing dread I prepared myself for the raw oyster tasting I assumed would follow. Raw oysters gross me out more than any other raw shellfish, and although I've tried to like them over the years (people look so happy when they eat raw oysters) it's always failed. They just make me gag. I've also never understood why North Americans go crazy for raw oysters while shunning sushi and sashimi: oysters are pretty much the most dangerous sea creature to eat raw, for worse than the tuna and other fish commonly eaten as sashimi in Japan. It's especially ironic that here in Japan it's far more common to find oysters cooked than raw, precisely because people here are well aware of the dangers.

But if any oysters are safe to eat, it would be these ones. Freshly plucked from the lake across the street and kept in a special brine until shipped to retailers across the country, these were as clean and safe as you can get.

My brother-in-law bought 60 oysters at what I can only guess was a huge expense (but a fraction of the price they'd go for in Tokyo, he assured us). And while they were being counted out and hosed off we were presented with a freshly shucked sample.

If you read the previous post it's no surprise what happened, but if you're just tuning in let me tell you what happened: I fell in love with raw oysters. There was about a half second of disgust as the soft, cold flesh slid into my mouth, but it disappeared as soon as my tastebuds detected that sweet, salty, umami goodness. I had expected I'd want to just choke it down as soon as I could, but instead I gave it a few little chews and discovered the lovely various textures that are far more apparent raw than cooked. And then I swallowed, and immediately wished for more.

Hideaki also reported he enjoyed it, but not as much as I did and he still prefers them raw. But at least he gets it now. And so do I.

We headed back to BIL's apartment in Kushiro to prepare for dinner (or rather, he prepared dinner while we waited in agony). Above are oysters to be shucked at the table.

The tools are a pair of thick cotton gloves, an oyster shucker, and glasses for champagne (which apparently goes very nicely with oysters). As an appetizer we were served crackers topped with local Hokkaido cheese and freshly picked parsley (BIL is quite the gardener, and his apartment was full of edible plants).

This oyster was shucked by my BIL, and was every bit as good as the one I'd sampled earlier.

 

And this is my first attempt at shucking. Opening an oyster is a lot harder than it looked, and I never did get the hang of it. Every one I opened had to be painstakingly picked free of bits of shell that I'd crumbled, but luckily Hideaki and BIL generously supplied me with plenty of shard-free oysters. I probably ate half of the ones shown above, and would have eaten more if shame hadn't slowed me down a bit.

The oyster feast didn't end with the raw variety: we were soon served kaki no sakamushi (sake-steamed oysters).

These were great, in a different way from the raw ones: they were soft and plump with sake and had a deeper flavour. Hideaki liked these best.

Next up was shabu-shabu, with freshly shucked oysters cooked briefly in kombu (kelp) broth). Once cooked they were dipped in ponzu (soy-based citrus sauce), which complimented the oyster flavour very nicely.

The meal ended with soup made of broth leftover from the steamed clams and kaki-gohan (oyster rice), topped with thinly sliced nori seaweed and benishoga (red-pickled ginger). Both were lovely, and while I was half hoping for some kind of oyster-related dessert, I was more than satisfied.

I'm glad I finally get what the fuss is about raw oysters. And yet, I almost wish I hadn't liked them: where am I going to find such food, fresh oysters as the ones I had in Hokkaido? And how will I be able to afford them? If Hideaki doesn't find a job soon I think we're going to have to move to Akkeshi and become oyster farmers.

More pictures from the trip can be seen here.

Eating out

Some recent meals out:

One thing I like about Japanese supermarkets, or at least suburban and rural ones, is that they usually have a little cafeteria-style seating area where shoppers can grab a quick bite to eat. The food comes from an adjoining bakery or fast food counter, or right from the supermarket shelves, and besides the free water and tea there is hot water for instant noodles and a microwave for heating up bentos or other take-out food. It's not the fanciest setting in the world but it's a nice way to take a break from shopping and have a cheap snack.

On a recent weekend shopping trip I had fries and fried chicken and Hideaki had okonomiyaki (savoury pancake). It looks more like a taco than okonomiyaki, but this is a common way to serve it at yatai (food stalls) and fast food-type places: a thin wrap topped with cabbage and the usual okonomiyaki stuffings, plus in this case squid and mentaiko (spicy polluck roe). Very typical Japanese style junk food, it hit the spot perfectly.

Pasta is enormously popular in Japan, or at least spaghetti is (it's the default pasta, with other shapes being relatively rare). There is authentic Italian, bastardized Italian (like "Napolitan", a ketchup-based sauce), and Japanese style (think soy sauce, umeboshi, fish roe and the like), and I love it all. One thing I don't love is eating it with chopsticks, which is certainly not the norm but sometimes happens, like at Goemon, a chain restaurant that offers nothing but spaghetti. It's not that spaghetti is hard to eat with chopsticks, it's just that with a fork it's so much easier to get the right sauce to pasta ratio in each bite.

Luckily their pasta is good, which makes the chopsticks forgivable. On a recent visit with a friend I had spaghetti with a simple tomato sauce, topped with eggplant, fresh mozzarella and shimeji mushrooms, a very tasty combination. At 1000 yen it's not terribly cheap, at least for a chain, but it comes with a tiny bowl of soup and the quality is high enough to justify the price.

Taishoken is the name that dozens of ramen shops go by, all run by former apprentices (or blatent imitators) of the famed Taishoken Ramen shop in Ikebukuro, which pioneered the tsukemen style of noodles. That's tsukemen above, and it's basicly deconstructed ramen: the noodles are served seperately, to be dipped in the broth. The broth is more strongly flavoured than usual, and the appeal seems to be that the noodles stay firm and chewy. It's also nice in the summer when regular ramen is just too hot to eat.

We have a Taishoken near us, which my husband is pretty happy about. I usually let him go by himself, as I'm not a big fan of tsukemen, but on a recent hot day I consented to a visit. I ordered wantan tsukemen, which came with "wontons" that were closer to suigyoza (boiled dumplings), with lovely thick chewy skins. Tsukemen is not very photogenic, as with no noodles to hold them up most of the toppings sunk to the bottom: aside from the wontons, nori seaweed and naruto (fishcake) visable in the picture above, there was charsiu (bbq pork), ajitsuke tamago (boiled egg flavoured with soy sauce) and menma (bamboo shoots) at the bottom of the bowl. It was good, but mostly because of the wontons: if they just served the wontons without the noodles I'd gladly come again.

This latte art was a completely unexpected treat that brightened my day. It was at Excelsior, a Starbucks style coffee chain, and it was done right in front of me while I waited. I have no idea why: it's just a regular coffee place and I payed the usual 360 yen, and I've certainly never gotten latte art at Excelsior (or any chain cafe) before. Maybe the barista liked me? Anyway, I was thrilled, and almost didn't want to disturb it by drinking it. But I did, and yes, the little little hearts made it more delicious.

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!

Hiyamugi

Tokyo's summer always seems to take forever to come (the rainy season rudely butts in and delays things) but when it finally does come it comes on strong. There's no gentle segue from spring to summer like we get in in Toronto, where cool and rainy slowly turns to warm and then warm tenderly turns to hot, and without even realizing it summer has quietly arrived. Nope, here we get a few months where the weather swings wildly between cold, cool, warm and rainy--often in the same day--and then suddenly one day the temperature rises to 30, the humidity to 80, and bam! It's summer.

That happened sometime last week, and since then all I've wanted to eat are cold noodles (well, corn on the cob and fresh juicy plums too, but this post is not about them). Luckily Japan abounds in cold noodle dishes, with all the usual noodle types--including ramen--having their chilled summer versions. They're all good, but the quintessential cold summer noodle is soumen: a very thin white wheat noodle, almost always served in a large communal bowl with each diner getting a small cup of cold sauce to dip the noodles in, often with an array of garnishes.

Unfortunately I overindulged in soumen a few summers back which caused me to get a bit tired of it, so I've learned to rely on other types of noodles. Hiyamugi is nearly identical to soumen except that its a bit thicker: if soumen were capellini then hiyamugi would be spaghetti. This tiny variation makes a world of difference somehow, and although it is typically served in the exact way soumen is I don't seem to tire of hiyamugi as quickly. I think it may be that the extra thickness offers more texture, and makes the noodles less likely to turn into mush (even when I was in my soumen loving stage there was nothing I hated more than overcooked soumen noodles).

This is a typical hiyamugi setup: the communal bowl full of drained, chilled noodles (often with some ice cubes thrown in to keep things cool); little dishes of garnishes: thin slices of blanched okra, myouga (ginger bud) and shiso (perilla), and quaters of sudachi citrus; and small cups of tsuyu (a soy sauce-based dip, in this case bottled). These particular little somen cups come with a nifty indented lid, the perfect place for more garnishes: ground sesame seeds and a little dollop of yuzu koshou (yuzu citrus rind with green chili paste). There's also a bowl full of kyuuri no asazuke (quick-pickled cucumber) and a salad, added because this is a dinner* and it needed rounding out.

The garnishes are added to the tsuyu a little at a time, then the hiyamugi is taken from the bowl by the chopstickfull and dipped in the cup full of sauce and garnishes. The noodles themselves have little flavour but their slippery texture and cool temperature, combined with the flavours of the dip and garnishes, is refreshing and delicious.

*Soumen and other noodles are often served with no other side dishes. They are also thought of as lunch food and a typical household would never ever have noodles for dinner. Luckily my husband is a noodle lover who is happy to live in a non-typical household, but for some men being served noodles for dinner would be grounds for divorce.

Bukkake udon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pasta and noodles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pho

In my last post I mentioned making beef stock, and this is what it was for:

Pho bo (Vietnamese noodle soup with beef). Soaked rice noodles are added to a bowl, topped with thinly sliced raw beef, and piping hot beef broth is poured over both, cooking the beef and billing the bowl with fragrant, delicious, spicy beefiness.

This is it at the table, the beef still cooking. The toppings are basil, thinly sliced green chili, bean sprouts, cilantro and lime. Extra fish sauce and sriracha were also on hand.

I'll admit that this homemade version is not as good as the pho we can get back home (or presumably in Vietnam). The broth ended up too dark and cloudy and the toppings weren't quite right. I'd never even bother making it if I still lived in Canada. But this stuff was loads better than anything I've tried in Japan, where pho tends to be made with a simple unspiced chicken or beef broth and few toppings.

I've heard rumors of a decent pho place in Fujisawa, so next time I'm down that way (it's not far from Kamakura or Enoshima) I'll be checking it out. Maybe my pho making days are numbered.

Away this week

You may have noticed I'm posting even less than usual recently. One reason is because I am doing a week-long food blog at eGullet, a wonderful website devoted to food. With the eGullet food blog I go into quite a bit more detail than I usually do here on this blog, listing everything I eat and showing what life is like here in Japan. If you're interested, go have a look.

And to (hopefully) keep you occupied here for a while, I'm doing a round-up of stuff from the past month or so.

A few weeks back my husband and I had sushi at a local kaitenzushi (conveyor belt sushi) place. Most of the phone camera pictures didn't turn out, but here are the ones that did (kind of). Above is tai (sea bream) and tororo okura (grated yam and chopped okra).

Miso soup with crab and shirako (cod milt). The crab was just used to flavour the broth, it didn't have enough meat to eat (although I tried my hardest).

Aburisamon (seared salmon) topped with sliced negi (green onion), pepper and sea salt. We ate 9 plates each, plus the soup: the most we've had in years.

On the way home we discovered the fabled flock of parrots. I've heard of it, and know that many other big cities have parrots, but I didn't quite believe it till I saw these guys. Dozens of them were in someone's yard, sharing the trees peacefully (but noisily) with sparrows, all the same size and colour. Amazing.

A student brought back sanuki udon (a specialty wheat noodle from Kanagawa prefecture) so I made bukkake udon: the noodles are topped with cold broth along with katsuobushi (bonito flakes), negi, tenkasu (tempura batter) and umeboshi (pickled plum). It was good, but not the reason I'm sharing this picture. Check out the plate in the back: that's dashimaki tamago (thick omelet). I finally made it, and it didn't turn out half bad! It was far easier than I thought, and although this one wasn't very pretty it seemed to have the right taste and texture. I can't wait to try this again.

Lunch at an Indian place in Hibarigaoka. It took over the space where a really good Thai restaurant used to be, and we were pretty sad at first. But this place is pretty good. My chicken curry and daal were OK, but the naan was really good (despite the burnt tip on this one) and Hideaki's keema curry and egg curry were fantastic. Will go again.

Sauteed chijimi horensou (winter spinach), scallops with soy sauce and butter, penne with roasted tomato sauce. My sister introduced me to sauce made from roasted tomatoes last year, but this sauce uses canned tomatoes rather than fresh. The idea comes from last week's Mark Bittman column in the New York Times (the recipe given is for tomato soup but the idea works equally well for pasta sauce). Bittman now has a blog, by the way, and it's full of good ideas.

A quick lunch last week: instant miso soup and futomaki (thick rolled sushi) with a thick omelet, negitoro (chopped tuna belly), cucumber, shake no naka-ochi (chopped salmon), shake (salmon), maguro (tuna) and thin omelete.

Here's a healthy dinner of sake-steamed clams; atsu-age (fried tofu) and komatuna greens; quick-pickled cabbage and cucumbers, squid and broccoli sauteed with miso sauce; miso soup with shimeji mushrooms, wakame seaweed and mitsuba (trefoil), and mugigohan (white rice and barley) topped with umeboshi (pickled plum). Now that spring is almost here clams are cheap and widely available, and I'm very glad.

I had clay pot rice at a Chinese place in Roppongi Hills with a friend. Not the most attractive presentation, but pretty good: rice topped with bok choy, pork belly, tororo (grated yam) and a thick soy-based sauce. The rice was perfectly crispy on the bottom and I'd love to have this again, if only it weren't so pricey. I wonder if they have a lunch special?

鍋焼きうどん

It's been a while since I made nabeyaki udon, a favourite winter noodle dish, but the recent cold weather made me crave it. Nabeyaki udon, also called nikomi udon, consists of udon (fat wheat noodles) cooked in broth with chicken and vegetables and is usually topped with a partly cooked egg and a large piece of shrimp tempura, but when made at home can be one of those "add whatever you have" kind of meals.

I made a miso broth and used shiitake, carrot, spinach, negi (long onions) and atsu-age (deep-fried tofu) and skipped the eggs since we'd had them for breakfast. I also skipped the shrimp tempura as it's a bit expensive (and forget making it from scratch) and I can't stand soggy tempura. So I used (store-bought) kabocha squash tempura and instead of simmering it with the noodles I added it to my bowl so it stayed nice and crispy. Yum! Pure comfort food, and healthy too.

モダン焼

I miss my husband's cooking. Not that my husband ever cooked a lot, but now that he is working at his new job he almost never has the time or energy to do much in the kitchen. Luckily he finally gave in to my begging and agreed to cook dinner tonight, choosing the very thing that I miss the most: okonomiyaki (savoury pancake).

He cooked it at the table on the teppan (tabletop skillet), which helped make it seem less like work and more like fun. Above is his first one: a standard okonomiyaki, with a batter made of flour, grated yamaimo (yam), cabbage, dashi (Japanese stock) powder and benishouga (pickled red ginger) and topped with pork, okonomiyaki sauce and katsuobushi (bonito flakes).

And then he made a special treat: modanyaki (okonomiyaki with noodles). He started by dry sauteing chukamen (chinese style noodles, the same kind as for yakisoba) with a little salt and pepper until they were just a bit crispy.

Next he added okonomiyaki sauce (like a lighter, sweeter version of HP sauce) to the noodles and sauteed them a bit more, then moved them aside and started an okonomiyaki.

The noodles were placed on top of the okonomiyaki, and then more batter was poured on top.

Thinly sliced pork was added on top of that.

The whole thing was flipped over (it takes great skill to keep it all in one peice) and cooked till the pork was crispy.

Then it was flipped over again and drizzled with okonomiyaki sauce.

The sauce was left to cook a bit, then katsuobushi was sprinkled over it and it was cut in two and served. And then he did it a few more times, and we ate until we were stuffed.

I was going to include the recipe, but I've just realized there are already several good okonomiyaki recipes on the web and that modanyaki is simple enough that it doesn't really need its own recipe. This recipe is from a kid's site, but I like it because it has very clear instructions with pictures and includes a recipe for the okonomiyaki sauce. To make it into modanyaki just saute the noodles as above, using my basic instructions. (Note that the recipe in the link doesn't include dashi powder or yamaimo. Neither are necessary but using them will improve the flavour or texture, so add them if you like: a dash of dashi powder and a Tbsp of grated yamaimo will do.)