Hiroyuki

The photo upthread was taken two days ago, and today, the itadori were about the right size, about 30 to 40 cm in height. My son and I collected some and brought them home. My son, daughter, and I first peeled the stems. Then, we put them in boiling water for a few minutes. We were surprised to see them turn to green. Then, we put them in cold water. We were surprised again to see them turn to subdued green. We tasted them and found them still very sour. We have to keep them in water overnight to remove sourness, with several changes of water if necessary.

I did some googling and found that the general rule is this: The less the water, the softer the konnyaku (when making it, of course). I also found one blog that suggests that Korean konnyaku is much softer. melonpan or someone else, do you know anything about Korean konnyaku? For me and most other Japanese, konnyaku is supposed to have that tough texture, and I have no intention to make it softer.

Some people make itadori jam!

I found one that may match your description: wari goori Click the URL below and view the fourth and fifth photos. http://www.h7.dion.ne.jp/~k_diary/favorite.html Wari goori is a product of Murakami, located in Kanazawa: Official website of Murakami: http://www.wagashi-murakami.com/index.html

For those of you who are not familiar with itadori, here is a picture of it: The plants with reddish leaves. By the way, cherry blossoms are in full bloom now in my area.

We live near Uono River. After the snow has melted, we started to see a lot of plants with purplish red leaves cropping up in the field by the river, and only today, we learned the plants were itadori and they were edible! To be more precise, their sprouts and young stalks are edible and even their roots are used as a medicine. I also learned that the people in Kochi prefecture like to eat itadori. I will post a picture of an itadori dish when I make it. Sorry that itadori is considered an invasive plant in Europe. from herehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_knotweed

man, i wish i could taste freshly made konnyaku... ← helen, is konnyaku sashimi the same as sashimi konnyaku? If so, melonpan, sashimi konnyaku is another type of konnyaku designed to be eaten like sashimi, sometimes with soy sauce and wasabi but more often with su miso (vinegar and miso based sauce). It isn't freshly made konnyaku. I'm not 100% sure but I think freshly made konnyaku tastes almost the same as one-month-old one...

I recently found while searching that May 29 is Konnyaku Day. Anyone interested in making a konnyaku dish on that day?

the tabletop braziers are usually heated with sterno. there was a recent thread on the braziers here. I guess I have never been to a good traditional nabemono restaurant because I have only eaten from nabes that have been cooked with table burners,like this. ← Thanks for the clarification. At first I thought about rentan (briquette) for use in a shichirin and bluish kokei nenryou (solid fuel).

Those items that you refer to collectively as plastic food are called shokuhin sanpuru (food samples) in Japanese. According to this webpage (Japanese only), food samples first appeared in Japan in 1917, and they were made of wax. It also says that those made of vinyl chloride first appeared about 30 years ago (the webpage was created in 2004), which brought a technological breakthrough in the history of food samples. I can tell you that when I was small, food samples were not as sophisticated as they are now. I mean, they were often bigger than life. For example, the piece of shrimp tempura in a ten don food sample was often much bigger than that actually served. I remember that the sandwich that I ordered at a rooftop restaurant of a department store was smaller than the food sample. If I were served the same sandwich today, I would surely make a complaint to the restaurant. There is a detailed book on food samples in Japanese, titled "The Japanese, who eat with the eye".

The students (and teachers, by extension) "should not eat while walking," why? Because it's gauche and presumably would reflect badly on the school? Why would this be so if, as you say, "Who the hell goes to a festival and doesn't eat while walking?" ← As torakris has already pointed out, eating while walking can be dangerous. It can even be fatal. In 1999, a four-year-old boy eating cotton candy while walking fell over and was taken to a hospital, but the doctor didn't realize that a waribashi pierced his throat and reached his brain and let him leave without proper treatment. The boy died the next morning.

Walking and eating is a habit that McDonald's spread throughout Japan since it opened its first shop at Ginza, Tokyo in 1971, yet there are still many people who think the habit rude except in limited occasions like festivals. It's no laughing matter. Chiyoda ward, Tokyo was the first municipality that established an ordinance banning walking and smoking to keep the streets clean and to protect small children from burns due to smokers' cigarettes, which are often at the same height as small children's faces.

Barley tea (mugicha), of course! Sorry, I'm not Kris.

My family went to a festival in Yuzawa yesterday, and found a booth where they advertised a new, soon-to-be-released variety of enoki take. My son and I tasted a sample (boiled and put in a small paper cup with some dashi soup in it), filled out a questionnaire, and each got a free sample. It had bigger heads and thicker stalks, and it was quite tasty. After we returned home, I made miso soup with this mushroom and tofu for supper. The enoki had more presence in the miso soup than the regular one. Can't wait to see it sold at supermarkets!

As Ohba suggests, binchotan is specifically for serious unagi, yakitori, and other restaurants. In Japan, every restaurant that uses binchotan puts up a sign at the front indicating that they use binchotan. It's not for use in an outdoor grill.

OK, I should have said, "I was pretty sure there were no such things as MSG-free dashi powder until these products came into existence." I did a good search and found that even Shimaya, the inventor of instant dashi powder, now produces mutenka dashi powder. http://www.shimaya.co.jp/lineup/mutenka-1.html Quite amazing! I think I'll stick to one of those cheap instant dashi powder, though.

I'm pretty sure that all dashi powders produced in Japan contain MSG. If you want to make MSG-free dashi easily, you may want to consider buying dashi packs, like this one.

A touching story... Is that yogurt that good?? I've never had it, I had just assumed that it was just another new product that would fade away in a few months. Slightly off topic, but is there any yogurt purist out there? I do put some sugar in my yogurt, but I can have it without any sugar, too.

oh wow, thank you so much! i have a lot of good research materials, like their website and other sites that discuss the influences and ingredients of wagashi, but it would be really cool if i could find someone whose life centers around it - the passion is so interesting. ← I think you already received my personal email about the reply from Toraya. I sent another inquiry to Ikkoan, famous for its warabi mochi, and got a reply last night. It says that partly because they are in a busy season, they don't provide tours for first-time customers.

I have just sent them (Toraya) an inquiry about your questions.

Customers were invited to vote for the pastry chef who they thought had produced the best "dreamy flavors" for kinoko no yama and takenoko no sato. http://open.meiji.co.jp/sweets/chocolate/k...neup/index.html The winner was the left one.

The big difference is that unagi is best as kabayaki or on top of rice in a donburi (una don) while anago is best as tempura. This is my personal opinion, but I'm sure many Japanese will agree.

No, never. I found this. This seems the only natto in Japan that is made with straw. Interestingly, this site says that this natto doesn't stink unlike other nattos made with pure natto kin.

Today, I saw a strange curry dish on a TV program: Yaki curry! It's made by putting some cooked rice in a pan, add curry sauce, cheese, and some other ingredients, and baking it in an oven. I learned that it originated in Moji in Kyushu. You can see some photos from here.

Any Japanese would cry out, "MONT BLANC, OF COURSE!". Posts related to mont blanc in the Japan Forum: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...dpost&p=1161582