JasonTrue

Ume are mae sil in Korean. The season is probably just about over in most of the US; at my Japanese market I picked up some about a month ago to make kokutou-umeshu (black sugar ume "wine"). The ones I saw this weekend were already getting soft and yellow, so they're probably a little too ripe for umeshu, but might be fine for koori umesu. Ume aren't really a variety of plum. They are more closely related to apricots, though much more sour and generally much firmer. Now it's obvious that you are talking about another type of umesu (or umezu). When I first read your thread, I thought you were talking about the byproduct of umeboshi making. Here is one recipe from here 1 kg ume 500 g brown sugar 900 ml x 2 (= 1800 ml) rice vinegar Put them all in a glass container for one month. and other from here 1 kg green ume 1.8 L vinegar 0.8 to 1 kg rock sugar (koori zao) ← uh oh. all I have is umeboshi, not regular unpickled plums. I have no idea where to get plums...all we have here are american plums which I am sure aren't the same thing. However I bet I can get some when I go to maryland when I go to a korean store? hiroyuki, could you possibly post a link to what japanese plums would look like? thank you very much ←

The salty umesu (umezu) is not cheap, but it's not very expensive either. I've found it in natural foods stores sometimes as well. I've never bought the umesu that is made without salt, but I bet ume-kurosu would sell in the Japanese market as a drinking vinegar, blended with water or soda.

Ah, yes, I often order bibimnaengmyeon when in Korea... In the US I sometimes buy the frozen naengmyeon to make this, because soba have a very different texture to me than naengmyeon. I also ate it on my last trip to Korea: bibim naengmyeon

Ah, the going to Japan comment was meant for Greenspot, who is probably already done with his trip, but I wasn't sure. The umesu that I know is not very similar to umeboshi mixed with vinegar; it's more of a vinegar that came the juices that emerged from pickling umeboshi. However, there's nothing wrong with blending ume and vinegar and using it for flavoring.

Not sure anyone here would know a specific Italian restaurant well enough to know whether it's tough to reserve... there are so many restaurants in Tokyo that even the "famous" ones probably aren't recognized by more than a small percentage of people, unless they were featured on some popular TV show within the last three weeks. The only time I've ever even made reservations in Japan is when I am going with a large group or have a special occasion. Most of the people I've eaten with don't make reservations even for particularly well-known places, probably because there's almost always something else good nearby. Shinjuku's south exit and the department stores in that area like Takashimaya are littered with Italian restaurants. I like "La Manina" in Takashimaya Shinjuku. It's mid-ranged in price (probably around 4000-5000/yen per person unless you eat small, or come for lunch). Hiromi and I recently enjoyed a Italian-Japanese izakaya when we stayed in Ochanomizu.... it was called "Wai Wai" See more pictures and details here.

Maybe it's misguided, but I always pay the premium for soba made in Japan, preferably yamaimo soba. I've never been terribly impressed by the ones that came from China or Taiwan, though, of course, even the Japanese packaged ones are not as good as te-uchi soba. I also look for noodles that have buckwheat as the first ingredient. In Japan at FoodEx I once had a sample of packaged soba that were semi-fresh and sold refrigerated (they had a couple of weeks shelf life) that were surprisingly good... wish I could get them here, but for logistical reasons, that's rather improbable.

The ume-su I've seen before is usually fairly salty, as it was historically a byproduct of umeboshi production. It was once popular among macrobiotic practitioners. However I'm sure you could ferment ume without the salt, then you would get a different style of vinegar.

If you're looking for umeboshi in Tokyo, although you can certainly find them in any department store, consider stopping in Yuurakuchou (near Ginza). There's a specialty store focusing on Wakayama products, one of the most famous of which is umeboshi. They'll let you taste any of their umeboshi before buying. It's in the basement of the building that houses Mura-kara-machi-kara-kan (a specialty food shop focused on regional things), and Hokkaido dosanko plaza, as well as a Toyama specialty food shop. Within walking distance there's also an Okinawan market. Some photos of the umeboshi I took back with me in May: Wakayama Umeboshi

The New York Times is talking about how the bluefin tuna shortage is leading Japanese chefs to find alternatives, including smoked deer meat, raw horsemeat, and American-style inventions involving avocado and the like. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/25/business...serland&emc=rss

Glad that worked for you. I knew seven years working at Microsoft would come in handy for a food-related problem someday

That sounds like the colored wrappers I saw at FoodEx Japan a couple of times. I think they're made from soybeans, in part, and often, various colorings. I remember not being impressed, though they seem to have been making a dent in the US market.

Like I said, if you reboot your system after setting the "Default language for Non-Unicode Applications" to Japanese, as instructed above, you should have a reasonable chance of getting an older application to work with Japanese, as long as you saved the data with Shift-JIS encoding before. (For Japanese Windows systems this was always the default, before Unicode support was common). This makes the computer functionally the same as a Japanese system except that menus will still be in English.

I don't have recommendations on recipe database software, since I don't use any, but some thoughts on recovering your information. Japanese support has not changed in Japanese versions of Windows, however, Windows NT4, Windows 2000, XP and Vista offer support for all languages on the same OS, as long as the application is written to support Unicode. However, I think some people may have used some hacks to make Japanese display on older versions of English windows. Those kinds of software, such as products from Pacific Software Publishing, probably no longer work because they were assuming applications on English systems didn't know how to display Japanese. The tricks they used to force display of Japanese assumed that the application supported only a subset of Western European characters. If you are using an English version of Windows XP (or Windows 2000) with Japanese Language Support installed (from the Regional Options control panel), you can go to Regional Options, choose Advanced, and change "Language for non-Unicode programs" to Japanese. You'll have to reboot, but if the application you were using to display Japanese on an English system was relying on Shift-JIS encoding, or if you previously used MasterCook with a Japanese OS, you should be able to see your data again. I would recommend exporting the recipes to some other format (a text file or something) after you've done that, so that you can restore your computer to English mode. Oh, edited to add: You might, when you recover your recipes, consider submitting them to CookPad.com, which is a Japanese online recipe database similar to allrecipes.com in the US. You can (probably) sign in and save your favorite recipes if you like, or just use your Favorites folder or del.icio.us to keep track of the recipes you like.

I've seen some umeboshi cocktails, but I think they are using shochu ume, which aren't very strong tasting like normal umeboshi. We can even find shochu ume in the umeboshi section at my Japanese supermarket in Seattle. Hi, greenspot. I think it is, if it is sweet. Umeboshi sour? I've never had it before. I have ume pickled in sugar and shochu (Japanese distilled spirit), given to me by my mother, which are sweet and tasty. ←

I think Daniel's has a piano bar/lounge type thing, though I never went there even though I lived blocks from there several years back. For a small, intimate kind of place, though I really don't know what the drink quality is like, you might try the little restaurant across from Andiamo on 11th St NE... Ascada Bistro, if I remember correctly. It's a 750 square foot space. The food is not remarkable, at least the last time I went there, but it's probably the closest thing to a "little lounge" after dark in Bellevue. I assume it's still there, but it's been a few years for me.

I don't think this is a marinade, I think this is just brushed on toward the end of the grilling time. I usually use melted butter mixed with soy sauce... I don't think you need any sugar or mirin because the corn is already sweet.

Recipes for the paneer dishes... well, it's been a long time, and I didn't use a recipe to begin with.. The fried paneer itself was simple, just dredged in slightly salted katakuriko (use potato starch if you don't have that). The chutney was made with toasted fenugreek seeds and cloves, and probably a few other spices that I've forgotten (maybe try using a little garam masala), plus fresh ginger. It was adjusted adjusted with lime juice and a little raw sugar during cooking. The paneer in tomato cream sauce was probably basically garam masala, finely chopped onions, ghee, additional chili, turmeric, and paneer; the cream and tomato puree are added later and cooked until thick. I tend to cook off the cuff so I'm not entirely sure what I did back then... but you can probably adjust the seasonings to your whims and come up with something decent.

I made these two paneer dishes a while back... the fried paneer was a bit fusiony, served with a peach chutney and dusted with katakuriko (basically potato starch).

Also the warabi starch isn't usually made from warabi anymore... but even in the places that use some actual warabi starch, it's refined to the point where you wouldn't taste any evidence of sansai. The distinctiveness is the texture that results, if anything. I think a konnyaku version would probably have the texture overwhelmingly influenced by the konnyaku, so they probably wouldn't use much, if any, actual warabi starch powder. I don't think that warabi mochi tastes like warabi, that is, young shoots of warabi. Warabi powder is starch made from warabi roots. melonpan: I am now quite indifferent and tolerant to what they say about natto and whale meat. ←

The little spot in downtown Kirkland, called Cafe Happy, run by a Taiwanese Buddhist family, serves vegetarian food from little butane stoves. They have only 10-12 actual seats; the food is fairly decent... it always reminds my friends of their mother's cooking (in a good way), and it's really simple. Cafe Ori is my favorite full-service Chinese restaurant on the Eastside; it seems to lean Taiwanese as well. If you're going to go all the way to Newcastle from Redmond, you might as well go to Seattle, but Yea's Wok has some strong points (and a few monstrosities, but you'll probably guess from the menu). I recommend trying out some of the Eastside's strengths, namely, South Indian food, which doesn't really exist in Seattle. Udupi Palace is a chain, but a decent one, if you skip the buffet and go straight for the dosas/utthapam; I think a few other choices in that category have emerged since my last regular Eastside dining experiences a few years ago. It's far from great, but the serviceable Kikuya in downtown Redmond used to be popular with MS Japanese employees for lunch. I presume that's still the case. Don't fear crossing the bridge, though

Ah, I called up Hiromi to let her know about the show, but she was busy preparing for a day that involved both cheering at a game and attending a wedding... I think we were talking just around the time that you came on, so I suspect she missed it... How's the recovery from Lasik surgery?

In Tokyo I had a sweet lassi with vodka... It was similar to the drink Calpis (Calpico in the US?) or Milkis.

I don't think you need to marinate fish in miso... you can just split open the fish and rub some miso paste inside, and stuff with a bit of scallion (long, or chopped) to get flavor from miso's salt. Then just grill. Miso in a salad dressing... if you like, you can use a teaspoon of miso, a tablespoon or two of vinegar, and whisk while slowly adding oil to emulsify; add black pepper and minced or finely chopped onion. Perhaps a drop of sesame oil, and sugar or honey to taste.

pickled eggplant is often blue but I guess it would be hard to shape like waves

Also, most of the prepared wasabi sold both in Japan and abroad is little more than mustard, Western horseradish, and food coloring, sometimes with a token bit of real wasabi thrown in, such as in SB's "hon-wasabi". The prepared stuff is a bit spicy thanks to the mustard-heavy blend, but unadulterated wasabi is more pungent than spicy. (sorry for helping this continue to veer off into non-baby territory... perhaps we can be squeezed into a wasabi topic?)