JasonTrue

Usually I'm not so precise about measuring things when cooking, especially with Chinese, Japanese or Korean dishes. But my blog explicates the process in a bit more detail. I used roughly one bunch of mustard greens (which can vary substantially in size, of course) and something like 3/4 lb. of medium-firm tofu, an unmeasured portion of ginger, and after combining the rinsed salted vegetables I tweaked the salt. If you've made any other type of jiaozi, it's pretty much the same: you can boil them, steam them on cabbage leaves in a bamboo steamer, or you can pan-fry a few minutes and add in some water, then cover.

I am vegetarian, but that doesn't stop me from indulging in jiaozi on a regular basis. Until recently, I tended to partially cook or blanch the vegetables unless I was using pickled vegetables, but this time I followed advice to massage salt into the vegetables and rinse, allowing the vegetables to shrink a bit without requiring any advance cooking. Mustard Greens and Tofu Jiaozi (Blog Entry) The filling: mustard greens, tofu, ginger, beansprouts, adjusted salt. Next time I think I'll sneak in a bit of vinegar. The finished jiaozi

I think a lot of "fusion" dishes are just so contrived and based on such a superficial understanding of a cuisine that it never makes any music... it's just noise. On the other hand, frequently one cuisine provides vocabulary (or musical notes) that enable fairly harmonious fusions. Last week I managed to pull off a fusion that worked fairly well... I would not call this dish Greek, either, but it used filo dough, shredded very finely, to turn a humble Indian dish into unmessy finger food. One of these days I'll have to get the press to make string hoppers, so I can stay on the same continent. Nests of channa gobi masala

That sounds like the way the base of the stem looks when attached in a cluster. If they smelled normal (a slight earthiness) then there's nothing to worry about. Most of the time the base is white as I recall. Where did you get them?

I don't remember if they called it by a special name, but I had kakigouri in the style of fruits anmitsu in a small shop in Takayama. The shaved ice was under all the other stuff, and I think there was a scoop of ice cream. Ice cream anmitsu (cream anmitsu) usually includes a bit of fruit, some kind of ice cream, and black sugar syrup or simple syrup. It's not exactly layered but kind of composed. The Takayama shop I visited served something like this with kakigouri underneath, with varying levels of complexity.

I think it was there the last time I was in Roppongi, but I can't remember the last time I was in Roppongi... it might have been 6 months ago, or maybe 12/18 months ago. Except for specific objectives, I tend to avoid Roppongi otherwise. I remember that being one small reason for going to Roppongi (I mentioned it briefly in a thread in the Japan forum about things to see in Japan, but not by name, since I couldn't remember it). I thought it was pretty cool that you can choose your coffee in tiers of how much robusta is used. I think they had five choices. I assume they sold the beans, but I wasn't trying to brew any coffee in Japan, and I'm partial to recently roasted beans when I'm back home in Seattle. I actually heard about the TN shop in Roppongi from an NHK documentary on coffee consumption in Vietnam. Broadcast earlier this year on our local TV Japan network, but I don't know the original broadcast date, so I can't say whether the shop is still there. Very interesting documentary, too. http://www.bento.com/rev/1941.html ←

I remember suffering with a pizza dough that I was making at a friend's home in Japan... I had asked for flour for a pizza dough, and was handed a nice bucket of it, and then I struggled to get the dough to show some signs of gluten development, and to stop wanting more flour. No matter what I did, it seemed not to take. Finally I asked if there was something different about this flour, and they said "oh, did you want the regular flour? This is for cakes..." Sometimes the flour type does matter, but I agree, perhaps not as much as people emphasize. The character of a low-gluten flour will be more like Italian pizzas, the high-protein ones will be more like the New York/Philadelphia types. I usually add extra gluten to my pizza doughs because I undermine the glutens with potatoes.

This is interesting to me because in Seattle, the coffee shop business model is so well proven that most companies go the opposite direction: they open a coffee shop with an eye toward adding a roastery when their cashflow supports it, or when they decide that's the best path to improve their quality. Vivace did this, for example. There are some companies that have done the opposite, but usually they seem to be people who came from other coffee companies. The roaster Umbria finally opened a coffee shop a while back, and is apparently planning to occupy two former spaces of Torrefazione, but his family actually founded Torrefazione back when it was a little independent shop. Anyway, I think that a roaster who operates a coffee shop will have to be even more conscious of quality. You may see changes as they decide what kind of blend and roast works best for their coffee setup, but before they have customers at retail the wholesaler is at a disadvantage in the feedback loop.

Oh, I was under the impression that you were served a portion (6 or 7 bites). Was it served like this? http://preetamrai.com/weblog/archives/2004/12/06/tofu-yo/ This Okinawan government site shows a more modest-looking serving: http://www.wonder-okinawa.jp/026/e/recipe/tofuyo.html If the tofu-yo is actually made in Japan, and made with Okinawan liquor, it would likely be more expensive than that made in China. But I would still assume that a single portion, if served like the example on the Okinawan government page, would be something like $4-5 in a restaurant. Another site suggests that it was historically been fairly expensive in Japan, and that the Okinawan type is more mellow than the Chinese type. http://www.thesoydailyclub.com/SFC/Fsoyfoods441.asp

This is done with a slightly altered inkjet printer that uses food-grade inks on an "icing sheet" substrate. I think that is some kind of fondant. http://www.icingmagic.com/catalog/index.ph...d308ced432f1efe http://www.sugarcraft.com/catalog/airbrush/kopyjet.htm http://www.photofrost.com/pf-pro.htm It seems the cost of supplies is about $2 per sheet including the dye and icing sheets. You might find a baker with this equipment who will print just the icing sheet for you, and charge you some markup on top of that cost.

If you saw it in an Asian market for $3, the cost at wholesale is probably $1.95. Most restaurants have a 20-35% cost of materials when figuring their menu price, with cheaper entrees usually closer to the 20-25% side, and big, expensive dishes closer to 35%. Most of the rest of the menu price goes toward paying the staff's low wages and paying the rent, electricity, gas, water and insurance. After cost of labor and fixed, infrastructure costs, most restaurants are lucky to eke out a 6% return on investment, and only the rarest projects net double digit net margins. So the price isn't terribly surprising. Was it served like a cheese plate?

You didn't say if your accommodations are going to be camping, youth hostel, hotels, or ryokan, but I should point out that in some cases, ryokan can be a very cost-effective way of staying. I've stayed in hotels for $120-160/night and gotten an alarm clock and a bathroom in my room, but then gone to a ryokan for $120-160/night and gotten an elaborate dinner and breakfast. I prefer the latter. Keep in mind that many ryokan will require some advance planning, and the best ones tend to be in more rural areas, and often associated with onsen. If you're traveling in off-peak seasons, you can sometimes get excellent deals, especially on weekdays. Ryokan can also be stratospherically expensive, so don't be misled: I'm not saying ryokan are always a budget option, but they can be a cost-effective way of experiencing a lot of great things all at once. They also guarantee that your lunch on such a day will not need to be much more than a quick stop at a soba shop. Many onsen are only accessible if you are a guest of their ryokan, or you might pay 2000-3000 yen for admission just to the onsen part if they offer that, and you'll have to eat two or three meals anyway. So, even if you are staying in camping areas or youth hostels most of the time, some ryokan may be good way of packing a lot into your "splurge" experiences. I'm not sure the best way to find the budget options for ryokan, but most Japanese rely on magazines or internet searches. I just relied on my Japanese friends to help me on that

There is no secret, of course... just peeled, food-milled or fork-mashed potatoes, optionally a splash of cream or milk, a healthy mix of black and white sesame seeds (I used a lighter hand than usual on this batch because I ran out of black sesame), and salt. Some people incorporate a bit of an egg yolk into their korokke base, but I find this usually less than helpful. Refrigerate for a few hours before using. Then shape, flour, coat with egg wash, and panko as customary for korokke. I've never bothered to create a recipe for korokke because they seem fairly forgiving, but if you need precise instructions, I can make something up

Oh, and my least favorite korokke ever were filled with a hard-boiled egg. I think I might be willing to try them with uzura-tamago, but I just couldn't handle a big egg and a thin layer of potatoes.

I made kurogoma-korokke last night. For me, kabocha is a clear favorite, but kurogoma runs a close second. I've also had good satsumaimo korokke and okara korokke at a little yaoya-san (Misato-ya) in Choufi. Here are mine: Kurogoma korokke in my blog I use a bit more salt with kurogoma-korokke than when I make other types, because of my association of kurogoma with gomashio.

Oh, and if franchising is your thing, the Japan exhibition at FoodEx has two areas featuring lots of franchised restaurant and bakery concepts.

They also ran a shuttle bus between the two shows, but I think this takes longer than the train and you might not get on during busy times. It ran about 500 yen, as I recall, and slightly less frequently than I would have hoped. They are only about 30 minutes apart by train. Hyperdia.com is great for figuring out the trains. ←

More conventional food... Kabocha no nimono... simmered squash. The squash is just turning pleasant in color and taste now in Seattle; as of a week ago, the color tended to be a little pale, but it's getting better. Kabocha no nimono This is one of my favorite fall dishes.

I don't make a lot of ochazuke... this was the first time in ages. I was planning on doing yakionigiri in kakejiru sprinkled with matcha as a friend of mine said was beloved in somewhere not far from Uji. The yakionigiri kept crispy for a fair amount of time in the tea and the inner rice didn't seem to get outrageously soft, but I had to prepare the onigiri on a previous day when the rice was still warm (I don't use a rice cooker so I don't have any held warm on standby), and kept it overnight in the refrigerator. This made it easy to grill, though. I think my hand with the miso was too light in this yakionigiri to eat standalone, but once the umeboshi was part of the equation I didn't feel that way anymore. I still have a long way to go before I can make the perfect yakionigiri. You know, yakionigiri do take some time and they take a spot on your stove, but they seem forgiving enough not to require constant attention, so I thought it was actually helpful to have something more forgiving like that on the stove while I was busy preparing other things.

Not so creative, perhaps, but here is my kimpira gobo. My roommate helped tend to the kimpira as I was distracted preparing other food. Kimpira gobo

My most recent ochazuke: Yakionigiri no ochazuke with umeboshi Yakionigiri dinner blog entry

I think OkinawaChris is in the restaurant trade, so he should be ok, and I'm an importer. My first year my only credential was a recently printed business card. They don't really do a background check or anything, but the food industry is pretty broad, so if you do anything remotely related you can probably get in. With preregistation they are likely to be less analytical, but you do have to provide them a business card and fill out a short form in either case. Considering how little it takes to print business cards I'm surprised they don't do anything else to verify your trade credentials.

I think that the show at Tokyo Big Sight is actually Hoteres, which has an exchange that allows you free admission if you have a ticket to FoodEx at Makuhari Messe. Hoteres is where the restaurant/hospitality focused exhibitors are, and this includes things such as equipment (cooking, washing, sanitizing), franchise concepts, hospital sanitation equipment, vendors of hinoki bath prefab materials, smallwares, and packaging. FoodEx, on the other hand, focuses primarily on the food itself, including packaged foods, restaurant/foodservice conveniences such as frozen commissary dough or premade Japanese-style pizza crusts, etc, and manufacturer ingredient supplies and OEM/Private Label manufacturers. You'll see a little overlap, but the environment is quite different. FoodEx is insanely large, so it's hard to say what you should focus on, but with two years of experience, I now find the international halls more interesting than the Japanese halls. In my case, I'm looking for companies interested in exporting things, and most of the interesting companies in the Japan section are smaller and concerned about their ability to handle export transactions, or are incredibly large and don't need people like me. The least interesting (to me) sections were companies from China, and the most interesting to me were companies from Malaysia/Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Korea. I usually don't spend much time in the Italian, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, or Austrian sections, since they are outside of my market focus, but if you're a fan of European foods (which I am) it's definitely worth a look. Usually a few Japanese companies will do some interesting things; I quite liked the Fuji Oil/Soyafarms booth, and in my first year, the Saison Factory booth. I haven't really spent my time in the lectures and classes that are offered at FoodEx, but I did like some of the demos at HoTeRes, which were perfect for restaurateurs looking to be moderately innovative while keeping a very clear food cost consciousness. So far it has been hard to manage seeing all of the booths, considering about 2000-3000 companies are there, but you'll probably just be drawn to things that appeal to you. Based on my first two shows, I would plan for one day primarily in the Japan section and one day primarily in the international section, one day to meet/follow up with people (if you're there to conduct business), and one day at HoTeRes. http://blog.jagaimo.com/search.aspx?q=FoodEx&p=1

I wouldn't go so far as to call myself Asian, though some of my friends might; I am, however, hugely influenced by my early exposure to Asian immigrant populations, as I think those experiences substantially influenced my university course of study, my career path, and my personal interests. Asian fusions are probably likely to continue to dominate the culinary scene for the near future, because travel to Asia and Asian ingredients are both more accessible than ever before; intra-European fusion mostly ran its course, and travel to Africa is still rather complicated and expensive. Some potential for fusions between South American/Caribbean cuisine and European techniques is imaginable, but again, the effects of colonization meant the fusion has already pretty much happened, and it's just a question of how much of a presence South American cuisines can develop outside of that region. Middle eastern cuisine has already had a substantial influence on European cuisine. Long term, most fusions will have to involve either Asia or Africa. These are where the frontiers are. While I have misgivings about the excesses of fusion, I think this is mostly due to the fact that most fresh-out-of-culinary school cooks have limited culinary experiences. Outside of restaurants, most cooks still have limited exposure to Asian cuisine. Almost none of it is from exposure to Asian cuisine within Asia. As appreciation for Asian cuisine becomes more sophisticated, I hope fusion will also evolve, becoming less about shocking and surprising customers and more about fundamental understandings of the functions of ingredients, and deeper understandings of techniques of the cuisines they are borrowing from. The old sitcom joke about the Chinese eating Chinese food all the time just goes to show how limited the range of culinary experiences Americans have within the realm of Asian cuisine. In China, Hong Kong or Taiwan I might find restaurants mostly focused on a particular region and so they might have a long menu of various things, as one might find in the U.S., but it's a very different approach. You don't usually see a long list of (insert name of meat here) (insert name of sauce or preparation here). Options are important, but usually each place has a signature touch. But beyond that, many restaurants really specialize in something; you aren't entering some sort of ambiguously Chinese restaurant. You're at a duck place, or a dumpling place, or a noodle place, or a seafood place. In the U.S. and Canada, such specialization does exist, but it's rare enough that most people have a very specific imagination of what they should be able to get at any Chinese restaurant. I once went with a friend to a favorite noodle place in Seattle and she was disappointed she couldn't get an order of fried rice... at a noodle place. This kind of specialization is even more pronounced in Japan. I went to one place which only served one dish, depending on the weather: either mori-soba (plain buckwheat noodles with a dipping sauce) and pickles, or soba in hot soup. Granted, it was a restaurant on a buckwheat farm, but it's a restaurant concept that is incredibly unlikely in the U.S. I've gone to a place that serves only rice porridge, and one that only serves onigiri (generally, stuffed rice balls, a classic traveler's lunch) and simple accompaniments. I've been to several restaurants that only serve I've gone to a place that only serves anmitsu. If go out to okonomiyaki in Japan I would be somewhat disappointed to find sushi on the menu, because it would mean they don't have confidence in their signature item, and probably don't do either dish very well. Yet in the U.S., I find restaurants that do this kind of thing all the time. We have "high end" Japanese restaurants with menus as long-winded and unspecialized as chain family restaurants in Japan. Because of the relatively poor palate education the average American has, especially in the context of Asian food, "fusion" chefs have a lot of room to appeal to people with essentially mediocre food. I've watched restaurant reviewers base their entire rating of a "Japanese" restaurant on their impressions of "standards", which for them meant the spicy tuna roll, spider roll, and California roll, all of which are incredibly unlikely to be found in a Japanese sushi place. By those standards, it won't take much to impress the same reviewer with "innovative" combinations of monstrous towers of ingredients. On the other hand, I have misgivings about the use of the word "authentic" to describe cuisine, especially when used as an opposite to "fusion". It's also incredibly ambiguous, and reflects more on the experiences of the person using the word than on the "authenticity" of the food. Even authenticity isn't much a guide for quality; it would be incredibly naive to say that 7-11 prepacked onigiri and side dishes aren't authentic Japanese food. They clearly are designed to meet emerging Japanese needs, even if the delivery method isn't traditional and even if the taste is relatively unremarkable. Similarly, grilled chese with processed cheese slices on white bread with canned tomato soup is authentically American, but this implies nothing about quality or tradition. Fusion as a process is always a product of the experiences of the person who creates the fusion. The future of fusion will really depend on how much exposure chefs and home cooks have to their source cuisines. If every trendy fusion restaurant is built on the chef's experiences of a lifetime of ambiguously Asian restaurants and uninformed trips to the nearest Asian supermarket, coupled with a 2 year culinary degree, there isn't much to look forward to. I do hope that people will start to appreciate not just the novelty of ingredients, but the fundamentals of what their source cuisines value. Japanese, for example, place a high value not on flavor intensity or spiciness, but on "sappari"-ness, which can be partially explained, but doesn't translate very well. If fusions of Japanese ingredients and Western foods are done with an understanding this fundamental aspect of Japanese culinary ideals, there's something for me to look forward to. But that will take more non-Japanese chefs experiencing this in context, rather than in the U.S. Actually, the experience of Japanese convenience foods weighed against a well-executed Japanese ryokan meal, and the experience of the difference between instant noodles vs. handmade, recently milled soba noodles made by someone who has been doing it all his life, are all valuable pieces of culinary education that will help inform a chef who wants to develop a fusion of Japanese cuisine and something else. Not every experience needs to be "haute cuisine"; sometimes the perfect simple thing teaches a lot more than an elaborate multicourse meal at an expensive restaurant. But I do think that Asian fusion, and fusion in general, will only grow as much as the sophistication of the culinary education of Westerners does.

Wow... what a stroke of luck. Maybe some yuzu pastries are in your future.