JasonTrue

I'm familiar with Lee Kum Kee's black bean sauce, and it's very different in aroma than denmenjang. Denmenjang is salted, fermented soybeans plus sugar. As for black bean sauce, typically, the black beans are sold fermented and salted by themselves, then mashed and mixed with added ingredients like oil and perhaps garlic when used; it's only for convenience that they are sold in a prepared sauce form. Black bean sauce seems more common in the US than in Japan in my experience, but I don't go out to eat Chinese food very often in Japan, so it might just be the places I've been. I would recommend that someone who cannot find denmenjang substitute hatchomiso and sugar, perhaps between a 4:1 and 3:1 ratio. If that taste doesn't quite match, it could be simmered with additional water, similar to nerimiso. Hatchomiso is relatively easy to find in US Japanese supermarkets, though it's less common than shiro or akamiso. However, Youki's denmenjan works for me. http://www.katagiri.com/ctlg/jpgf/a/a3801.htm has a tiny picture (it's on the right), and it's listed on http://www.katagiri.com/ctlg/list1.htm

Black bean paste is likely to be misinterpreted as fermented black bean paste. It's not the same. Denmenjan seems to be a sweetened miso with some added soy sauce. There is a Youki product called Denmenjian or Tenmenjian which I keep in my refrigerator. I found it at Seattle's Uwajimaya, but it should be easily available at other Asian markets, as Youki distributes their products fairly widely. I haven't tried, but I suspect a non-Chinese speaking American stranded in an Asian market could ask for a "slightly sweet Chinese-style miso, called something like tenmenjan or denmenjan" and be directed to something suitable. Thank you all. Right, I can read in Japanese no problem, but do not know what it is called in English - or rather what would be the equivalent name for this in English. If I tell people to look for black "bean paste" in Chinese markets, will they find it? Thanks! ←

In my experience, this wouldn't be terribly surprising... there are some standard things at every Christmas market, along with many stalls selling random stuff as impulse buys. I'd bet you'd find some guy selling Russian wooden chicken-pecking-board toys and plastic toys from China at many German Christmas markets. I'd be holding out hope for Kartoffelpuffer (a sort of hash-brown) with Grüne Soße (Green sauce, basically mixed herbs sauce) or Apfelmus (apple sauce) at a street market, but that dish, while not particularly German, isn't particularly un-German. Somehow less shocking in Japan than it might be elsewhere... I'd expect to pay $5-8 in Seattle for 220g (1/2 lb) of freshly candied nuts other than, perhaps, peanuts.

Some of those items I'd consider inedible without trying, but that has more to do with my hostility to day-glo cheese. Already been done... See http://kookisushi.com/ (though blueberry flavor doesn't seem to have come up yet)

I'm a convert to corn after making a mizuna pesto pizza, though I skip the mayo and keep the toppings somewhat light. http://blog.jagaimo.com/archive/2007/06/01...esto-pizza.aspx Since I'm fond of potato in my crust, I've learned to like sliced potato and rosemary on my pizza as well. It's actually somewhat easy to find potato as a topping in the Seattle area.

It's probably worth noting that sushi, while available nearly everywhere in Japan these days, is essentially a Tokyo food. (The invention of kaitenzushi might be traceable to Osaka). Similarly, it's probably not worth trying to find Tokyo's best okonomiyaki, a task better left for a trip to Osaka or Hiroshima. Not that there's anything wrong with eating either food elsewhere; it's just that, if you're going to the trouble to be in both places, you might as well focus on the local strengths. If you can, do yuba or some kind of kaiseki meal in Kyoto, okonomiyaki, takoyaki and maybe oshizushi or udonsuki in Osaka, and the monja and sushi in Tokyo.

For me, "authentic" Japanese cuisine is not really about ingredients, but about techniques and the approach to ingredients. I've had ohitashi that had a little Parmesan cheese in them which were more Japanese than the dishes than some of the most popular dishes at "Japanese" restaurants in the US. Mostly Japanese cuisine is about waking up ingredients, so it's marked mostly by "assari" (light) and "sappari" (refreshing) flavors. More hearty dishes like ramen, built on a Chinese foundation but altered for Japanese sensibilities, can be accented with something that, at its essence, is not incompatible with the dish. Ramen's character is defined by its fat, and using something like butter as a finishing touch would not necessarily be shocking or jarring in that context. Some Japanese will find butter ramen too oily, but it certainly resonates with some people. (The further West you go in Japan the less likely people would appreciate the concept; Hokkaido people, on the other hand, tend to like butter.) Though I do avoid most Japanese dishes that involve processed cheese, because they don't seem well balanced to me (and I don't like most processed cheese) it's certainly not at all shocking to see judicious use of cheese or dairy in Japanese dishes. Tempura is not indigenously Japanese, and yet it is certainly Japanese; Japanese ramen is based loosely on a Chinese dish, and yet the Japanese variants can be instantly recognized as Japanese and decidedly not Chinese. Ingredients and even techniques can be morphed into a Japanese context. I'm not sure I can adequately explain what the distinction between a Japanese dish and a non-Japanese dish that uses Japanese ingredients, but I know it when I see it (and taste it). Authenticity is a much more complex question than simply enumerating appropriate ingredients that mark a cuisine. I wouldn't go so far as to say that all kinds of Japanese food can be altered with butter or cheese, but I wouldn't instantly discount the authenticity of a dish merely due to their presence. Broccoli isn't Japanese, but tastes convincingly Japanese in preparations like ohitashi (not, however, in tempura... and I can't explain why). Because I think soy sauce can be worked into "authentic" French cuisine and butter or cheese can be worked into decidedly Japanese cuisine, I find it hard to argue that it's impossible to make such ingredients work in Chinese or Korean food. But in many cases, the initial experiments with incorporating such ingredients are far from successful; the garish yellow slices of pasteurized process slices on the bibimbap don't resonate with me, for example, because I can't think of much of a place for amorphous blobs of tangy melting fat emulsions nor for ingredients of that particular color on bibimbap. If I were going to pick a Western ingredient to put on bibimbap, I'd sooner choose blanched fresh green beans or dry-fried chanterelles with a little soy sauce and dried korean chili flakes; the ingredients at least have functional analogs in more conventional bibimbap preparations. If I were to put cheese into Chinese cuisine, I'd put it in baozi or jiaozi before I'd threw it into some red-cooked stir fried dish... Perhaps halloumi might work in such a case, sliced into thin, dry tofu like slices, with a hit in sizzling oil to slightly brown before incorporating other ingredients.

Hiromi just eats it with rice in small quantities. We also have a hard time using wasabi-zuke up before it starts to lose its charms.

For moderately priced sushi, the standard answer is probably to look for a busy kaiten-zushi place. Anything that isn't kaiten-zushi is not going to be moderately priced, at least in Tokyo. Anything that isn't busy is likely not to be as fresh, due solely to turnover. The unlimited JR pass depends entirely on how much you plan on being in transit. It's about $110-130 to take the hikari or nozomi train between Tokyo and Osaka (one way). Because you easily can find flights in that price range (and sometimes cheaper, like the $90 Skymark flight) as well, consider flying instead, if that leg is your major reason for getting a rail pass. Haneda and Itami airports are the most convenient inside the city, unless you're planning to spend time in Narita itself or somewhere like Wakayama in Kansai. For domestic flights, it's almost as quick to get on an airplane as it is to get on a train, save for an extra 5 or 10 minutes for security checks. Although you can use the slightly slower, slightly less expensive hikari, You can't use the nozomi speed class with the unlimited pass, as far as I recall. You may also find bundled hotel accommodations that make that more attractive. For train and standard (non discounted) airfares, check your travel routings on: http://www.jorudan.co.jp/english/norikae/ If you plan on making 3 long trips within a 7 day span, the 7 day ticket may be worth it; if most of your train usage will be in-city and your only destinations are Tokyo and Osaka, it will not really help much. I don't use JR nearly as much as the subway lines when I'm in Tokyo. I've used the rail pass twice, on my first two trips to Japan. These were trips with aggressive travel itineraries, and I don't generally travel like that anymore. For example, on trip 1, I was in Japan for 23 days and traveled from Tokyo to Ogouri near Fukuoka to visit a friend in Ube/Yamaguchi; this is a 6 hour trip which is about $220 each way. in the middle of that trip, I needed to go back to Kobe/Osaka for one day (about $100), then Kyoto ($30 because I took the shinkansen) the next day, then back to Osaka for dinner ($30), and returned to Ogouri again ($100). A few days later I went back to Tokyo ($220). I made side trips to Mashiko ($45-50 round trip), Nikko (another $45-50), Takayama ($160 round trip). This trip made the 21 day pass worthwhile, and I could use it for small in-area trips when JR was available, reducing the complexity of going to somewhere like Kamakura, Yokohama or other Kanto area places. On a subsequent trip I had the rail pass and made the equivalent of two round trips between Fukuoka and Tokyo, but I found myself making odd decisions that I wouldn't normally have made without the rail pass, like going back to Tokyo for a few days when a friend got called away from Fukuoka on business. Now I'd rather fly than take a roughly 6 hour rail trip, and shave off the 2 or three hours in favor of a better meal and a more relaxed days. So there are ways to get good value out of the rail pass, but you really need to be expecting to be traveling long stretches fairly often. While I was generally in most spots at least 3 days, I certainly remember spending a lot of time in the trains. I'm not sure you'll really want that kind of memory.

For Monjayaki, you can't go wrong if you just follow your nose in Tsukishima, which is on the Yuurakuchou and Oedo lines. That's the place with the highest concentration of monja restaurants, and it's highly unlikely that a bad one there would last very long. I'm not a huge fan of monja, to be honest, but Hiromi is, so I can ask her if she has a more specific recommendation. I would say there's no such thing as "expensive" monjayaki, but I'm sure there's at least one luxurious counterexample somewhere. Cabbage prices have gone up in the last two or three years, so it might be more expensive than the last time I tried, but most monja is about $6-13 per order depending on the toppings. Apparently "Baby star" (instant-ramen shaped noodle snacks) is quite the hip add-on. Generally, good okonomiyaki will be $11-15 per order (using more nagaimo and less water) and respectable okonomiyaki can be found in the $6-12 range. For two people, You'll typically order one or two variations, along with something like yakisoba or gyuutan. I'm less well-versed with Osaka, but expectations in Osaka are very high so even if you're at a chain you'll probably be well fed. Generally, the higher the base price (for the simplest version) the more likely they are using a lot of nagaimo, which is important for the ideal texture.

I don't know; in Japan, the average domestic butter is nicer than the average US butter I can find. And milk can easily be better too, or at least closer to what I knew in Europe. Butter ramen is, if I'm not mistaken, a Hokkaido thing, and my Hokkaido friends are often nostalgiac for it. Butter and soy sauce is a magical combination, and finds good use in izakaya dishes (corn, renkon, and a few other things). Cheese can be excellent in okonomiyaki unless the cheese is the scary processed stuff. Cheese in spring rolls, like tomato-basil-mozzarella, or brie-nori, or umeboshi-shiso-camembert, can also be quite nice. The balance can be tricky to get right, but at least with a Japanese approach to ingredients I've seen some very successful uses of dairy products in dishes that don't customarily have them. That being said, I've generally been less happy with fusions in the hands of trendy, young American chefs who don't know their source cuisines very well.

citrus + rum = magic. Though I suspect kumquats would be better with a cognac. Maybe even (real) tequila.

Funny, I've started to eat nabe by myself because it takes only a few minutes of preparation and is comforting on a cold night, and can be scaled down to one person with minimal effort. I've made Takikomi Gohan in Donabe.

I think that e-ma is using Xylitol, a sugar alcohol which is slightly lower in calories than sugar.

At Sosio's I sometimes go in and ask "what should I want right now?" They usually steer me the right way. Plus, at the market I've often had people throw in pounds extra of nice tomatoes or quince or whatever.

I think the Pike Place Market vendor you are thinking of is Sosio's. I generally prefer the quality and prices at Pike Place Market to Whole Foods.

I think the Japanese hot water pots (used for tea) usually have metal canisters and plastic exteriors, though most are designed as dispensers rather than as pourable kettles.

http://www.jnto.go.jp/eng/ may be able to help finding interpretation services. Considering the complexity of your needs it may be worthwhile. Also, it may be possible to find a student or friend-of-a-friend who can accompany you to restaurants for just transportation and food costs. I remember that such services were available at FoodEx (for exhibitors and attendees) and the cost for non-professional interpreters were not unreasonable. It's quite unusual for restaurant staff to make the leap between a list of allergens or unacceptable ingredients to non-trivial cases, too... As a vegetarian, I've noticed that shrimp (ebi) isn't considered meat or fish, katsuo-dashi (bonito soup stock) is too much trouble to avoid, and that unexpected surprises are pretty common (like a salad covered with a cracker made mostly of dried shirasu, tiny fish, not mentioned in the menu description in Japanese at all). With your soy allergy, some restaurants might skip miso soup, but not think about the small amount of miso from a miso pickle or eggplant side dish. Substitution requests aren't generally entertained in Japan, either, though this seems to be slowly changing.

A fair point. It's always been clear to me that the Stranger values a certain air of superiority above actual knowledge, skill, or ability. Of course, waiters at mediocre Capitol Hill restaurants seem to mirror that as well. But I've seen similar gaffes in other Seattle papers (most irritatingly, reviews of Japanese restaurants that focus entirely on "the standards" like invented-in-America spider rolls, dragon rolls, California rolls and spicy tuna rolls). I've written a clueless restaurant review or two also, but those were for my college newspaper in a town with very few restaurants and a primarily rural Midwestern audience. For the features writer, premature judgment is always easier than doing one's homework

The Stranger reviews Chiso Kappo While I'm not so elitist as to claim that a restaurant reviewer should know everything about a cuisine before writing about it, I'm regularly bewildered by certain kinds of cluelessness in Seattle reviews of, in particular, Asian restaurants. I'm not sure what the reviewer expects to do with the oshibori. Did she wipe her face with it or something and think she was done with it? How is leaving the wet oshibori on the table bad service? It is, after all, in Japanese restaurants, the equivalent of the napkin. It's usually left on the table throughout the meal. Some restaurants even have a small wooden or ceramic plate to keep it on. To be fair, I've been confused by restaurants in the US that bring both an oshibori and a cloth napkin, since one makes the other redundant. Maybe that's the source of the confusion. The second issue, related to tea not being refilled, I can understand being mildly irritated about in a tipping culture, though it's more customary in Japanese style service for the guest to request more tea or water, even in the more expensive places I've eaten in in Tokyo. Removing or not removing dirty plates is a difficult balancing act, too, not picking up on clues is certainly a sign of weak service, something you'd never see at a place like Lampreia; certainly two or three stacked up plates is a signal to the waitstaff that they are no longer needed. But after the rather bizarre complaint like the oshibori thing, I'm disinclined to trust much of the rest of the review. (I might agree about Taichi's charisma, but he is in fact personable). I've only eaten in the downstairs Chiso, and Hiromi and I feel comfortable there because, in Seattle anyway, it feels the most like actually dining in Tokyo. It's perhaps ordinary, but not in a negative way. Maybe I'm a bit biased after all, but for higher-end cuisine it seems like one would expect the reviewer to have some more intimate familiarity with Japanese cuisine and customs?

I prefer most takikomi gohan to most American casseroles; it seems to me that both are simple comfort food.

I made this around January this year, and it's just starting to be drinkable. I think my karin were maybe just a little too ripe.. The vendor gave them to me for a song (I bought a few pounds and they basically added in their remaining stock for free) when they noticed a surplus. In the summer when I first tasted it, there were still almost waxy and astringent (shibui) qualities. Now it's started to become more complex and nice. The first time I made karinshu, in 2004, was with a bit more sugar than the most recent attempt, and probably less ripe quince from November or December, and it was very nice in about 6 months. I think the astringency is removed over time with the help of the alcohol or the sugar. It was best after a year, but drinkable after 6 months.

Unfortunately "apple cider" has no legal definition even in the US, so it can refer to almost anything, from fermented alcoholic drinks, to sparkling apple juice (which we used as "champagne" for children when I was a kid, and I still have at festive events so that people can have their champagne flutes without getting drunk), to spiced ultra-pasteurized apple juice, to the unfermented but unfiltered product that I remember from our "pioneer" days in elementary school made of pressed apples, cloudy because it isn't filtered like the industrially processed apple juice. http://www.horenso.com/shop/applejuice_col...ml 　looks very much like unfiltered apple juice (apparently depicted frozen on the web site).

In the second photo, top to bottom: Imo-youkan (implying yokan made with sweet potatoes) Kuromame-zerii (black bean jelly/gelatin) Kuri-kinton (chestnuts in sweet potato puree) In your last photo, you mostly have photos of varieties of (nama-)yatsu-hashi, which is usually made with honey. Those ones probably have a short shelf life.

I've tested making tofu with frozen edamame myself, and it doesn't work so well, so I don't think they would have used non-dried daizu, at least not as a primary ingredient. From what I've read, tofu makers that sell "edamame tofu" mix it with some regular soybeans and then most likely have to add some coloring, natural or otherwise. http://starbulletin.com/2001/09/19/features/ingredient.html Edamame "flavored" tofu I've tried in Japan was nice, but the ones I've tried used some additional thickening agents beyond nigari.