jkonick

They're called takoyaki. Here's a thread about them from the Japan forum: Takoyaki

I just watched both episodes... I gotta say, there's no such thing as too much Bourdain in my book. Being obsessed with Japanese food, the first episode was pretty much as good as it gets for me. I thought the baseball stuff was great... particularly the book of vocabulary for fans. I have no idea what "my heart bleeds peanut butter" (I think that was one of them) means, but I think I love Japanese baseball. Did anyone else watch the show beforehand on bizarre foods of Asia? I thought it was really bad... the host said almost everything he ate was disgusting, going so far as to spit out durian and say it tasted like rotten onions in front of the grower while at a durian farm! It was sort of like the anti-No Reservations.

I think the same thing. I was going in to my first natto eating expecting this terrible, worse than 10 year old washed rind cheese smell - and it just had a faint coffee smell. I actually like the smell, and the taste, which I think are roughly the same. It's just the texture that gets to me a little, but I'm getting used to it. I have a Japanese friend who said that my coffee scented natto didn't smell like the nasty stuff his dad likes, so maybe the kind I but in the U.S. is different from nattao available in Japan?

I just made this today because I had some extra pork chops that I needed to use up - man, it was really, really good! I tried Ben Hong's suggestion for cooking them, and I they turned out really juicy, despite the fact that I was using regular old supermarket pork. I also added a little extra cooking wine and soy sauce at the end and used it to deglaze the pan for a pretty good "sauce." Mmm. Thanks for the wonderful recipe!

I went there recently too, and was pretty impressed. It's a lot better than the place that was there before I think. It's been mentioned a few times already, but I went to Seven Stars Pepper the other day and had a great dinner. The beef in hot oil appetizer was really, really good - a perfect combination of spiciness from the chili oil and numbingness from the Sichuan peppercorns. Also had the dan dan noodles which were great. I'm going back on Friday and I want to try that whole fish dish...

My favorite is The Japanese Kitchen by Hiroko Shimbo. It was one of the first Japanese cookbooks I ever bought (I now have about ten) and it was very helpful when I was first starting to cook Japanese food. It has a wide range of dishes from traditional to modern, as well as a a comprehensive section on techniques and ingredients. There aren't any pictures but I like it that way, I think it gives more room for in-depth descriptions. It's definitely my most beat up cookbook, and the one that I always go to first when trying out a new recipe.

Part two! http://www.thedaily.washington.edu/index.php?storyID=15694 Enjoy

Yakitori with liberal amounts of shichimi... mmmm.

For anyone still interested, I did this story. You can read it here: http://www.thedaily.washington.edu/index.php?storyID=15631 Part two, what happens to the food once it gets here will be in next week's entertainment section on Thursday. ← I'm really delighted that you were able to follow up on this story concept. It might give the piece an even stronger line (next week) to take a menu item and follow it from field to plate, mentioning the amount of money the farmer is paid, the mark-up that the whoesaler/distributor takes, what the university pays, what the student pays etc. Well done! ← Thanks! And thanks too for giving me the idea! I originally intended for the series of articles to be similar to what you described, but as I did more research into where the food came from, I realized that it would take longer than two weeks to write the story (our editors change every quarter, and these two articles are my last of the quarter so I can't plan past these). Next week's article will focus more on what happens to the food once it gets to the UW. Today I spent the afternoon/evening with one of the campus' chefs, and interviewed one of the chefs who watches over the whole operation. The article will mostly be about the process of raw potatoes in the storage area to plate, rather than soil to plate. I wish I could've done it that way, but it just didn't seem feasible with the time constraints and finals week looming. I'll post a link to next week's article though.

For anyone still interested, I did this story. You can read it here: http://www.thedaily.washington.edu/index.php?storyID=15631 Part two, what happens to the food once it gets here will be in next week's entertainment section on Thursday.

I've made aebelskiver in a takoyaki grill with great results! In fact, my aebelskiver tend to turn out better than my takoyaki...

I have to add another thumbs up for Green Leaf. I went there the other night with two friends and we ate enough food for about ten people, yet I still left feeling like I wanted to try more... I completely forget about the fried duck soup until I was perusing the take out menu later that night. We had: Veggie salad rolls - These tasted almost exactly like Tamarind Tree's, especially with the cripsy thing in the middle which I've never seen anywhere but Tamarind Tree. They were good, I'd say no different that TT's though. Lemongrass tofu skewers - Not much of a lemongrass flavor, but really good none the less. Fried flour cake - Like someone else said in this thread, the name sounds rather off-putting but this dish is really great. It sort of reminds me of a Vietnamese version of polenta... very creamy on the inside and crispy on the outside. I also really like the pickles it comes with which are really sweet and only slightly tangy, super crunchy too... mmm. Banh Xeo - Just as good as they've been described. I think they were my favorite dish... I can't get over how good they were! I could make a meal out of those alone. Vegetarian tofu soup - Nothing super special about this, which is not to say that it was bad. I'd rather have ordered the duck soup though. Seven courses of beef - I haven't had this at Tamarind Tree, but one of my friends had and said that Green Leaf's was better. I really liked the charred tasting sausage looking things - I'm not sure what they were but they were great. The first salad was really good too, although I've had something similar with raw beef and more herbs that I thought was better. And all that, plus dessert and lemonade was under $50. A pretty amazing deal, plus I love the decor and the service was really great. I'll definitely be returning!

Bacon fat has to be my favorite. Since I stopped being vegetarian a few months ago, I've gone pretty crazy with bacon, and in doing so, acquired a lot of bacon fat. I keep it in my fridge and take out a little whenever I need it - my favorite use is cooking scrambled eggs in it. At first, when I was truly in a meat frenzy, I took a shot glass full of bacon fat to IHOP and used it as a condiment - french fries dipped in bacon fat, pancakes topped with bacon fat, bacon dipped in bacon fat... I can't say I'd make a habit of it, but it was really good.

The trickiest sneak I've ever done was Ethopian food. A friend and I were going to go to dinner and then a movie afterward, but by the time we ordered our food we realized the movie - which would probably sell out - was going to start in 15 minutes. We needed to get there early but we'd already ordered, and we were hungry, so we just told the waitress to bring our food out in take out boxes. We got to the theater and then realized we had no idea how we were going to get a whole Ethopian dinner in there - two different lentil stews, some dumpling like things and five or so pieces of pizza-sized injera bread. With the help of some fellow sympathetic movie goers, we stuffed all the food underneath our shirts/pants, and somehow made it in to the theater. I will tell you this though - even if you sneak Ethopian food in, eating it in the dark is a whole different problem. I made a lot of paper towl runs to clean up spilled lentils. The smell was also pretty intense, but we sat in the very back row in the corner, so we got by undetected. Movie theater food is a definite rip off, and I usually sneak in little things like candy or cans of soda in my pocket. I don't go crazy over popcorn, but I've always loved movie theater Sprite. I have no idea why. No other movie theater soda tastes better than its packaged equivalent, but Sprite from movie theaters always tastes different to me. Maybe it's the soda fountain thing, the water/syrup ratio is different.

I think one reason they're so expensive is that they're not necessarily for drinking - a lot of people actually collect the different Jones Soda special packs and keep them - some people even sell them on eBay for a lot of money. Though the Valentine's sodas did taste good, they also looked nice in their box, and if you're in to... well, soda collecting, they'd make a nice addition to your collection. It is too bad they're so expensive, because I could make a habit of drinking the Valentine's flavor.

Oooh, this makes me wish we had White Castles out here in Seattle... I don't think I've even seen any in Washington. I spent tonight at IHOP, but despite the strawberry crepe, it was nowhere near as romantic as that.

I went there a few weeks ago too and had dim sum. It was all really good, especially the turnip cakes. All the fake seafood was good, and actually tasted like real seafood. I'd definitely go back and again to try some of the non-dim sum stuff. Much better than Wholesome Vegetasia which was there before. Everything there tasted like gasoline and their dishes had an uncanny ability to get cold after being on the table for about thirty seconds. Vegetarian Bistro is definitely a level above that, and above other Asian veg places like Bamboo Garden, Teapot, which I think are gross.

I went to Jade Garden last week and it was great. I've heard really good things about their dim sum from Chinese friends of mine, but I went at about one in the morning (thank god for late night Chinese restaurants) so no dim sum this time. Very extensive menu and they cooked our food in literally five minutes. If it wasn't so good I would've sworn they'd just thawed the complete dish in the microwave, it was that fast. I'll definitely have to go back for dim sum with my Chinese friend so she can order all the good stuff for me

Oooohh thanks for all the great info! This is making me really excited... and hungry. Mmm, ramen.

I'm not too worried about travelling around - and especially at those prices, when I'm having trouble affording just the airplane/tuition! I have a friend in Tokyo whom I wanted to visit, but maybe I'll just make him come down to Fukuoka... hmm. Anyway, I'll be living with a Japanese family half of the time, so hopefully I'll get a pretty good idea of everyday food in Fukuoka. The other half I'll be living with Japanese students in a dorm or apartment I think. Either way, I should get a pretty good exposure to lots of different foods.

This summer I'm planning on doing a month and a half long study abroad program at Kyushu University in Fukuoka, from early July to mid-August. What is the city like? How is the food? Are there any regional or local specialties? I know it's pretty close to SE Asia - is there an influence at all on the food? Also, how close is it by train to other big cities in Japan (IE Tokyo, etc). I've never been to Japan but am basically obsessed with Japanese food, so this is going to be a lot of fun. I also don't know Japanese at all... which will be somewhat of an obstacle, although part of the program is an intensive Japanese course. Thanks!

Today I picked up the latest seasonal Jones Soda set, the Valentine's Day edition. Far more palatable than the turkey soda from the Thanksgiving edition, Love Potion #6 has tastes sort of like... well, gooey, sweet, sickening love. Or cotton candy, I'm not sure. It also came with a CD, a book of "love coupons" (five minutes of uninterrupted gazing into each other's eyes *unless in public, where goopy-eye time will be reduced to two minutes), and a stick of Love Potion #6 lip balm. The lip balm tastes very almondy, and complemented the soda. I'm not sure how wide the distribution is on this, but I'd suggest picking it up, if for no other reason than the novelty (although it's actually pretty tasty).

The worst meal(s) I've ever had were, in of all places, France. I was living with a French family (who weren't even French - they were Indian by way of Portugal, and spoke Portugeuse most of the time, which didn't do much for my slowly improving French) for two weeks during a mini-exchange thing in a town about thirty miles from Paris. I was really excited because a) French food is great, and I would be exposed to all sorts of new things and b) my host father owned two restaurants! Surely he must be a great cook! Well... he wasn't. I'm thinking he must've been more on the business end than the food end. I ate at their house for breakfast and dinner every day. Breakfasts were great - all purchased food like yogurt, pain au chocolat, croissants, etc. However the dinners were all made by the parents. Nothing was really good, but here are some of the worst: The first THREE nights I was there, we had "sushi." It consisted of very salty tasting long grain rice topped with pieces of tough, slimy fish. The same sushi was served all three nights, so that fish was AT LEAST three days old. There was no soy sauce, ginger or wasabi to drown out the taste. There were also little cocktail shrimp arranged around the plate. "Chinese food." I'm lucky enough to live in a city where the concept of "chop suey" is nothing but a relic of another era, but I'm pretty sure this is what it tasted like in those unfortunate days. A lot of celery, vague "soy" flavors and noodles. It's all a gross blur. Despite the plethora of bakeries, I'm pretty sure they only bought new bread once while I was there. All of it was stored in a cabinet, and was rock hard. It tasted sort of like croutons. The cheese, which we ate with the bread, on the other hand was really, really good. All sorts of non-pasturized goodness that you can't get in the US. The worst though would have to be a vegetable dish we had for dinner one night. At the time, I was vegetarian, so they highly encouraged me to eat this. Here is a rough recipe from memory: take a bag of mixed, diced frozen vegetables. Empty into a microwavable bowl. Top with mayonnaise. Stir. Microwave. Stir again. Serve. I lifted a spoonful to my mouth and my gag reflex went off right away. I have no idea how I swallowed that one bite without puking. I managed to choke down my small serving, but was horrified when my host mother foisted more upon me. When she asked why I wasn't eating it, I tried to respond politely, but my limited French would only allow "I don't like vegetables," which started a barely comprehendable, but surely angry conversation between my host parents. My host mom said "You don't like vegetables? How can you be a vegetarian if you don't like vegetables? You have to eat them." I looked desperately through my French-English dictionary for names of vegetables that I liked, but I'm pretty sure by that point the damage was done. And not a specific meal, but a common theme was tuna. Apparently tuna is a great food for vegetarians, because in lieu of meat, they made me put this on everything I ate. I never wanted to see tuna again after that trip.

I saw some of this stuff earlier tonight and contemplated buying it, but since I have a cold I opted for some vitamin water instead. I'll have to pick some up though, I'm intriguiged...

Alright! I have mochi, okonomiyaki mix and cabbage, so tomorrow will be mochi okonomiyaki for lunch!