nakji

I'm...appalled, I think. I only like my yogurt mixed with soju

Last week I was in the Sogo department store in Yokohama looking at the selection in the Ito-en booth there. I couldn't afford any then, but I'm looking forward to going back and picking some up next week. I've heard the teas from Shizuoka are supposed to be good. I like houjicha (roasted tea), which I often buy if I'm in Asakusa. There's a touristy tea shop there that roasts their own tea - every time I come out of the train station, I can smell it, and I can't walk by without buying a bag. I also really like genmaicha (tea with roasted rice), which I started drinking when I lived in Korea. Both make excellent bracing cups of tea for first thing in the morning.

Today, one of my students brought in a small bag of chestnuts that she'd boiled in a sugar syrup. She also brought in some plates and green tea, so we started our lesson in a most civilized way! I had a hard time explaining why chestnuts aren't so common in Canada - Chestnut Blight is hard to explain. We still have some chestnut trees around, especially in my hometown, Halifax - but I'll be darned if I ever saw anyone eating a chestnut. It's a shame, since they're so delicious. I used to buy roasted chestnuts on the streets of Seoul - what a great treat! But that doesn't seem so common here in Japan. I also had happened to pick up a supermarket bento for lunch - from an okowa specialist. They had several to choose from, and I chose takikomi gohan and kuri gohan. They were so incredibly delicious! I've made takikomi gohan before, but never with sticky rice. Can anybody give me proportions for these dishes? I don't have a rice cooker, I just use a pot on the stovetop. One more question - the takikomi gohan I had had some sort of chicken in eat - it looked like it had been braised or simmered in shoyu. I've had this before in other preparations before, too - notably a table charge salad at my favourite izakaya. Can you tell me a method for making this? It isn't sticky or sweet - it's slightly dry chicken tinted brown from soy.

What gorgeous pictures. A lot of them remind me of driving through the outback in Australia - is there anything more beautiful than watching the sun set on red rock with a cold beer in your hand? I can't get over how bright the plates of food are, and how they're bursting with energy - explosions of vegetables and sauces and cheese. I think I'd have to spend several minutes just looking at them before trying to eat anything. I wouldn't know where to start! And I notice your notes - I always write down funny conversations I have when I travel, too! They're the reason I travel. The absolute best, best is the bakery in the middle of nowhere. I make my coffee the same way, but with bagged beans. I agree with him - it's the best way to make coffee. Finding a place like that is my goal on most trips. You just sit, and enjoy the moment. And no guidebook can ever point you to anything like that.

I'm not sure, but I feel like they should run about 10,000 won. If you're buying several, remember to bargain, which is okay in markets like Namdaemun. Say "Kaka chuseyo" to request a discount in price - don't expect much, though - maybe only a 10% reduction.

Well, in my experience, Diet Coke is often practically impossible to find in my area, although Coke Zero rears its ugly head frequently. I ended up switching to bottled green teas, and I almost never drink carbonated beverages any more - I used to be a one Diet Coke a day girl, too. I think the teas are healthier, anyway - but your daughter might miss the sweet taste. I've found after a year in Japan that I hardly crave sweet things anymore. I feel like Fanta has a low-calorie drink out as well, but I'm not sure of the name. Calorie information is usually displayed on the label, and is easy to read, though - usually it looks like "kCal". "Low calorie" or "calorie-free" is often written in katakana on the label, but I still haven't gotten around to installing those drivers on my computer, so I can't type it out for you. I'm not sure I've ever seen artificially sweetened yogurt, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Plain yogurt is easily available, and I just sweeten mine with honey. Actually, I used to consume a lot of artificially sweetened products when I lived in Canada, but because they're not as readily available in Asia, I just gave up trying to find them. As you know, a lot of traditional Japanese foods have a bit of sugar in them as seasoning. However, labelling is pretty good here, and you should be able to see what things suit your daughter's diet needs. That doesn't help much at all, I'm afraid. But I hope you and your daughter enjoy your trip.

I make one for my husband most days, which never fails to amuse and surprise our co-workers. I just can't abide combini food most of the time. Especially with our schedule - by the time I get to it, all of the good stuff has long been picked over. The problem is time, of course. I have to add at least another 30 minutes to my morning routine to get them put together, unless I'm using all leftovers. I'm not sure most people in the West are willing to devote that much time to cooking anymore - lunch or whatever meal, based on my (admittedly brief) visits back every few years. And of course, kids are notoriously picky eaters, aren't they - that's what some parents claim is behind their motivation for making cute character bentos - to get their kids to try a variety of foods.

Thanks for your lovely comments, guys. Really good food is worth writing about! Kevin72, how did I miss this podcast? I've subscribed to it - it'll be just the thing for my long train commutes. The only problem is, it'll no doubt make me incredibly hungry.

Namdaemun market should have everything you're looking for - and it's located convenient to Myeongdong! They have dolsot pots for bibimbap or rice, which will be heavy. You can get kimchi pots there, too. Ceramics like teacups and bowls are available in Insadong.

Hoddeuk - Insadong. There are two or three vendors - look for the one with the long line up about half-way through. Eat there. Don't bite in right away, no matter the temptation. Ddeok bokki and other various fried bits - the main street in Jongno, or the centre "gai" in Myeongdong will have lots of vendors. Namdaemung market, as well. Same rules apply as anywhere - look for a vendor that's busy, and has a lot of turnover. It's nice to get vegetable twiggim added into your ddeok bokki - since it's pre-fried and sits out in the cold, it's usually not very nice - but if you get them to swirl it around in the special sauce - magic! Also make sure you break up the boiled egg and mix the hard-boiled yolk into the sauce; it mellows it a bit. Outside Doksugung, at City Hall station, they sell waffles "nuts" filled with white bean paste. I always loved those. On the weekends, the vendors should be out all day; on the weekdays they usually come out around lunch or after the kids get off school. Early evening is the best time to sample their wares.

They have Lotteria in Korea. Lotte is owned (or was started) by an ethnic Korean in Japan. Lotte products are very popular in Korea.

There's your moment of zen for the day! I don't know. But to me, the thoughts and traditions behind a traditional style bento focus more on health and nutrition more than Western-style boxed lunches might. I mean - who doesn't like a fried chicken, potato salad/slaw, biscuit boxed lunch? But how much thought has gone into the nutrition balance of that box? I'm not sure if people still worry about that as much in Japan anymore, though. A Japanese style lunch box is certainly different in shape and design from a Western one. When I first bought my bento, I was sure it was too small, and could never properly feed me! (sorry for the awkward double-post)

I've seen these before in the shops, but...do they taste good?

Salsicce e Patate alla Paesana We had some autumn rain blow through here yesterday, so I was too lazy to get out and get chickpeas. So, no chickpea soup - not yet. But it's on the list. Flipping through this book offers snapshots into Marcella's life. I usually skip right over the notes that accompany recipes in most cookbooks, but in this book, they're almost (almost) the best part. I can see the places she grew up in, and the people she met along the way. I was immediately engaged by the sausage recipe on page 236, because her description of the farmhouse of where she used to eat this dish brought to my mind another farmhouse and another memorable dish I ate on another continent, another time. Marcella writes, "...the floor below it consisted of a single, large, dusky room. Into it, a tiny window strained dusty daylight. At one end, there was a hearth and, beside it, blackened, thickly encrusted grills and trivets, battered pans, piles of dried vine canes and other firewood... ...In that smoky, primitive room I had some of the best meals of my life." It's true that hunger makes the best sauce, and the sort of hunger you can arouse by stomping around an Italian farm all day, I can only imagine. But last year, I took a motorcycle trip in the mountains of Northern Vietnam, and had some particularly hairy rides over mountain passes, through washed-out roads, and down steep dirt goat tracks on the back of old soviet-designed motorcycles. And I can tell you, hunger following oh-my-god-I-can't-believe-I'm-still-alive sorts of situations is pretty demanding. All along the way, we stayed in minority villages, in bamboo houses with friendly pigs underneath and chickens as alarm clocks. There was no more than a single bare bulb for light at night, and in the day, the light from outside. The walls of the kitchen were black from smoke, and the floors were often dirt. The smell of woodsmoke and the sound of clucking hens each morning woke me up, and invariably I'd find three or four young women who had been up an hour already, crouched by the family hearth preparing breakfast. One day, in a small village near the Laotian border, I watched a girl flip out a hundred banana pancakes using only a battered Chinese-made non-stick pan and a pair of homemade bamboo chopsticks. Smothered with condensed milk poured straight from the can, and shared with Phillipe and Michel, who could only talk about how much camembert and Bordeaux they were going to eat when they got back to Belgium, it was so comfortable and cozy, it was like being in my Mum's kitchen in Canada. Another morning, after a particularly rough night spent driving in the dark, I awoke to potatoes fried in pork fat, served with fried rice cakes to celebrate the new year. The women preparing the feast did everything on the ground on old woodblocks, with simple knives and tubs of water. When I read Marcella's recipe, my mind flew back to that plate of pork and potatoes, and the black ceilings, the breakfast plates lit only by the light coming in from the window, and the smell of woodsmoke curling up through the bamboo floors, and the girls laughing at how much we could eat. It's hard to recapture that kind of atmosphere in my simple flat in Japan. But anyway, potatoes, sausages, and tomatoes are something I keep on hand. I can't imagine why it never occurred to me to put them all into a pan before, but I guess that's the genius of it. I resisted the urge to use basil, and put in only bay leaves, as are called for, and was ultimately rewarded by the subtlety of flavour. It took a bit longer to cook than I'd hoped, so my husband and I had some more of the pickled aubergine and bits of bread for starters. The sausages, sadly, were not quite right - too smoky, maybe? They tasted delicious, actually, but I felt I wasn't getting the dish exactly right. I'm not quite sure what Marcella means by "sweet breakfast sausages" - can anyone enlighten me? The kind of sausages generally available in Japan are smoked German-style ones - bratwurst and the like. Can anyone post a picture of a typical "Italian" sausage, so I know what to look for? We washed it down with a Nero d'Avola. The key for this recipe, I think, is to be patient and really let the tomatoes and onions caramelize on to the potatoes - and get them a little crispy on the bottom, so that they delaminate into a floury-orange-stained piles of non-resistance when you poke them. Otherwise, this dish had everything I look for in a recipe. Simplicity; a low number of ingredients; and minimal interference from the chef. If I went back to Vietnam now, and went to a village (and the Hmong make really incredible sausage, by the way), I could walk up to the fire and (save the bay leaves) knock this dish out for the ladies of the hearth to say thanks for those great breakfasts.

Do you have a picture of the wagyu? I'd like to see what it looked like cooked, or raw. My experience with wagyu has been that while I enjoy the flavour a lot, I don't enjoy the texture of it when it's cut like a Western-style steak. It seems too - gelatinous. And I generally enjoy eating fat. When I've had it in more traditional Japanese style preparations, like sukiyaki, the texture bothers me less because of the thin cut.

I don't know how many times I burnt myself on that hot, molten core. So delicious looking, how can I resist biting into it right away? But the second-degree burn scars from previous encounters warn me to be cautious. It's best to eat them in winter, when your gloves protect your hands, and the cold air cools the syrup. I think Korea is having a moment. Korea - sparkling! I'll be there, too, over Christmas and New Years. Myeongdong is a good area to stay, since you'll be able to get around easily, and there are quite a few cheap places in the shopping area. You'll also be close to Jongro and Shinchon, where the best eats are IMO. The food hall in Lotte will be good for bringing home food souvenirs. When I was there, we didn't speak much Korean, but we got around fine. I don't remember many restaurants then having English or Japanese menus, but basically, since you know what kind of restaurant it is by looking in, we would just waltz in and start ordering things - if they had it, it came, if they didn't, they'd tell us. Not a great system if you have kids, though. But really, hangul is so easy. Just add "chuseyo" on to the end of whatever you want to order (eg.: "Dolsot bibimbap, chuseyo"), and they'll understand what you mean. As for getting around, the subways are all in English, and quite a good deal less complex than in Tokyo, so you should be fine. Jongro and Myeongdong have some great street snacks, and you definitely want to get some ddeok bokki in and around there. Insadong for hotteok on the street - mind the lineups, tho, they can get long! Insadong is also good for stopping in the tea houses along the alley for some restorative kamjajeon, kimchijeon, and haemul pajeon. Also a great place for trying some infused makkeolis - pine makkeoli, anyone? Umeshu and another drink - bokbunjaju - a sweet purple liqueur are also available in the teahouses, along with a wide range of teas - and of course, sikhye - rice punch. I could never develop a taste for it - I prefer the persimmon punch. On the streets running perpendicular to Jongro, there are some nice galbi restaurants, ones that even serve European wines. In the entertainment district of Jongro, there are quite a few ddalk galbi restaurants - you must hit one of these places up. As for fast food, I never found the chains there to be as innovative as the ones in Japan, but things change. The one thing I do remember from McD's is the bulgogi burger. Better in Korea are the combini onigiri - or samgak gimbap - they have bulgogi, bibimbap, gochu pork....... When you go to a lunch restaurant - any of the orange coloured places - try the modum gimbap plates - cheese, kimchi, bulgogi, tuna - oh my! Korean breakfast is similar to a Japanese one, but with kimchi, of course! And instead of miso soup, they have doenjang jigae, or another type of jigae - it's very hearty. I'm sure your guesthouse will put out a good version. I'm getting so geared up and excited now!

I had that one as well, but I was disappointed - what I really wanted was a mint julep I guess. Next time I'll add bourbon. I usually enjoy the Kirin World Kitchen series. Yesterday I had a great new juice from Tropicana: "White Blend", with white grapefruit, peach, lychee and a couple of other juices I forget. I was just the thing for my burgeoning cold. Stopped it dead.

Wow, you have to be the bestest Mom ever! Can you come over to my house and pack lunches? I see there are some onigiri in there - were they plain, or did they have a mediterranean flair as well? What kind of sausages were they? I struggle to find a sausage I enjoy in Japan. I haven't posted any of my bentos lately, I'll have to get out my camera.

Well, I do have a lot of thyme on my hands..... [rimshot]

I enjoyed eating these a lot when I lived in Korea. They were usually made into a sweet "tea" - a kind of jam or marmalade that you poured boiling water over, not unlike yujacha - here's a link. If they weren't made into a tea, they were dried and used like a raisin or similar. My favourite way to eat them was in a sticky sweet rice snack - glutinous rice steamed with jujubes, pine nuts, chestnuts and some seasoning - maybe soy, I'm not sure. I can't find a picture on the net anywhere (in English) of what I'm talking about. But it's fabulous. I'm going to go look through my Korea pictures to see if I can find what I'm talking about.

An incredible series of pictures! I'm in awe of the chef's skill. And I agree - the gills look like the dish I would have most liked to try.

Well, I looked through the book, and sure enough, this recipe had already been tabbed. (Gray: all-season/pantry staples). However - about the mozzarella - I'm not sure. Now, don't get me wrong - in a country where you can be on a simple Sunday walk and come across a band of university students whose hobby it is to get together on weekends and play New Orleans-style jazz - I cannot imagine that there are not one or two artisanal mozzarella makers floating around out there too. It's just a matter of me finding out where they are, and how to get to them. But most imported shops sell "Italian" mozzarella - not the logs of passive white cheese slanderously labeled "mozzarella" that I grew up with, but the proper balls. The second problem is my lack of oven. Now, I can often cheat a recipe that calls for one. Last night, for example, I nuked some small potatoes for around five minutes, then quartered them, tossed them in olive oil, salt, and garlic, and put them under my fish grill for another ten to crisp them up. But this recipe looks like it benefits from the cheese and potatoes spending all that time together before committing to marriage. So I may have to hold off until I finally move out of my crappy apartment and get a small convection and/or toaster oven. This may be the recipe for this week! As for the pasta with rosemary and bacon...I'm ashamed to admit it, but I'm a serial rosemary plant killer. When I walk by, rosemary plants shrink back and whisper, "murderer! murderer!" to each other behind their spiny little hands. Which is a shame, because the rest of my herbs are in good shape - my lemongrass plant is threatening to take over the living room as we speak. Yay! I can't wait to see what you make! Bruce - about the mushrooms - do you find the anchovies integral to the flavour of the dish? I'd like to make this one, since there are a lot of mushrooms around this time of year, but I'm not sure I have ready access to anchovies. And, Thanks! That means a lot.

I liked the beef done in sukiyaki best - I made it the other night at home, too. It's not cheap, but it tastes great. In Japan, you can buy the beef thinly cut for just this purpose. What kind of cuts of meat have you got access to?

Excellent. This jives with my personal feelings about a good meal; I'm glad to hear Italy agrees with me. Sounds, and looks, gorgeous! I have to get up the nerve to go and buy fish. It feels wasteful to live in Japan and never buy fish. But I'm too intimidated. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. People who think they don't like a certain food have simply not had it with enough butter and carbs loaded on. That's how my parents got me eating seafood - they dosed a plate of mussels with butter, garlic, white wine, and said, "Here- eat this. It's got butter on it." Which leads me to last night's dinner.. For me, another Tuesday night; another series of flagrant recipe violations. I blame my Scottish grandmother on my inability to ignore and/or bin a wilting vegetable. This week, the culprit was a half a head of Chinese cabbage, left over from Monday night's sukiyaki. (Done on my new portable gas ring - whee! And as I discovered Sunday night, the perfect way to make risotto without missing any TV). I knew there was a recipe featuring savoy cabbage and pancetta. Chinese cabbage and savoy cabbage are both crinkly, right? And I had some smoked bacon from Kamakura as well. I hunted through the gray (for all-season or pantry staple) tabs, but found the recipe I remembered was for risotto. Which we'd had, on Sunday night (Bittman's dried mushroom risotto from How To Cook Everything - tastes great made with dried shiitakes and Japanese short-grain rice - as long as you've never had the real thing! ) and frankly, there's only so much risotto I can take in a week, new gas ring notwithstanding. So...I used the pasta shells left over from last week instead, but followed her directions to the letter for the sauce. And boy, what a sauce! Just like roasted cauliflower suddenly makes you look at cauliflower in a whole new light, cabbage fried in several tablespoons of olive oil, butter, and bacon fat erased negative associations developed over years of my mother's boiled dinners. Mmmm, cabbage. In my kitchen, not just for kimchi anymore. In fact, the sauce alone would have made a fabulous spread for bread, now that I think about it. When the cabbage had gone all brown and succulent, I tossed in the cooked shells, which scooped up gobs of the bacon and cabbage and tucked them up inside, making fabulous flavour bombs. The bowl looked rather uninspiring, though, and I had no handy eggplant skins to rescue the look, so I didn't bother to snap a picture.

Haha! Don't worry - I wasn't feeling bad about using the dashi powder - just about not telling my husband it was in there. But I broke down and told him anyway, when he asked me what I did different this time. I only used enoki mushrooms in my takikomi gohan, since those were all I had on hand. They were wilting sadly in the crisper, so I made the dish just to use them up.