rarerollingobject

A perfect day; it rained, so I had every excuse to be an even more terrible tourist than usual; got out of bed at 12pm and took myself out for one of the main reasons I'm in Kyoto; to try the coffee at Arabica in Higashiyama, one of the new generation Japanese espresso specialists. A beautiful cafe, and incredible coffee that I've been reading about for months. Yes, I had to queue for 40 minutes, because the Japanese are onto good coffee like a fat kid on a Smarty, but it's just outside one of the main temple areas, where lots of young Kyoto couples like to promenade, so it was perfect people-watching territory for one of my favourite things in Japan; young guys in kimono. If anything, I love them more than women's kimono. I made like a total creeper and took pictures of every one I saw. However, I dare not invoke the eG mods' wrath by attempting to post a slew of non food photos, so if you want to see them you can head over to my Insta at https://www.instagram.com/rarerollingobject/ But the coffee: Then I went to find the most beautiful ramen shop in possibly the world; Ramen Muraji, in Gion. It's run totally by women, a rarity in the macho world of ramen-making. GET IT, GIRLS. Anyway, it actually WAS the best ramen I've ever tasted; thick, collagen-y chicken stock, so rich it makes your lips stick together, with a blanket of thinly-sliced lemons to cut the fat and a side of the crispiest fried chicken to cut the fat-cutting. Then I walked around in the rain for ages, and stopped in at a sake bar for a 4pm tipple, purely because the place was called Pass the Baton, and I was struck by the perfect design of its noren entry-way curtain. Anyway, the owner gave me like six free cups of sake so I got very drunk and forgot to take pictures. And just some supermarket sushi for dinner; not bad for AUD$13! A GREAT day. Full of all my favourite things; coffee, ramen, women living their best lives and smashing the patriarchy, sake and objectifying boyzzzz.

I'm fairly sure I was already pushing the bounds of decency and eG readers' patience with that in-the-bath shot.

You wouldn't complain if you were here in person..my wild-eating, thirsty-drinking, loose-moralled ways are what make me fun

I spent most of today at Kitano Tenmangu shrine in Kyoto, for their once-a-month antique and flea market. Lots of food, too! I took video too: Sweet hot rice sake dosed with fresh ginger: Crystallized ginger: Anyway, I was very good about not buying anything, for the sake of luggage and the fact that I'm after some very specifically-shaped sake glasses, which will take up most of my weight allowance when I do find them. And when I say 'anything', I mean apart from a beautiful abalone shell bowl, some wooden spoons, and a giant pack of crystallized ginger; all things designed to give Australian Customs a conniption, no doubt. I then traipsed back to Kyoto Station to find Ramen Koji (Ramen Street), a hidden-away-in-a-corner-of-the-station cluster of branches of the most 15 or so famous ramen shops of Japan. I had the Iroha black ramen from Toyama, and a side of gyoza. Here's a a walk around of the shops that I took: I stopped in then at Isetan to buy dinner; a snack of beautiful hotaru ika baby firefly squid, which you eat dipped in a dab of hot mustard; shiso leaves, massively marbled beef, uni and tuna. So feeling that I'd been quite parsimonious because all I'd eaten all day had been the ramen and the gyoza, dinner was a pre snack of the squid, and then sushi rice, smeared with wasabi, wrapped in raw beef, topped with uni and folded into a shiso leaf and down the hatch. With some very nice sake, too. Then a tuna donburi on sushi rice: And dessert was a raw egg yolk that I'd cured in ponzu (citrusy soy sauce) all day, folded up carefully in a slice of wagyu, and lifted delicately, quiveringly to my lips. So, as you can see, I'm not suffering here.

And today - after an excellent Japanese breakfast in my Tokyo hotel - grilled fish, onsen tamago egg, fresh soft tofu, potatoes and green beans simmered in dashi, pickles, fresh yoghurt, rice, seaweed and an iced matcha. I hopped a train to Kyoto, eating en route a snack bag of dried scallops, an ekiben of gyudon (beef simmered in mirin, soy and sake) and beautifully rare steak. As well as a little packet of chicken fried with shiso and sour plum (ume) seasoning. I've rented a house in Kyoto, because I wanted to do a bit of (simple) cooking, so after buying some wonderfully marbled beef, some rice, some pickles and some eggs, and a bit more fried chicken with this cute mini Kewpie mayonnaise, the house automatically drew me a bath into which I retired with a yuzu-shu and fresh sliced yuzu. Could not be happier.

Things I did yesterday; queued for sushi for 45 minutes with these legends, was complimented twice on my "polite waiting, amazing for a foreigner" (??), ate said sushi, accidentally ate a 200 year old clam and felt sick with guilt but not enough to NOT eat it. In my defence, what happened was I thought from the picture on the menu that they'd be scallops, so ordered them, much to the sushi chef's surprise. They came and I knew straight away from the size and the texture that they weren't scallops, but shrugged and ate them anyway, mystified but not thinking too much of it. It's only when I got the bill and paid, that I afterwards noticed that the two slices of clam alone were far more expensive than the whole rest of the sushi meal put together; out of curiosity as to what I'd eaten and why it was so luxe, I went back and asked and the chef kept saying "200 years, very old!" in Japanese and I assumed I was misunderstanding (I wasn't), so with a lot of Google Translate (the chef ultimately grabbed my phone and typed into the Translate app in Japanese and handed it back to me in English), I established that I'd just eaten something older than Sydney University...yikes. Then I went to Nihonbashi Mitsukoshi and bought six Pierre Herme macarons, and ate them in bed like a goddamn rockstar.

And; I can't post video directly on eG, so look at this very cool street-side rotating fish grill on my Instagram:

Went to Tsukiji for breakfast, @kayb! After tearing myself away from my Beloved - the massage chair in my hotel room - - I wandered off to the fish market for an uni donburi (raw sea urchin on a bowl of sushi rice) and some grilled crab. Didn't stay all that long because I've been to the market many times before, so walked around to Hamarikyu Gardens to see if any cherry or plum blossoms were out yet; only these punters. Caught a river boat to Asakusa and then slowly made my way back to the hotel for a giant, marathon nap and a simple dinner of tempura and cold soba with wasabi, green onion and dipping sauce. Then I walked the streets for a bit before coming across this place, going in to which seemed like a perfectly terrible idea, so of course I did. Since I am nothing if not an Everyday Lady, I spent a very fun hour here making them seriously regret their marketing choices.

Yes, I'm staying overnight in a temple. I didn't know there might be a chance to help with the food..I'll look into that! I'm obsessed with Koya gomae tofu.

OK, so, an excellent flight in to Tokyo. Qantas business class is leagues better than it used to be; sake and Japanese pork belly buns and yuzu-shy highballs with shochu, but more importantly, I even slept!! I'm a pretty seasoned traveller and no drug, no flat bed, no jetlag, no time zone changes, no alcohol has ever worked for me - I've finally established what I need to do to be able to sleep on a plane, even a little bit; just watch that bloody 'Lion' movie, cry till I've exhausted myself in heaving, whole-body-wracking sobs, and promptly fall asleep with the general effort of emoting via external stimuli. The old cry like a baby, sleep like a baby routine..must remember that. And I know this is not a makeup forum or anything, but if you're in the market for a new eyeliner, let me heartily recommend the Tom Ford Eye Defining Pen; how you can cry every skerrick of makeup off your face and lips but your eyliener stays put is clearly a secret between Tom Ford and god. Anyway, Tokyo is heaven because within 20 minutes of arriving at my hotel, dumping my bags and setting out to roam the plains, I was eating this tuna sushi set (I know, I know; I promised to restrict myself to only two tuna meals while I am here, which feels like a very big sacrifice for me, but not as much as for the tuna), before being reunited with one my true love - Family Mart convenience store fried chicken. "Convenience store fried chicken?! WTF??", I hear you ask. And in any other country, that would indeed be a truly disgusting proposition. Japan is not like any other country. Believe. Repairing for the evening in my hotel room's massage chair, with fried chicken, a bottle of sake, and Japanese food TV? Bliss.

@buffy - Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Koya-san, Hiroshima, Fukuoka, Kurokawa/Mt Aso, and back to Tokyo. That's if my planned travelling partner is still coming with; if I end up going alone, I might just stay in the big cities. Good eating any which way.

All I'm saying is..in the next few days, I'll be back in Japan for 2.5 weeks of solid eating, drinking and napping, so...brace thyself, Japan Dining thread!

Amazing, @sartoric!

Insanely delicious baked char siu/BBQ pork pull-apart buns with crunchy pineapple bun topping (nothing to do with pineapples, that's just the name given to the crispy, crackly pastry glaze). Could've done with a longer proof, but I'm hardly going to kick them out of bed over THAT.

Lobster roll with prawn brain mayo; lobster tails, sous vided in butter, piled onto toasted buttered brioche hot dog buns, smeared with mayonnaise that I made with prawn oil (browning prawn heads in oil, pureeing and straining) and then emulsifying with yolks and mustard in the normal mayo way, and topped with smoked chilli threads.

Cupcake-making chaos. Buttercream everywhere; I didn't even intentionally taste any, yet I have buttercream on at least six of my nine chins. But as a test run for the 20 or so cupcakes I'm making for a 7 yr old girl's birthday party next weekend, it was most satisfactory. Tried out some edible glitter dust, on white roses.

A bit like me, she'll never win prizes for her looks, the old Singaporean oyster omelette. I've finally perfected my preferred ratio of crispy:gooey, too. Tapioca starch, rice starch, potato starch, white pepper, soy sauce, a swirled egg, heaps of chilli and delicious fat, briny oysters.

For my team at work; a gigantic raspberry-ripple pavlova; crushed Iced Vo-Vos (classic biscuit de Australiana) and freeze-dried raspberries sprinkled on top; whipped cream (with seven vanilla beans!), meringue kisses swirled with raspberry purée, and a wending line of fresh raspberries. Styled to itself look like a giant Iced Vo-Vo.

Things I have baked today; GIGANTIC, 15 cm wide, highly indelicate chocolate chunk cookies (with beurre noisette and all that Valrhona, after 'curing' the cookie dough part in the fridge for 36 hours to deepen the sugars/caramelised toffee flavours and to better hydrate the flour for a more tender crumb). And their diametrical opposite baked good; delicate shattery lacey pecan florentines, sandwiched together with egg nog buttercream, redolent with fresh nutmeg and Vietnamese cinnamon, and a healthy slug of dark rum.

Spent all afternoon making a gigantic batch of these beauties; crystal prawn dumplings a la @ladyandpups, with prawn, pork and ginger filling, tapioca and wheat starch skin, prawn brain mayonnaise, and a little lemon zest and chilli on top.

I had six apples to use up and not enough going on in my life, so I made a giant apple rose tart for breakfast this morning. Shortcrust pastry base made with orange juice and zest, blind baked, brushed in apricot jam and then with slices of apple fanned out over in. Dusted in ginger, sugar and baked, glazed with stem ginger syrup and more apricot jam and eaten warm. Them apples; you would like them.

I had six apples to use up and not enough going on in my life, so I made a giant apple rose tart for breakfast this morning. Shortcrust pastry base made with orange juice and zest, blind baked, brushed in apricot jam and then with slices of apple fanned out over in. Dusted in ginger, sugar and baked, glazed with stem ginger syrup and more apricot jam and eaten warm. Them apples; you would like them.

I don't know what possessed me to make these on a 42 degree day, given the amount of time they require you to stand over a giant wok of steaming water, but these are a banh beo/banh bot loc mashup; Vietnamese tapioca starch dumplings, with spicy minced pork and prawns, shallot oil, chilli/garlic/fish sauce and lime to dress, and deep fried crispy shallots. They look like nothing once cooked, since the tapioca starch cooks to completely translucent, but you turn them over on themselves with a spoon, make sure you get all the garnishes on, and it's down the hatch in one happy mouthful.

More office baking; milk chocolate and Frangelico mousse tart with gold chocolate shards on top and a base packed with popping candy; @FrogPrincesse's ginger, butter and aged rum (30 year old rum!) tart.

Bruce, we're a hivemind; I like to have my main meal of the day on Sundays at breakfast mostly just because it gives me a chance to rummage gleefully in my fridge, see what wonders I can find, and set about happily constructing a cooking project out of them. Today, I had these beautiful baby king oyster mushrooms to use up, along with a handful of thinly-sliced wagyu beef, and some cooked rice. So I made Japanese curry beef fried rice a la @ladyandpups, with crispy garlic and ginger and a deeply-browned onion, Korean curry powder, Japanese curry roux blocks melted in, a pinch of dash granules, a lot of black pepper, a hit of cocoa powder to mysterious things up, and a nice slick of melty butter on top. Needed an egg on top, but my ova are ovah. Along with some warm fresh soy milk and some cold blanched sesame spinach, I’m ready for my day and fighting fat. Fit. No, fat.