smallworld

One more for "shopping is its own reward". But I guess it all depends on how you shop: if I shopped like my mother did (one giant shopping trip per week) I might need a treat. Lugging all those bags from the trunk to the kitchen and then unloading them is hard work, and no matter how fun the shop it's all forgotten by the unpacking stage. I live in Japan, where most folks--at least city folks-- still go shopping every day, and when it's a natural and enjoyable part of the daily routine a reward is just not necessary. That said, if it's really cold, and I've dragged my husband out with me, and we're feeling a little peckish, we sometimes pick up a couple of freshly fried krokke (potato croquettes) to keep us warm on the walk home.

I would buy one and make sashimi from the flesh and make buri daikon using all the trimmings (ara)! ← That's what I was thinking. I've never carved up a fish that big though. Have you? ← No, although I have no idea how big your kan-buri was. I've wanted to buy a deba for months, and that will be a good execuse for buying one, and a yanagi. ← Not huge-- maybe 50cm? I have no special knives though, and poor knife skills. I'm afraid I'd just bungle it. Very tempting though.

Helen, your osechi looks wonderful and all of your people must have been so pleased. Is it too late to share my osechi (as in the osechi I ate-- I definitely didn't make any)? I spent the holidays at my in-laws. This was the first meal of the new year. Same as every year: datemaki (sweet rolled omelet), kamaboko (steamed fish paste), a selection of wagashi (Japanese sweets), tainoko (bream roe), kazunoko (herring roe), and not shown: kurikinton (mashed sweet potato and chestnuts), kuromame (simmered black beans), shiromame (sweet white beans), gomame (caremelized baby anchovies), and namasu (carrot and daikon dressed in vinegar). These will be served (minus the wagashi, which is just for the first morning) for breakfast and lunch for the first three days of the year. Dinner is when the more savoury, alcohol-friendly foods get served and I like those the best. A close-up of my favourite osechi, tainoko (sea bream roe). I don't know if it's a Kansai thing or just my mother-in-law, because I've never seen tainoko elsewhere. Which is a shame because it tastes fantastic. Dinner on new year's day is yaki tai (grilled sea bream). Two, actually, and they're really good: caught wild in the Seto Inland Sea, they are better than anything I can get in Tokyo. The bones are simmered the next morning to make broth for ozoni (the other two days use plain chicken broth) and I look forward to it all year. This year we had plenty of broth leftover so my mother-in-law ingeniously used it up at dinner to make tai chazuke: the hot broth was poured over rice, topped with leftover tai meat and chopped mitsuba. Only the second day of the year, but I knew this would stand out as one of the best foods of 2008! I really hope she makes it again next year.

I would buy one and make sashimi from the flesh and make buri daikon using all the trimmings (ara)! ← That's what I was thinking. I've never carved up a fish that big though. Have you?

The fruit looks like a yamamomo (mountain peach), called yumberry in English. Beautiful! I love Koyasan, and you're right-- it really suits the fog. I'm really enjoying your report, and paying special attention because my parents are coming this spring. Does anything from your Mom's visit stick out so far as a must see, or complete waste of time?

Looks great Hiroyuki! I love kan-buri too but only indulge once or twice a year because it's so pricy. Last year I served it as sashimi along with buta shabu and just for fun we tried dipping in the pot-- delicious! Now shabu shabu is my favourite way to eat it. Yesterday I noticed that whole kan-buri were on sale for about the same price as a small pack of sashimi. I wonder if it would be worth buying it whole and cutting up at home?

Helen, you are a saint. No matter how much thought and planning you put into this, I'm sure whatever you come up with will be appreciated. But I see your point about wanting to give them a break from bento boredom. So maybe those western extras as well as the Chinese style osechi you mentioned before (which I've never tried but sounds interesting) can be something to concentrate on. And some really good nimono. I occasionally buy bento and osozai from bento shops and grocery stores, and they are really convenient and sometimes even pretty good. Except for the nimono, which always leave me disappointed. I'm sure I'm not half the cook you are, but even my nimono is better than anything I can buy. So a break from the usual overly sweet stuff will likely be appreciated. My favourite New Year's dish is tai-yaki, which my MIL buys ready made. It's big and quite expensive, but those little farm-raised tai are not so pricey (certainly no more than a handful of shrimp, and I'll eat tai-yaki over hard, rubbery osechi shrimp any day) and are definitely roastable in your kitchen. There's also this one amazing chicken dish my MIL makes. I don't know the name but it's chicken simmered for a long time with star anise and other spices until it's a mass of super-soft meat and jelly. I have no idea if this is a standard osechi dish or just something my MIL does, but it is positively addictive and keeps really well. And now I'm off to work at an English camp for the weekend. Not looking forward to four campsite cafeteria meals...

I have no particular advice Helen, but I just wanted to say good for you! What a wonderful thing to do. Is this something you are doing by yourself, or are you part of some kind of organization that helps these folks?

I cook my rice in a donabe occasionally, it's really delicious. I posted a recipe on my blog here, but it's really not that different from cooking rice in a regular pot. The terra cotta nabe you bought looks good, but to me it looks like it would be better for stove-top/oven cookery than table-top nabe cooking due to the high straight sides. But the fact that it is oven-safe is very cool-- I've been looking to buy a good but reasonably priced oven-safe pot for a long time without sucess. Have you tried it out yet? Very interested to hear how you like it.

Great report, HKDave. Aoyama is not an area I frequent, but your description of Lauburu has convinced me to pay a visit. I'm with you, I've enjoyed the tonkatsu at just about any random Mom & Pop place to the stuff at the more famous restaurants. But I think tonkatsu is one of those foods that people tend to disagree on, with everyone having their own favourite levels of crunch, amount of grease, thickness of batter etc. So you're lucky to have a place you like right accross the street from you. I've never heard of Shinamen before, but I'm guessing the name is not a transliteration of Chinamen. "Men" means noodle in Japanese and "Shina" is an old Japanese word for China, so the name most likely just means "Chinese noodles". Shina has rather racist connotations and is no longer really used, but for some reason a few ramen shops use it in their name or on their menu.

By "sauce", you mean Worcester, chuunou, or konkatsu sauce?? If so, that's very unlikely. But, come to think of it, people in Osaka may be capable of doing so, since they can eat tempura with these sauces. ← Hiroyuki, I'd just like to point out that "sauce" in English is quite different from the Japanese word "sosu" (ソース). Sauce really means any liquidy condiment or flavouring, and it includes tomato sauce, hot sauce, soy sauce, cream sauce, gravy and a million others. I guess "tare" (たれ) is closer in meaning? Ce'nedra, I occasionally add a splash of soy sauce to my okayu, which my husband finds mildly scandalous. So I'm guessing it's not normally done here. Like many Japanese, he always craves okayu when he's sick and prefers it very lightly flavoured with salt. When he's a little better, an egg, flaked salmon or salted kombu are added (but not all at once). I find Japanese style okayu to be a bit plain so I prefer zosui. It can be more heavily flavoured and can have more stuff in it, and as Helen pointed out it also easier and faster to make.

The kanji read Hiroshima yaki. I've never seen Hiroshima yaki of that shape, though. ← Yatai Hiroshima-yaki is about as authentic as what we call "Osaka-yaki" here in Tokyo (as in: not authentic at all). The hiroshima-yaki sold as a street food here is made with a thin crepe-like batter, and is folded or rolled just as shown. I've seen the egg both on the inside and the outside, but the Hiroshima-yaki in the picture looks pretty standard. Having eaten the real thing in Hiroshima, Tokyo's street food version is a pretty poor substitute. But if you can find a stall that doesn't cook the batter until it's as hard as cardboard (and that's a big if) it can be pretty good. So what does yatai Hiroshima-yaki look like in other parts of Japan? Helen, I've noticed that too. Pretty much the only time I see yatai now are at festivals. The only exception is yaki-imo-- the trucks abound around here, but I never buy from them (a local market has cheaper and better ones).

That salad is beautiful smallworld, and I would really like to try it. I'm curious though, how is the wakame prepared exactly? Is it fresh? I'm perplexed as to how one might include dry wakame, which is the only available kind here. It doesn't seem like it would be much good without rehydrating it first, and then it seems like it would be necessary to cut it into small bits. Also, what firmness of tofu do you use? It seems like you're using something similar to what I would call silken tofu as you didn't cut it up. Silken tofu hasn't been pressed, and can easily be broken into pieces. ← The wakame I used is semi-fresh. I don't know the exact term for it, but it's sold in long bunches, refrigerated with the other seafood. It is partially dried and heavily salted and needs to be soaked both to re-hydrate it and to remove the salt. It has a better flavour and texture than dried, pre-cut wakame but the difference isn't huge and you could use easily dried wakame. Dried wakame does indeed need to be soaked, with some types needing to be cut and some types already cut. I'm not sure how to classify the tofu. While tofu meant for cooking is labeled as either "cotton" or "silken", there is a lot of tofu with other names, usually meant to be eaten fresh. I have no idea how to classify all the different kinds of tofu available here-- can anyone else help? In any case, this tofu was similar to oboro tofu (which I suppose is related to silken tofu): smooth, rich, custard-like and so flavourful that it didn't really need any dressing-- I could eat it plain with a spoon. Sorry to be so vague. Hopefully there are some wakame and tofu experts around here who can help out.

Interesting! Do you cook it in the fish grill part of the stove, or on one of those stove-top fish grills?

Not from that meal, but this one is pretty much the same: The base is spinach (as you can see, Japanese spinach has smaller, flat leaves) and wakame seaweed dressed with ponzu, ground sesame and sesame oil. Next is tofu, topped with katsuobushi and drizzled with a bit more ponzu. This is my standard salad, with the greens and dressing changing depending on what's available (ponzu and olive oil is also a really nice dressing for tofu salad or hiya-yakko). It's important to use good tofu-- here I've used one from my favourite tofu maker, Otokomae Tofu, called Masahiro: The bottom of the package is stamped with the kanji for "otoko", or man. The tofu retains the stamp when out of its package, which looks pretty cool when splashed with soy sauce as for hiya-yakko but is invisible when covered with katsuobushi!

A recent dinner: rice, miso soup (instant-- I was afraid to clutter up the stove while deep-frying), tofu salad, and kara-age: I couldn't find my old kara-age recipe-- I could have sworn I posted it right here on eGullet but a search didn't help. Anyway, it's been a few years since I made kara-age and I seem to have lost the touch, as it was a bit disappointing. One of the problems was that the flavour was far too light, so I guess I need to fix the marinade. Luckily I was able to whip up a couple of dipping salts, which solved the problem nicely. Both are made with yuki-shio (a fine powdery salt from Okinawa), one with black pepper and one with sanshou. Sanshou goes so nicely with fried chicken. Does anyone have any favourite dips, or tips for better kara-age?

Great idea Gabriel! I love the dinner threads and agree that we should have one here for Japanese cooking. Anyone have any dinners to share? Here's a recent one of mine: Rei-shabu (a cold version of shabu-shabu) with pork on top of thinly sliced daikon, myouga and onion; kinoko no takikomi gohan (rice cooked with mixed mushrooms); miso soup with tofu, okra and negi; and goma-dare (sesame sauce) and ponzu for dipping the rei-shabu.

Me too. In years past I would slowly use them one by one until I realized the remaining ones were all dried out. I don't want to waste them again this year so am thinking of ways to use them up all at once. Ponzu maybe?

A few years ago we received a big box of frozen venison from a hunter acquaintance who advised us to eat it raw. But as much as I like sashimi, I draw the line at game meats because of the potential dangers. Like parasites, chronic wasting disease and hepatitis. Wild boar and deer are dangerous enough that I seem to recall the Japanese government warning against eating them raw-- a rare move, given the many other dangerous foods the government happily ignores. So the deer meat became a lovely stew, but as good as it was I can't help wondering what deer does sashimi tastes like. So how was it Kristin? Hopefully it tastes better than raw whale, which I tried as sushi last year (sorry for the bad picture): This was actually the most expensive item we ordered, which is too bad because it was just awful. It had a very bloody, organ meat kind of flavour that makes me wonder how anyone could like it. Domesticated mammals, I have no problem with. Beef sashimi and basashi are just heavenly and chicken sashimi is nice too, although I really prefer it cooked.

Oh, I love that stuff! It never occured to me that "moroheiya" could be "melokhiya". Thanks!

Really? I don't think I've heard of it. What's it called in Japanese?

I use them and am very happy with the service. Very fast, and perhaps cheaper than Costco, if you consider the cost of membership, trainfare, and shipping fees involved in shopping there. Watch out though, the amount of oatmeal you get is huge! Lasts me almost a year.

Thanks! I'll keep my eyes open for gokofun. Wonder why I've never seen it before? I'm pretty sure zasai is different from preserved radish though. But it might be a suitable substitute, given its high salt content. Thanks for the suggestion.

I'm looking for two things: five-spice powder and preserved radish (used in Thai and Chinese cooking, also called hua chai po, preserved turnip, pickled radish, pickled turnip, salted radish, etc). I suspect that they are not that hard to find here, if only I knew what they are called. I don't mind substituting-- I suppose I could make the five-spice powder myself, but what about the preserved radish? So does anyone know what those two ingredients are in Japanese, where I can find them, or what I can use as a substitute for preserved radish?

I did hear about the auction being closed to tourists some time in 2005, but since then I've read a few blog entries that mentioned being at the auction. Also recently read a news article about the buyers at the auction being annoyed by tourists. As much as I can figure, tourists are still allowed to view the auction, but are not supposed to take flash pictures or touch the fish. The rest of the market still seems to be open as usual.