helenjp

Yes, this is an interesting point, isn't it? One of the more worthy reasons why Japan is slow to issue warnings on mercury in seafood is that apparently it's not true that inorganic mercury is inorganic mercury; organic mercury is organic mercury, and never the twain shall meet. I don't know which is the more correct, but some people claim that methyl mercury is cumulative; others say that is not. What I do wish (and have been hunting up information on) is that we had more information on which varieities of fish tend to be LOW in mercury or other heavy metals, PCBs, dioxin, etc. I imagine that this information is less media-friendly, because the nature of food webs means that there are many,many varieties of fish, some highly local, which don't live long enough or grow big enough to accumulate significant amounts of mercury, while the big predatory species are few and well-known!

Inorganic pesticide residues vs. fecal contamination and what have you - well, bad farming is bad farming, whatever method is used! Less meat rather than no meat - that is the approach that appeals to me. The "flitch" that hung in anglo-saxon chimney corners and went, slice by slice, into the soup and dumplings, is a very different approach to meat-eating from stocking our freezers with half sides of beef for daily consumption. Personally, I'm more interested in this approach than when I was younger, because I have a moderate allergy to soy, and am sensitive enough to other legumes to want to avoid developing a bigger allergy to them. There are plenty of people in the same situation, and I notice that East Asian traditional soy foods are often fermented, which makes a big difference. I hate TVP, but tempeh is good eating! Very large land or sea animals (i.e. animals that take a relatively long time to mature and reproduce, and which eat large amounts of feed) don't seem to be a good choice for a staple food. We come from a world where eating a cow that could still breed or give milk or an ox that could still pull a load, was living on capital; and taking ships far from land to hunt whales or game fish was a reckless endangerment of ship and crew, because it was not only hard to take such large prey back home, there was a big risk of being unable to navigate the way home from the open ocean. Why don't we use more small fish, bird, and animal species? Is it just that as we become more urban, we only recognize about 3 types of food animal? For example, quail and eel are not too fussy about their environment, and fast and easy to replace. Quail don't need large amounts of land cleared and forced to grow only 2-3 types of grass, and eels don't need to be pursued by huge factory ships. It seems ironic that the appeal of large mammal meat is that it can be sliced into like cheese or cake, avoiding encounter with inedible animal parts like bones or sinews, but our ancestors happily crunched small bones and sucked large ones, and we have the technology to make eel bacon, if we cared to. I appreciate the point about food culture developing from environment - it's true that European cattle reproduce younger than Asian cattle, for example, making it less practical for Asians to farm their cattle for meat. There are also historical influences. It seems that growing vegetables was a low priority in European feudal economies - work on communally herded livestock or communally farmed crops was legitimate, while work on personal crops of "pot-herbs" was begrudged as a necessary evil rather than a good day's work. The "near enough is good enough" approach we still see today to vegetable growing is quite different from East Asia, and I think it affects the value westerners place on vegetable foods even today. Japan's feudal government regularly sent out edicts exhorting and even requiring the rural poor to gather green mulching material, grow vegetables on "waste" land such as dykes around rice paddies, etc etc. That is, they actively tried to make their labor force self-sufficient, and used anti-luxury regulations to focus attention on locally-grown plant foods, and away from trading for food (or hunting/fishing). Mongolians not only ate their herds, they traditionally ate a fair amount of dried yogurt and cheese, didn't they? And didn't they follow the traditional approach of slaughtering excess stock before winter, rather than all year round? Sheep are also less picky than cattle about what they eat, not to mention smaller and faster to reproduce (spring-born sheep may mate in fall, whereas European cattle won't mate until the following year - not too sure about Asian/tropical cattle). But both Mongolian and US grasslands currently used to raise meat animals are resources that are hard to renew - the sod is made up of years and years worth of rotted-down grass, and once that fertility is gone, our current habit of shipping out plant and animal food and not returning waste (inedible animal or plant parts, plus the residues from human excretion, not to mention taking the dead humans back to rot happily on the farm...) is causing us to try and "force" grass cultivation on soils such as New Zealand's, which mostly require chemical changes to adapt them for grass. This kind of manipulation affects local climate, water resources....and that's before we start thinking about effects which don't have such a direct impact on locally resident humans.

Was the question out of place? Probably any time I book a restaurant rather than taking my chances, it's a special occasion - pampering visiting relatives, showing respect to the aged and ornery, celebrating family successes (this is Asia, a birthday isn't a good enough reason, essentially an exam needs to be involved!), or taking tourists or expat Japanese out for a particular delicacy. Certainly, many people budget for meals at a good restaurant, and it's a regular "leisure activity". I grew up thinking that eating at a new restaurant was a good enough reason to make the 45 minute trip into town. However, my husband doesn't feel that way at all. As a guest, he feels constrained by formal dining, and weighed down by obligations and bad memories. There is no point arguing that we could eat exponentially better by spending 500 yen more per head at a small resaurant than we do at a chain restaurant - he just doesn't enjoy it, so we rarely do so. As a host, his pleasure comes from his guests' enjoyment (that is, he only invites people to a restaurant when he knows that it's a treat they would enjoy more than a gift or some other kind of outing). So for him, "special occasion" hospitality is a bigger part of restaurant dining than spectacular food.

I totally agree on the cherry tomatoes - the smaller they are, the faster they ripen, and the less chance there is for disease or pests to get at them, meaning that you can often avoid pesticides, fungicides etc. Somebody mentioned yard-long beans (AKA snake beans). They are very resistant to disease, and tender if cooked when young (before the beans inside make the pod swell at all. Especially good in stir-fries), but they need temps in the high 80s F (over 30degC) to germinate, and they are not truly happy until the temperatures are in the mid-90s. However, even if flowers fail to fully open, they seem to be pollinated by ants etc crawling into the flowers. If you don't cut off the flower stems, they will grow new flower buds at the ENDS of those stems - they don't grow new flower stems from the main vine, as you might expect! Seems to me that your climate would suit zucchini most of the summer? You can use the male blossoms as well as the fruit, of course. Pea-sprouts - Sow peas very thickly, and simply shear off the young sprouts to use in stirfries etc. I like the fact that I can get 2-3 cuttings from these. All these (unless you plant bush zucchini) will climb, and it might be fun to make bowers or garden seating shade areas with climbers. Asian eggplants are smaller and crop faster than regular large ones. Eda-mame (green soybeans) are super-easy to grow, and very easy to eat (simply trim the leaves, and snip the stem between "bunches" of pods, serve sprinkled with coarse salt, and allow diners to pop them out the pods straight into their mouths). Buy a soybean variety specially intended for eating as eda-mame. For fall, what about flowering broccoli rabe and varieties of asian mustard that are eaten flowers and all? Brassica campestris "autumn poem" is one, but there are several others. Friends also tell me that brussels sprouts are more resistant to disease and pests than other hearting cabbages or broccoli/cauliflower, and you can "cut and come again" with them over a period of time.

"Naturally Fermented WHOLE SOYBEAN SHOUYU Made with: organic soybeans, organic wheat" The red seal says "Izumo: Yubikiri genman" ([from]Izumo, a cross-my-heart promise). This brand is for organic, no-preservatives products. Yubikiri genman is a brand owned by shoyu and shoyu-based seasonings manufacturer Igeta, based in Izumo. "Whole soybeans" means fermented from regular, dried soybeans, not from defatted soybean meal.

I dunno, naebody, our local school boasts that one memorable school trip attracted 9 patrol cars, but the kids who were in "residential facilities" at 14 were still able to learn at 10 and 11 how to cook themselves some kind of meal. By 11 and 12, admittedly a certain percentage of the class didn't really need to be issued with knives because they came ready equipped, but heck, the young lions get as hungry as the young lambs, and they need to learn to cook just the same. ...getting a bit off topic, but certainly my vote goes for "dinner" rather than snacks or fancy food, because oddly enough, the kids seem to get more satisfaction out of it, maybe because making dinner is a grown-up thing to do.

Does anybody still make these? I remember them as good, but always in danger of being greasy rather than just short and crisp. Do you make them plain and simple, or dress them up with blue cheeses, extra spices etc? Do you use more flour or more cheese than this recipe? Hotter or cooler oven? Please share your secrets! Here's mine... Great-Grandma's Common Sense Cheese Straws (probably from a late Victorian cookbook, but there are several cookbooks from around that era with "Common Sense" in the title!) 2 oz (50g) butter 3 oz (75g) flour 2 oz (50g) dry cheese (leave to dry in cool room or refrigerator till cracked and hard as soap before grating) pinch salt pinch cayenne 1 egg yolk lemon juice to mix Rub butter into flour, add cheese, then beaten yolk and lemon juice. Roll out 1/8" thick, cut into fingers 4" long, moderate oven, leave on tray till cold. FWIW, in comparison ewith other recipes around the net... Very similar to the High Fearnley-Whittingstall/Fizz Carr recipe on the BBC Food website, except that the cheese is increased to 5oz (that would be 125g in terms of my recipe above, but my recipe involved leaving a hunk of cheese out to dry for a few days before grating), and the dough is rolled a little thicker, and baked in a hotter oven (220degC/425degF) The other popular ways of making them seems to be either layering cheese and puff pastry; or a simple dough of equal parts by weight of butter, cheese, flour, and breadcrumbs (and up to 4 T milk or water) - this type seems to be just as old as or maybe older than the recipe I have. I see that some people make a piped finger cookie called cheese straws, but I've never seen this type.

Genmai-cha (popped brown rice mixed with green tea). It's a popular green tea, as the nutty flavor of the popped rice makes the grassy taste of the tea less noticable for first-timers. On the other hand, if you planned to make a big potful and leave it for people to serve themselves, green teas don't take to sitting around in pots as well as many Chinese teas or roasted Japanese teas like houji-cha (hoji-cha).

I'm afraid your kids will be kidnapped, treated like royalty, and only returned to you under duress! I can't speak for extreme high-end central-city restaurants, but found that even in "good" small restaurants, my children were kindly accommated when young. It is quite normal to ask for "one XXX...and two extra bowls and spoons/chopsticks, please". Without going as far as kaiseki, restaurants which serve formally-influenced sets will almost always have a kiddie option, and when you are lucky, they will be put together with considerable care and thought for children's tastes and appetites, and often come with a free toy, too. Restaurants which serve "set meals" (teishoku) usually have single items too, so you can always order set meals for yourself and noodles for the kids, or share some of your order and order a couple of extra items for the children. With young children, I always looked for "zashiki" seating (sitting on tatami mats). It's so easy for a tired and bored child who has finished eating to curl up discreetly with a book, toy, or sketchbook.

We didn't get to eat in Arashiyama, but I am sure that Togetsutei would be a great experience - a much quieter surrounding than the busy restaurants of Gion or Ponto-cho. After a quick bread-and-coffee breakfast (my husband was delighted to find that the doorstopper toast "morning set" is still alive and well in Osaka!) and a rushed curry lunch, we had very little time to spare for food in Kyoto until dinner. We ate with relatives at the Izumo-ya restaurant on the corner of Shijo and Ponto-chou Doori and Shijou Doori (close to where we were staying in the cheap, basic, but pleasant Iroha Ryokan). Didn't think to take photos, sorry. It was reasonably good, and had a view of the river - something that usually comes with a big price tag in Ponto-cho. It's basically an eel restaurant, but they had other dishes too. My sons were delighted that the eel donburi was called "mamushi-don" (snake-bowl), Kansai sylte. Pontochou-Izumoya We enjoyed another Kyoto treat too - a type of senbei that my former sister-in-law remembered was a favorite of mine. The sesame-flavored wafers are not only tasty, they have a delicate arabesque pattern all over them. They are called Shirakawa-ji, made by Tamaru-ya, whose website is below. Tamaru-ya

There are several reasons for current attitudes to the issue of methyl-mercury in seafood in Japan. First off, I thought this was a good general summary of advice people can expect to get in Japan: All about guide to diet in pregnancy The issue of methyl mercury in seafood is on the second screenful of the web-page. It starts by saying that fish is a wonderful source of protein, and has plenty of the omega-3 fatty acids helpful for babies' brain development. But some fish contain a lot of methyl mercury, so we should be careful. It has been said that excessive mercury may damage babies' nervous systems. And readers are referred to a link to the Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare website. So there is some awareness, and the information on how much of which fish are safe to eat is there, but you have to dig for it. The guidelines given by the MHLW site (look to be from 2005?) are: up to 80g bottlenose dolphin (bandou-iruka) once every 2 months (10g per week, which is less than a 15g slice atop a single piece of sushi) up to 80g short-finned pilot whale (kobire-gondou) once every fortnight (40g per week) up to 80g per week of these fish: a type of alfonsino (kinmedai) swordfish (mekajiki) bluefin tuna (kuro-maguro, hon-maguro) bigeye tuna (mebachi-maguro, bachi-maguro) a type of Japanese ivory shell/babylonia (etchuu bai-gai) Baird's beaked whale (tsuchi-kujira) sperm whale (makkou-kujira) up to 80g twice weekly of these fish: yellowback seabream (kidai) striped marlin (makajiki) a type of scorpionfish (yume-kasago) southern bluefin tuna (minami-maguro, Indo-maguro) blue shark (yoshikiri-zame) dall's porpoise (ishi-iruka) No concern if the following types of tuna are eaten in normal amounts so eat in a balanced way: yellowfin tuna (kihada-maguro) albacore tuna (bin-naga- or binchou- maguro) young bluefin tuna (meji-maguro) canned tuna Notes: Slice on top of one piece of sushi - 15g serving of sashimi, slice of fish (small modern slice, in my experience) - 80g Guidelines assume that the average weight of a woman entering pregnancy is just over 55 kg (120 lbs). Only pregnant women are considered at risk - on the basis that half of methyl mercury is eliminated within 70 days of consumption, so a woman who starts to restrict high-mercury seafoods once she realizes she is pregnant will have reduced mercury levels by the major period of fetal brain growth in late pregnancy. Regarding salmon, cod, shrimp/prawns, which have recommended limits in other countries: testing of these fish sold in Japan found low mercury contents, and no need to limit consumption was felt. Low mercury contents of around half the daily recommended limit are not subject to recommendations. Tuna was included in these guidelines in 2005, because tolerable weekly/daily intake recommendations were lowered, and because a study of popular dishes such as donburi-style sushi topped with tuna use quite large amounts of tuna. There is a further link to a MHLW table (in Japanese) with Mercury levels in around 400 varieties of fish available in Japan. This appears to date from 2005, and it seems that before this, information on mercury levels in tuna and was not easily available. The official explanation is that they were originally luxury fish and not part of the average person's diet. It is also worth noting that quite a few of the species in the "recommend restrictions" list are commercial species, so people may not realize what they are eating in take-out, semi-prepared, or casual restaurant meals. Japanese food sites such as food co-ops also note that purchases of "whale" may actually be the higher-mercury-content dolphin species. There have indeed been "expose" style reports, such as this background piece to an NTV report from 2003. It is worth reading if you read Japanese. The comments here and on personal blogs indicate that availability of information and policies have changed in the last 3-5 years. Since the Food Safety Commission was formed in 2003, as part of the Cabinet Office, this is where recommendations are generated. Note that the English site below includes an English document on methyl mercury policy, but I think it's about 2 steps behind the current policy. To find references in Japanese, you have to click the "risk assessment" button and search for methyl mercury and fish from there. Food Safety Commission's English website

I found a Japanese Filipino recipe book today...it had the squash recipe Doddie gives upthread. I have a question about salted/dried/preserved/fish. The book tantalizingly says that Filipino recipes using preserved fish are very tasty made with "himono" (Japanese salted semi-dried fish) . And then it doesn't actually GIVE any such recipes! . I will go back and read it through again in case I missed something but 1) Where preserved fish is cooked with vegetables, what kind of fish is this? Is it wet-pickled, or totally dried, or salted and dried??? 2) I'd love to hear more about dishes using preserved fish together with other ingredients. (I'm sure the book is not talking about things like shrimp paste etc, but whole preserved fish).

Tri2Cook, I love the combination of orange and strawberry you have! This is a good time of year to find citrus and hothouse strawberries in the shops for me, so thanks!

Are you traveling to Japan yourself, and wanting classes at a particular point in time, or were you looking for more general information for clients or friends? I'm guessing that you are not in Japan, and so want short-term classes in English, rather than regular, long-term classes?

I've rendered lard using fifi's method, and also simply cooking it stovetop in quite a large amount of water. It's cold enough in my kitchen this time of year that I can simply lift the solid lard layer off the top of the water, dry it on paper towels, and pack it away. Doing it this way seems to minimize the porky flavor - I'm mostly using pork belly, and the "defatted" pork is then fried and cooked with beans in the defatted liquor used to render the lard. I'm with Lindacakes on this - it appears that lard has lower levels of saturated fat than butter, not to mention suet or mutton tallow. Duck or goose-fat, schmaltz even lower. For whatever reason, these fats seem better in pie pastry than suet, anyway. I've been experimenting with an Okinawan cookie known as Chinsuko - basically one part each by weight of sugar and flour, with 2 parts of lard. Baked at a cookie-ish temperature until lightly browned all through, and crunchy. A cookie as simple as this naturally tastes of lard. This is not a bad thing , especially if you rendered your own lard.

I really liked the approach my kids' elementary school took. There were restrictions - no raw meat to be handled, as the kids were still quite young to expect scrupulous hygiene - but they focused very tightly on putting together a basic meal. One of my son's friends has been cooking for himself and his father since he was 12, pretty much on what he learned in those classes. In class, they learned to make a couple of basic starch dishes (rice, pasta), vegetables (salad, stir-fry), protein (omelet, and ham something), soup (miso soup here, of course!), and a dessert of their own conception. Each group was responsible for buying and bringing their ingredients, working to a budget. The kids photographed each dish, and the photos were proudly displayed in the classroom, and at the end of term, families invited to look at each group's completed meal menus in all their glory. Families were also invited to observe the final class, and I noticed that the boys were just as involved as the girls - maybe because they were making and eating their own lunch for the day, not "extra" food.

That's a lot of shortbread! I spent yesterday making two birthday cakes, a chocolate roulade and a three-flavor Japanese-style pound cake. The roulade was a scaled-down recipe from Helge Rubinstein's Chocolate Book, and is very good and simple - a moussey roulade made with sugar, egg, and just a little cocoa, spread with melted chocolate, and filled with cream and whatever you wish. It turned out looking very handsome, and got a big smile from a friend of my son's who shares his birthday, and who had actually forgotten it was their birthday till we rolled up. The pound cake was marbled with a plain dough with azuki beans, a kuro-zatou (black sugar) dough, and a matcha green tea dough, served with chestnuts and cream - my son's request for HIS birthday cake. The cake was wrapped straight out of the oven, and left while we delivered the other cake, so it had lost it's just-baked dryness by the time we were ready to sample it.

Gosh, can't give you much advice, sorry! Pineapple upside down cake...in my house, that needs to be made with kuro-zatou (Japanese dark brown sugar)! My kids have suddenly remembered it and been nagging for it... I'm pretty sure I've made fudge with jouhakutou, but it would be safer to use granulated sugar. It's been several years since I made candy, so I don't remember exactly.

Hmmm...the picky kids who sigh at what I put on their plates don't bother me half as much as the ones who scarf everything down, then help themselves to cash-cards, camera, and a few other portables while "using the toilet"! It seems to me that the more in need of a meal and a table full of people to enjoy it with somebody is, the less experience they have of sitting down ready to eat whatever arrives on the dinner table. They're used to take-out or fast food, ordering what they want, trashing what they didn't care for. And to be honest, as our families blend and re-blend, and our supermarkets and bookstores are always showing us something new to eat or cook, we don't have the ability our grandparents had to predict roughly what will be on the table or how our dining companions eat or behave. So I try to cut my guests a little slack, and I try to avoid plated, individually served dinners if I think a guest is likely to be unhappy with that style of eating. And I know some people are just unhappy with all but the plainest food, so why would I invite them if I don't plan to offer them hospitality in any meaninful sense of the word? Funnily, sometimes the intention appears to be as good as the deed. I sat down with a piece of paper and listened at length to somebody tell me about the cans and can'ts of his dining habits. I actually lost the piece of paper, but he seems much less fussy these days! The one person I try to avoid dining with at all costs is a friend who likes to have everything about a dish in a restaurant changed to suit her whim, in the kind of restaurant where the food is ordered as a pre-priced set...but she doesn't speak enough Japanese to harrass the staff into the proper state of submission, so she likes to get me to do that for her...NO, THANK YOU!!

So what did you like about this method, rather than using dried and powdered starch? Texture, flavor? I'm curious to know how it turned out, though don't think I would do it from scratch myself - because sweet/sticky rice is quite expensive, while the powdered starch is easy for me to buy.

I've been mulling over the menu you had too! I came to the conclusion that while I'm not sure that western ingredients should be banned (the court-style kaiseki must have had quite big influences from Chinese food and dining customs long ago), but I agree that the cheese and custard didn't seem to fit the menu well - didn't the custard seem a bit rich to finish the meal with? Please keep us updated on your analysis and your cooking both! My kaiseki book is way out of date, so I'm curious to see how you will approach kaiseki in 2008. One thing that especially interests me - there is that "double" history of kaiseki, as formal Court-style dining, and then re-invented by Rikyuu as part of the tea-ceremony. But they are linked by the idea of food prepared or served by the host in his or her home as a strong expression of hospitality. In Japan, the idea of inviting guests to eat home-cooked food was an uncomfortable one for a long time - when I first came to Japan, people were talking about "home party" in katakana, as a new idea, and as something that was more approachable than the idea of serving a formal Japanese meal at home. Do you think your own plans are more in the tea-ceremony style - local, sincere, retaining a feeling of simplicity - or in the formal style - rare, sophisticated, the best of everything? And how does your view of kaiseki affect your choice of ingredients, serving, guest seating etc? (Of course, if you answer all these questions, you won't have time to cook!).

Jouhakutou in baking: it's fine for most purposes, unless the flavor is an issue (very delicately sweetened items) or the moisture is an issue (possible lack of clarity in a gel, unwanted moisture in meringue). In fact, I don't particularly recall intrusive tastes or cloudy jellies with jouhakutou, and meringue is about the only time I make sure I have granulated sugar on hand. Since granulated sugar is a little coarser than I'm used to, if I want to whip sugar with egg I let the sugar/egg mixture sit for a little while, to encourage the sugar to dissolve a little before I start beating. I could also whizz the sugar briefly in a food processor/blender first, of course!

A pot pie with potato pastry. Better than ordinary pastry, better than potato-top, potato pastry is IT for winter comfort!

There are several different varieites of turmeric. In Japan, the white-flowering, orange-fleshed, fall-harvest curcuma longa (what is generally known as "turmeric" is used for food, while the spring-harvested, purple-tinged flowering, yellow-fleshed c. aromatica is used more medicinally (it's more bitter, for one thing). There are several other varieties, but none of them are used much in cooking. Then there's zedoary, which has white-fleshed roots and quite pink flowers. So if I were looking for culinary turmeric powder, I'd be looking for an intense marigoldy orange-yellow, and stay away from lighter mustardy tan colors.

A good cook needs a good eater, in my opinion! If you have a cooking buddy, or even an uncritical diner at hand, that helps.It also doesn't help to sit down to eat something you've been smelling in it's less glorious forms for the past couple of hours. But even then, I've had two or three goes at some things, and never liked the result. Just curious, were your disappointments with dishes that you'd eaten before, or with totally unfamiliar ingredients and styles of cooking?