helenjp

Heh heh, I hate to tell you this, but I'm pretty sure that high-fructose corn syrup was a Japanese invention .

Yes yes, we bought one each (apart from the 10kg box of Sun-Jonagold...) In fact, that's how I almost came to mistake the name of "Shinano-Sweet". The label said "Shinano Sweet Rose" in katakana...but then I realized that was "bara" meaning "sold individually", not "bara" meaning "rose"! That was a Big Treat for us - all the apples cost over 100 yen each, and one cost 200 yen . It was nice to get fresh Kougyoku though - often the cheap ones are old and flabby.

We had an apple tasting the other day - obviously only of the early varieties. Just had a delivery of Sun-Jonagold (Jonathan x Golden Delicious). Apparently "sun" has nothing to do with variety, just means the fruit was not put in a paper bag on the tree, but was exposed to the sun. They are delicious - crisp, sweet, aromatic, and enough sharpness too. We had some Sun-Tsugaru (Golden Delicious x Kougyoku) last month, and I couldn't help feeling they had been held over chilled from the 2005 harvest. Hope I'm wrong, but for an early season apple, they were oddly mealy, lacking in aroma, and rotten brown at the core. Kougyoku - small red apples - these were nice, sweet and very aromatic but also high acid. Yellowy flesh, not super-crisp, but not mealy either. The old favorite in Japan for cooking. Sekai-ichi - this was the hardest and one of the sharpest tasting apples we tried. It was nice, but not as good as the Jonagold. Shinano-Sweet. My sons liked this, and said it was aromatic as well as sweet. It's a Fuji x Tsugaru cross, and to me it shows its Red Delicious heritage in a kind of musty, off, bitter odor, but maybe I'm the only one who thinks Red Delicious and Fuji apples taste that way! Ourin - mild, large, green apple. (Golden Delicious x Indo) Best eaten fairly fresh, as the very pleasant aroma dissipates and the flesh gradually gets flabby. A lovely apple though. Indo is not an Indian apple, by the way - it's a sport from one of the apple varieties introduced from Indiana last century, apparently.

Yes, they make an annual visit. One awful day, I upset a cask of stinky pickle juice in the front hall while cleaning for the annual visit, and spent the whole day cleaning that up instead of the rest of the house, which was bedlam after a month of heavy translation work. Turned out we were the last house on the route, so when my boys INSISTED that the teacher come inside while they fixed her a snack with their own fair hands, she foolishly agreed. I'm surprised she had the courage to eat the proffered Seven-year-old's Special Yogurt and Icecream Parfait in such unhygienic surroundings! (As you can tell, that happened a while back. Last visit, the now-12 year old gave his teacher home-made red shiso drink, and told her it was very good for fatigue...) Swedish meatballs - this I have to see! I have a nostalgic fondness for them. A Swedish woman who ran a cafe back in Auckland, NZ, used to serve them. Her meatballs were much better than her constant attempts to matchmake her clientele!

I also hope that Gautam visits the Japan Forum frequently in future! I have a strictly amateur interest in plants, and since I come from a warmer climate, I couldn't begin to suggest plants (apart from the really obvious ones ) that would suit Hiroyuki's climate. I regularly kill off plants just by underestimating how dry it is here in the winter! If you can get rice straw (even old tatami) Hiroyuki, that would be great. Gautam, since you can buy processed clays in Japan (akadama-tsuchi) in various-sized granules or lumps, would using some of that help overcome some of the limitations of the SFG soil? Can you help Hiroyuki identify that mint? I've been looking and looking at the picture, and the heavily serrated leaves look right, and the color and (as far as I can tell) position of the flowers look right. But I expected hakka (mentha arvensis piperascens) to be downier/hairier on leaves and stems, and not show a red stem. But this photo shows slight to considerable reddening of the stems, while some Japanese "hakka" seems to be mislabelled western black peppermint mentha piperata ???. Mints crossbreed so easily, and mislabelled herbs are a problem in every garden center, and I'm not expert enough to do more than have doubts!

Thanks for the interesting blog, the sandwich ideas, and too many reasons to buy new CDs! .

Curses, now I can't remember the details either...ah here it is! I think that variety of potato used is the most important thing, ensuring that you drive enough moisture out of the mash before adding the other ingredients is the 2nd priority, and arcane methodology is probably not a bad thing...but I don't know if I'd resort to it regularly unless the type of potato I was using produced a very gluey mash. I use the Japanese danshaku variety for korokke, and find it satisfactory.

Gosh, drop in here to see the hoagies, and I get an eyeful of bottle rockets as well! They are regulars on engineering university and high school campuses here in Japan too. Question: apart from the various hoagies nouveaux, is the meat for a hoagie supposed to be some type of preserved meat? Sorry for the ignorant question, and thanks for all the details, including the Hog Island photo. What did your group sing for the show-opener?

Lily Frankie is the nickname of an artist-cum-writer-cum-musician. I agree with the idea of cooking the daikon separately for oden. It's also worth doing the whole cross-cut in the middle and pre-cooking in the water used to wash rice thing for daikon. I like cabbage rolls in oden, but I try to keep it a secret.

I'm very sad to have to tell you that son1, a true geek, has indeed bought canned oden in Akihabara for himself and his geeky friends, and that a can has pride of place on his computer desk (or should I say, on one of his computer desks...).

Yes, I'm looking forward to the Hoagies instalment too! US sandwiches/bread fillings are so different from anything I grew up with.

That's pretty special. I bet those kids will have a changed view of rice for the rest of their lives.

OK, I think I get the point of this now! I think that shiitake, chicken, and mitsuba all work well with the egg in a donburi, and am quite happy to meat them in the same mouthful. I think it's sort of fun working out the separate components of the resulting taste. However, I think Kris has a point about Japanese food not being big on blended, complex flavors. When I pack bentos with something like a sesame-dressed salad and a sweet-sour meat, I would use a piece of cucumber to separate them, or put the salad on a shiso leaf for the same reason. I don't buy a lot of processed food such as bento side-dishes because I really dislike (extremely! it's an offense against nature!) the way everything tastes the same. I'm curious - along with wanting the various sides well separated, do you think that you have stronger ideas about WHAT foods go together in the same meal than muddled eaters, or don't you mind as long as they are not physically touching? No doubt some people are more sensitive to taste. One of my sons is very picky, and has strong ideas about how the whole menu should be arranged; while the other is more likely to pick the main dish and not worry much about what will accompany it. P.S. Steve - do you think your father would have enjoyed this cooking for engineers site?

I remember that you used to be able to buy cheap bags of broken yatsuhashi somewhere along the Philosopher's Walk. It was pleasant to dawdle away an afternoon, walking and chatting and munching. I don't know if you can still buy broken ones.

Way back up thread somebody said that shiitake have a much higher calorie value than regular mushrooms. That bothered me so much I dragged out my nutritional tables. Here's the gen: Mushrooms per 100g (scant 4 oz) edible portion: 11 kcals Shiitake ditto: 18 kcals No fungi are really high calorie foods. Just for reference... Enoki: 22kcals Nameko: 15 kcals Shimeji: 14kcals Mushrooms and enoki have the highest levels of protein, but still minimal. All have good levels of Vitamin B2, but enoki also has good levels of B1. Shiitake have by far the best levels of Vitamin C. Sorry, no information on hiratake, maitake etc.

Meatloaf! I immediately made one for dinner. Living in Japan, I forgot about the existence of things like meatloaf for years on end. We'll be having ours with rice and miso soup, of course. I keep envisaging you trying to resist the urge to take photos of lunch in the jury room!

The kid-made menu seems to happen only in elementary schools. It's a great idea, and the children usually create a realistic menu. My sons both enjoyed the menu that their 6th grade classes put together just before they graduated from the school - the whole school gets to eat that menu, which naturally includes many favorites, and it helps to create a mood of celebration right through the school. How can the younger kids *not* love the outgoing 6th graders, when they are responsible for strawberry parfait and fried chicken *on the same day*! The school also incorporated vegetables from the school vegetable garden in summer, always with much fanfare. Even at middle school, we get letters from the public school nurse about seasonal foods and healthy eating for each season, as well as basics such as portion/calories and food groups. Son1's middle school has a catered lunch, with a choice of 2 menus. He just brought home his copy of the choices for the 2nd and 3rd weeks of November. I wanted to know why he'd chosen all the extremely traditional dishes - he says the queues for those menus are always shorter. By traditional, I mean things like dried taro stalks! The menu offers tofu or beans etc 2x weekly, with fish and meat at least once each. Son2's middle school has no school lunch, and has several restrictions on what kids can bring in their lunchboxes - no commercial packages, not even cheese or dried fish. Son1's eating habits vindicated him a while back - another kid booby-trapped the classroom piano with a carton of milk, which spilled all over the keyboard when the piano lid was lowered. The kid tried to blame son1, but son1 said that in 9 years, he had never failed to eat and drink everything on his lunch tray, not to mention lots of stuff from other people's lunch trays...and his classmates apparently agreed that his eating habits were so well-known that it was unthinkable that he wouldn't drink his milk, and voted him innocent! One of son2's teachers occasionally checks lunchbox contents in various sneaky ways - the other day he claimed that he was too hungry to continue teaching, and had son2 hand over his lunch, exclaiming over the contents so enthusiastically that the entire class rushed up the front to see what the fuss was about. He then returned it to son2, saying that a good sniff was enough to see him through to lunchtime, thank you...

Google wire mesh skimmer - a fine mesh one is perfect for keeping oil clean as you fry. Yes, high heat + short time - the ingredients are cooked, so all you need to do is to fry the coating. Drained tuna + potato (with scallions, parsley, or whatever takes your fancy) is good. I quite like chopped hard-boiled egg corokke, but it's been too long since I made them to recall the details.

Question: did you use white sugar or a dark sugar? Looks good! I used to work in a Chinese grocery that sold home-cured lop yuk and sausages - wish I'd paid more attention!

I agree about the amakara, but I think it's especially strongly rooted in the eastern/northern parts of Japan. Another thing - aside from the amakara tradition, Japanese seasonings often rely on either one or a small range of understated seasonings (assari), plus one strong topnote (often a very fragrant item). So instead of complex blends cooked together as in much Korean food, you will find say umami from konbu and katsuo, with salt and shoyu, simmered to permeate the entire dish; and then a generous tenmori topping of shredded fresh ginger, citrus peel, sansho leaves, shichimi chili pepper etc added at the last moment when serving. Soy sauce plus wasabi is another example.

Oh yes, sour cream, yogurt - those are good ideas! Alternatively, use buttermilk instead of milk, or even toss a teaspoon of vinegar in with regular milk.

Wonderful! My sister didn't take NEARLY enough pictures of food in Prague, so I'm kind of re-living her trip vicariously as I enjoy your trip vicariously! P.S. And how was the opera? Can't go past the human voice where music is concerned...

My mother liked moist scones, and made hers quite differently from my grandmother. Apart from that, I suspect that US flour is much higher in protein/gluten than UK flour. You might want to either find a flour that is slightly lower in gluten, or failing that, add in some cake flour (see what proportion suits you). I believe US bakers have a favorite flour for biscuits - "White Something-something"??? Grandmother's method: classic "cut butter into dry ingredients", add milk, knead 3 turns only, cook at the top of a very hot oven (400 - 425F or hotter, depending on your oven. Crowd scones very close together on the baking sheet so that they keep each other a bit moist. Lay a linen towel (that is, not too dense and heavy) over a cake-cooling tray, put baked scones on it and fold the towel over lightly, allowing them to cool that way. Mother's methodf: "melt and mix" - melt butter and half milk together, add rest of milk (so that it's not too hot), pour into a well in the dry ingredients, mix/knead just till mixed. They will be very sticky, so turn onto a really heavily floured board or cloth and cut as fast as possible. Bake in a very hot oven as usual - but you must preheat the oven before you even start to mix ingredients, or your scones will be rising (and falling again) on the tray as you twiddle your thumbs waiting for the oven to come up to heat. To be honest, many Japanese don't really "get" scones, so I add 1 beaten egg to add flavor...sshh!

You can buy some sugar substitutes here, but I think they are not that widely used. The emphasis is very much on training yourself to eat less sweet food - even diabetic books include desserts made with sugar, but serving sizes are tiny and sugar is used very lightly. Seasonings - in Japan the high sugar use and the heavy-handed use of salt and soy sauce pack a double punch, so diabetics are recommended to use vinegar, but also to use fuller-flavored seasonings such as miso instead of soy sauce, and to use a little soy sauce or salt at the end of cooking instead of adding it earlier, so that there is some salt when the food is first put in the mouth, but the entire dish is not permeated with high levels of salt or soy sauce. Low-insulin diets in Japan recommend sweet potatoes - despite a high calorie content, they take ages to digest. However, as a main starch rather than a snack, for many Japanese they evoke images of wartime food shortages. Rice servings are around 100g cooked rice per serving. Apart making takikomi rice or maze-gohan (vegetables stirred in after cooking), occasionally Chinese-style congees are recommended, but they are digested rapidly despite being low-calorie, so are not used by diabetics as much as one would expect). Looking at my Japanese diabetic cooking book (a good thing to own even for non-diabetics), those who need high protein rather than low protein diets are encouraged to eat more tofu and use dairy products as dressings or in miso soups etc. Sashimi is of course a great way to get lean protein, and in Japan has the advantage of being easy to buy in single-serving packs, so the diabetic family member can have sashimi while everybody else eats something cheaper. Nabe are also a good way to get veges and protein without high calories and starch/sugar. Nabe is the recommended dish for diabetics when eating out (otherwise, get a teishoku set which includes soup, rice, and vegetables). Conversely, people who are on restricted protein/high energy diets are encouraged to eat their vegetables as tempura. Seaweeds and fungi are recommended to increase fiber (slow down rate of digestion).

...but while you're in Nara, make sure to nibble on dried persimmons - the big, expensive kind! You may have trouble meeting up with chefs as it is a busy time of year, unless their restaurants are completely closed, of course. If you really get desperate, bento from department store basements (or even convenience stores) should be available any day of the year. There are all sorts of New Year events over this period - when I have a bit of time in a day or two I'll look up festival schedules - though some don't take place till mid-January. Can't remember exact dates, but the Masuo Taisha (major shrine) in Arashiyama (western Kyoto) is linked with sake production, and used to serve sake over New Year in freshly cut hinoki boxes - wonderful smell! I remember drinking it by a huge fire they had burning right through New Year. Nearby in Arashiyama is Nintendo's head office...they have an interactive walk-through game of the 100-nin Isshu poetry game, always played at New Year, so that should be jumping, so though you would need to know Japanese to play it, there will be other attractions there. You don't mention how early in December you will arrive - usually the last tori-no-ichi (market day) of the year around December 21 is a good time to eat snacks and look over flea markets.