helenjp

Thanks for the blog, but I don't think much of your photo - I was hoping to check the shape of your upper lip , part of my private research into whether any people with teardrop embouchures manage to become good at flute! And by the way, if you like a fairly "round" beer, Sapporo is probably a good choice. They have an even fuller-tasting beer, Ebisu, which also comes in a "black" (stout-like) version, but all the Sapporo beers are fuller tasting than Kirin. Kirin beers are based on a lighter American concept of beer, though their line-up has a few exceptions to that rule. As for Asahi, I call it "Aspirin beer" and never drink it!

That's so nostalgic! It reminds me very much of my first "very own" home, which was built around 1920, and had the same arched doorways and long sash windows...and curiously the same tiny kitchen space! I agree with the "don't hurry" brigade - I'm still waiting for our kitchen re-do (9 years and counting...), because old houses have their own ideas about where to spend your money. The first day in our current house, our kids jumped into the bathtub and cracked it... Looking at your layout, you have a very narrow space between the fridge and the stove for people passing from the kitchen or the back door to the next room. That could become very irritating if you have more than two people in the house. I think I would consider sacrificing some of the cabinets near the backdoor and placing the fridge there (so you'll have to move the power point, ho ho, though an under-counter unit there with drawers may be less space-intrusive than fridge doors), and giving yourself a narrow strip of storage or counter space (if needed) below window height along the wall. That should keep traffic out of your main working area in the kitchen. But...don't rush! By the way, looks as if your back door leads onto stairs rather than handy freezer-housing porch space???

Sounds as if your mother is being very co-operative. I gave up when I discovered that my mother's daily diet consisted of one entire hot salami, and nothing else...when I tried to remonstrate, she just pointed out sweetly and reasonably that she HAD divided it into thirds, one portion for each meal. If you leave the wine out, how about adding a spoonful or so of vinegar - it's more robust than lemon juice, which can disappear from a poaching liquid. Think I used things like parsley stems, a bayleaf, and a few whole peppercorns (which are then removed from the finished dish, so much less impact than grinding pepper into or over the dish, but you could leave them and the bayleaf out. Don't think parsley stems are likely to cause harm, though). My recipe says to put the fish into the cold poaching liquid, but the best "boiled" fish I've ever made was with a Shuttle Chef pot, where I simmered the liquid and then added the fish, slammed on the lid, and placed the pot in its insulated cover, so the "switch off and leave" idea sounds good to me. Sauce - the poaching liquid itself is nice poured sparingly over each serving, but for the rest of the family, how about a lime mayonnaise?

The ad....it's not like an ad campaign, it's just a well-known chunk of folk culture, with the name of the beer added in! The takarabune or treasure ship, is a kind of lucky dream - if you dream of this ship loaded with treasure at New Year (and the 7 gods of fortune who ride it!), you will have a good year. Seems like they left this poster up a bit too long! The beer being advertised is Sapporo Draft. Yum! The noodle shop looks like fun - the name is a pun with about 3 layers - The Noodle Eater's Mansion/Restaurant, I-Wanna-Eat-Noodles, and the Fool-for-a-Handsome-Face Mansion/Restaurant. That lemon tart looks good - nothing just quite like that around here!

Haha! Sorry, I guess most people think that kyogen springs from Noh, but one of its roots are in rites or celebrations from folk religion, and the appeasement or pacification of earth spirits is one of those...it's no more than a dance move in kyogen these days, and as you say, nobody would call a kyogen actor instead of a kannushi these days if they wanted a religious rite performed...

It really is best as a topping or dip - it has quite a lot of sweetener, which tends to burn if you try to marinade things in it and then grill them. I just made a miso/sesame paste for my kids to dip cucumbers in for their afternoon snack - and crisp young cabbage hearts dipped in that miso you have taste good too!

wild guess....occasionally things are graded "pine", "plum" or "bamboo", meaning "excellent", "good" and "regular" quality. But I don't recall seeing that system used for tea.

The sake is more of an offering, but the salt is to purify/repel any unwanted spirits or (what would you call them...earth deities???) attached to that particular piece of ground. I'm interested to know...did the kannushi stamp with his feet, or walk around the perimeter of your land??? (The kyogen historian in me is trying to climb out of hiding...)

Yes, I have...it tastes a little more earthy than mountain potato, and is a little crisper and less slimy...but I have to admit it didn't make that much of an impression!

Haven't found any recipes in Japanese for wasabi ice-cream (mostly because it's most popular here as soft-serve, restricted pretty much to tourist areas). Did get these comments thouygh... Some have chunks of grated fresh wasabi root in them. I got the impression that some may use pureed fresh (or maybe blanched, but not dried) wasabi leaves for fresh taste and green color. Some people commented that regardless of zing, some wasabi icecream leaves an unpleasant irritation at the back of the throat after eating. I was wondering how a wasabi icecream or gelato "kicker" would go - pay a little extra and have a portion added to your serve of cherry icecream, dark grape icecream, chocolate sorbet...wasabi and cherry has really caught my imagination though...

Living on the outskirts of a major conurbation, I have to consider what the modern city *is* before I think about how feasible this idea is (Actually, that's a lie, the first thing I had to do was figure out that 100 miles is roughly 160km!). Old Tokyo (Edo) never got much past 1 million people. There was arable land enough on the Kanto plain to provide for much of that city's needs, and the city was limited by transport etc. from growing too far past the productive capacity of the surrounding region. Interestingly, that 100 mile limit (from where we are, a little east of Tokyo) pretty much covers the Kanto plain plus some of the lower hills to the west and east. Now that people commute up to 2 hours into the city, their houses cover most of the richest land that fed previous generations of Tokyo residents! What's grown in the area now is token production of the basics on tax-rebate toy farms - household vegetables for fresh consumption, and limited amounts of rice. I'd have nori but no konbu; salt but no shoyu (it's made locally, from trucked-in and imported beans), sake and wine, but no whiskey or beer, sardines but no tuna, spinach and scallions but no onions or potatoes, chicken but no beef...and NO BREAD!!!

Looking forward to spending a couple of months in Auckland soon. My boys (11 and 13) have a couple of menus planned, mainly revolving around sausages and smoked fish, AND they insist that our first dinner in Auckland, as ever, must be fish and chips eaten on the beach as the sun sets over the harbour... Budgetwise, that's about our level, but we like to hit a few restaurants and enjoy a few midwinter picnics and BBQs on our local beach too. Any suggestions about places to try (especially south...the north shore is foreign territory for us!), or goodies to look out for?

Those red berries are wolfberries (lycium barbarum). Very healthy, but I'm a bit hazy on WHY they are so healthy! I'm enjoying this blog, Pan, particularly because your photos *show* me some of the strange, exotic US food I encounter in books or on the Web, but never see! ...so now I know what Black and Whites look like! Thank you.

They really do need a while to mature and absorb moisture...honey cake is always dry after baking. As for "how long" the optimum waiting period is, I'm not sure. Anybody?

I agree with Carrot Top. In my former life as an interpreter, I did things like traipse around all of NZ's commercial slaughterhouses, take TV crews to vegetable and shellfish growers, accompany technicians to repair factory machinery in the back of beyond, etc. The TV crew wanted to eat dinner with the vegetable grower's family, using the abundance of nature etc etc, but the grower's wife said she didn't know how to prepare half the vegetables they grew. So as well as being the interpreter and coordinator, that day I got to rush down before filming started and cook the dinner... In other cases, where people had started up NEW farming enterprises such as oyster farming, the owners tended to be more moneyed, mobile, and educated than those running traditional farms. In these cases, the family could and would serve up city food using rural ingredients, but they were also using ingredients that their neighbors had never heard of and had no access to. Here in Japan, for a while I belonged to a natural foods co-op. Part of the deal was offering city homestays to rural producers in town for meetings. That was really interesting! I asked if they ate food from other co-op producers, but no, they said, it was far too expensive for a large multi-generation rural family, they ate mass-market items available from local shops like everybody else in their area. As for country restaurants, if it's a really rural area, then by definition there's no restaurant - nobody can run a business on the dining-out requirements of the 10 families who live within an hour's drive, that's why! What there is, is quick chow for passing travelers, and especially for passing truckies and salesmen. I do think that people in production areas are often better at judging the quality of the raw materials - I sometimes think people are too easily convinced that a fashionable sauce and skilled presentation can turn a floppy, watery hunk of chicken into good food! It's easy to think that a nice, green bunch of spinach is fresh, but if you've ever fought to get a REALLY fresh bunch of spinach into a bag, you know the difference between supermarket-fresh and garden-fresh. So what's romantic about food in the country??? Maybe food and romanticism have to do with socialization - there's more opportunity to eat with people outside your immediate family in the city, and therefore more reason to turn food into something special - people in the country enjoy special occasion food and notice, comment, and preserve forever in the annals of local gossip who brought what to which occasion, but the expectation is that food for funerals, weddings, family get-togethers, and local PTA bazaars will be predictable rather than surprising. People came to my local small town bazaars looking for jam from Mrs. X and cakes from Mrs. Y, and so the job was not to tempt the unkown passer-by, but to live up to the standard of previous years in the quality and range of items offered.

I've revised my views on picky eaters...a bit! I've come to think that picky people probably are (or were once) more sensitive to tastes or textures, so the important point is how they incorporate pickiness into their eating habits - are they preemptive-defensive picky or merely cautious-but-not-incurious picky?

This may not be the same thing, but a passionfruit version of lemon curd is often made in New Zealand and Australia. 6 passionfruit/4 eggs/1 cup sugar/juice of 4 good-sized lemons/4 oz butter. Beat and strain eggs, blend in sugar and add passionfruit pulp and lemon juice. Cook in the top of a double boiler, stirring constantly, until mixture is thick. Add butter and stir in well. Remove from heat, pour into warm, sterilized jars.

????? Haven't they had a teriyaki chicken burger for ages????? It's son2's fallback order, wherever we are!

I've made various torshi, and think it's a wonderful no-cook prep method for summer , but I'd never thought of this puree version as a similar dish. Thank you for the recipe, persiancook, I'll definitely make it soon. Your recipe reminds me of an Iranian friend in New Zealand, who always brought a big bag when she visited so she could raid my huge number of parsley plants!

I was just thinking about exactly how I use my toaster oven more than I used to...the old one took over 5 minutes to make toast, so it wasn't very useful for grilling - things dried out before they cooked. I use the toaster oven even in summer, when nothing could persuade me to turn my tabletop convection oven on (these are especially hot in small Japanese kitchens without big extractor fans, because they tend to be around waist-height). Yesterday I used my toaster oven to grill sardines on toast for breakfast, grill one piece of fish for a lunchbox to save cleaning up the fish grill under the gas range and grill whole eggplants, because they are too thick to fit in the fish grill, and used the lowest heat setting to roast some garlic. Unfortunately I forgot to slash the garlic and one exploded all over the inside of the toaster oven, so it will be a long time before I bake anything sweet in it! And that's a pity, because my kids enjoy a (slashed first!) grilled banana now and then!

Hmmm...debatable. One year when I was making Japanese plum liqueur, I experimented with cherries (ordinary sweet dessert cherries, not cooking cherries). What happens is that the flavor of the cherries is transferred over time to the alcohol, and the fruit tends to become insipid. After 6-12 months, the liquor tasted almondy, with little cherry fragrance. If I were much more determined than I am, I would maybe try gently candying the cherries in syrup over a few days, and preserving the resulting glace cherries in brandy to preserve more of the color and aroma. More to the point, it would be interesting to know what varieties of cherry are used for commercial brandied cherries.

placed into a mold, yes; drained, no!

Process for making silken tofu explained in English here....I know I'm nagging, Jason, but the idea that silken tofu is strained through silk cloth is such a popular misconception that I didn't want to see it perpetuated on eGullet! Sorry...

I've eaten and watched dou fu hua being made many times (it was a popular staff snack at the Chinese grocers' where I worked when I was an undergraduate) - it's not the same as kinugoshi (silken) tofu, it is more similar to oboro-dofu, because you get a definite separation between curds and whey, though the whey is not drained off, and the curds are not pressed. Silken dofu is made using a coagulant, BUT the whole thing coagulates, like a milk pudding - there is no whey produced. Silk cloth is not used, because the stuff is poured into molds, not drained through cheesecloth like regular tofu. The "kinu" definitely refers to the texture, not the process. As for who invented it, I'm not going there...

I've cooked pork simmered in Chinese black tea. Tea seems to combat greasiness very well, so adding vinegar as well might be overkill for a chicken?