kuishinbo

I have trouble eating "Suzume kushi-yaki" (Sparrow on a stick). The first time I got talked into ordering it, I thought it would be a little sparrow-meat shiskabab, not a whole sparrow skewered on a stick. I remember the yakitori bar chef trying to convince me to eat it, saying how delicious it was. I tried again and again to bring it to my mouth, but just couldn't get myself to chomp off the head. Eventually, I gave up and handed it off to another customer. It was then the the chef confided that he had never eaten it either.

I was at my local sushi shop the other day and i asked the head chef about his wasabi. He has two types. One type is grated wasabi that comes in vacuum sealed packages from Nagano prefecture. This is used for the sashimi orders. The other type of wasabi used for sushi is mixed up from powdered wasabi. He said that all of the powdered wasabi has horseradish in it (not mustard as i mistakenly indicated in my last post). He thought there wouldn't be that much range in quality of the powdered wasabi, but he only used Gin Jirushi (Gold Mark) which he figured was the best.

Another comment about wasabi... There is a big difference in taste between fresh wasabi and paste made from powdered wasabi. I think there may be different qualities of wasabi powder as well. I have heard that because customers of north american sushi shops want a lot more wasabi (especially larger mounds of it accompanying the sashimi), the shops are forced to use the cheaper quality stuff which is more like wasabi flavoring with a bunch of mustard added for the kick. Next time I'm at my local sush shop I'll ask the taisho about how sushi shops in Japan source their wasabi - I'm pretty sure they are not grating up fresh wasabi every day for the sushi.

the burrito truck hangs out at Nakano station after 9PM every day except Sundays and rainy days (and days the police are hanging around to harass vendors). It can also be found in the Shibuya area (i think on Meiji-dori) during the afternoon.

I think that Sushi chefs in Japan put what they think is the ideal amount of wasabi on their creations and that this amount would vary somewhat according to their taste. I think it would be rare for a customer to question the sushi chef's judgement - I've certainly never seen this. Personally, I like a little more wasabi kick and here is how i do it. I usually order several sashimi dishes before i start with the nigiri and i put the wasabi for the sashimi in the same shoyu dipping bowl that I'm going to use for my nigiri. I put it on the side and don't mix it in. That way i can touch the wasabi when i dip the sushi and get a bit of wasabi with my shoyu if i want it. By the way, sushi should be dipped in the shoyu upside down (or on the side for nori wrapped items like ikura and uni) so that the fish or nori is contacting the shoyu not the rice which will just act like a big sponge.

There is a burrito truck that parks at the station in the evenings. He is apparently the only burrito truck in Japan. (I've been visiting him for about 7 years). There is also a vegetable vendor that comes to my apartment building on Saturday evenings (sometimes). I haven't bought anything from them because we never know when they will show up for sure and we don't usually wait until Saturday evening to do our vegetable shopping. I have tasted some delicious veggies at a local restaurant that came from the truck. We also get the usual yaki-imo, ramen, and laundry pole guys. When i lived in Hiroshima there were a couple of ko-iwashi (baby sardine) vendors. These old ladies would just set up a chair on some street corner (one was in a residential street off the beaten-track) with a big tray of ko-iwashi. They would sit there all day and fillet the little 2 inch fishes. I think ko-iwashi sashimi is the food i miss most from Hiroshima. You can't seem to get it in Tokyo.

Yakiniku restaurants in Japan (the Japanese version of Korean BBQ restaurants) usually have beef liver sashimi. I'm not a big fan of cooked liver after all the tough nasty liver i had to eat as a kid, but liver sashimi is great.

this is true. i saw a 2 hour special on natto once on NHK TV and they showed how stirring the natto stretches the strings and actually changes the chemical composition of them. It does taste better. They recommended mixing it 400 times. I've tried this and its quite a work out - the natto gets pretty stiff as the strings break up. Mixing a well-stirred portion of Natto with Negi-Toro and a splash of soy sauce is probably the best gateway recipe for Natto newbies. Personally, i've liked the stuff since day one. It just tastes like beans to me. Cooking natto may help with the texture for some, but it really brings out the smell and that makes it worse for others. I was camping at a festival up at the tip of Tohoku years ago and in the mornings i ate Natto Fried Rice (with a nice nutty flavored brown rice) that an enterprising young woman was selling - cooked in a frypan over a little fire. I couldn't get the taste of this out of my head when i got back to Hiroshima where i was living at the time (Note: Hiroshima is in Western Japan - not exactly Natto country). I convinced a friend to make this for me in her restaurant and when the Natto hit the grill it literally emptied the entire restaurant coughing and choking out on to the street. Oops! one more Natto factoid: How long do the slime strings stretch? a recent trivia show demonstrated this by lifting a guy up with a hydraulic lifter as the natto string extending from the beans held in his chopsticks grew and grew. I think it was 12 or 15 meters before the string broke.

my favorite yakitori shops are the ones that server pork instead of chicken. there's one in Asakusa-bashi called "Nishi Guchi Yaki Ton" (west exit grilled pork) that was located under the JR tracks by the west exit of Asakusa-bashi station. A greasy, filthy, smoke-filled stand up restaurant that had room for about 10 customers inside the place, but another 30 or more spilling out down the street using makeshift tables. Like the restaurant name (Yaki Ton sounds a lot like Yaki Tori, but means grilled pork instead of grilled chicken), the menu is a tongue in cheek play on a yaki tori shop menu - there is even pork tsukune. The guts sashimi is great too. (Unfortunately, Nishi Guchi Yaki Ton moved to become a real sit-down, inside restaurant. Same food and customers, but the ambience was better at the old place.)

I prefer sashimi. My typical pattern is ask the chef what's best today, then have a few of those as sashimi. Then follow up with a few nigiri, and maybe slip in something hot - like Aburi-salmon (lightly grilled salmon on nigiri, salted with a squeeze of Sudachi - no need to dip in shoyu) or Shin-sama-negi-maki-yaki (young sama wrapped around a length of negi and grilled). I always finish with Ikura, Uni, Oo-toro nigiri.