eG Foodblog: Torakris - New Year's Festivities in Japan

[torakris]

the kimchee

some of the ingredients that went into it, not shown is an apple, sugar and salt and dashi

a close up of the ika no shiokara (squid and guts) for those who were curious

the finished product (well it still has to ferment)

This what I call a quick kimchee, it will be ready to eat for dinner tonight and does not keep as long as "real" kimchee and it is also really easy to throw together.

[torakris]

What is espresso sauce??

Well according to the ingredients it is made from 4 kinds of sugar , coffee, brandy, cointreau (sp?), flavoring and preservatives.

Basically it is an espresso flavored syrup that is meant to be poured onto the marscapone for a quick tiramisu, they also suggest sprinkling on some cocoa.

It is really good!

looks like this

[torakris]

we have finished lunch, today we had yakisoba, which despite the name are not really soba but rather a Chinese style noodle that is usually stirfried with meat and vegetables with a non-descript boring sauce.

I don't really care for yakisoba, but it is a cheap and easy lunch for a family

The yakisoba sort of comes as a set with the noodles that need just minutes in the fry pan with a little water to soften and package of powdered sauce that mixes with the water.

I added sausages, cabbage, bean sprouts and onions, I usually add carrots but I don't have any in the house.

before cooking

after cooking

my husband has taken the kids to the store (oops now they are back! ) so I was enjoying some time a lone with my tumbler of iced coffee and the speakers cranked up with Uncle Kracker's Follow Me (this is my song of the moment, love this song!) I was about to put on some Bon Jovi.....

[Jake]

After living in Japan for so long, are you an American music fan, or Japanese, or other? What's the stand-by for those days when you really want to turn up the stereo?

[torakris]

After living in Japan for so long, are you an American music fan, or Japanese, or other? What's the stand-by for those days when you really want to turn up the stereo?

I like all kinds of music, but i tend to go through these phases of just listening to one song over and over (until my kids tell me to stop!).

Currently it is the Uncle Cracker song, before this it was Complicated by Avril Lavigne and before that it was Shaggy's Angel.

I really love Japanese music too, all time favorites include anything by Kawamura Ryuichi (but only his solo stuff not when he is part of Luna Sea), anything by Fujii Fumiya (especially his song Another Orion which is my favorite to do at karaoke), A new one I really like is Moriyama Naotarou and his song Sakura (this is probably the best song I have heard in 10 years in Japan) and also Hirai Ken and his grandfather's clock song. I am also a big fan of Yazawa Eikichi though he hasn't done much recently.

I don't really care for a lot of the music in the US now, I am an 80's child and my two favorite groups are probably Bon Jovi and Aerosmith, though you are just as likely to find me listening to Celine Dion, Enya or John Denver and the Carpenters......

[Jake]

Eclectic taste, to say the least! Sorry if this was a bit off the food topics, but thanks for replying. As an 80's child myself, the names bring back some memories!!! Not all good - must admit, if I never heard Celine Dion sing again, I would not be upset.

Of course, the John Denver, Carpenters part was definitely 70's -- would fall asleep hearing those songs on the stereo, augmented by Cat Stevens, Harry Chapin and Joni Mitchell.

[torakris]

Eclectic taste, to say the least! Sorry if this was a bit off the food topics, but thanks for replying. As an 80's child myself, the names bring back some memories!!! Not all good - must admit, if I never heard Celine Dion sing again, I would not be upset.

Of course, the John Denver, Carpenters part was definitely 70's -- would fall asleep hearing those songs on the stereo, augmented by Cat Stevens, Harry Chapin and Joni Mitchell.

John Denver and the Carpenters are what my parents used to listen to, so the songs are almost imprinted onto my brain!

You should have heard me belting out Rhinestone Cowboy (Glen Campbell), another one of my dad's favorites, at karaoke a couple days ago. For some reaon I never got into Johnny Cash or Barry Manilow.......

I also went through Pink Floyd phases, Eagles phases, Heavy metal like Anthrax and Slayer phases and Beach Boy phases, these were all in the mid to late 80's and had a lot to do with my current male interest....

I am still hooked on the Eagles though....

[torakris]

oh and I forgot to mention that for most of the early to mid 80's, I was the biggest Wham! fan

They decorated my bedroom wall (along with smaller pictures of Duran Duran) and I swore one day I was going to marry Andrew Ridgeley, the other half of Wham!

[torakris]

well this should be my last dinner of the blog

tonight's dinner is probably the most typical of how we eat, sort of a mix of Asian dishes depending on what's in the house or was on sale at the store. This dinner cost us under $4 for 5 people.

braised bean curd

kabocha salad with pine nuts

pa'jon (these are called chijimi in Japan) Korean scallion pancakes, these ones were made with the nira (garlic chives) and negi (Japanese leeks) leftover from making the kimchee. They are served with a dipping sauce made of soy, vinegar, sugar, sesame seeds and kochujang (Korean spicy bean paste)

and the kimchee

I have been trying to get a hold of Mayhaw Man for a Louisiana blog but he doesn't seem to be around, if I don't hear from him soon I may have to tag someone else.....

[Mayhaw Man]

I just replied. I am sorry, we have been traveling for the holidays and it has been very difficult to stay on line for anytime (phone modem coupled with a group of people who insist on snatching up the phone every 3 seconds).

I told Kristen that I would be traveling this week and would not be able to do a decent job of it, but I would be interested in doing it either during the Jazz Fest or Mardi Gras, as we ("we" being the whole extended family and all of the many friends you find out you have when someone needs a free place to be during these holidays) have lots of company and pretty much don't do ANYTHING but eat and drink and cook and listen to music. So remember me the last week of February or last week of April, if you still want me to do it.

[helenjp]

An '80s music fan, hmmm....well you can figure out how much older I am than Kristin when I tell you that my younger son heads off to school many mornings belting out Cat Stevens' "Wild World" as he trudges up the hill!

Kristin's photos have added a real glow to her detailed blog...and life in Yokohama looks so exciting compared to Matsudo, even with our great annual Shin-Matsudo Samba Parade!

After I posted my photos, I realized my dear elder son had turned the camera to "low resolution" so as to squeeze in LOTS of photos of trains. Our big New Year outing was a ride on a go-nowhere local line that still uses pasteboard tickets and has manned wickets on the platform.

I forgot that the cash machines would be shut for THREE DAYS over New Year, so we have been eating frugally -- lots of tofu and Chinese cabbage!

We did the trad thing and ate osechi for the first two days, then moved to nabe for dinners, and lunched on left-over nabe reheated with udon noodles or rice or mochi. Lunch is often noodles. We have yakisoba sometimes too, but these days never ramen -- after my husband made ramen at the weekend once too often, and provoked a Ramen Rebellion from our sons, who have refused to eat it for several years now! Our "easy weekend favorites" tend to be okonomiyaki (thick savoury pancake with cabbage and pork, topped with worcestershire sauce, mayonnaise, nori flakes, and shaved bonito) and gyoza (Japanese version of Chinese potstickers -- ours are usually pork and Chinese chives, with cabbage, bamboo shoot, dried shiitake, and beanthread vermicelli).

My husband is about to leave for a fortnight in the Netherlands and Germany, and requested a "proper Japanese curry" for dinner tonight -- pork, potato, carrot, and onion, cooked in an incredibly thick curry roux. My family likes it as thick as concrete...yuck...but I've discovered that replacing the roux with peanut meal makes it thick without being so pasty.

That was the first time we've cooked white rice this year -- husband is a mochi maniac, and we have them for breakfast, fried in a little butter till crusty, or grilled with cheese on top, or grilled and basted with soy sauce and wrapped in nori, or even with soy sauce and Japanese mustard. The sweet types are not popular in our house, though red bean soup with grilled mochi is.

We got out the takoyaki pan again, and made extra-small Dutch poffertjes (yeast-raised dough baked on the stove-top in round molds) for breakfast yesterday.

Kristin mentions living on cold coffee...I have to practically hide my coffee-drinking on holidays. Husband drinks coffee at the office, so at home he likes English tea with breakfast, and green tea thereafter. We like a kind of green kukicha (includes stalks) -- it is a little milder and lower in caffeine than straight sencha.

Sashimi...I grew up near the sea, so no hesitation in eating fresh fish raw, but I dislike the ready-cut fish steaks sold at the supermarket- it's not as fresh as the fillets or whole fish labelled "suitable for sashimi". On the other hand, I've learned plenty about preparing fish (and vegetables) through Japanese cooking.

I don't buy saba (mackerel) for sashimi, although I love vinegared saba sashimi -- it does have more parasites than other fish, and it goes off very quickly -- there's a Japanese saying about "mackerel starts going off before the fish is dead".

I have the impression that quite a lot of Americans are not comfortable with eating fish in any form, let alone raw?? Or have I just come across an atypical selection of Americans, maybe?

I don't buy beef in Japan (grain-fed beef tastes greasy and bland to me, and I stopped buying it altogether when I first read that Japan was importing animal-based cattle feed from the UK.), so we do eat fish several times a week. The cheapest are always the oily fish -- sardine, saury, mackerel, and small yellowtail -- either fresh or salted.

Salt fish are normally grilled and served with something like ponzu (soy/citrus juice/dashi). Die-hard northerners like my husband pour soy sauce over their salted fish.

The more seasonal and local fish are often not expensive, but the supermarkets don't stock them because they are not well-known, even to Japanese consumers. One sign of an increasingly mobile population...

The Japanese fishing industry, like the rice industry, is heavily protected, making these traditional foods unnecessarily expensive, and ironically encouraging young families to eat more bread, noodles, and red meat!

Reply to a much earlier question about illegal immigrants here...plenty of Filipinos and Chinese, both legal and illegal, but illegal labourers (spotted on building sites, in fish markets, packing and transporting goods) are often from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran, and a suprising number from North and East Africa. It seems that there is a feeling that Japan, being non-Christian, is more pro-Muslim than other developed countries. Japan hardly ever issues working visas for blue-collar jobs, so by definition unskilled workers tend to be illegal - makes it so much easier to boot them out whenever the unemployment figures start to go up...

Other Asians tend to be "legal" -- I think they either come from wealthier countries, have university degrees, and are here for specialist jobs like computing, or they come from countries like Myanmar where only a tiny fraction of the population gets abroad, and those that do tend to be the elite.

The university where I teach has more Chinese students than any other public university in Japan, and there are always a few in my classes. And even in run-down Matsudo, there are always 2-3 kids with 1 or more foreign parent among my kids' classmates -- not that the schools acknowledge them, the textbooks paint an unchanged society of "Taros" and "Hanakos" learning about their traditional festivals from their grannies and grandpas -- when in fact, Mom might be Chinese, and granny and grandpa are probably more into pachinko and classic motorbikes than the traditional handicrafts and string games the schools are always fruitlessly urging grandparents to come and demonstrate in class!!

[Mayhaw Man]

I have the impression that quite a lot of Americans are not comfortable with eating fish in any form, let alone raw?? Or have I just come across an atypical selection of Americans, maybe?

I think that the perception that American's don't like fish is a bit overstated. I believe that it has more to do with where the American is from. In my part of America (I live on the Gulf Coast) we eat seafood and freshwater products as often as we eat beef or chicken. That would be true pretty much from Corpus Christi to Key West and on around to Baltimore on the Atlantic Coast. Many times these foods are less expensive than their meaty alternatives. Redfish, Speckeled Trout (spotted sea trout) blue crabs, oysters, shrimp (white and brown), flounder, and the ever present crawfish, etc. are readily available and are the center of many meals. Take a look at any local cookbook and you will see what I mean.

OTOH, when meat is eaten in this same area, it is likely as not to be pork. Pork pretty much rules the Gulf SOuth and the SOuthern Atlantic Coastal States. As a matter of fact, we had loin chops for dinner last night, with clue crab clawmeat stuffed potatoes ($5.98 per lb., pretty good for this time of year), fresh local brussel sprouts (in hot bacon dressing, mmmmmm, wrong but delicious), and some bread I had made a couple of weeks ago and frozen.

Thanks to both of you for your blogs this week. They have been fascinating. And I agree with Helen in the fact that Kristen's photos added much value to the whole enterprise.

Edited to say that as far as raw fish goes-My oldest got his usual choice of anyplace he wanted to eat for his birthday this week and he chose, once again, an excellent Sushi Joint in New Orleans. And also to say that you might be suprised how much of the fish on the Tokyo Fish Market left the Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans yesterday morning. Japan is one of our biggest seafood export partners.

[Mabelline]

To both Kristen and helen, I have been fascinated by this foodblog.You both cook such wonderful-looking food! Thank you so much

[hillvalley]

I forgot that the cash machines would be shut for THREE DAYS over New Year, so we have been eating frugally -- lots of tofu and Chinese cabbage!

What about credit cards? I can't imagine the ATM's being closed for 3 days in the US.

[torakris]

Since Mayhaw Man can't do it, I tag Hillvalley since they were the last one to post before I read it this morning!

what do you say?

[ronnie_suburban]

Since Mayhaw Man can't do it, I tag Hillvalley since they were the last one to post before I read it this morning!

what do you say?

Excellent choice!

Come on hillvalley

=R=

[Mayhaw Man]

Go Hillvalley Go!

[Jason Perlow]

Kris, whats your procedure for making the Pajon? That looks really good.

[torakris]

I forgot that the cash machines would be shut for THREE DAYS over New Year, so we have been eating frugally -- lots of tofu and Chinese cabbage!

What about credit cards? I can't imagine the ATM's being closed for 3 days in the US.

the ATM hours here are awful! Most are only open something like 8 to 5, some have extended hours to maybe 8 or 9 and it was only last year that they opened some in convenience stores (up until then they were pretty much only in bank lobbies, though you could find some in the really large stores and amusement park places).

The annoying thing is the amchines aren't compatible with all teh banks, I can't just use my bank card in any machine.....

I avoid the banks whenever possible because it takes forever for everything and don't even think about going to a bank on the 25th or 26 of the month, because the 25th is payday for like 90% of the country (the Japanese only get paid once a month) and everyone is in the bank either depositing the paycheck (a lot of people still get paid with an envelope filled with cash) or transfering the money to pay their bills which are all due by the end of the month.

Thankfully my husband gets paid on the 10th and I can avoid the rush.....

The machines closing for holidays is not unusual and since most Japnese keep incredible amounts of cash in their home it normally isn't a problem......

Edited January 4, 2004 by torakris (log)

[torakris]

Kris, whats your procedure for making the Pajon? That looks really good.

I use a lot of eggs in mine, for two medium sized ones I use

2 to 3 eggs

1/3 cup flour

1/3 cup rice flour

2/3 cup ice water

If you don't have rice flour, you can use all flour, these are estimates, you want it to be like a pancake batter on the thin to medium side, so adjust the amounts accordingly.

I love nira (garlic chives) in it, but I don't know about their availability in the US, I also normally add soem kind of meat (usually pork) or seafood and they are good with a variety of vegetables, especially kimchee.

If I make kimchee one then I just use the simple soy-vinegar dipping sauce.

The one I made yesterday was thicker than I normally make because I was too lazy to make 2 and just made one big one, they are better a little bit thinner.

I also cook it in sesame oil.

[hillvalley]

Since Mayhaw Man can't do it, I tag Hillvalley since they were the last one to post  before I read it this morning!

what do you say?

Excellent choice!

Come on hillvalley

=R=

I guess it's me!

[JennyUptown]

I was in an Asian food store today in Rockville, MD and came across...screw fruit.

Can anyone please enlighten me?

[torakris]

I was in an Asian food store today in Rockville, MD and came across...screw fruit.

Can anyone please enlighten me?

I found this

http://www.survivaliq.com/survival/edible-...-screw-pine.htm

probably the fruit of the screw pine, I have never seen (or heard of this before) looks like it is from South Asia.

[herbacidal]

and listen to music. So remember me the last week of February or last week of April, if you still want me to do it.

i really wanna hear a Louie blog.

i'll be sure to remind whoever is up about your willingness.

[Mayhaw Man]

Mark it down. February 24th is Mardi Gras Day. I will try to get someone to tag me for that week. It gets pretty nuts foodwise. Crawfish boils, fishing trips (and the subsequent cooking of the redfish, specks, flounder, sheepshead, white trout etc.)

and lots of dining on street food. Since my apt. is directly across the street from the World Famous Verdi Mart (The Nelly Deli, according to the sign out front) I will do the first ever review of the treats available there as we eat there about once a day during carnival (this place is where Bourdain got his smokes, whiskey, and plate lunch delivered from when he was in New Orleans).

I look forward to it.