February 23, 2007

mastering the art of food kanji

For at least the last year, it's been a goal of mine to master enough cooking-related kanji and vocabulary to be able to follow recipes written in Japanese. With a few exceptions, most English-language Japanese cookbooks focus on time-tested, classic recipes -- excellent for mastering the basic techniques of Japanese cooking, but not so helpful when you want to whip up one of those crazy, modern-meets-ye-olde-Japan dishes you can find at any good izakaya. (My favorite dish at the best izakaya in my town, for example, is a kabocha-stuffed eggroll served with a dipping salt spiked with cinnamon and sugar. It's like a crispy pumpkin-filled savory churro.)

The only solution is to delve into one of the many Japanese-language recipe magazines crowding the bookstore shelves. With this in mind, a year ago (a year ago!) I bought 15分でごはん! (15-minute meals), a collection of quick recipes published by a popular food magazine called オレンジページ (Orange Page). Once upon a time, I set out to make some kind of lotus root-ground pork dish because the instructions looked easy (the picture of the finished dish actually looks completely vile), but never did. Yesterday I decided if I was ever going to conquer a recipe, it should at least be something I would want to eat. So I flipped through the now rather dusty and dented magazine once more and picked out　白身魚の梅あえのっけ丼 (white-fleshed fish with plum dressing over rice). After about an hour with my dictionary and with the aid of the step-by-step pictures, I had a list of ingredients and the instructions pretty much figured out. Minus the rice-cooking time, it all came together in the promised 15 minutes, and nearly as easily as if I had been cooking from a recipe in English.

The resulting dish was simple and light, the flesh of the kanpachi turning buttery beneath its dressing, brightened by the bits of tart umeboshi. This would be a perfect summer meal, much like my beloved maguro no tataki don, but with a hot bowl of wakame soup, it worked equally well as a mild winter night's dinner.

A note on ingredients: The original recipe suggests using tai (sea bream) or other white-fleshed fish; I instead went with the less expensive kanpachi (amberjack), an oilier, less delicate fish. I think this would work equally well with hamachi, maguro and even salmon. Use whatever you like to eat as sashimi.

Kanpachi no ume-aenokke don (Kanpachi with ume dressing over rice)

Makes 2 servings

2 cups (400 g) cooked rice
3.5 oz (100 g) sashimi-quality kanpachi (or substitute the fish of your choice)
daikon, 1 1/2 inch (4 cm) piece
1/5 bundle of mizuna, rinsed and dried
1 large or 2 small umeboshi
1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 teaspoon salt
pepper to taste

Peel the daikon and cut into matchstick-sized pieces. Cut the mizuna into 1-inch (3-cm) lengths. Remove the seed from the umeboshi and dice the flesh. With a very sharp knife, slice the fish into 1/2-inch (1-cm) width pieces.

In a bowl, mix the olive oil, salt and diced umeboshi. Add the daikon, mizuna and fish, then toss together using chopsticks, distributing the dressing evenly. Taste for seasoning and add more salt if necessary. Scoop the rice into a bowl and top with the fish and vegetable mixture, making sure each serving gets a good amount of umeboshi. Sprinkle with pepper and serve.

Link | Comment (4) | Categories: Firsts | Recipes | Rice

January 10, 2007

me vs. natto

In the showdown between me and Japanese food, there was one foe that could always best me: nattō.

Nattō. Fermented soybeans. You've probably heard of it. It's a divisive comestible, in that way only things that are called "food" yet smell like rotting feet are. While nearly everyone in Japan will lecture you on the health benefits of eating nattō (lowered risk of osteoporosis and cancer and blood clots and obesity and maybe...death?), there are actually a fair number of Japanese people who find the stuff repellent. The thing that makes nattō so disgustingly special is its texture, which manages to be at once slimy, slippery and stringy. This is a byproduct of the fermenting and aging process, during which the beans are soaked, fermented under heated conditions, then aged at a much cooler temperature. Meanwhile, Bacillus subtilis natto, a rice straw bacterium, does its not-so-subtle work and a pile of sticky, odiferous beans results.

But my cowering at the sight of nattō wouldn't do. I refused to be bullied, especially by something made of beans. Beans are small. Beans are innocuous. Beans are even kind of wimpy. So I armed myself with a fistful of green onions and a bowl of hot rice, excellent allies in any Japanese food showdown, and set to work.

Although I entertained thoughts of wimping out and starting with the black soybean nattō, which is supposed to be less strongly flavored, I decided to instead go for an all-purpose brand that had always caught my eye when I peeked fearfully at the nattō section of the grocery store. It came with small packets of tsuyu and karashi (mustard). I planned on using the tsuyu and forgoing the mustard, as its strong flavor might overpower the nattō-ness of my nattō. I chopped up some green onion and took a deep breath before lifting open the Styrofoam lid. It would be the last nattō-free breath I would take all day.

And there it was. You don't really need to ask why I was so afraid of nattō, do you?

The deep stink of fermented protein filled the kitchen. But the slippery adventure was only beginning -- I still had to mix my nattō, stirring it around with a pair of chopsticks to make it even more stringy. I wasn't too clear on why this was the desired result, but in the spirit of no-holds-barred nattō consumption, I did it.

After mixing, the beans looked even worse, foamy and viscous, like something you might find on the underside of a lily pad or see in a movie about spawning aliens. Undaunted, I piled them into the small bowl of hot rice, sprinkled on the tsuyu and covered the whole mess in a thick layer of green onions.

And finally, I put the first stinking bite into my mouth. I chewed. It was nutty. Slippery. There was a faint taste of rot, but it was rot I knew I could come to accept and maybe even love, like a very stinky cheese or a friendly zombie. After a couple bites, I added to some daubs of karashi to the mix and found the occasional burning bites even better. Toward the bottom of the bowl, I needed something more, so I pulled out my final Japanese food ally, the mighty umeboshi, and alternated the last bites of beans and rice with nibbles from the tart pickled ume. It was exactly right. I cleaned the bowl.

I had bested nattō. Or had I? My entire apartment reeked of the stuff for the rest of the day. I declare this match a tie.

Link | Comment (11) | Categories: Firsts | Soy | Weird

October 10, 2006

my first hōchō

High-quality Japanese kitchen knives are forged from the same materials and handmade using the same process as Japanese swords. Back in the days of the samurai, the same craftsmen who produced katana, swords, also made hōchō, Japanese kitchen knives. Just as a samurai's sword was considered the embodiment of his soul, in Japan a cook's knife is viewed as the symbol of his skill in the kitchen. When a cook begins working in a new restaurant, his own hōchō moves with him and in the new kitchen the head chef may inspect the knife, noting the maker (engraved in the metal) and how well it has been maintained, forming an opinion about its owner accordingly.

As much as I'd like to carry around a well-made Japanese sword as a symbol of my soul and general toughness, I just don't think it would work with my current lifestyle. A well-made Japanese hōchō, however, would suit me just fine. So I attended the annual Sword and Cutlery Festival in the nearby town of Seki this weekend with a mission: to find the perfect knife.

A twenty-fifth generation swordsmith at work.

Seki, a sleepy town near the center of Gifu Prefecture, is known for its history of sword- and knife-making, and every year vendors gather during the first weekend in October to sell their knives, scissors, garden implements and nail clippers; people crowd the streets; and sword makers give a public demonstration of their craft. You can also buy your very own katana, if you have the cash.

After briefly checking out the forty-plus booths selling all manner of sharp and pokey objects, I narrowed down my criteria. I knew I wanted a nakiri-bōchō in the Tokyo style, not too big or heavy, handmade with an interesting-looking metal. With kanji on it. (Admittedly, many of my criteria were cosmetic, but I don't think a Japanese chef would protest my desire for something beautiful in the kitchen.) I would pay up to 5,000 yen, or a little under $50.

Nakiri-bōchō are vegetable-cutting knives, thin and usually double-edged, unlike most other types of hōchō, which are sharpened on one side only. There are two styles: Tokyo, which is rectangular, and Osaka, which has a rounded front end. (You can see a picture of both here.) Both styles are hard and sharp yet light, so they can do heavy jobs like chopping through kabocha as well as delicate work like cutting cucumber into paper-thin slices.

I finally found my knife at a booth fortuitously close to the jaga-bataa (butter-soaked steamed potato, one of my favorite festival foods) stand. It met all my criteria and was priced at 4,800 yen, but when we had stopped by the booth earlier the cheerful salesman had announced in English, "Discount OK!" and I intended to test this rare offer. (Bargaining is seldom done in Japan.) After some back and forth, we arrived at 4,200 -- but when he gave me my change, he threw in an extra 200 yen and a smile, which I promptly used to buy a jaga-bataa. The 200 yen at least.

Back at home, I had to test out my knife, even though it was nearly midnight and I was exhausted. My expectations were high -- this was the knife to embody my very soul, perhaps for the rest of my cooking life! -- and even then, I almost gasped when I made that first slice through a thick carrot. It was like cutting through butter. Or maybe jaga-bataa. Something incredibly soft and yielding, anyway. If it hadn't been so frighteningly sharp, I might have hugged my new nakiri-bōchō right there. After a lifetime of insufficient, poorly-made, flimsy, dull and ugly knives, I've finally found something worth taking care of.

Link | Comment (3) | Categories: Festivals | Firsts | Tools

May 10, 2006

my first kani miso

My first encounter with kani miso was accidental. It was during my first weeks in Japan, when I would buy things in the grocery store just because they were labeled in hiragana—the Japanese alphabet I could read—instead of kanji, the thousands of complicated Chinese-based characters of which I knew approximately thirty. So when I saw the word kani, crab, I thought I was buying a container of fried crab meat, and it wasn’t until halfway through dinner that I began to detect the muddiness of the flavor, a certain bottom-of-the-sea taste I remembered from an hour-long seafood feast I had eaten in Thailand, encompassing every type of crustacean and mollusk I had ever heard of, and culminating with a plate of prawns swiftly beheaded by the hostess of the meal, the thin green brain fluid pooling on the serving plate, a sight which had ended the meal for me. Looking down at the fried thing in my chopsticks now, I noticed the grayness underneath the batter. What was I eating? I finished the remaining pieces, but vowed to stick with the kare age, fried chicken, next time.

Sitting at the local kaitenzushi (conveyor-belt sushi) restaurant a few weeks later, I watched the approach of a roll stuffed half with crab meat, half with a dollop of some mysterious substance the color of wet cement, with the thick and shiny texture of mayonnaise. (A condiment not out of place at kaitenzushi restaurants, incidentally—hamburger steak and a squirt of mayo balanced atop a small finger of rice, anyone? …Anyone?)

“What is that?” I asked, as my friend James grabbed the plate and added it to the growing pile in front of him.

“Kani miso.”

“But what is it?”

“Crab guts. Want one?”

I hesitated. I didn’t want to look like a wimp. “Okay.”

As he plopped one of the two rolls on my plate, he told me about the first time he had eaten crab guts; it had been at this very kaitenzushi place, on a night when he came alone and sat at the counter, next to an old man presiding over a giant pile of empty plates. I imagined a rainy night, possibly with lightening, and the old man as wizened and dirt-streaked, most likely with a blind, rolling, cataract-ridden eye.

“I reached out to take some kind of clam sushi and I saw he was watching me,” James said. I thought of the darting cataract eye. “So I asked him if the one I picked was any good. He said no”—I could see his cackling, wrinkled face—“but the one he was eating was. So the next time it came around, I tried it. And I liked it.” A flash of lightening! The claw-like hands, curling triumphantly around their disposable chopsticks! A flayed and defeated crab lying supine in the kitchen behind the conveyor belt!

There was still the matter of the kani miso on my plate, and the dawning realization that I had eaten fried crab guts for dinner once.

I picked it up with my chopsticks, the guts glossy in the fluorescent glow of the conveyor belt. I dipped it in my small dish of soy sauce. I ate it. There was the dense crab meat, then the squish of guts between my teeth, the bottom-of-the-sea taste, but even stronger this time, as I chewed through the rice and seaweed wrapping. It tasted like crab, but dirty crab. Like a dirty martini—something dusky and thick beneath the clean sweetness.

“Huh,” I said. There was no flash of lightening. “It’s okay.”

But the next time I went out for kaitenzushi I found myself picking it out of the conveyor-belt line-up, enjoying the disgusted look flickering behind the eyes of those at the table who would never try crab guts, their open-mouthed incredulousness as I popped the pink and gray pieces into my mouth and chewed. “Mmm…” I said, hamming it up in the face of their revulsion, and it actually did taste better than the first time I had eaten it.

And after that, I started eating kani miso for myself.

Link | Comment (1) | Categories: Firsts | Sushi | Weird