offbeat

Some links and random thoughts

maki — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 02:46:01 +0200

Here are a bunch of unrelated-to-each-other links and thoughts that have accumulated recently.

Product linkage, edible

For UK and Europe readers: Japan Centre has a sale on this week for Yamamotoyama Soy Rappu, colorful soy based wrappers that are an interesting substitute for nori seaweed when making sushi rolls. I haven’t really tried them myself yet, so I placed and order and will see how they work.

And speaking of Japan Centre, they now stock Grape and Orange flavored Calpis! Ah, Calpis, the guilty pleasure of my youth. I’ll be writing up an unnecessarily long and rhapsodical ode to this most curious fermented milk beverage sometime soon, before summer runs out.

Allez Cuisine into the deep

For U.S. cable TV viewers, Fine Living is going to be running a Sea Monster Week of Iron Chef episodes starting on Monday the 18th, starting off with Battle Octopus, then on to Battle King Crab on Tuesday, Battle Giant Eel on Wednesday, Battle Squid on Thursday, and ending with Battle Ashura Oyster. Sounds like good slimy fun.

Not edible, but still so sweet

Recently it’s become very popular in Japan to decorate various things including cellphones and iPods, mirrors, bags, even your car’s rearview mirror, with fake confectionery made of clay that look just like the real thing. They are made with various air-drying clays. Take a look at this Google image search for some amazing examples. Remember, none of what you see there is edible!

If this intrigues you or your kids, J-List/JBox has an exceedingly kawaii paper clay cake making kit aimed at children. It comes with lightweight air-drying paper clay.

Update on what’s up with me and stuff

And finally, some personal notes… As I’ve written about here previously, I’m in the middle of the process of selling a house (actually two houses, since this is a Doppelfamilienhaus), finding a new place to live, and then eventually moving from here to there. I’ve tried not to let the two food sites slip into non-updated oblivion, but I haven’t been able to spend as much time on them as I’d like, not to mention any kind of time consuming cooking. (My two other blogs have already gone rather quiet). Anyway, if you see a lack of answers to questions, or note the fact that most recently posted recipes are very, very simple, you know what the reason is! In the next few weeks I may be absent for some stretches so that I can go do some serious house hunting, and when we do find a new place to live it’s likely things will be quite hectic for some time after, but I hope you bear with me!

Full Japanese Breakfast, slightly scaled down

maki — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 16:22:21 +0200

Recently, a reader asked in the comments about what I have for breakfast. It is definitely not as elaborate as this one.

This is a typical breakfast that is served at a traditional inn (ryokan) in Japan. (You can also get it at Western style hotels in Japan too, if your knees are not up to sitting on the floor to eat.) It is either served in your room, or at a large communal dining table.

The star of the show is a fresh, whole fish (more desirable in Japan than a piece of fish) - an aji or horse mackerel in this case - grilled and served with a little grated daikon radish and soy sauce. There’s also a packet of flavored nori seaweed, which is used to wrap little morsels of rice.

There’s also an onsen tamago, a soft poached egg where the white is soft set and the yolk is harder set, served in a sauce.

There’s also a couple of slices of kamaboko (a fish paste product, sort of like a firm sausage in consistency), a small container of natto, and a hot bowl of miso soup with tofu and wakame seaweed. (Often you will get some pickled vegetables instead of kamaboko.)

Just in case you were wondering, this is a miniature. You can see the scale here compared to my fingers, as I lift up the lid that keeps the rice warm in the bowl.

It’s one of the sets in the Mankitsu Washoku Dokoro series from Re-ment (previously). This series celebrates traditional Japanese cooking (washoku) in its many forms, and a breakfast like this is certainly a great part of that.

Do Japanese people eat like this all the time though? Not really. As you can imagine, it takes some time to assemble a spread like this. So people look forward to a breakfast like this when they go to an inn, more often than not at a hot springs (onsen). At home, you might have an abbreviated version of this breakfast, perhaps with the rice, miso soup and one or two other items (a fried egg and some pickled vegetables perhaps). But more often than not a breakfast in Japan is likely to be toast, eggs and fruit or something. (Cereal is also eaten, but is not that popular.)

I guess you could call the breakfast spread a Full Japanese, akin to a Full English (breakfast) with eggs, bacon, sausages, fried bread, baked beans, and so on. I occasionally get a craving for a Full English too! But I really look forward to my next trip back home to Japan to enjoy a Full Japanese at an hot springs inn.

Going Out For An English, the greatest restaurant sketch ever

maki — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:59:41 +0200

Oh no, two YouTube posts in a row! Well on Saturday we went to an Indian restaurant in town, and invariably our favorite restaurant related video was brought up. Goodness Gracious Me (Wikipedia entry) was a half hour comedy sketch show that ran on BBC One and Two from 1998 to 2001. In case you have never heard of it and you’re in the U.S., it was a little bit like the ’90s comedy show In Living Color, except that the cast in GGM was almost all Asian (as in South Asian, or Indian), who also wrote all the sketches. It poked fun at many British and British-Asian things. One of the best routines was one that made fun of a typical outing to an Indian restaurant. This sketch is called Going Out for an English. I don’t think you have to be Asian (as in South Asian) or British to find it funny…it’s how a lot of people still behave, at any ‘ethnic’ restaurant!

“What is the Blandest Thing you have on the menu?”

Mayo, shiso and tiny little fish sandwich

maki — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 21:13:48 +0200

Browsing around YouTube instead of working, as you do, today I found this little gem. It’s a commercial for Ajinomoto Mayonnaise, by Juzo Itami, the late, great director of the best food movie ever, Tampopo:

The actor (not sure if it’s Itami himself) is talking on the phone to a friend, when he gets hungry. Still remaining on the phone (and inexplicably on his back), he scoots over to the kitchen to get white bread, mayo and chirimenjako, little semi-dried fish. He tops it off with a fresh shiso leaf, and is in heaven. The dialogue is just like the dense, obsessive dialogue in Tampopo. I’ll have to give that sandwich a try one day…it is odd enough that it has to appeal only to a really curious food person.

(The second commercial is cute yet odd, like many of the best Japanese commercials.)

Whatever lame April Fools' jokes you may encounter today, there is none better than the Swiss Spaghetti Harvest

maki — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 13:51:38 +0200

Today, you will be encountering many lame (and perhaps a handful of not-lame) April Fools’ Day jokes. But there really is none better, than the Swiss Spaghetti Harvest.

I know I keep bringing it up every year on this day, but it really is that good.

Here’s a fairly acceptable YouTube version:

The attention to detail is quite good too - the boccalini used at table looks very authentically Ticinese!

Also quite funny, and very well made, is the New Jersey Spaghetti Harvest:

More spaghetti related chuckles - allegedly a banned Ikea commercial. Hmm, it’s also time for spring cleaning!

Happy April Fools’ Day!

Silly product warning labels

maki — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 15:34:11 +0100

I was just opening a new pack of umeboshi (pickled plums) today, when I noticed this warning on the lid in Japanese:

WARNING: Umeboshi have seeds, and sometimes the seeds can be pointed.
So please be careful.

Here’s the label, with two pointy seeds.

(Edit: I could understand the umeboshi warning if it was in English (or language of the country in which the pack was being sold), since people may be unfamiliar with umeboshi. But this was a pack imported from Japan, with Japanese writing, so they are warning Japanese people, who are, or should be, familiar with umeboshi and their pointy seeds. Ume are related to apricots, so maybe apricots should have pointy-seed labels too.)

WTF? So…has it come to this now? We have to have warning labels on natural foods?

I can understand warning labels on manufactured products, say a pesto sauce, to warn about the existence of finely ground nuts. A small percentage of the population is very allergic to nuts.

But, surely the nut-allergic shopper knows to stay away from whole peanuts for example. Or will we have to have labels on those too? “Warning: This bag contains peanuts.” ….

What about warning labels on bags of beans? “Warning: This bag contains beans, which may cause flatulence and socially awkward situations.” Meat? “Warning: This pack contains meat, which comes from an animal. Vegetarians are known to have an aversion to meat.” A bunch of bananas? “Warning: Bananas have slippery skins. If dropped on the ground, they may cause an accident, or a horde of circus clowns to show up.”

Is this labelling gone too far? (Japan is not as litigious as the U.S. for example, but it’s slowly getting there.) Are there any other nanny-state labels you’ve seen?

A Marmite Valentine

maki — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 13:37:10 +0100

Back in January, I received an email from someone called Chris, who worked for the PR company for Marmite. He’d enjoyed my post about Paddington Bear becoming a spokesperson (spokesbear?) for Marmite. I pointed him to the other Marmite-love articles I’d written: the Guinness Marmite tasting and this somewhat obsessive taste comparison of Marmite, Vegemite and Cenovis. (Marmite won over Cenovis by a narrow margin, and over Vegemite by a mile. Sorry to all my Aussie readers! It’s a matter of personal taste and having spent some of my formative years eating thin Marmite-and-butter-sandwiches for tea.)

Chris and I exchanged a couple of nice emails, and he left the enigmatic words “Watch this space!” I had forgotten about it totally, until a small yet hefty package arrived in the mail a couple of hours ago, containing this:

Yes, this is a special limited edition of Marmite, made with champagne! I have to admit that I was contemplating trying to procure one when I’d first heard of it, but hesitated because I still have about two and a half jars of last year’s special edition Guinness Marmite. But then again, can a dedicated Marmite lover have too much Marmite? I don’t think so.

Then I realized that Rax from the Marmite PR people even sent this wonderful poem by email:

Hi Maki, I hope you’re well
We’ve written a poem for you
Because it’s St Valentine’s Day
And we love the blog that you do

JustHungry sums up the expatriate view
That missing home-food can seem like a curse
So we want to offer you comfort
In the form of this little verse

Whilst Marmite isn’t Japanese
Nor is it American or Swiss
It is a nomadic food available for all
That fills its fans with bliss

There are those that hate it who claim
That it’s never really been in culinary fashion
But Marmite Lovers from around the globe
Testify their LOVE for it with real passion

And it is YOUR passion that we truly admire
(We loved reading your Paddington Bear monologue
But it is your February article on Marmite
Which makes JustHungry.com our favourite blog!

So expect some Lovers Marmite
To be delivered to you in the post
Please think of us and our love for you
When spreading it on your toast!

So, how does the Champagne Marmite taste? (Naturally, I tried it on a piece of toast with butter.) It is a bit runnier than the Guiness Marmite, and does have a distinctive taste of champagne. It’s not bubbly of course, but that’s a minor drawback. But most of all, the label is just so right.

You can read more about the Champagne Marmite on the Lovers’ Marmite blog. Viva Marmite!

Hmm, I wonder if I can somehow make Marmite fit with rice…

(As an aside, when you’ve been running a food blog for more than 4 years, you get contacted by all kinds of PR folks, and this is the one of the nicest experience I’ve ever had in that area. I feel even more warm and fuzzies towards Marmite now, if that’s possible. ;))

Japanese Valentine's Day chocolate giving customs in miniature

maki — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 17:08:16 +0100

As I wrote about last year, Valentine’s Day in Japan is fraught with social stress. Somehow, the chocolate manufacturers have managed to convince the whole society that a girl or woman can’t just give chocolates to the ones they love. (And it’s only the women who give chocolates in Japan on the 14th, not men, unlike other countries.) She must also give giri choco, or ‘obligation chocolates’, to people she ‘owes’; bosses, teachers, and fathers-in-law.

Now you can see this kind of social giving in miniature! Re-ment, the maker of amazingly detailed diecast miniatures which I’ve also written about before, has this set of two types of chocolates: Honmei or giri?! (Your real target, or obligation?!) The caption says this:

Chocolate assortment: The present for the boss is a chocolate assortment that we all chipped in for. The boss is quite a gourmet, so we couldn’t just get any old thing, but this makes the grade doesn’t it?

Handmade chocolate cake: A cake I’m proud of, that uses Belgian couverture lavishly. Tonight I’m inviting him (my boyfriend) to my room, for a Sweet Valentine’s Party.

I do agree that handmade is the ultimate luxury these days, because time is more precious than money! But…does this mean that if your Japanese girlfriend gives you a storebought box of chocolates, that she doesn’t really care for you? You decide.

The Honmei or giri?! set is part of the Zeitaku Sweets (luxurious or beautiful sweet things) collection. You can get it from J-List or eBay (where merchants often sell individual sets instead of a whole collection). But beware…Re-ment collecting is very addictive.

Uh..uh...beetle larvae shaped chocolates

maki — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 08:39:06 +0100

Chocolate. It’s such a lovely, malleable substance. It can be shaped into anything really. Anything.

But, one wonders what kind of twisted mind came up with this idea…chocolates shaped like kabutomushi (rhinocerous beetle) larvae!

Avert your eyes if you are squeamish. You may not want to read this while you’re eating.

(If you’re getting here from the front page, pause and breathe in deeply before clicking that ‘continue reading’.

If you’re up to it, keep scrolling down.

(ready?)

They look somehow uh, worse, in multiples.

According to Yahoo! Japan News (Japanese), these were displayed at a ‘regional products fair’ at a department store in Akita, which is in northern Japan. They are made by a confectionery maker. They’ve been so popular at the fair that they’ve been selling out within an hour every day. Apparently they have been a big hit because they are so kimo kawaii (a combination of kimochiwarui, or ‘gross out!’ and kawaii). As a matter of fact, according to the maker’s website (Japanese of course), they have been so inundated with orders that people who order will receive the product after April.

The larvae bodies are made of milk chocolate with crunchy ‘flakes’, covered with white chocolate, with dried cuttlefish (sakiika, a popular beer snack) for the legs and orange peel for the mouth. Each one is 4.5 cm (almost 2 inches) long.

If these are too tame for you, they make them in an adult flavored version (with a rum-laced ganache). They also have some virulently colored potato grubs (imomushi), which are made of bean paste (an).

Yes I know, Japanese people are weird. Kimokawaii!

(If you are in Tokyo, it seems the maker is selling the little buggers at the Chocosweets Exhibition at Sunshine City in Toshima-ku.)

Did you learn to cook in school?

maki — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:57:06 +0100

The UK government is instituting an interesting school policy. Starting in September, cooking courses will be compulsory at schools in England. (I guess it’s not for Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland yet?) It’s part of their campaign against childhood obesity. (Read more about it on the Guardian Word Of Mouth blog.) It’s a very appealing idea, though I’m not sure if it will accomplish their goals, if they aren’t eating right elsewhere. But we shall see.

I had to take what were called kateika (domestic science) courses in Japan, in the 5th and 6th grades in elementary school and the first 2 years of junior high school. (In junior high it was for girls only; the boys got to do gijutsuka, which meant mostly building fun things. I wanted to do that more than the cooking and sewing!) I don’t think we did a whole lot of cooking (I remember doing more sewing for some reason) but I do remember some of the things we made.

A basic vegetable soup - though bacon was used for the “dashi”.
Rice with green peas (mame gohan)
Sweet potato paste with chestnuts (kuri kinton), a standard osechi (New Year’s feast) item…except that the teacher couldn’t get a hold of chestnuts so we had to use apples instead…so that was actually ringo kinton…
Some sort of freeform rock cakes or such
Pork and ginger buta no sho-ga yaki
For some reason, a fancy sole meunière
Sandwiches, the Japanese way - with soft white bread, mustard butter, the crusts cut off neatly, and the whole thing kept nice and moist (shittori) with moist kitchen towels!

I’m not sure if any of that was very useful - we never learned fundamental skills like how to wash rice, how to make a dashi, and so on. The only one that was useful was the sandwich class, so if I want to hold a tea party I’m all set! There were time constraints of course, which prevented the teacher from doing anything too complicated. I do remember that the classes were always chaotic - and we’re talking about fairly well-behaved Japanese schoolkids! I wonder how the British teachers will fare.

Did you take cooking classes in school? If so, what did you learn? Do you think cooking classes are a good idea?