Honesty

Along rural roads, you can see little stands like this, where you can buy a bag of four persimmons (like these), tangerines, carrots, or whatever the neighboring farmer is growing. It's an honest country, so the stands usually are unattended, though the money boxes are often more secure than this one.

How much for André champagne?

How much do these cost where you are? These prices, in yen, convert to slightly higher amounts if you change the yen to U.S. cents.


Regular Tabasco


Bosco Extra Virgin olive oil -- I forget whether this is 200, 225, or 250 ml.


Boones (lacking an apostrophe) fruit wines.


André Champagne, Brut and Rose.

Nimono ("boiled things")

The famous Japanese dish called nimono -- literally translated boiled things -- is a no-brainer for a cool fall day, or cold winter day, plenty of which are on tap now.





Basic directions: First you make your dashi, then you put in the cut up things and boil them until they're done.

More detailed directions:

1. Dashi for nimono
Put one or two pieces of dried konbu in one or two liters of water (or litres or quarts, depending on where you are cooking it). Bring the water to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer 15 minutes. Take out the konbu. Save for some other dish. Put in a small handful (or a large handful) of katsuobushi (flaked dried bonito). Wait one or two minutes until the katsuobushi has all sunk to the bottom. Strain out the limp flakes and throw them out. (If anyone knows a good use for used katsuobushi, please let me know.) Add about 1 teaspoon each per liter (litre, quart) of liquid: sake, mirin, sugar, soy sauce. Stir. Stop. You're done.

2. Add more or less whatever you want, meat, fish, vegetables, tofu. Boil until everything is done and nothing is falling apart.

3. Serve with spicy Japanese mustard -- or not.

Konbu -- before and after

Before and after simmering 15 minutes to make the dashi for the nimono.

Mushipan

Sweet steamed bread, sometimes sold by little trucks that play a kids' song that was popular about the time I was starting kindergarten. The bread, too, was created about that time and is now available in many flavors, including curry. Sometime when I hear the truck go by at night I'll try to get a picture.

Apparently this is one of the few places in Japan where the trucks still run. Mostly you have to buy your mushipan in stores (like I did).

Persimmons drying

Thanksgiving party pictures

Turkey Challenge Report

I slathered the bird inside and out with herbed oil:

• 1/4 cup olive oil
• about 1 1/2 teaspoons each of sage, oregano, and thyme
• salt and pepper and LOTS of chopped garlic

After two hours at 160 C, it was a little burned on top but only 120 F in the thigh, so I increased the temperature to 170 and put a bit of foil over the breastbone. After 3 1/4 hours the thigh was still only 158 F so I took it out, put it on a dish, and put it back in, then microwaved it for 6 minutes.

The meat was tender and moist, with a lovely aroma from the herbs -- especially the garlic!

The birds were ordered on the web from the Foreign Buyers' Club. I think they were about 5,000 yen each. That's about US $55 for each 5 kg. (11 pound) turkey.

Eggplant miso

Sauce

• 1 part mirin
• 1 part white sugar
• 2 parts miso

Directions

1. Cut eggplant into cubes (or whatever).
2. Slice bell pepper (or similar) into strips.
3. Saute in oil.
4. Mix with sauce.

Best served at room temperature.

Thanksgiving Challenge

Oden

It feels like winter, though it was only about 8 degrees last night. Still, we've started using the kerosene heater and one of the things you can do with those, other than die of carbon monoxide poisoning if you forget to allow for ventilation, is keep your oden warm.


Oden is stew. Actually, it's interesting that I just typed the word stew. Last night I explained that word to a couple of my students although it's used in Modern Standard Japanese as a gairaigo (a foreign word in regular use). But it's only used for one particular kind of stew and, of course, the pronunciation is very Japanese.

しちゅ　　pronounced she-chew, with equal emphasis on the two syllables.

It means chicken cream stew.

Beef stew is also popular in Japan but it's called nikku jagga.

Oden

Oden Recipe

Get a box of Oden base


and add it to a pot of water, or use one of the thousands of standard recipes for making your own broth. Then throw in cut up chicken, chikuwa, whole eggs (in the shell), konyakku (cut in any shape you like), whole potatoes, carrots, whole blocks of tofu . . . basically whatever you like. Like the French pot au feu, you can add ingredients at any time. Restaurants that specialize in oden ofen add ingredients throughout the day. However, I've never heard of any that add ingredients throught the century, as is supposedly true for a few country inns specializing in pot au feu.

Don't add the potatoes too soon or they might disintegrate.

Most people eat with Japanese mustard, the kind with horseradish in it, though many restaurants also offer a sort of sweet and sour sauce I'll have to look up sometime. I prefer it to mustard.

Vending machines

In the supermarket

I drink this, daily.


This is cafe aulait.


This is, as it says, creamy powder to turn black coffee into, well, cafe aulait.

Hamachi nimono

With onion and eggplant, simmered in water, shoyu, mirin, and a little sugar. The three pieces of hamachi (not sashimi grade) were 298, but marked down to half price.

A yam, by any other name . . .

We had Daigaku Imo for dessert tonight, made from Naruto Kintoki Satsuma Imo. Each part of those names has a story behind it.

Imo mean potato.
Daigaku means university.

So the candied sweet potatoes we had are known as "University Potatoes."
I had no idea why, so I browsed around the web. Most websites that ventured an opinion suggested that the dish was popular among university students. One website suggested it had to do specifically with Tokyo University. I contacted a friend who's exceptionally well-read on things Japanese, partly because she's a professional translator. She checked the Japanese version of WikiPedia (the English version hadn't had anything) and found two stories, each of which derived the name from a different Tokyo area university student connection.

Back to the names. . .

Naruto is a city just north of here, where the sweet potato variety Naruto Kintoki was presumably developed.
Kintoki uses the Chinese characters meaning golden time. Sounds like a nice name for a vegetable. There a bean that uses kintoki as part of its name.

Naruto Kintoki package label


Satusuma is the old (pre-20th century) name for one of the southernmost parts of Japan. It was one of those few parts of Japan that had contact with the outside world during the two and a half centuries when the country was closed on pain of death to anyone having contact with foreigners. Sometime in this Edo Era a new crop appeared in Satsuma, a new variety of potato unknown in the rest of Japan. Or perhaps it had always been grown there. Or perhaps it had come by trade at an earlier period. But I think that most likely it appeared as the fruit of some clandestine trade carried on with people in the Ryukyu Kingdom (Okinawa) who themselves had extensive trade contacts with Southeast Asia and China. (Both China and Japan claimed to be the overlords of the tiny Ryukyu Kingdom. That's a story for another time, or maybe another blog.)

Then a famine hit Japan. It affected the whole country, except for Satsuma. When representatives of the Bafuku (the national government) inquired into the reason the people of Satsuma hadn't starved along with the rest of the country, they were told about this crop that had done well and kept the local people in good health. The government ordered that seed plants be sent throughout the country, to protect the whole nation. As a result, this new potato, known as The Potato from Satsuma (Satsuma Imo), came to be grown even in the Tokyo area, where university students could eat it, coated with a sweet candy glaze.

Cut the sweet potatoes into chunks, whatever size and shape you like. I left the skin on some, which is basically never done in Japan. Soak them in water, drain, and pat dry.


You're supposed to deep fry them. I sauteed, which didn't work as well, probably because I wasn't careful enough to cook them evenly but thoroughly. Meanwhile, I combined about 1/3 cup white sugar, 2 tablespoons of water, and 1/2 teaspoon of soy sauce in a saucepan and brought it slowly to a boil, stirring constantly, until it was clear.



Unfortunately, I burned them a little.



Then I tossed them with the syrup and sprinkled on freshly toasted white sesame seeds. You're supposed to use black, but I didn't have any. Eat warm, cool, or cold.

Tthey tasted okay, but I'll try to control the heat better next time.

Incidentally, plain baked sweet potatoes have long been sold out of carts trundled around the streets of Japan. I saw such a yatai (portable shop) parked in front of a hospital last winter. Daigaku imo are sold everywhere, even in the take-out section of supermarkets.

And by the way, I bought these Naruto Kintoki at the local farmers' market. The label included the grower's name.

The Big

That's the name of the supermarket I just went to.

There used to be a few supermarkets in this general area called Megamart. About two months ago, they closed, only to reopen last week with this new name.

Actually, they're part of Aeon, one of the biggest retail chains in Japan. They also run one of the biggest English Language school chains in Japan. Our nearby mall, where I saw Half-Blood Prince, is actually Aeon as well. Almost all the shops are Aeon, they just look like the little shops you find in a mall in other countries.

I'll take my camera next time, since I know you want to see the bottled, cold tea called

Teas' Teas -- London

and some of the other goodies I saw there.

Balanced (kid's) breakfast

Japanese style

Daikon and carrot sumono

Part of dinner tonight:

• Cut the carrot and daikon into shreds. Ideally, the shreds should be about half as thick as these. I was feeling lazy.
  
• Sprinkle them with salt. (About a teaspoon for about 2 cups of shreds.) Mix gently. Wait five minutes.
  
• Gently (so as not to break the shreds) squeeze the water that has been drawn out of the vegetables by the salt.
• Pour on a little of the sauce (see below). Mix it around (gently, remember?) and then gently (what did I say?) squeeze it out.
• Pour on the rest of the sauce. Wait at least 30 minutes before serving. It's okay to wait 12 hours or more.

For the sauce, mix together 2 parts sugar and 5 parts each rice vinegar and water. Heat to near boiling, stirring. Then turn off the heat and let it cool before using. It's nice with a few toasted sesame seeds sprinkled on just before serving.

Record sushi roll

This isn't about food in Japan, but about Japanese food in the U.S.

http://www.kcbs.com/Berkeley-Students-Break-Sushi-World-Record/5631549

California Roll seemed strange to me when I first heard of it, and very strange to my Japanese acquaintances when I told them about it years ago. Now, however, as you probably know, the family-oriented kaitenzushi (conveyor belt sushi) restaurants have all sorts of modern variations on the theme: weiner, roast pork, grilled beef, salmon with mayonnaise, and others.

At one time, right after World War II, toro and especially otoro (fatty tuna belly meat and super-fatty tuna belly meat, from the bottom of the belly) were considered weird, foreign-influenced innovations. That part of the tunaconsidered too fatty for humans. It used to be fed to the family dog or cat.

More winter crops

New sushi place

Not far from us is a kaitenzushi place (conveyor belt sushi) called Sushiro. It always seemed crowded, especially on weekends, and it's also the closest sushi restaurant to our house, so we finally went there yesterday when we needed some place to go to celebrate the Yankees's victory. It turned out that the crowds were right. Of the cheap sushi places we've tried (105 yen per serving, about $1.10 per plate, though there is less rice per piece than at regular sushi places) it's definitely the best. The hamachi was, good, the tai was very good, and the hotate (scallops) were excellent. Lee was a little disappointed that they didn't have weiner sushi, but they had her other favorites: egg, tuna salad, and cucumber.

One unusual sushi topping that they had, shirako. That's the sperm sack from a (male, obviously) cod. Interesting change from the common fish egg sushi. Tobiko, flying fish roe, and ikura, salmon roe, are standard.

Christmas cake

I found this ad for Christmas cake in a store this evening.






Christmas cake is quite an institution in Japan, one that really surprised me when I came here to live. Of course, in England, plum pudding is a Christmas tradition, and in Italy pannetone is an essential part of the holiday season. But in the US all we have is fruitcake, and nobody I know gives, let alone makes, those lead-heavy agglomerations of dry fruit and sugar that DaveBarry has satirized so thoroughly. These light, fruit-topped confections as a Christmas tradition seem to be unique to Japan. Right?

They're so ubiquitous that the term "Christmas cake" used to be used for single young women approaching their 25th birthdays. The idea was that after the 25th, nobody wanted Christmas cake, so after their 25th birthday, nobody would want these women. I don't think anybody says that anymore, but it was a common saying 10 or 15 years ago.