Random Food for Thought

None of this is from a particular day or event. Just some cool stuff I've run into.


This beauty is a grated white yam that was part of breakfast at Yamanako-ko. It is grated raw and used more for its texture and temperature than flavor. Host father suggested putting your rice/barley mixture in here. Because its semi-liquid, its hard to eat alone. The texture is described as "neba-neba." Anything that leaves strings when you lift it up qualifies as "neba-neba." Natto, konbu, raw egg, and this yam are all neba-neba.
Also at Yamanako-ko, we stopped for afternoon tea in the music box museum. This is the most interesting way I've seen tea served. It was a good, very good, black tea served inside a glass teapot with fruit. The fruit was steeping as long as tea and sweetened it, but not too much. After the tea, you got plates of fresh whipped cream for the warmed fruit.
Tomato booze at Yokohama. Souchou is the distilled spirit of choice in Japan, ranging from 20-40% ABV. Usually its made from grain or potatoes. Sweet potato is also popular. This is the first time I saw tomato.
Black tsukemono beans purchased at Yamanako-ko. They are about an inch long. Never saw anything like it.


The family doesn't have an oven. It's more of a giant microwave. Very few families have ovens as we know it. What they do have, however, located under the gas range, is a mini-salamander. This is what they use to grill fish, chicken wings, you name it. The thing kicks too. Its not much different than the ones in restaurants, just smaller. I wish they would design this for American ranges. You can see the sanma in this one from a few weeks ago.

Eggs

The eggs in Japan are magical. I don't think it is the product itself, but how the Japanese cook them. Judging by how a raw egg comes out of its shell (and into my waiting rice bowl) I don't think they are any better or fresher than a supermarket egg in the USA. A farmstand egg if given a chance probably will blow a Japanese egg away. I wrote about the hanjuku preparation before of the onsen-tamago and even the cafeteria egg, with a slightly cooked white and reasonably firm yolk. These are the eggs they put on hamburgers and serve as a side with a little yuzu and soy sauce. I think today I realized there is an even better way to cook an egg.

This preparation is called ni-tamago. It's the egg you saw in my ramen bowl in a previous post. I didn't realize it then, maybe because I was too exited about eating my first bowl of noodles in Japan, but the ni-tamago is king in that bowl of ramen, or bowl of anything. A ni-tamago has a fully cooked white but a barely cooked yolk. The yolk is mushy and even runny, kind of the opposite of onsen-tamago. Also, the egg is cool, probably a few degrees below room temperature but the time the bowl gets to you. The outside is slightly brown and tastes like a sweet soy sauce marinade was applied. Taste and texture (again, Japanese and texture) together, cool, sweet, tongue-covering egg in a bowl of hot, steaming ramen was new sensation that was unbelieveably good. Too bad you only get two halves of egg. I tried to solve the problem by cutting the egg in quarters to double my fun. A few nights ago I had a ni-tamago in a bowl of eggplant, pumpkin, and mushroom curry soup. The cool egg with the hot and spicy curry was even better than with the ramen. This curry was outstanding, halves of japanese eggplant roasted very tender with the skins scored. This served two purposes; make the eggplant easier to eat and helped catch the curried broth. There where two hunks, yes, hunks, of mushrooms. Like still on the stalk. Maiitake and Honshimeiji. They were so strongly flavored that they were able to hold up to the spiciness of the curry. Here is a recipe I found for ni-tamago.

Subway

Woah...Never would see this choice in the USA. Unfortunately there are no 500yen 30cm subs.
Yes, there is a Mushroom and Meatball sub. Yes, you do get real honshimeiji mushrooms with your sub.
Can I have a 15cm shrimp and avocado on honey oat please? Don't forget the mayo.

I don't know what Cheese-Roasted Chicken is but it sounds a bit like Chicken-Fried Steak and just as scary.

Also the Herb Dog is questionable

Food for Thought

I go to a college. There are cafeterias. So how does a Japanese university cafeteria compare...

As a note, I eat here when I have a 40 minute lunch break, otherwise its always out because the cafeteria is good, but not goooood.


There are two floors, each with about 10 main offerings and 5 side dishes. Food is Japanese, or japanese take on American stuff. There are various udon bowls, chazuke (rice with green tea and some other stuff), a certain type of fish, sanma, is seasonal right now and you can get your chazuke with sanma meatballs or even a whole broiled sanma for yourself. There is terryaki chicken with mayo (the japanese thing to do). Fried pork cutlet curry (very japanese). Hamburgers are popular but don't come with buns. Hamburgers in Japan come with spaghetti and a soft-boiled egg and soy sauce. I gotta try the egg on an american style burger. Eggs are so awesome here. Side dishes range from western salad, to a half-boiled egg, roasted squash or sweet potato, various tofu preparations, etc. You can feed yourself pretty well for around five dollars. Tea is self serve in the dining area. This tea out of a vending machine is better than any green tea I've had in America outsie of a Japanese restuarant. Quite amazing. I've said it before, but want to reinforce that GREEN tea here is GREEN. It's not supposed to be oxidized like English teas. It should taste green and vegatative. Everything I've had blew Lafayette's cafeteria away. So long as you stay away from the curry rice and fried pork cutlet, it doesn't leave you feeling gross when you walk away. Here are some picks of sweet potato, chilled half-boiled egg, and the soup with sanma meatballs.

Few items of note

1. Grapes-My host family loves grapes. They buy them by the case and we eat them with every meal. 2 kinds, big red globe grapes and ordinary looking green ones. Semi-seedless. Both kinds blow our grapes away. Our grapes taste like water. These taste like grapes and if you are lucky, wine. The skin is a bit thicker and my family sucks the grapes out of the skin but I munch on the whole thing because the skin has good flavor on the red ones. The middles slide out of the skin like jelly. They are clear and cool and taste like fruit.

2. Mushrooms (shitake) Best ever found in ordinary supermarket. Everything a mushroom should be. Japanese came up with "umami" and no surprise what are ordinary cooking mushrooms embody the umami goodness that should be in every mushroom.

3. Tako (octopus). Host mother bought an octupus leg for sashimi. (I got to slice it!) It was so delicious that I think it came off of the octupus right there in the market. It was slightly salty on its own and just needed a dab of soy sauce and wasabi. Octopus in america is more a textural affair, for better or for worse, unless it is seasoned, but it had actual flavor on its own tonight. It tasted eerily like a roasted pork chop. Meaty, tender, little salty, but had a slight crunch at the end since it is a mollusk.

A funny thing happened on the way to Akihabara...

I wanted to go to Akihabara today and had to take a subway to Shibuya (major station) and then transfer to a train. While transferring, I ran into food. It seems like every major station has a major department store built into it, and in Japan major department stores mean that the basement has a grocery store and tons of brilliant pre-prepared food. I haven't been in a Japanese grocery store yet that has not been impeccably clean and magnificently laid out, offering the Asian version of a Wegman's selction. There are no monotonous aisles that stretch on forever, but sections of the store that specialize in this and that. The attendants are knowledagble and friendly. I saw more varities of fish today in that store than ever before. There as a whole fish section and a sashimi section, with the fish monger taking care of costumers himself and slicing the fish on the spot for sashimi. Vegetables, mushrooms, fruit, all that blew away American offerings. The Japanese do food better. And that was just the first half.

The prepared section was something out of a movie. The offerings, quality, and prices were just unreal. There were two bakeries, real bakeries making real bread. Cassa loves, baguettes, big poofy loaves, sweet little pastries, challah, you name it. The ovens were visable behind glass worked by sharply dressed professional bakers in chef garbs. It smelled amazing. I didn't buy any but no doubt this bread would be as good as any in America. There were rows and rows of beautiful cakes, tarts, and pastries. There was a varietal honey stand carring 20 different types, sold prepacked and in bulk. Honey from europe and asia separated by different bee and plant species. The area withe beer, wine, sake, and spirits was just as impressive. A whole row of refridgerators selling imported and domestic beer, stuff you never see in the United States. The wine cellar was in a temperature controlled space and had wines from all over. Prices comparable to US because of no tax. The was a section of sake and japanese spirits as well. Other sections of prepared food were tonkatsu...fried cutlets of pork and chicken, sushi, grilled eel, mochi balls, it went on forever. Pics don't do it justice but here they are.













One thing I did eat was gelato, yes they have gelato too. It's something that needs improvement. Flavor selection was ridicuous. Green tea, azuki bean, pumpkin pudding, black seasame, sweet potato, cream cheese caramel, mint...probably about 20. Pumpkin pudding was disappointing. Really no flavor. The gelato wasnt dense like Italy, it was kind of dry and tasted like it had a cream cheese base. But it sure looked pretty.

Hakone Food

Late on the post but I have to give the rundown of Hankone's food. Gotta start with the onsen-tamago. Eggs are one of my favorite foods and I eat them close to every day in every way but never this way...cooked in the water of a volcanic spring. I had them two ways. One way, hanjuku, or half-boiled seems to be the more authentic, tastier way. These eggs are cooked at around 70 degrees C for 15 mintues. The result is a soft white, tofu-like, and a semi-hardened yolk. I gotta say they were a spectacular way to cook an egg. I would love to make a dish out of them, cold, with a little ponzu and chopped scallion. I think the soft boiled eggs can be replicated by using an electric skillet set to the appropriate temperature. After 15 minutes, you'll have an onsen-substitute tamago.The key to getting a cooked yolk and soft white, according to internet sources, is cooking at a low temperature. Only one little corner of the hot springs had these, a nice little secret. I was surpised because according to the internet, halfboiled is the true way for onsen tamago. The massive operation that was going on live were hard boiled eggs, cooked around 80 degrees. They came in packs of 5 and the shells were completely black. Still warm too. It was a delicious hard boiled egg but nothing special. The pics I have are of the hard boiled ones only.









One downside to Japanese food is they like sickeningly sweet things (except tea?) We stopped at an old rest stop and got a rice porredge and mochi...rice cakes made from pounded rice flour. They are sticky and sweetened, steamed or grilled. They have the stickyness and elasticity of bubble gum but are edible and dissolve after a few good chews. Japanese love these things. Everyone in the family is nuts about them. The three you see here are soy sauce, sweetened sesame seeds, and some kind of sweet bean flavored. They are edible, but the amount of sugar in them and on them gave me a sugar crash and nasty night. I just can't take that much sugar.