Donuts for mature, relaxed people

Krispy Kreme donuts are spreading across Japan, and Mister Donut is responding with "Cafe Andonald."

Question: Are KK donuts worth the extra money? I've never had one.

Spice level 2

Indian food for lunch. Curry is extremely popular here, but the usual curry (as in 99%) is really mild and based on a beef roux. Once, at a curry restaurant (part of a chain) I ordered shrimp curry and even that came in a beef sauce. At one elementary school I worked at, years ago, the students planted and harvested rice on a tiny plot next to the school. After milling, they cooked it up as, you guessed it, "curry rice."

This restaurant, however, is part of a local chain that hires Indian chefs and the food is authentic North Indian. You can choose your spice level.

I chose 5. Six would have been okay. Seven is hotter than I'm used to these days.

My wife chose level 2.

Like Goldilocks's porridge, it was just right!

Takoyaki flavored soda!

Takoyaki is a treat popular with school kids and some older people. It's a piece of octopus tentacle inside a golf-ball sized dough ball cooked in a special iron griddle similar to the one my mother used to use to make grilled cheese sandwiches.

But takoyaki flavored soda -- the mind boggles!

World Instant Noodle Summit

Less salt, less filling.

Organic local food -- what a concept!

http://www.japantoday.com/category/lifestyle/view/japanese-cities-experiment-with-paris-marche-concept

Kashiwa mochi (NOT!)

The package said 柏餅 (kashiwa mochi).

But kashiwa is the Japanese Emperor Oak, Quercus dentata, and this obviously has no teeth. I've seen this growing in formerly cultivated areas that are now overgrown. It's a vine. My wife thinks probably her mother will know the name. We'll check and update this page.

My daughter didn't care, she just ate the mochi inside anyway.

The Mother of all Bamboo Shoots

Maybe not quite, but pretty big.

Cosmetic seconds

Not usually on sale in Japanese supermarkets, but one chain is experimenting with the product.

Dinner

Is Utah in Britain?

As most of you know, and the rest will know in a moment, what we in the U.S. and Japan call potato chips are called potato crisps in Britain since the chips appellation has long been allocated to what we in the U.S. call French fries. (The French, of course, call them pommes frites, which basically sounds like it means fried apples.)

So what would you expect from this bag, which loudly announces that the contents are crisps, but decorates the pack with a photo from Monument Valley, Utah?

And what do they mean by "real salt" -- as opposed to the fake salt that other crisp/chip makes presumably must use? And not only "REAL SALT" but "REDMOND REAL SALT." Is Bill Gates somehow involved? The mind boggles.

Nuka and takenoko

In line with the takenoko (bamboo shoot) picture I posted last week, here's different angle. It shows the bamboo shoots are being sold alongside nuka (糠 or ぬか), rice bran, which is added to the cooking water to remove the natural bitterness of the bamboo. To prepare fresh bamboo shoots, you peel off the outer layer of the sheath that covers the heart of the bamboo shoot. Then score the next layer of the sheath and put the bamboo shoots in a big pot of water. Add a handful of nuka to the water, bring to a boil, and then simmer for about 90 minutes. Let the pot cool to room temperature before you take out the bamboo shoots. Now the bamboo shoots are ready to peel and use.

Guess again

Now's your chance to guess again what these are, now that they're in bloom.

Eggplant

I tried a different recipe this time, with a sweet and sour dressing. I didn't like it nearly as much as the usual way, with miso.

Usual recipe

Soak 500 g of chopped or sliced eggplant in water for 10 minutes. Discard the water and pat the eggplant dry. Stir-fry until they're getting a little soft. DON'T OVERCOOK! The eggplant should resist your teeth slightly, like pasta cooked al dente. Toss them in a mixture of 3 T miso, 4 t sugar, 4 t mirin. Sprinkle them with one or two teaspoons of freshly toasted white sesame seeds. If you're not serving them right away, cool them and then either serve them at room temperature or cold, depending on the weather and your mood.

Local bamboo shoots

Local bamboo shoots have hit the local supermarket. They're expensive, 1111 yen each.

They're big, though.

My hand span is 25 cm. (10 inches).

Potato mochi

Mochi rice is pretty sweet by itself, but when you mix it with sweet potato and stuff it with anko, sweet bean filling, boy! You're definitely getting your sugar mainlined.

Warabi (fiddlehead fern)

It's most definitely spring, judging from the selections at the farmers' market. Particularly this, warabi, the almost-open heads of the fiddlehead fern. I've often eaten it, especially in spring, when it's fresh, but I had never cooked it before. That caused a little problem.

I washed them, cut them in 2-inch lengths (5 cm.), and parboiled them. When my wife came home and asked about them, at first, she wouldn't eat them because I hadn't soaked them overnight in a baking soda solution. Apparently I should have checked a Japanese recipe rather than North American, Hawaiian, and European recipes, as I did. Here in Japan, they're always soaked that way before parboiling them for three minutes, which is all I did.

So I gave them a second parboiling in a baking soda solution and they're fine. I've been having them with a different salad dressing each night, and once in a creamed chicken stew I made since, until yesterday, our cool weather was hanging on.

Still lots left. I seem to be the only one in the family who really likes them.

Have you ever eaten iceplant?

Neither have I.

Bento ads

From Hinode Shokudo, mentioned below.

Sweet potato ice cream

Sometimes my daughter seems much more American than Japanese, but sometimes . . .

We had some warm days in March, and a lot of cold ones. April is starting off like it thinks its March and wants to come in like a lion. Last night I rode my motorbike home at 7:30 and the gale force wind out of the north made me think of a time camping in winter on Mt. Lassen, lying down on the wind whipped snow to take a sunset picture.

Earlier in the day I had taken my daughter out to lunch with a friend and, after lunch, I offered her a choice of something from the bakery or ice cream. Since she's eight, she chose the ice icream. The store had 8 or 10 flavors of ice cream in cups, plus a choice of three flavors of soft ice cream (called soft cream here), vanilla, red potato, and sweet potato. She chose sweet potato. I stand in awe of how Japanese she is, sometimes.

Mangoes for US $1067.06 EACH

Read about them here:

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100407f3.html

Takuan plus

Doesn't look like takuan, does it? Takuan (沢庵) is a kind of pickled daikon. Its creation is attributed to a Rinzai Zen priest, Takuan Soho but, since he was from a farming family, I assume it was a family and regional recipe that he brought with him when he became abbot of Tokaiji, an important temple in the then-new Tokugawa capital, Edo (now known as Tokyo).

Traditional takuan is a sort of muddy, yellow-brown color. Most modern takuan is bright orange, no doubt from yellow dye # 197 or whatever. This takuan, however, has been buried in a crock of miso. How long? I don't know. It was given to my wife and she didn't ask for the recipe. It's somewhat milder in flavor than most takuan, but saltier. Maybe I should say "even saltier" since takuan is always salty.

Takuan is eaten with many or most traditional Japanese meals, usually at or near the end of the meal, as what the French call a digestif -- something sour that supposedly helps you digest your meal more easily.

It has a special and important place in meals at Zen temples where there is a particular ritualized way of eating. Each priest has his personal set of four bowls, a pair of chopsticks, and a furoshiki -- a cloth to wrap it all up. (At least, that's what I used the one time I stayed at a Zen temple. I've read that the sets vary in size from three to five bowls and some include a spoon as well as chopsticks.) At the end of the meal, each priest is given one or two pieces of takuan which he uses, with his chopsticks, to wipe out the inside of each bowl in turn. After the takuan has been eaten, hot water is poured into one of the bowls. The priest swirls it around to pick up the flavor of the takuan, then pours it into the next bowl. After the water has been swirled around each bowl in turn, the priest drinks the water, then wipes the set of bowls and chopsticks with the furoshiki, making everything clean. Finally, the bowls and chopsticks are wrapped in the furoshiki and set aside, ready for the next meal. Not a speck of food is wasted and hygiene is assured by the acidic takuan, hot water swirl, and furoshiki wipe.

Hanami

This hasn't been the best year for hanami (cherry blossom viewing) because it's been cold at night and cool and windy during the day. I heard second or third hand that the bloom was expected to start early, but it didn't -- at least, it didn't here in Tokushima.

Still, we've had two nice hanami, last night and this afternoon. Here, however, are a few pictures from various hanami over the past 7 years. Only the last two of the series are from this year, from this afternoon, actually.

Flower viewing parties go back over a thousand years in Japan, Korea, and especially China, but the custom probably didn't catch on in a big way in Japan until the Edo Era, the time of the Tokugawa shoguns (1603 -- 1868). It's only in that time of relative peace and prosperity (except for the occasional local rebellion or famine) that the Japanese merchant class started aping the aristocracy. Now everybody gets into the act, and if you have any sort of association with anyone -- work, family, club, school, gang, or whatever, you're likely to have a hanami with them. I think I went to about 7 last year, when the weather was more cooperative.

When I say the weather has been uncooperative this year, take a look at this picture from Kyoto at Wikipedia. That's what Kyoto was supposed to look like last weekend. Now look at the picture I took in virtually the same place:

Of course, some cherry trees are forwarder than others. The weeping cherry, shidare-zakura, bloom earlier than the usual yoshino somei.

The mountain cherry (yama-zakura) also bloom a little earlier than the yoshino somei, as you can see in the hills behind this museum, Dai Ku Mura. Dai Ku Mura commemorates Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which was first performed in the adjacent village by German prisoners of war during World War I.

Mickey Mouse pancake breakfast

Made by my daughter.

Hinode shokudo

A shokudo is literally a dining hall. The word is usually used for fairly plain restaurants serving traditional Japanese food, often very similar to what you might cook at home. Lately, though, we've been seeing some new, cafeteria-style restaurants in all the towns around here. Some of them are called hinode shokudo. Others are called by the name of the town where they're located -- Ishii Shokudo, Kitajima Shokudo, etc.

The food is pretty good, pretty cheap, and cafeteria-style. Also, they have re-usable chopsticks, as I showed in a posting on March 8th.

My daughter eating spinach