Gateau Chocolat from Raku Raku So

Apologies for the long absence. I have been adjusting to a new, full-time job. A job closely related to tourism and thus to food, and maybe because our work is also related to the arts or maybe because we get so many high quality food gifts in the business, we all seem to appreciate the fine points of good food.

Recently when my co-worker Michiko asked me to do a favor proof-reading an English text for a friend of hers, we agreed on a barter of proof-reading for cake, chocolate cake, actually Raku Raku So’s gateau chocolat. Raku Raku So is in Kameoka, a city on the other side of the western hills of Kyoto, where thick fog fills the valley most mornings and the produce is delicious and abundant because of the high water table.

I recently had a chance to go to Raku Raku So for a dinner with the whole office staff. We trucked out in the company Benz and got a table outside in the beer garden.

Raku Raku So used to be the home of a very wealthy man who laid the railway through Kameoka. The large estate includes a beautiful traditional Japanese garden that is lovingly taken care of by Michiko’s younger brother. The buildings on the estate have been converted into a traditional Japanese ryokan inn and has both a Japanese restaurant, an Italian restaurant, and the beer garden, where we had our barbecue dinner.

The best part was we got to barbecue our own dinner right on the table over little grills filled with hot charcoal that gave the sausages, vegetables, thinly sliced pork, and seafood a delicious smokey flavor. I couldn’t stop eating the sausages that I kept insisting were just as good as German sausages. Sadly, there is little chance I’ll ever be able to test that comparison.

We also had two kinds of spaghetti from the Italian restaurant, Cinghiale, including one with a hamo (pike conger) and cucumber sauce. Hamo is a traditional summer specialty of Kyoto prefecture. The knife skills necessary for finely scoring the fish before poaching it is amazing (I’ve seen it demonstrated a few times on Japanese TV), but exactly that skill seems to determine the final flavor. [And I just learned why!  Hamo has too many bones to remove before eating that instead chefs finely score the fish to break all the bones into tiny, edible pieces.] I don’t remember how much of the hamo cucumber spaghetti I had, but at least thirds and maybe fourths. It was so yummy!

We finished the meal after a tour of the whole Raku Raku So complex – including my first time in an actual tea room, which had been built by Michiko’s husband, a traditional tea room carpenter – with coffee and sorbet in the

Michiko gave me the gateau chocolat from the Cinghiale Italian restaurant on Sunday . It was a box of six large, brownie-like pieces. I had one each night after dinner for the last four nights, the last one this evening (the other two my roommate ate).

I am no cake expert. In fact, I don’t allow myself the pleasure of eating cake except for very special occasions or exceptional reasons like there’s a box of cake in my kitchen. But this cake is delicious! Its soft crumb releases a delicate sweetness and strong, almost bitter chocolate explosion. And every evening these last four nights, I ate a slightly smaller dinner than usual to allow myself this treat.

A note to Michiko: I will do proof-reading for any of your friends at any time in exchange for food!

Spicy tofu with ground pork

Americans may question this combination. Why put a meat-substitute with meat? Sadly, tofu gets a bad rap in the states as a health food. Yet high-quality tofu (or practically any tofu in Japan) can be absolutely delicious even raw with a dab of ginger and a little soy sauce dribbled over the top. This dish, mabodofu, brings together the soft freshness of tofu with the contrasting texture of ground meat and unites it all with a bit of spice, an absolutely wonderful combination. Make a whole meal out of it, by piling it on an oppulent bed of red-leaf lettuce and eating it with a bowl of steaming hot rice.

Mabodofu is originally Chinese. I have no idea if the Japanese completely changed the flavors when they adopted it into their repetoir. I've only had it in Japan. Whenever I've gone to the lunch place where I ate this dish the first time ever, filled with businessmen, cigarette smoke, and super delicious lunch sets, I hope this dish will be the daily special as it was then. I'm never in luck, though. Now the cigarette smoke and slightly out-of-the-way location keep me away, but I still remember that mabodofu.

Sometime last week, I picked up a top quality cake of momendofu, or firm tofu, at Nishiki market on my way home. The day before, I'd finally gotten a small jar of tobanjan, a Chinese spicy paste made from soy beans and a little reminiscent of miso paste. In my kitchen, it easily came together for a quick dinner which few people could regret for its nutritional value and delicious flavors.

Mabodofu

(serves one)

1/2 cake tofu, cut into small cubes

60g ground pork

oil

1/2 tsp tobanjan

1 tbs sake

1/2 cup water

1 1/3 tbs soy sauce

1/2 tbs corn starch mixed thoroughly with 1/2 tbs water

1 tsp sesame oil

1 green onion, sliced

4 to 5 red leaf lettuce leaves

a bowl steaming hot white rice

Put a dab of oil into a frying pan and toss in the meat. Breaking it down into small pieces as it cooks. Add the tobanjan, then sake, then water. When the water starts boiling, add the soy sauce.

Gently put tofu cubes into the pan, carefully stir to coat the tofu in red, a let it cook for about 5 minutes.

Pour the corn starch/water mixture over everything and gently stir it in. Dribble a touch of sesame oil over the top and place in a bowl lined with lettuce leaves, and sprinkle with green onions.

Ittadakimasu!

Perhaps I should re-title this blog Cooking with Chopsticks: A guide to cooking for one occasionally homesick foreigner in Japan. With a strange array of ingredients available at the grocery stores and markets and familiar ingredients only sold at out-of-the-way and over-priced import stores, the old favorites can be hard to find and unaffordable on a single income. But that is where the challenge begins.

In most import stores, perhaps the only thing I've found that's sold for reasonable prices are canned beans of kinds not found in the normal grocery store (which only carries azuki, large black beans, and white beans that might be white kidney beans). I would prefer dried beans that don't float in that strange liquid, but they're at least twice as expensive. Recently after being enticed by my friends' conversation about hummus, I bought some canned garbonzo beans at Meidi-ya on Shijo Ave.

The resulting hummus was most fulfilling, and since my former host mother is a marvel at bread-making, I asked her to make some pita bread to go along. Although I was nervous if this dish would appeal to the Japanese palate, it was a success! Even my host brother who dislikes beans gobbled up his pita dipped generously in hummus.

The next day in my apartment, I made a sandwich for lunch that was incredibly satisfying! Into the pita I spread hummus, laid lettuce, tomato, and cucumber, a dab of mustard, and for lack of falafel, a small omelet that I made by adding a touch of water to one egg and stirring it vigorously with salt, pepper, and a bit of dried thyme. This I scrambled gently in a pan, but before it started to dry, I scraped it all together into a mound the shape of the bread. The result was an omelet fit perfectly to the pita.

Here is the recipe I used for the hummus, very basic. I will post the pita bread recipe as soon as I've tested it myself.

Hummus with Pine Nuts
(adapted from the Epicurious.com recipe)

2 garlic cloves

1/2 tsp salt

1 can garbonzo beans, thoroughly rinsed
1/3 cup tahini or whatever sesame paste is available – I used Chinese Chi Ma Jan, because it comes in bigger jars than the Japanese Nerigoma

1/2 of a juicy lemon's worth of lemon juice (us to taste)

2 tbs olive oil

1/2 cup water that's not from the can!
one handful fresh parsley

2 tbs olive oil

2 tbs pine nuts

In a blender or food processor, combine garlic, beans, sesame paste, lemon, 2 tbs oil, water, and salt, and blend thoroughly. Add salt to taste and water to smooth the texture.

Pour the hummus into a serving dish, rinse the blender, and throw in the parsley and 2 tbs oil. Puree thoroughly until you have a green colored olive oil.

Toast the pine nuts in a dry (no oil) pan until they turn lightly brown. Set them aside to cool.

Sprinkle olive oil and pine nuts on top of the hummus just before serving.

Ittadakimasu!

Any guesses what this is? I’m not asking the Asians or the world travelers now. Having only eaten this plant from a can or cooked into a stir fry in the states and Europe, always in unrecognizable rectangular-shaped, thin slices, I never imagined it looked like this in real life. It’s a bamboo shoot. They’re in season now, and being a Kyoto specialty, Nishiki market’s shops have mounds and mounds of them for outrageous prices. Why the high prices? Because they are most tender and have to be dug up while still underground before they reach the sunlight in the early early morning, and bamboo can grow a meter in one day. I never thought I could afford one…

Until one fine day last week, I was walking through Nishiki market on my way home from work and I happened to see a small basket containing three at a small vegetable shop. The price tag said 525 yen, and I could hardly believe I could get even one much less three of them for that price. I incredulously had to reaffirm by asking the shopkeeper. Yes, they were 525 yen, and although they were a bit smaller than the giants at some other stores, they were being sold for less than half the normal price. I bought them without thinking twice and far from regretted it.

As I was packing my treasure away, the shopkeeper gave me a small bag of sawdust-like powder and gave me a bunch of instructions on keeping them for up to a week. Being far too ecstatic with my find, I hardly listened and didn’t ask him to explain again. Half way home my dream bubble burst and I panicked. How was I going to cook these things?!?

After a bunch of e-mails to my host mother’s cell phone, I apparently still messed up the procedure for preparing them for storage. You’re supposed to peel them and boil them as soon as you get them home!!! After that you can keep them in clean water, replacing the water every day, for about a week like the shopkeeper had said.

Lucky me, my host mother showed me the prep process on my next visit to her home. She chopped off the tip of the shoot, pushing her knife through all the tough leaf tips at an angle. Then, she cut along the body of the shoot from tip to base, making the cut deeper at the tip than the base. Shoving her fingers into the the cut, she pried away all the tough leaves in one go. (It had taken me a much long time taking off one leaf at a time the day before.) The delicate parts of the leaves that stick to the shoot when you pull the rest off don’t have to be laboriously peeled. The purple bulbous bits at the bottom of the shoot, however, should be cut off. For a good picture of the cutting procedure, look here.

After peeling them, the bamboo shoots should be boiled for 30 to 40 minutes in water with the sawdust like powder, which is actually rice husks (米ぬかkomenuka).  Skim off any foam that forms on the surface. Turn off the heat and let the bamboo shoots cool with the water until they reach room temperature. Then put them in a container with fresh water to go in the fridge.

My favorite bamboo shoot dish is the simple bamboo shoot rice or takenoko gohan. The fresh shoots can really shine with the white rice, giving it an occasional crunch and a subtle bamboo shoot flavor that is much gentler than the stuff from the can. Leftovers can be made into delicious rice balls the next day (recipe included).

Takenoko Gohan (竹の子ご飯)
(serves 4)

1 bamboo shoot, prepared as described above (If you want to use canned or vacuum sealed bamboo shoots, try boiling them for a little while to get the harshly flavored liquids out.)

3 or 4 shiitake mushrooms, finely chopped

3 tablespoons soy sauce

a pinch of salt

2 1/2 cups rice, cooked

3 cups water

Chop the bamboo shoot into quarters and then into small slices and put them with the mushroom pieces in the boiling water. Add the soy sauce and salt to the water and allow the liquids to boil down to about 1/3 the original mass.

Add the cooked rice to the pot and mix well, using slicing motions and by turning the rice on itself gently so as not to break the kernels.

Any leftovers can be made into rice balls (おにぎり onigiri) the next day. Make your hands wet with cold water and sprinkle salt on them. Grab about 1/2 cup of rice and shape it into a ball or triangle. Wrap with nori seaweed and eat!

Ittadakimasu!

Although I had never even heard of taco rice before I had it in Japan, this dish can easily cure the I-want-food-from-home syndrome. It is a concoction created on the southern Japanese archipelago of Okinawa, where a large population of American military personnel still controls half of the main island. I can just imagine a homesick US military guy wanting some tacos, but not having the right ingredients for it, sticking the taco fillings on top of some rice, which like in all of Japan is abundant.

I remember the first time I had it on a trip to Okinawa over Christmas with three friends who were studying with me in Kyoto. On Christmas Eve, we arrived in Naha on a warm day and stretching our legs, found our stomachs to be in need of sustenance. On the main street of Naha, filled with souvenir shops, restaurants, and obvious American influences, the first place we saw offering food was a small cafe or bar with a sign out front "Taco Rice." After polling the group, we decided to go inside and ate a large hearty meal that was simple, delicious, and reminded us of home.

Recently, however, I rediscovered it in Kyoto in a cafe that is rapidly becoming one of my favorites, Sarasa on Tominokoji somewhere between Oike and Shijo. Their taco rice is much more delicately done than the simple one I remember having a few years ago in Naha. What I like most about their dish is the cheese baked over the rice and the chili powder dusting the top of the lettuce.

My variation is a close approximation of Sarasa's, with the addition of fried onions and garlic mixed into the steamed rice. The result is pure taco, with a subtle reminder that I'm still in Japan.

Taco Rice (タコライス)
2 large servings

1 cup of rice, cooked in 2 cups water

1/2 fresh onion, finely chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

olive oil

salt, pepper

7 oz. minced chicken (or pork or beef)

3 tbs pureed tomato sauce (or maybe 1 tbs tomato paste?)

2 tsp chili powder

1/2 tsp coriander

1/2 cup water

1 tomato,chopped

1 cup cheese (1/2 cup per serving, adjust to taste)

4 broad leaves red leaf lettuce, chopped

lemon juice (a few drops from half a lemon)

chili powder to taste

Heat the olive oil in a fry pan and add the garlic and onion. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and stir continuously for 1 or 2 minutes, until the onions are barely soft. Mix the onions, garlic, and the tomato pieces gently into the white rice with slicing motions instead of mashing motions.

Heat a little more olive oil in the pan and add the meat. While cooking, break the meat into small chunks. Once the meat is cooked, add the tomato sauce, chili powder, coriander, water, salt and pepper. Let this simmer until the water reduces and the meat is thoroughly coated in flavors.

Place the rice in an oven-proof bowl and top with cheese. Place it in an oven at 375 degrees for 5 minutes until the cheese is thoroughly melted. Top the bowl with the meat mixture and lettuce. Over the lettuce squeeze a few drops lemon juice and dust with chili powder. Top with a few pieces of tomato and serve.

Although this is rice, it is most commonly eaten with a large spoon and therefore makes a perfect meal in front of the TV (not that I'm advocating it, but when you live alone…)

Ittadakimasu!

My apologies for not posting for so long. While I'm in the middle of a job transition and dedicating more time to my traditional arts studies, this blog has been set aside in the crunch. That is not to say that I haven't eaten delicious food recently or that I've not been cooking. On the contrary, but the time to compose a coherent post about each item has been lacking.

So, in an effort to make up for the vacuum, here's a picture of a bento lunch I got at a Noh performance last week. Beautiful, isn't it? And this is only the top tier of the box, which contains various vegetables, two shrimp, fried fish in a sauce, a tofu/shrimp ball, rolled omelet (tamago maki), stuffed cabbage, two oysters, and a piece of roasted eel (my favorite). In the lower tier was rice mixed with beans (indicating good fortune), some fruit, and a traditional Japanese sweet (wagashi).

All of the food was quintessential Kyoto, a far cry from the bento lunches you can buy at the convenience store on the corner (which are good in their own right, mind you). This bento was like an edible mosaic, each bite a different color. May the future hold more culinary opportunities like this.

Ittadakimasu!

It seems that clams are in season right now. On Japanese television, clams feature in every cooking show right next to fresh bamboo shoots (I want to get one shoot to experiment, but they're so expensive!). Fresh spring potatoes and fresh onions are also appearing in super markets, but the weather is wet and uncomfortable for someone who loves to take her bike everywhere like me. So, I decided on clam chowder yesterday.

It was my first time cooking clams, so I had to look up the basics of handling them. Apparently, clams are fresh if they are tightly closed. About half of mine were open when I took them out of the refrigerator the same day I bought them, but when I tapped their shells, they closed again, indicating they were alive and fresh. To get the sand out of the shells, you're supposed to soak the clams in salt water, but clams from the supermarket are usually already clean.

When finished, the soup was lightly creamy and infused with clam juice (since I'd cooked the clams whole with the rest of the soup) and the flavors of roasted onions and butter. The clams were not chewy, the potatoes smooth in texture and the onion gentle in flavor. It was perfect for a rainy, unfavorable evening watching the fifth season of Sex and the City.

Clam Chowder (クラムチャウダー)

(adapted from the Japanese Staub cookbook, Staub de Jinwari Hokkori Shiawasena Reshipe by Shigenobu Hatsue)

First, I chopped up 1 onion and 2 fresh potatoes (left unpeeled but scrubed thoroughly) into rough chunks. The onions entered la cocotte over low heat along with 1 tablespoon butter, and I stirred the onion chunks constantly until they were lightly browned around the edges and verging on translucent (about 5 minutes).

Then into la cocotte went the potatoes and 9 oz. clams for a minute, followed by 1 cup water, sea salt, and freshly ground pepper. I brought the water to boiling, turned the heat to low, and let it cook for another 5 to 6 minutes while I made a fresh salad with balsamic vinaigrette.

During this cooking time, the clams began to pop open, indicating they were done.

Finally, I added 1 cup milk to the pot and let the soup come back to a gentle boil. With the color from the browned onion and the clam juice, the soup was irresistible and lived up to its appearance when devoured shortly thereafter.

Ittadakimasu!

The Museum of Kyoto's exhibit on Kyoto food culture

The poster looks tempting, or so I thought when I first saw it large outside the Museum of Kyoto, which is between my home and work, so I've seen the poster almost every day. What it says loudly in Japanese is nicely translated into English at the top: Traditional Food Culture in Kyoto – the history and charm of Kyoto cuisine and vegetables, and it's on display until April 16th. How fascinating. What might I learn, I thought, so when I finished work early one afternoon, I stopped by the museum on my way home.

(You may ask why Kyoto people have so much pride for their vegetables, which is easily explained if you look at a map. Kyoto is in the middle of the Japanese main island, about equidistant from the Japan sea in the north and Osaka bay in the south. Traditionally, there was little fish in Kyoto, which means also you don't go to Kyoto for their sushi… let's have a moment to sigh deeply… But their vegetable dishes can be exquisite in both flavor and aesthetics.)

However, after paying ¥1000 with an excited sense of anticipation, riding up to the fourth floor of the museum on an elevator, and getting off at the exhibit, I felt a little misled. I should have asked myself beforehand, "What could a museum exhibit about food?" Museums exhibit preserved objects for viewing. Food is for consuming and is difficult to preserve.

At least I got a general review of the different kinds of cuisine lumped together under the term "Washoku" (Japanese cuisine). First there was Honzen Ryori 本膳料理 (Literally, "food on raised trays"). Raising food onto trays is a way of offering it to the Shinto gods or to someone exalted. This was apparently how the members of the Japanese court ate all the way back in the Heian period (794 – 1185). Shojin Ryori 精進料理 is Buddhist vegetarian cuisine.

Then, Kaiseki Ryori comes in two versions (written in different Japanese letters). Kaiseki 懐石 are meals for extended tea ceremonies. These meals came from the Buddhist practice of monks putting hot stones in their robes to stem their hunger (hence the second character meaning stone) and developed into simple tea breaks and eventually into equisitely prepared yet humble meals accompanying tea ceremonies. The other kind of Kaiseki(会席) is what you will find in fancy Japanese restaurants throughout Kyoto, elaborate meals of many small dishes in multiple courses.

By the end of the exhibit, my head was spinning from A) the overexposure to untranslated Japanese texts, which I can read only slowly (obviously, the little bit of English on the poster was seriously misleading), and B) the desire to eat. My recommendation for anyone unable to read Japanese is either take a Japanese friend along or don't go. It's not really worth the entrance fee. I should probably have spent the money on a nice lunch that would have given me a more intimate experience.

On the positive side, the exhibit got me thinking about all the kinds of foods I want to try here in Kyoto. The options are practically endless. Wouldn't it be great if Kyoto put on food events, perhaps along the lines of Paris' Le Fooding? One wonders… and feels one's stomach growl. Time to find some food. Ittadakimasu!

Salmon Ochazuke

Perhaps the simplest, most homey Japanese food, Ochazuke is basically tea poured over rice. Traditionally, ochazuke comes at the end of an elaborate meal, maybe as a way to bring you back down to earth, but its often eaten by itself for lunch or a quick meal.

On the last day before I returned to the states after studying abroad here in Kyoto for a year, I got to request the meals at my hostfamily's. For lunch, we had ochazuke and for dinner, sashimi, perhaps the most ordinary and most refined meals in Japanese cuisine. Ochazuke is so plain, people have compared me to elderly Japanese for liking the dish.

Usually people add little flavor packets to the tea/rice combination that have nori seaweed, mini rice crackers (arare), dried salmon flakes, and green tea-flavored salt pieces. But then, who knows what's actually in these packets and how they preserve the fish bits. It's a bit questionable if you ask me. So I tried to recreate it, with some help from Maki's ochazuke recipe.

Shake no Ochazuke (鮭のお茶づけ）

Basically, this recipe can be split into three main parts: rice, tea, and stuff for flavor. Like Maki says, the stuff is probably difficult to find outside of Japan unless you have a good Japanese grocery store nearby, but I imagine its possible to get a good part of the ingredients together.

I cooked the rice fresh for my ochazuke, but day-old rice or frozen rice can be reheated and works fine since there are so many things added to it for this dish.

Any green tea works for this dish. I used a genmai-cha, which has little popped rice kernels in it, but gyokuro-cha, sen-cha, or hoji-cha would work well too, to different effects.

As for the flavor bits, I used the stems and leaves of mitsuba, which is similar to Italian parsley, though mitsuba is a bit bitterer and less spicy. I fried a salmon steak with salt until it was lightly browned on the outside and still juicy on the inside, and then broke it up with my chopsticks, taking out the bones in the process. With scissors, I cut a sheet of nori (the same stuff you use to roll up California or other sushi rolls) into thin strips. The little brown dots in the picture are arare, small rice crackers that give the dish a bit of crunch, though perhaps you could break up other senbei-type rice crackers. A dash of salt and perhaps a dab of wasabi finish the dish.

Ittadakimasu!

Brocolli rabe in wine sauce

With the first huge load of vegetables from my former host mother's overabundant garden out in Kameoka came a bunch of na no hana (broccoli rabe), which I have never seen before coming to Japan. I guess I was stuck in a hole for years (aka college dining). The first time I cooked na no hana (with the sesame saba), it was too bitter to finish. I thought I would never have it in my kitchen again… until Okasan gave me a plastic bagful along with spinach, green onions, mizuna, etc. from her garden.  I hardly gave it a second glance and put it in the back of my fridge.

But such fresh, beautiful vegetables need to be eaten! They can't just rot in the fridge! And I also like to think of myself as capable of facing my food fears, so the na no hana came back out of cold storage after half a week. It was still crisp and the flowers in perfect condition. I really wonder how long this vegetable can last.

However, I wasn't about to follow Okasan's directions of boiling and putting a bit of soy sauce over them, because A) boiling takes out all the nutrients and makes vegetables limp, grey, and dull, and B) salt, which soy sauce has plenty of, seems to just enhance bitter flavors. Instead, I followed Julia Child's advice for all green vegetables… blanche them (boil very quickly) to bring but the vegetable's color and not to overcook them. And instead of soy sauce, I made a wine sauce based on Alanna's wine-glaze recipe, that has honey and soy sauce in it, the perfect balance of sweet for the bitter rabe, and a nice note of Asian flavor to make the dish work with dinner, a meal of ochazuke (tea poured over rice, recipe at a later date).

Wine-aji no Na no Hana (ワイン味の菜の花)

To blanche the na no hana, I brought a pot of water to boiling. Into the pot went the freshly washed vegetable for no more than a minute. The color became like that in the picture, but the water also turned instantly green, a sign, I think, that a bit of the bitter flavor also left the vegetable.

For the wine sauce, I put 1 tbs butter into a sauce pan until it melted. In went 1/2 cup red wine and 1 tbs honey. Right before putting it over the na no hana, I put in 1 tbs soy sauce (which I added this late to have it stand on its own against the wine) and 1 tsp corn starch to thicken the sauce (which it didn't have enough heat to do).

Since I only made a handful of the vegetable, I had far too much wine sauce, so I put it in a jar in the refrigerator for use on the rest of the bagful of na no hana or on some meat maybe…

Ittadakimasu!