Japan Navigator

Curry udon

Originally uploaded by Ganjin

An interesting and delicious “fusion” dish where Japanese udon noodles are served in a curry soup. The curry soup can be made with curry roux or from left-over curry. It is a good idea to add some dashi to make it thinner in that case. Another way is to use curry powder and add flour or starch to make the soup thicker. As regards which ingredients to add, there is a lot of freedom here: onions and green spring onions are staples, meat in the form of small slices of beef or chicken is optional. In the example here, Chinese cabbage and “gobo-maki” have been added. Gobo-maki are rolls of fish paste with a piece of burdock in the center. Curry udon is an excellent example of a combination of two popular dishes!

The Visit Japan Campaign has set up a channel on YouTube where I found these video’s about Japanese Cuisine. They are nice introductions and above all beautifully made.

Gochiso, part 1, is about seasonality and kaiseki cuisine:

Gochiso, part 2, is about wagashi, traditional Japanese sweets:

Gochiso, part 3, is about sushi:

Gochiso, part 4, is a do-it-yourself cooking file:

Enjoy!

Nigori sake

Originally uploaded by Ganjin

Nigori sake is getting more popular in Japan, but to my feeling it in the first places suits auspicious occasions as the New Year. We had a strong nigori genshu (an undiluted, raw nigori). The sake set is typical for the new year, too. Of course we did not warm the nigori and only used the kettle to pour from. The cups are flat “sakazuki”.

Zoni

Originally uploaded by Ganjin

Zoni or the New Year soup consisting of white miso with rice cakes (mochi) is literally a “killing” dish. The half-molten rice cakes get extremely sticky and every year several persons – mostly elderly – choke on them. But zoni remains a fixed part of the New Year meal. The advice is to use smaller mochi and to take small bites off them – take care not to suck them up with the miso soup!

Auspicious food for New Year

Originally uploaded by Ganjin

Here is a plate of New Year food, of which most items have an auspicious connotation: Starting at the bottom and going around clockwise:

- kazunoko or herring roe – the name sounds the same as “many children”

- Koya tofu, freeze-dried tofu

- the black pouches next to that: konbumaki or kelp rolls, sounds like “yoroboku” or “to enjoy oneself”

- renkon or lotus root -see my previous post;

- kinton, puree of sweet chestnuts

- tazukuri, small dried sardines; “tazukuri” means “preparing the rice fields” and this term sounds like “otsukuri”, which in its turn is another word for sashimi, raw fish. In other words, “tazukuri” is “sashimi for farmers”, who could not eat real sashimi in the past as they didn’t live near the sea…

-datemaki, rolled omelet

- and in the middle: red (pink) and white slices of kamaboko fish paste

There was no space left for the black beans, kuromame, which sound like “mame ni ikiru”, to have a healthy life.

Looking into the future

Originally uploaded by Ganjin

Lotus root (renkon) is one of the fixed New Year dishes in Japan. It is considered as auspicious for three reasons:
1. The lotus is a flower symbolizing the process of enlightenment in Buddhism, as it rises up from the mud of the pond towards the light.
2. With its spokes and holes, a slice of lotus root, as on the picture, resembles the Wheel of the Law, an important Buddhist symbol.
3. Through these holes, the Japanese say, “you can see the future” (”saki ga mieru”).
What does this future show you?

A very happy, prosperous and healthy New Year to all readers!

2010 will see an overhaul of this blog. As you have noticed, my posting has been on hiatus since October – the main reason being a problem with the database of the site. Whether it is a bug in Wordpress or MySQL I have not been able to determine, but both the “categories” and the “links” have disappeared and I am not able to revive them – when I make a new posting, they are refused. The only solution I can think of after much searching and scratching my head, is to start from scratch again and build a new database. But when I do something as large as that, I might as well shift to other software. I have been studying Joomla (which is quite popular in The Netherlands) but it is not as easy to use as Wordpress and doesn’t have a native comment system. Whatever I do, I will keep the archives although when I have to republish them locations will change. Anyway, in a few months time I hope to have a new site up and running here and be back to regular postings as well!

I love food from Okinawa, not only because it is supposed to be very healthy (Okinawa is called the “Land of Longevity”), but in the first place because it tastes so good! Like all culture on these tropical islands, the old Ryukyu Kingdom, Okinawan cuisine contains elements of both China and Japan.

My favorite Okinawan vegetable is the goya, a very bitter gourd that looks like a grotesque, extra knobbly cucumber. Goya can be eaten in salads, made into tempura, but the most common way is to use it in a stir-fried dish called goya-champuru. Besides goya, leeks and eggs are used, and lots of tofu. What is bitter, is good for you, so goya is thought to be the secret behind the Okinawans’ famous longevity.

[Goya Champuru by Maaco]

Another favorite is rafuti, tender chunks of pork stewed in a sweet brown sauce made from miso, soy, sugar and awamori.

Awamori is the national drink of Okinawa, a powerful distilled drink with alcohol percentages between 25 and 30. It is very fresh and tasty, too, as it contains a lot of citric acid. It is often drunk mixed with hot or cold water.

The food that really suits awamori is my third Okinawan favorite: tofuyo. This is fermented tofu, super dense and concentrated. It tastes like a strong moldy cheese and is eaten in tiny bites. It marvelously complements the awamori! Okinawan food and awamori have become very popular in Japan and in all the big cities you can find Okinawan eateries and izakaya (bar-restaurants).

When I lived in Tokyo, I never thought much about neighboring Saitama as a prefecture with possibly interesting sakes. The image of a series of dreary, endless Tokyo bed towns was too strong for that. But is was exactly the vicinity to Tokyo (the Edo) and its numerous consumers that helped the sake industry develop here. Transport arteries were the large rivers, the Arakawa and Tone Rivers – and they also provided plenty of water for the brewers.

Important highways also passed through Saitama: the Nakasendo and the highway north, the Riku-U Kaido. Saitama is therefore dotted with historical towns. Many breweries are spread out along these two highways and not a few of these were Oshudana, breweries operated by Japan’s best pre-modern businessmen, the shrewd Omi Shonin, merchants of Shiga Prefecture.

The western part of Saitama consists of the natural beauty of the Chichibu basin, with many old shrines. Here, too, there is good water – not for nothing is Ogawamachi an old paper-making town – and therefore plenty of brewing opportunities.

So if you re-assess your image of Saitama on the basis of this information and then hear that it is No. 8 in sake production, with about 40 breweries, that almost sounds like a matter of course. The prefecture is also active in developing new yeasts (”Kaori Kobo”) and common brands (the ginjo “Saiko”). Sake from Saitama is usually light and fresh.

Some famous Saitama breweries are:

Kikuizumi (Takizawa Shuzo, Fukaya City; 1863)
The name means “Chrysanthemum Spring” – chrysanthemums were thought to bring long life.
Stands along the Nakasendo highway, in “brick producing town” Fukaya. All processes are traditional and by hand. Won many prizes in the last 20 years.

Shinkame. (Shinkame Shuzo, Hasuda City; 1848)
Founded in 1848, Shinkame only brews junmai sake. Instead of making flashy young and fragrant sakes, it insists on a deep and complex flavor. Another token of its solidness is that its uses a generous aging period. The name of the brewery ‘Divine Turtle” goes back to a turtle who lived in the pond Tenjin-ike that used to lie at the back of the brewery – that turtle was considered as a messenger of the gods. “Hikomago” is another brandname used by this brewery.

Information from: National Tax Office and Japan Sake Breweries Association, as well as the JAL sake site, Sake, the Liquid Essence of Japan.
Regional profile gleaned from: Nihonshu no Tekisuto (2): Sanchi no Tokucho to Tsukuritetachi by renowned sake journalist Matsuzaki Haruo (Doyukan, 2005). Some information about individual breweries based on Matsuzaki Haruo, Tastes of 1635 Shinpan Nihonshu Gaidobukku (Shibata Shoten 2003), as well as The Sake Companion by John Gaunter (Running Press) and The Insider’s Guide to Sake by Philip Harper (Kodansha International).

The “Nihonmatsu Chochin Matsuri” (Lantern Festival) is one of the three largest lantern festivals in Japan. It is held every year from Octobber 4 to 6.

[Photo by Ad Blankestijn]

In fact, it is the annual festival of the Nihonmatsu Shrine, going back for 350 years. But contrary to for example Kyoto’s Gion Festival where the daytime parade of floats is the main event, in Nihonmatsu the “yoi-matsuri,” the evening previous to the festival on October 4, is considered as the most interesting spectacle.

[Photo by Ad Blankestijn]

Seven carts from different wards of the town are decorated with about 400 lanterns, strung in six layers above each other. A sacred flame is brought from the shrine and then all the lanterns are lighted. Next the floats parade through the town to the accompaniment of festive music of the drums and pipes played by people inside the carts. Every float has its own festival music and typical rhytm.

[Photo by Ad Blankestijn]

Young people follow the carts energetically dancing and shouting “washo, washo” to the music. The lanterns shine in the dark sky of early autumn and from the many stalls lining the street waft the nostalgic smells of fried squid, soba and octopus balls. The nice thing about this festical is that it is still rooted in the local population. They hold it for their own enjoyment and not just to attract tourists.