Two secrets (not my own) that I don't want to forget

1. You can speed up the maillard reaction when caramelizing onions by adding a pinch of baking soda.

2. When you want to "puree" garlic while you are chopping on your cutting board, add some salt so that the grains help to mash the garlic.

Nitakiya Kinsai, omakase heaven

S & I were lucky enough to experience one of the best meals of our LIVES in Tokyo, in a neighborhoody yet elegant izakaya named Nitakiya Kinsai, in Naka-Meguro.  We were accompanied by (and really could not have done without) our now-fluent Japanese speaking friend, T, under the recommendation of another good friend, L, who unfortunately could not join us in Japan this time.

But onto the food.  Friends, everything was as delicious as it looked.  Because I don't speak Japanese (though I definitely want to learn), I can't tell you as much as I'd like to about the food, but I will tell you how much I enjoyed it!

We put ourselves in the Kinsai chefs' hands, and requested an omakase dinner.  This meant that each lovely course would be a surprise, and would no doubt consist of fresh, seasonal, and creative dishes.

So delicious.

Course one started off with a light, lemony broth, garnished with roasted sesame seeds and finely sliced chive-like herbs.

I would eat this everyday.

Course two was a kind of tofu unlike any other I have ever had.  It was soft and smooth, and had a sesame flavor reminiscent of tahini.  It sat beautifully on a shiso leaf, and was accompanied with freshly grated wasabi and delicious rock salt.  Perfect.

Almost too beautiful to eat

Course three - my first sushi (well, to be specific, sashimi) in Japan experience.  And it didn't disappoint.  There might not be an English word for the fish on the left, but delicious will have to suffice.  In the middle was a sustainable skipjack tuna, and on the right, two silvery shiny slices of delectable mackerel.  I am a surprisingly conservative raw fish eater, and normally avoid mackerel because I find it, well, too fishy!  This was amazing, because it was so fresh.  Fresh fish is just a different animal. 

You know you want to dip your spoon in...

Course four, and I could cross one thing off of my must-try list.  Sea urchin.  I've always avoided it because of my conservative fish tastes, and rightly so.  To quote T, un-fresh sea urchin tastes like toilet water.  Not so with fresh sea urchin, which is smooth and mild and salty and lovely.  It sat upon a silky egg custard, which complemented the smooth texture of the urchin quite nicely.

Nicer than a Christmas present

This wonderfully fragrant package was filled with grill-steamed mushrooms, including shitake, matsutake, and enoki mushrooms.  The matsutakes were especially out of this world, and perfectly garnished with lime juice and sea salt.  Five courses, and still more to go!

MMMMMMM.

This dish was a wonderful contrast in flavors and textures.  The ball looking thing was made from chopped shrimp and coated in finer-than-angel-hair fried pasta.  It was accompanied by a pepper, eggplant, and smooth pile of shaved daikon, and sat in a lovely mild salty dashi broth garnished with some type of mild yet fresh herb.  I could eat this one everyday too.  By course six, I was getting really full.

No more words.

And what do you eat when you are starting get full?  Meat, of course.  Though I had eaten very little meat all summer, it wasn't hard to get right back into it with all of the delicious pork in practically every dish in Japan.  However, this was amongst the best, again accompanied by sea salt, some type of sweet miso, and a very hot pepper paste in addition to juicy grilled vegetables.  Course seven, even more full.

See the pumpkin hiding in the back?

Course eight was probably my least favorite, but it was still really delicious.  Another ball in broth, this time a chicken meatball with taro, Japanese pumpkin, and summer squash.  I really enjoyed the pumpkin though, and I wish that I could buy this in Ithaca.  We'll have to try to find it on our next pilgrimage to Mitsuwa Marketplace in Edgewater, NJ.

Like a painting, isn't it?

Somehow I managed to make room for the last meal course, two beautiful pieces of sushi.  Not sure what the one on the right was, but the one on the left was a delicate, delicious piece of anago (sea eel). 

There's always room for dessert!

Though you are full, there is always, always room for dessert, isn't there?  By what magic does your stomach mysteriously make room?  A lovely bean gelatin with matcha ice cream and a dark syrupy soy based glaze, with nutty soy powder to top it.  A beautiful light finish to a robust yet delicate meal.  I will remember it forever.

Ramen tears

Over the years S and I have, together and with friends, come up with or use existing food terms that refer to reactions from eating (usually adverse): food coma and meat sweats have larger circulation of course; and we have something called p-mode (p is for pig) where you not-so-secretly compete with the other person you share your dessert with so that you make sure to get your fair share.  Well, today at Nantsuttei Ramen I've discovered a new eating reaction.  I call them, ramen tears.  Ramen tears well up in your eyes when the broth is so delicious that you can't help but cry.  What is this magical bowl, you ask?

You may be asking, why is it black?!?  According to this blogger, the black stuff is called ma-yu, an oil flavored with burnt garlic.  Wow, was it intense.  The soup was surprisingly mild though, so when the ma-yu was distributed through the bowl it was amazing.  The broth was so delicious it literally brought tears to my eyes.

Then I bit into the noodles, which were also quite delicious, and more along the lines of what I had been expecting... thinner than at Setagaya and a slightly yellower color.  See for yourself --->

The pork, which you can see a bit in this picture and better above, was fine.  It didn't hold a candle to the pork from Setagaya, but the broth was so amazing that I'd have to say that this bowl trumped the other one.


In addition, I enjoyed the atmosphere at Nantsuttei a bit more.  I could hear lots of hustle and bustle in the background, of the female server communicating with the 3 ramen chefs, and the decor felt cozy and warm.

This was a sign that was posted in front of my seat, I just thought it was cute.

Whatever I just ate, it was delicious...

I think that this is going to be the theme of the trip.  Since I don't speak Japanese, it's lucky that I will eat pretty much anything as long as it is delicious (except tripe, lordy I hope that there is no tripe hiding in any of the dishes I order).  That means that it's going to have to be eat first, identify later.  And my first real Japan food experience taught me that.

Being so busy this summer and having pretty much no time in between my Berkeley program and my Japan trip meant that I couldn't spend as much time as I would have liked to planning the Japan trip.  Normally I would obsess over where I wanted to go when and what I wanted to eat, but I didn't have time to do that.  Which means, be open to whatever I find wherever I find it, and keep my expectations in check.

However, that doesn't mean that a bit of research isn't in order.  I am staying at Shinagawa, and it turns out that my hotel is literally across the street from Shinatatsu Ramen Row, with 7 famous ramen shops lined up quite conveniently, all waiting for me to try!

Thanks to this very useful blog post, I was able to identify where and what I ate, after the fact.  I'll keep you in the dark a bit longer though, to recapture my experience better!

I first wander around the Shinagawa station, and walk in the opposite direction of ramen row.  I had a sense that I was going the wrong way, but I wanted to orient myself to the area anyway and saw a few interesting looking Japanese fast-food type places.  I walked less than a block though, before realizing that it was just too darn hot to walk around without a destination in mind.  Also, I was really hungry.

So I turned around and walked toward ramen row, and found it quite easily.  I spent a little time taking in the different signs, but felt quite overwhelmed.  So, I decided to rely on one of the more useful tricks of the trade when you don't know where to eat... social proof.  Which place looked the most busy?  Then I saw this:

Of course, I knew that this is where I must go.  Plus, there were about 8 people in line in front of this vending machine, mostly salarymen and women in business wear on their lunch breaks.  They would know where to go!





What to get, what to get?  How to use the machine?  My heart was racing but my stomach said 'go for it.'


I knew I wanted ramen, and the red on this button caught my eye:

I didn't know what it was but it looked good. I could see onions and roasted pork, so I was sold.  I pushed the button, got my little ticket, and stepped inside.  It was quite busy but very efficient, so I didn't have to wait long. A server greeted me in Japanese, and I quickly said, "aigo ga wakatimas ga?" "Do you understand English?" -- she indicated only a little, took my ticket, and told me, "wait."  I did.

A few minutes later, when some parties left, she led me to a seat and I waited some more.  I looked around at what everyone else was having, and it looked like the guy next to me ordered the same thing.  Good, I thought.

Then my bowl came:

Wow, it looks just like the picture on the vending machine!  Amazing, that.

I dipped my spoon in, and wow.  The broth was not what I was expecting.  It was thick, not really like a broth, but like gravy.  It was quite salty, but not as salty as my favorite broth, shio.  It had a slightly seaweedy flavor, not actually strongly porky.  Hm, I thought.  This is just okay.

Then I tried a bite of the noodles.  You can't really tell from this picture, but they were a lot thicker than what I was expecting, almost flat.  And, thank goodness, the noodles were amazing.  Really amazing.  They had a perfect chewy texture.  Then I tried the thick root looking thing, which I think was bamboo.  The onions added a nice hearty flavor.  Then another moment of truth... I bit into the pork.  WOW.  The flavor was ridiculous.  Really, really, really, really good.  Sometimes I flirt with vegetarianism but it's meat like this that makes that a pipe dream.  This is what pork was meant to taste like.  It must be roasted in some way to get the incredible caramelized rich flavor, but I don't think I could ever replicate it.  Ridiculously good.

So what was it?  If you clicked on the other blog post (Go Ramen) you already know, but in case you didn't, it's called Kumo Ramen, according to Go Ramen Kumo means cloud. I ate at Setagaya, with Chef Maijima Tsukasa at the helm.  Here's a sign in case you want to find it yourself!

Bad eggs...

Of course you'd expect that I'm following the massive egg recall that is underway.  Explanations are proliferating (very similar to the peanut butter product recall), ranging from blaming industrial/factory farming, weak regulation, greedy CEOs, and national distribution.  There are some success stories emerging around the detection of outbreaks, with some state public health departments doing crack detective work with limited resources.  New food safety legislation has still not passed, mired in cross-state politics, battles over different visions of food safety, different views on who is to be blamed, and how producers of different sizes and localities will be affected. 

So what can I add to the plurality of voices here?  It is important to think about all of the above factors, and even more that I haven't mentioned, but I believe that more attention should be paid to two things: 1) clearer evidence chains that emphasize who is producing evidence and how this evidence is produced should be made publicly available.  2) if we indeed have "bad egg" companies that endanger the whole food system, what kinds of structural factors produce these "bad eggs" (ahem ahem ahem contract farming)?  A simple focus on greed and moral failing does not address deeper issues regarding the conditions that produce "bad eggs." 

Why is my zucchini bitter?

 To be clear, these farmer's market beauties were decidedly NOT bitter.  However, while dining in one of my favorite cafés and procrastinating from my piles of work, I was munching on a lovely panini with foccacia, pesto, grilled onions, and sauteed portobello mushrooms and zucchini.  Sounds delicious, right?  It was, except for the horribly bitter zucchini.  I decided to actually find out what exactly makes the zucchini bitter and answer this pressing question for all of you.  While folk theories about what causes this bitterness abound, it turns out that bitter zucchini is caused by the presence of what are called cucurbitacins, or, more specifically, oxygenated tetracyclic triterpenes.  These phytochemicals, according to Fenwick et. al (1990), start to have toxic effects at doses of 3 g.  Wow, um, that's not very much.  Cucumbers are another common veg that often has this problem.  So the next time you bite into a bitter zucchini, don't force yourself to eat it.  It's not the way you cooked it, it's not because it's too old.  Toss this one, and your next one will probably be fine.

Fenwick GR, Curl CL, Griffiths NM, Heaney RK, Price KR. Bitter principles in food plants. In: Rouseff RL, ed. Bitterness in foods and beverages; developments in food science 25. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1990:205–50.

Ode to Heirloom Tomatoes

Heirloom tomato,
How I love thee.
Let me count the ways.
You are summer embodied,
With your fleshy acidic sweetness,
and colors!
Red Yellow Green Purple Orange.
And shapes!
Sphere Pumpkin Face Grape Alien.
I enjoy thee simply,
with salt only,
and remember that though our love is fleeting,
I will taste you once again each summer.