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nourishing the body

greg

Sendai Eats

On Sunday I traveled from Narita to the Tokyo station and then took a shinkansen fast train to Sendai. Here is the local Narita station on a beautiful sunny morning

Here is the Tokyo station shinkansen platform. See everyone queuing up for their cars? You have to know the Japanese system in order to understand it. Instead of questioning it you jut have to go with the flow and everying is ok.


On the way to Sendai it is apparent that every inch of space is utilized in Japan.

Near Sendai you an see mountains in the distance.

They are crazy for this game here.

This is a food blog, after all. So I guess I should talk about some food. Below the Sendai train station there are many restaurants. I found one in particular that did not have a picture menu. I had to drag my server outside to point at the food I wanted in order to place my order. As you can see I found some pretty good shrimp tempura and noodle soup for a very reasonable 880 yen. That’s less than $10 US. Pretty good deal.

Onigiri

I’ve just arrived in Japan for a two week trip. I am looking forward to many wonderful Japanese meals while I’m here. But after being up for 24 hours and finally getting to my hotel jetlagged and stuffed full of awful airline food, I was not in the mood for a fancy restaurant meal. Fortunately the Japanese have convenience stores on just about every corner. I grabbed a quick snack before I passed out from jetlag. A Sapporo and a couple of onigiri hit the spot. Onigiri is a rice ball, usually stuffed with something, wrapped in a crispy sheet of seaweed. The packaging is ingenious as it has layers of plastic to separate the nori from the rice so that it does not get wet and soggy. You peel the package open from top to bottom then pull the two corners and the plastic pops off. You end up with a perfectly wrapped onigiri. I had one with shrimp and one with tuna inside. Wash that down with some good Japanese beer and you can’t ask for much more.

Szechuan Green Beans with Pork

I think stir fried green beans are my all time favorite dishes and they are so easy to make. This Szechuan inspired dish is not too hard to make. I started by quickly steaming some green beans in a hot pan with a splash of water and a cover just until they turned bright green. That takes only a minute. You don’t want to overcook them. Once flash steamed the beans are quickly cooled in cold water and drained. I like to precook the beans a bit as it makes it easier to stir fry without burning them. Next I took some chopped pork and seasoned it with salt, pepper and Szechuan peppercorn. I added some chopped garlic and ginger to the meat. I heated my wok until it was almost smoking, added some oil and threw in a half teaspoon of red chili in oil. This was the kind of chili that is like red pepper flakes that have been cooked in oil and placed in a jar. The meat was added to the wok and it was fried with constant stirring just until cooked.

The meat was removed from the pan and set aside.

The wok was heated again and the beans were tossed in. The beans were seasoned with just a dash of salt and pepper. They were stir fried for 3-4 minutes until they started to get browned on the sides. I like to add my ginger and garlic near the end so it doesn’t burn. So, once the beans were almost ready I tossed in more garlic and ginger. This was stirred for just a few moments and the meat was added back into the pan. A teaspoon of garlic chili paste and a splash of soy sauce. That’s it! Serve hot over rice.

Leftover Turkey Soup

On a cold November day after Thanksgiving, nothing is better than a warm hearty bowl of turkey noodle soup. The roasted turkey carcass was converted into nectar of the gods and the noodles were homemade. Thick, rich and creamy, this was the perfect thing to warm the soul. Not much too it, really. I cooked all the leftover turkey bones and carcass with carrots, celery and onions to make the broth. Strained it off. Peeled whatever meat was left on the bones off and cooked it all together with more fresh vegetables and noodles.

Divine Dining Redux #5 – Blueberry Lavender Ice Cream

I have an on-line friend from California who contributes regularly to the recipes and cooking forums over at Gardenbuddies.com. This year she has started her own fantastic blog where she shares her little piece of heaven in California. If you haven’t seen Jain’s Once in a Blue Moon, you MUST. Last year on Gardenbuddies she shared a recipe for ice cream made from fresh lavender and blueberries. Can I say, this recipe is truly divine? The perfect ending for my Divine Dining dinner. Another Gardenbuddies contributor, Mary, has posted her recipe on her outstanding blog, Once Upon a Plate. You can find all the recipe details there. I only made slight changes.

It starts with 1 cup of blueberries. I used frozen blueberries. Fresh or frozen, it doesn’t really matter. They are both excellent. These are cooked with sugar and just a bit of water until the blueberries begin to pop open.

Once the blueberries have broken down I pureed them in a blender and strained it using a fine sieve. The blueberry liquid was returned to the sauce pan. Recipes call for just the flowers but I didn’t have enough flowers in my garden so I just chucked in lavender leaves as well. This was cooked gently for a few minutes ton infuse the lavender flavor into the blueberry syrup. This was strained once again and vanilla and cinnamon were added.

Once the blueberry syrup was well chilled, half and half was added and the mixture was frozen in the ice cream maker.