Japan

Shabu Shabu in Kobe

December 21, 2008 by greg Leave a Comment

Shabu shabu is another nabe dish made by taking paper thin slices of beef and dipping them into a pot of boiling water or broth for just a few seconds to cook. More on the food in a second. Let me first describe my Thursday in Kobe. This is a wonderful city just west of Osaka. Kobe Pharmaceutical University sits on the hillside looking down upon Kobe’s numerous narrow winding streets. This picture shows one of their WIDE streets! Imagine a street as wide as one car twisting and turning through densly packed homes up the side of a hill. Their big taxis climb those hills every day.

In the morning my host Naito Sensei took me to the Hatsukura sake factory for a tour of their sake museum. There I learned all about how rice is polished, infused with koji spores to convert starch to sugar, and then fermented with yeast. Of course we left with a taste and a bottle!

Dinner that evening was a slighly formal shabu shabu dinner. We ate at a traditional low table on the tatami mats. Actually there was a hole under the table for your feet so you didn’t have to sit cross legged for hours. See the nabe pots ready for action?

This sake is made especially for this restaurant. I have to say it was quite good.

We started with a small appetizer of marinated raw fugu. I would call it a Japanese seviche with its vinegary marinade.

This is onion, garlic, radish and chives to garnish the dipping sauces for the shabu shabu.

A sashimi course, of course!

A bite of crab, seaweed and cucumbers.

This is a bit of fried monkfish. The chili was not very spicy. I’ve never seen a pink batter before. Very festive for the holiday season.

Our sever brought the plates of beef and vegetables.

I am always in awe of the wonderfully marbled beef. Makes for tender shabu shabu.

Our server demonstrated the shabu shabu technique. Grasp the beef slice with your chopsticks and swish it back and forth in the boiling pot for just a few seconds. The dish is names shabu shabu after the sound of the beef swishing in the broth.

The flash cooked beef is immediately plunged into a bowl containing a sesame sauce and eaten.

After the meat is eaten, next come the vegetables. Here you can see tofu, enoki mushrooms, green onions, bean sprouts, mushrooms, carrots, some greens and napa cabbage. The noodles are for the end of the meal.

The veggies cooking away.

We had two kinds of noodles – the clear ones you see served with the vegetables above and these wider noodles that were brought to the table after the vegetables. Also in the pot are some sticky rice cakes cooked along with the noodles.

A perfect end for a wonderul meal – a bowl of macha green tea ice cream. I like the fact that this ice cream is not as sweet as our American versions.

Filed Under: Japanese Tagged With: Japan, Kobe, shabu shabu

Japanized Chinese

December 21, 2008 by greg Leave a Comment

On Wednesday evening I went to dinner with my friends from Osaka University. They took me to a Chinese restaurant way up on the top of a skyscraper with an incredible view of Osaka. I would say some of the things in the restaurant may be traditional Chinese but this was definitely Japanized. Our meal was served in many small courses. I would say the flavors were quite bland compared to what you would find in China but it was pretty tasty.

First course was a variety plate containing some barbequed pork, jellyfish, some kind of roll with vegetables and rice, and I think the fried piece was chicken.

Second course: Shark fin soup. Not nearly as good as the shark fin soup I’ve had in China.

The third course tasted pretty good. A piece of fugu was accompanied by a scallop, mushrooms, and baby corn.

For our fourth course we had a lightly battered and fried shrimp served with pineapple and a beef and vegetable dish.

These steamed delights were our fifth course. They looked gorgeous and tasted so so.

Another soup to top off the meal.

Finally we had dessert. It was some kind of mango pudding I think.

And me and my hosts. Professor Mishima on the right and Professor Ohshima standing next to me on the left.

Filed Under: Chinese, Japanese Tagged With: Japan, Tokyo

Osaka Eats

December 17, 2008 by greg Leave a Comment

On Tuesday I arrived in Osaka. My hotel is right next to the Umeda station in a busy, bustling part of town. This place is a maze of underground shopping malls and department stores and it is hard for even the local people to find their way. But I have been managing ok. After my train ride from Kyoto I was hungry for some lunch. In the underground maze I found a ramen shop with an advertized special of pork and ramen with a bowl of rice for only 700 yen (~$7). It was quite a deal and filled me up.

Here is a photo from my hotel room looking down on the Umeda train station. Yes, that is a ferris wheel on top of the Hep Five building.

After spending the afternoon exploring night was falling and I was starting to get hungry for dinner.

The Hankyu department store is just one of the many huge shopping conglomerates here. Actually I think all of Japan is one large shopping mall. They certainly are in the christmas spirit here.

I wandered around and found many of these narrow streets lined with all kinds of resaurants, pachinko parlors and shops.

I could have gone to She’s Bar or spent only 500 yen and be served by Ladys staff.

Although I think the idea of throwing darts and looking at girls is more appealing, I was looking for an Osaka specialty for dinner and it wasn’t to be had here.

I did pass by this place on the way. It was snorting at me as I walked by. I presume you can get pork there!

Finally, in the underground Umeda maze, I found a very nice okonomiyaki shop. This is an Osaka favorite. Kind of like a pancake but different, okonomiyaki literally menas cooked as you like it. The base is a mixture of cabbage and a batter. You can add all kind of things to it. Mine had pork, squid and shrimp. Some places have you cook your own at the table side griddle but at this place the server came over every so often to tend to my meal. So all I had to do was watch as she expertly shaped it into a perfect round using a wide spatula.

Ah, it’s crisping nicely.

Topped with okonomiyaki sauce and mayonaise, it’s ready to eat. This was further accented with dried bonito flakes and seaweed. It was as delicious as I remember.

Filed Under: Japanese Tagged With: Japan, okonomiyaki, osaka, ramen

More nabe in Kyoto

December 16, 2008 by greg Leave a Comment

Near to Kyoto University on a narrow dark out of the way street sits a wonderful little soba-nabe restaurant called Kawamichiya. I had dinner there with my hosts from KU on Monday evening. The restaurant is actually located next to the house of the president of Nintendo. I think my son would be more impressed with that! The entrance through this gate leads to a small Japanese garden and to the door of a 130 year old building. Dining is done in small cozy individual rooms.

Of course we had nabe at this restuarant. You an see my friend, Prof. Tomioka watching as the server fills the pot with chicken, fish cakes and vegetables.

Bubble, bubble, I think it’s ready to eat.

This nabe did not have the noodles in the pot in the beginning. After we ate everything out of the pot we then cooked the soba and udon noodles in the flavorful broth.

From left to right, Prof. Ohno, me, Prof. Takemoto and Prof. Tomioka.

Filed Under: Japanese Tagged With: Japan, Kyoto, nabe

A keiseki nabe dinner in Tokyo, and more

December 16, 2008 by greg 2 Comments

Nabe (or nabemoto) is the Japanese name for any of the hot pot dishes where all the ingredients are cooked in one vessel and shared at the table. I want to share a nabe dinner that I recently had in tokyo on Friday with my hosts from the Tokyo Science University. After dinner my friend Hayashi san took me to a “working man’s” soba shop where we had a few interesting dishes and a drink.

This was a nice evening of food starting with some appetizers, as usual. On this plate is some octopus, a piece of tempura, walnuts, some kind of pate like fish cake and some chicken. It was served with some pickled vegetables as well.

Next came the sashimi. This fish was extraordinarly fresh and tasty!

They also served another piece of cooked fish as a course.

This was kind of a pudding or custard and I’m not sure what it was made of. It was tasty.

Here is the nabe pot! You can see lots of vegetables, some seafood and quail eggs. On the bottom are noodles.

My hosts – Prof. Hayashi on the right and Prof. Soai to the left of me.

After dinner Hayashi san and I walked around for a little bit. As if I didn’t get enough food for dinner, he took me into a local soba shop where working men gather after work on Fridays to drink and eat. We had a few bites of special food. Here is some fried squid. Very good.

We also had some cooked pig stomach. I know it sounds bad, but it was really good! Not tough at all. It was tender and really tasty. Topped with some red chili pepper it was even better.

This is an interesting soba shop. We drank shoju which is a kind of a distilled rice liqour. The way you prepare it is most interesting. At the table is a kettle of water used to cook the soba in the shop, so it has many of the buckwheat nutrients and starches. You pour this hot water into the glass with the shoju. We also crushed some salty pickled plum into the drink. Unusual and delicious.