greg cooks

nourishing the body

nabe

More nabe in Kyoto

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.

A keiseki nabe dinner in Tokyo, and more

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.


Me and Hayashi san.

And our server! 🙂