my forays into japanese cuisine.

i started with some incredibly painstaking zen food, which i didn't take any pictures of, because it just looked like a blob of brown stuff over rice. it required many obscure root vegetables like lotus and burdock, each of which required painstaking individual preparations, such as blanching and soaking and peeling and scraping. the main dish was this odd combo of vegetables and some tofu served over sushi rice (another painstaking process), with a side dish eringi mushrooms served with this miso, carrot, and nut dressing. oh yeah, and this tofu that marinated overnight in the fridge. none of that was too thrilling, and it kind of made me want to eat something really unhealthy when i was done, like a huge ice cream sundae.

so i got a different book, something like quick and easy japanese food... too bad it wasn't that quick or easy. i made noodles with mentsuyu broth (which is created from scratch by boiling together bonito flakes and a large hunk of kelp and a couple other things), with udon noodles and various vegetables, topped with panko-crusted chicken breasts. i also made a salad of daikon and bacon, with a lemon vinaigrette. none of this was too exciting, either. i felt like i could've just made a packet of higher-end (e.g. not the supermarket kind) instand noodles and have very much the same result.

then i got this book washoku, by elizabeth andoh, which was frighteningly obsessive in its details, especially considering it was written by a white chick who married a japanese guy in the 60's. i made still more complicated recipes, but they all came out tastiful. however, i was so tired by the end, i was almost not hungry anymore. :P first was some sushi, which was composed of soba noodles, japanese cucumber (which, btw, tastes kind of bitter and nasty. you're supposed to perform some arcane ritual on the cucumber whereby you extract its bitterness [the bitter element itself has an actual name, which i've forgotten], but i didn't do that, i just put some salt on it), radish sprouts (which were real spicy but made me feel like a murderer because i had to tear them out by the roots from their little growing medium in the bottom of their plastic container, and they were so adorable), and wasabi. they were real tasty! and i couldn't find my sushi mat, so i rolled them up using plastic wrap. i discovered that the more stuff you cram in the middles, the better it looks when you roll it, and it's also easier to cut.

i also made japanese eggplant stuffed with ground chicken and scallions, which were not very photogenic (dare i make a comparison to some kind of soft interal organ with its insides sort of bursting out? no? okay.) next were delicious tofu blocks coated with egg and then cornstarch and then black and white sesame seeds. i wasn't quite as zen about the sesame seeds as i should've been, so there was a little intermingling between the sesame seed varieties. (note the black specks on all the white sesame seed ones) anyway, they were yummy. the stuff in the middle is more cruelly executed radish sprouts, which i put in there as a pretentious culinary flourish.


i also made some korean food recently, but i didn't take any pictures of it. i made mandu (dumplings) which were good and contained everything but the kitchen sink. i also made kimchee from scratch (which was super-good, except that it's a lot of work, and then when you take it out of the jar you have to look at all the little sardine heads and bits floating in it, but hey), as well as some or other version of bimbambop (spelling?), pickled hot peppers (also yummiful), and then kimchee soup, which was so hot i could hardly stand it. even brian's korean dad admitted that it was "a little too hot." i have plans to someday make bulgogi, because even though i don't eat red meat, i know someone who does. i've been eating kimchee on everything, though, including hot dogs, which actually in retrospect maybe was not the best idea.