I love love love mushi pan (steamed bread) and have been trying to make it at home. I want it to be very mochi mochi (heavy and sticky) but I am nowhere near the texture and taste that I want. This time we included warabi mochi powder, but it still wasn’t sticky enough. Keep trying.
I harvested my first ‘Kyoyasai’ (traditional Kyoto vegetable) today, an intriguingly light green and speckled Shogoin Cucumber and had it with dinner. It was rather astringent and bitter. I can see why they aren’t very popular! I planted 6 vines of them this year, I guess I will be getting better accustomed to this taste this summer.
In my third year of lotus cultivation I have finally produced a flower. It is a beauty!
I don’t like conventional taiyaki — the azuki bean paste filled grilled confection in the form of a sea bream — but I like this very unusual white version. While moffle (waffle made with mochi, not batter) is popular in Japan now, this is made with mochi flour, not the usual wheat flour. Once grilled though, it is gooey and chewy like fu (wheat gluten) and hot mochi. I have to get some more, but it is only available in Kyoto two days a week at the Kyoto Central Wholesale Food Market.
Check out this video about the frustrating life of taiyaki in Japan in the 1970’s,
9 months agoI love hokke ichiyaboshi in the winter. I bought this hokke (arabesque greenling) today, early summer and not salted and dried overnight and it was a real disappointment. In the winter they are buttery, heavy with oil. Apparently hokke was not eaten much in Japan before the war. They were called ‘rat fish’ or ‘prisoner fish’ (fed to prisoners).
This new Yebisu beer, Yebisu Jukusei, a limited edition, that I heard about from a friend in the know is available now. On the way home from dinner at Kichisen and sake at Asakura, I found that new Yebisu was out when I stopped by Kunitaya to see what namazake they had available for my friends to take back to America with them.
Yebisu is the only beer that I can really drink in Japan. Their Amber is very good, but only available in the winter. This beer is quite good as well. I am looking forward to having it with a meal!
Today, after I finished interviewing Kitamura-san of Izuju, he gave me a box of their kyomaki and inari sushi.
Kibune, also pronounced kifune, is a valley village up in the north mountains of Kyoto where people like to go in the summer and have lunch or dinner literally on top of the cool, rushing mountain stream. This is called kawadoko.
Tanigawa-san took me up there and we had a quick, chilled somen noodle lunch and then visited Kibune Shrine.
Cheri loves to eat
even wagashi
and then she is always ready for more
see, Cheri is a girl with a one track mind,
my dream girl!
