just a link for today

I've been uninspired this week. Going through a busy/rough/tired patch. We have eaten lamb, celeriac mash again, some random pasta... It's not been anything to write about, anyway.

Remember I was waxing lyrical about the bánh mì we ate in New York? I've been on the hunt for good recipes ever since. I came across this site, Ravenous Couple, written by a young Vietnamese American couple, and they seem to have some good suggestions. I will try making something from this site soon, I think. I'm just being lazy!

Improvising: yakisoba

This is the yakisoba we ate in Japan, with red pickled ginger on the side. It was divine, if a bit greasy. I tried to make my own yesterday.

So it turns out that it is bloody hard to find out what goes into yakisoba apart from the obvious things - most recipes state that you should use shop-bought 'yakisoba sauce' in this or that brand, but the contents of which remain mysterious. Upon looking up home-made recipes for this sauce, I turned up a load of very different opinions and was all confused and annoyed. There are some funny recipes out there - this one annoyed me in particular, even though it didn't seem bad. So I ignored most of them, took what I had in the kitchen and improvised.

This is my very inauthentic and imperfect version of yakisoba sauce (enough for 2 servings):
1tbsp soy sauce
2tbsp worcestershire sauce
1/2 tsp rice vinegar
1 scant tsp light soft brown sugar
1 tsp tomato ketchup

Mix them together in a small bowl until the sugar has dissolved. When you taste it neat, it nearly blows your head off, but it's fine in the noodles. It was very good, but not great. It didn't have the depth I wanted, and even with all those sauces, it wasn't quite salty enough (at least not enough to taste quite right. I think I would up the soy sauce content, knock back the worcestershire sauce, add a tiny bit of ginger, and add a tbsp or two of mirin and/or sake if I had either. Maybe this would be sacrilegious, but to add colour and depth some dark soy sauce might have been a welcome addition. I'll work on it. I was obsessing over it last night after dinner to the husband's bemusement. When something isn't quite right but I know I can make it better, I can get a bit funny about things!

As for the rest of this dish, there are plenty of recipes out there. I used soba noodles (they MUST be soba, not anything else!), onion, carrot, pointed cabbage, garlic. These are essential. I also added beansprouts and a little turnip because I felt like it :-) The turnip was great. Meat (thinly sliced pork or chicken) might have been a good addition, but wasn't essential. Sorry there are no pictures, they weren't great. Next time, eh?

The last of Japan

I kind of got distracted there... I had a few last things to write up about Japan. On our last day there, we travelled from Himeji to Kyoto where we stayed for a few hours before heading back to Tokyo. Kyoto was beautiful - with many more old buildings than Tokyo, there seemed to be a greater sense of history and tradition. I thought it was wonderful, with the surprise of a beautiful temple or row of old houses around every corner.

What did we eat? First up when we were struck by a pang of sudden pre-lunch hunger, there were three sticks of mitarashi dango which are little rice dumplings (dango) in a sauce. The sauce was both sweet and salty (soy sauce!), god help us, but quite nice nevertheless.


For lunch we ate a Kyoto speciality, nishin soba, which is a soba noodle soup topped with a piece of semi-dried herring which is again both salty and sweet and reminded me of lots of other oriental preserved fish snacks I've consumed before. It was delicious and light. The cooking in Kyoto is said to be more delicate and subtle than in Tokyo and I think this dish demonstrated the difference.

See those yellow and green things on the side dish there? They were horrible. I say that so infrequently about food, but my LORD, these were just too weirdy for me. I couldn't tell if they were dessert or what. One was mango flavoured, the other lime. In a weird sticky paste that was also savoury and salty and ricey with bits stuck on it and just plain yuck. I shudder to remember them. The husband didn't think they were too bad. I would run screaming if someone made me eat them again. OK, I exaggerate, I would eat them if they were the only thing left in the world, but that's it. That's it.


Back in Tokyo that evening, we ventured down to the famous yakitori bars that nestle beneath the railway arches near Tokyo Station. These are the places where trendy young Japanese come for a bite to eat and a drink after work. We found the noisiest, busiest place and went inside. It was raucous, cramped, and utterly delightful. The food was some of the best we had in Japan - a selection of yakitori including something like gizzards and some cartilage, a good tomato salad and the most beautiful yakisoba I've ever eaten. It was simple but wonderful. We are going to attempt to cook a home version of yakisoba tonight. I'll tell you how I get on.

then it got better

After the pizza low, things got better. We sampled odd Japanese pasta salads and salmon onigiri at breakfast alongside the usual bread and jam provided by our hotel in Himeji. It was odd but good.


I ate a lot of noodles for the rest of our time in Japan. I live for noodles - they are one of my soul foods - in soup, stir-fried whatever. I need them like other people need potatoes, bread, chocolate or caffeine. First lunch in Himeji I went to a place called Menme where the head chef hand-makes his udon noodles fresh every day. You can watch him making them in the corner of the open kitchen whilst you eat. The udon were amazing - just the right kind of soft, just the right side of chewy. I had kamaage udon, which is a big pot of plain noodles that you dip into a soy and dashi sauce with spring onions and ginger before you eat. Plain but tasty, and you can control how much salt you eat this way. In the photo you can just see the udon in their frothy water.

The List of Shame

I'm afraid the next couple of days in Japan were a gastronomic embarrassment. It was the salt, the evil sodium chloride that was to blame. Here is my list of shame:

dinner - ridiculously salty ramen noodles - nearly killed us.
breakfast - pastries and tea in the ubiquitous Doutor.
lunch - mediocre pizza and salad in Tokyo train station.
dinner - (we were both exhausted from jetlag and dehydrated) I raided the amusingly-named 'Natural Lawson' for buns with indescribable (but good) fillings, three tiny sandwich halves and fruit.
breakfast - pastries and tea again.
lunch - from Daimaru's wonderful food hall we shared a salmon bento box and half a fruit cream sandwich (that's two slices of bread with, you guessed it, fruit and cream inside - amazing!) whilst travelling on the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Himeji.
5pm HIGHLIGHT: perfect green tea ice-cream.
dinner - slightly depressing vegetable curry and rice.

I know. It was bad, it was a waste, but that's all we could manage. It was utterly depressing to have to avoid certain things - both very salty and fried things were off the menu because our mouths were sore. Things got better from here, including a solo foray into the Bon Marché supermarket where they sell wonderful things like dandelion flowers and fish heads, not to mention the most amazing looking deli lunch selection.




They had a whole load of delicious looking things - bits of meat on skewers, aubergine stew, noodles and warm rice. I could have eaten it all right there if I weren't on my way to lunch with the husband!

next...

Lunch on the same day as the sushi was in a brightly decorated okonomiyaki and monjayaki place, hidden behind an art gallery in Harajuku, a great shopping area in Tokyo. These dishes are both types of pancakes containing vegetables and meat that are brought to you raw in a bowl and you cook them yourselves on a hotplate in the centre of your table. The okonomiyaki is a heavier pancake made with eggs, and is more common than the runny monjayaki that you eat directly off the hotplate with a little spatula, burning your mouth as you go along. Of course the husband and I had absolutely no idea what these things were when we walked into this restaurant, but they had a vague English instruction sheet and we unsubtly watched all the other young people around us to see how they were doing it. It was definitely not the height of Japanese cuisine, but it's always great fun to play with your food. I would put a picture up, only the one that we took was woefully out of focus. The picture is from this cafe - every wall was hand-decorated by different artists and it was really quite impressive.

the things we ate...

I don't like not being able to eat things. I don't like to think that there is anything (apart from, say, domestic animals and primates) that I won't eat. But in Japan I hit a wall. A salty wall. I just couldn't do it - my lips and skin were like sandpaper, I wasn't sleeping right and I was thirsty all the time. After only two days of being there we had to scale down our Japanese food consumption and revert to Western breakfasts in a coffee shop and limit our choices to the less salt-laden items on menus. Dammit, we even ate pizza for lunch once. I know, I am purple with shame.

But that aside, we had a fantastic time eating our way through just one week in Japan. Even though we had salt troubles, we had them under control by the time we left and I think I could have kept on going. There were so many things we didn't get round to tasting and I was quite sad to leave.

Where to start? At the beginning, I guess. First meal, Sunday in Tokyo: lunch - minced chicken and shiitake mushroom kamameshi in some back alley in Ginza. It was a big pot of rice topped with stuff. It was tasty and good, and reminded me of Chinese steamed rice dishes. Dinner on Sunday - in some random restaurant in Nihombashi we ate a beautiful, if saltily dressed, salad, then fried tofu in miso soup followed by a chicken teriyaki dish with rice.



The highlight of the week, however, was on Monday. One of the top items on our list of things to do was to visit the Tokyo wholesale fish market at dawn to watch the auctioneering of the tuna, to see a myriad of fish and seafood for sale in this loud, bustling and frankly terrifying (watch out for the little trucks!) place, and most of all to sample the best and freshest sushi breakfast you can get. Anywhere.

So at 6am on Tuesday, full of jetlag, we were fully awake and eager to go. We squeezed in to witness the tuna auctions, and spent a long time wandering the hundreds of fish stalls, dodging trucks, being hurried along by impatient traders and wondering where on earth these famed sushi bars were to be found. Eventually we worked out that they were in a block just next to the main market warehouse. Each bar is tiny and only a handful do sushi. We didn't really know which one was the best, but we took the plunge anyway and joined a queue. Queues of locals are good. They usually mean the food is worth waiting for.


When we were eventually seated, elbow to elbow along a bar facing the sushi chefs, we simply went for the set menu. The chef at our end, who had mesmerisingly long eyebrows and a friendly, paternal smile, started to load the boards in front of us with food. I got the feeling that he likes to test people to see how far they will go, what weird sea creatures they are willing to put down their gullets. It was magnificent, bewildering, utterly gorgeous. I don't know the half of what we ate. There were tuna and salmon egg maki, raw prawn and raw squid nigiri, an assortment of unnamed fish nigiri, a little fried morsel of spicy shell-on prawn, raw octopus, eel, and a pile of wobbly, moreish roe (herring?) balanced precariously on top of rice. It was heaven. I love food which gives you little shivers of 'what on earth is this?' pleasure. It was like that, even though I've eaten my fair share of sushi before. I ate too much soy sauce even though I had told myself not to. It's not cheap at about £20 a head in the bar we went to but my LORD it was worth it.




More next time!

the things we ate...

You know how I waffled on for days about the things we ate in New York? Now, it's not like there's nowhere good in London, only we don't go there very often since I moved away and had kind of forgotten how great it can be. We went there on an indulgent shopping trip yesterday and discovered a few things that I'd never gotten round to doing whilst there, or had not come across in my limited explorations. It's a common affliction of the London-dweller - this blindness that keeps you going to the places that are most familiar, whilst making you forget to go out and have a good rummage somewhere else.


Now, I'd been down Brick Lane and environs before, but never on the best day - Sunday. Luck had it that just as lunchtime arrived, we passed by the legendary Beigel Bake at the top of Brick Lane, where they serve the most incredible salt beef in sweet home-made bagels with a slick of mustard for added punch. I swear I nearly died, it was so good. (Image from londontown.com)

Onwards down Brick Lane, we stopped to look at shops, we spent money down Cheshire Street, but as we drew towards the Sunday UpMarket at the Old Truman Brewery, we were ambushed by the smells of cooking. Inside the market there were dozens of stalls selling wonderful-looking food - mostly not the trashy, sweet-and-sour stuff that is pervasive in such markets, but instead lots of home-style, honest food cooked by people with an obvious passion for their cuisine. There were (praise the lord!) bánh mì, dumplings, Moroccan, Sri Lankan, you name it. The choice was so huge I nearly wept with excitement. Yeah, that's how sad I am. No photos, I'm afraid - I never remember to bring the camera with me.

So of course we had to have a second lunch. What did we go for? A vegetarian 'three-sauces wrap' from the Ethiopian stall. I don't quite know what was in it - green lentils, some familiar curry-like flavours, plenty of heat, a great cabbage salad, a pillowy, thin pancake... it was spectacular, like oh-my-god-why-can't-we-eat-this-all-the-time? We couldn't SPEAK, it was so bloody good.

We proceeded, via a juice bar, into central London for shopping. And when that was over, we headed over to a Chinese supermarket in Chinatown where I bought salt-laden, MSG-pumped instant noodles that are my secret indulgence, and buns to steam for breakfast. Then I led the husband into a tea shop where I had iced Hong-Kong style coffee with tea which is much like Hong Kong milk tea, but with coffee in it too. Had we not been heading straight for dinner afterwards, I definitely would have had tapioca 'bubbles' in it for fun. I used to love the milk tea when I first tasted it as a seven-year-old in HK - it's probably a bit sweet for my taste these days, but it was an amazingly nostalgic experience yesterday and quite a treat.

And could we fit in dinner after all that? Of course we could! At Busaba on Wardour Street, where the food is to die for, especially the violently garlicky goong tohd prawns. Needless to say I'd eaten too much by the time we went to bed and spent the night having weird itchy episodes intermingled with peculiar dreams about pink, man-eating cockatoos and a bear that ate my finger. No, I'm not lying about the dreams - that's what a surfeit of sugar and shellfish can do to you!

now where did I get to?

I got distracted from my slightly crazed recollections of what we ate in NY. Crazed because we don't get to eat out a lot, and both the husband and I come from rich cultural backgrounds that have imbued us with some very strong food memories and their concomitant cravings. So in New York we indulged first my congee habit, and that evening we went to satisfy Mark's Ukrainian needs at Veselka.

Now, I've had a bit of Ukrainian cooking before, courtesy of the husband's mother and grandmother and it was very good. This was spectacular. We had borscht to die for, various crispy, moreish pierogi, a giant cabbage roll and beetroot and horseradish salad. We were both more than satisfied and the husband pleasantly surprised at my enthusiasm. But then I have a lot of enthusiasm for starchy products involving mostly pork and root vegetables, so what is there not to like?

the husband goes to Prague and he gets me...?

PICKLED SAUSAGE! I can't bloody wait. He knows me too well. We also have a jar of pickled peppers. A match made in vinegar heaven!

more...

The congee I made the other day was pretty good. I was really quite impressed with myself. The reason why I have started to make it was because of a wonderful congee experience we had in New York. Now, it's not rocket science making this stuff, it's not clever or difficult. I grew up on the stuff - with meatballs and crispy vermicelli, chicken, dried scallops, salt pork, thousand-year egg, pork liver, whatever... It's the ultimate comfort food. It smells like home. Eaten with hot pickled turnips and pickled tofu, it is the food of the gods. I'm not kidding - rice boiled to within an inch of its life is one of the best things in the world.

So for breakfast we headed out to Chinatown and Big Wong in particular, looking for congee. The restaurant is simple and cheap-looking, just like places in Hong Kong, with water served in plastic tumblers and a bottle of soy sauce on the side - you'd never know from looking at it that it would be worth going inside but with this place it's all about the food. We had one bowl with salt pork and thousand year egg and another with pork meatballs. It was creamy and well seasoned but didn't have the horrid taste of MSG or anything odd. It was like home, where I like my congee with white pepper and soy sauce. It was like balm to a stomach that had been overfed on weird shit the day before.


After that we went in search of bubble tea, a very popular drink in Hong Kong and other parts of Asia. In HK I like what they call 'yin yang' - a mix of tea and coffee, and unsweetened if possible. We didn't get that - I had a sweet milk tea that tasted a bit odd, but it was fun nevertheless to sit in a little candy-coloured shop and suck up the chewy tapioca balls through fat straws.

the things we ate...

Most of the things we did in New York pale in comparison to some of the joyful eats we had. Actually, most of the things we did in New York were acts of joyful eating. We didn't bother to do the touristy things - I've seen the Empire State Building from the street - who wants to pay $21 dollars to go 84% of the way up (it costs $15 more to go from the 86th to the 102nd floor!)? We went to the awe-inspiring Met, and I made pilgrimage to the American Museum of Natural History, but that's about all we did that was standard. Nay, we had better things to do.

I won't bore you with a long list of everything we ate, but the highlights were many. Before we left, I'd determined that I would eat bánh mì. I don't make promises like that to myself and then break them, so for our first lunch we went to Saigon Vietnamese Sandwich near Chinatown and satisfied that urge. And my lord was it satisfying. There's something about the combination of meat and pickles, hot sauce and coriander that really makes this really special. We ate it sitting in a park and washed it down with mangosteen juice. I know it's vulgar to put up pictures of half-eaten food but really I couldn't wait to eat at least some of it before I took a photo. Be grateful, I nearly couldn't stop eating to pick up the camera at all :-)


Next up was dinner that night - Jewish. We ended up in a seedy-looking diner that, from the outside looked like any other greasy burger joint in London: all neon signs and laminated menus in the window, glass counter with days-old food in plastic tubs and take-away boxes on the side. It looked empty. I wasn't sure. But Fine and Schapiro is one of the bastions of the New York Jewish deli scene having been in business since 1927 and is not to be sniffed at nor feared. Sure the interior is shabby and dated but that is part of the character and joy of this place. The night we went it was populated with two lone male diners. One of them looked like he went there all the time, so I ordered what he had - a pastrami sandwich. It was fabulous. An enormous, meaty, fatty, caraway-seed-peppered thing of beauty. Everything here is served with a big bowl of pickled gherkins and home-made coleslaw. It was cheap and tasty - what more can a girl ask for? Here are another couple of vulgar pictures under bad lighting for you:




Enough for today. I have to go and tend the congee I'm attempting to cook. More next time!

Well well...

I am exhausted, overwhelmed, sated. New York was magnificent - a cacophony of wonderful things that I will eventually get round to writing about. First I must make lists or I will be drowned by the volume of the joyful things we did. It's like a new infatuation...

Image above: Clinton St. Baking Company & Restaurant at breakfast.

Getting excited

On Monday, the husband and I are off on holiday. We are spending four days in New York, followed by six days in the US Virgin Islands. I can't bloody wait - we've not had a proper holiday all year. For poor Mark, the Caribbean bit is actually a work conference, but I'm tagging along to take advantage of the free room in this magnificent resort. I have a feeling I won't belong in such a swanky, super-rich place. I will most likely be surrounded by people who don't carry a little pouch of fat below their belly buttons or have issues with the wibbly bits on their haunches... I have so many hang-ups, but I try not to care too much these days - it's no fun being self-conscious. It's not as if anyone's looking anyway. Or we could be hit by a hurricane, in which case I'll be stuck indoors alone with my problems.

Caribbean, schmaribbean! Who cares what I'll look like in a bikini? What I care most about is FOOD in New York. Yeah, there are loads of flea markets in NY but they are all open on weekends only, and we are there only weekdays this time, so where should I turn to but my next love? I am looking forward to every meal. I want to eat Vietnamese bánh mì, which sound like great lunch food. I even read about congee in Chinatown, which of course you can get in England or make yourself, but they make it sound better over there. Available in 13 varieties in one restaurant! But of course there is proper American food to try too - I wonder whether my little paunch will grow a bit before I get to the beach? Will I even give it a second thought whilst I'm stuffing my face? (Image below from battleofthebanhmi.com)