Going With My Gut

Steamboat-ing Around The World

Above: See that goofball smile? That's my happy-cuz-I'm-steamboating face. Friends might tell you I look like that a lot. Fair cop. Really good friends will be able to tell the subtle differences between my various goofball happy-cuz-I'm- <insert other food activity> faces.

 

Why does the phrase "in the soup" mean that you're in trouble?

For me, being in the soup -- of hotpot or steamboat or nabe or shabu shabu or Chinese fondue (whatever you call it where you are) -- is the best way for me to transcend the muck of any internal trouble I'm feeling. It's like a jacuzzi for the soul.

Maybe the savoury hot broth helps to melt away internal emotional blockages. Maybe the community warmth and fuzziness of a table full of people cooking, chatting, laughing and eating around a steaming cauldron on a chilly evening (or even steamy tropical heat, really) softens emotional bristly-ness.

Maybe just to gaze upon the annual Soh family epic steamboat spread during Chinese New Year (below) is enough to make me cackle any crankiness away.

 

 

I can't imagine I'm the lone believer in the magical restorative abilities of steamboat. Why else would it have popped up in so many nooks and crannies of this big wide world during our 15 months on the road? And sometimes in the most unlikely of corners?

Okay, so maybe it has something to do with the unstoppable sprawl of commodity-hungry, infrastructure-building savvy Chinese diaspora around the world, and steamboat being the perfect product to pitch to homesick overseas Chinese communities. But why let facts get in the way of a good story, eh.

So how unlikely are these unlikely steamboat satellites?

Well. How about Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania, for a start?

At Beautiful China (Mhasibu House, NBAA, Bibititi Mohamed Rd; +255 22 215 0548), a steamboat feast was quite the treat after volunteering on a farm in rural western Kenya without electricity or running water.

We didn't order the extent of this feast (below) on purpose. Really! This is what we got after calling ahead just to say we wanted hotpot. The table next to us had the same amount of food. Except their table had 8 people, vs our 2. Still, we made more progress than I care to admit...

Thanks so much to G*Star for sending us this lead.

 

 

Another unlikely steamboat satellite was amid the blazing deserts of Abu Dhabi in the UAE.

Far from the glitzy resorts and shopping malls, Qian Zhou Hotpot (Nadja Street, Al Markaziyah West; +971 2 674 5677) is a hidden soupy oasis, with good quality broth, fresh and authentic produce, and an impressive array of dipping sauces for you to use individually or to create a DIY-custom blend. Again, this was a lovely recharge of something familiar and comforting after a month of stuffing our faces with delectable but heavier meats, rices and mezzes of Syria, Jordan and Egypt.

Thanks so much to Louise and Herbert for hunting down this location for us and taking us there and treating us to boot!

 

Above: See? There's that goofy smile again

 

Asia is no surprise territory for steamboat. Or so I thought.

In Hanoi, Vietnam, I was utterly delighted by Kichi-Kichi Hotpot (1A Tang Bat Ho, Hai Bà Tru'ng) because it combined hotpot AND a kaiten aka sushi-style conveyor belt. Which means you can slurp away and watch a world (of temptations) go by. Be still my beating heart.

Your fixed fee of under £10 gets you unlimited access to soup stock and anything on the belt. Drinks and premium food items for your cauldron are extra. I found the basic belt spread to be pretty satisfactory, frankly.

Food aside, I ate at Kichi-Kichi with very mixed feelings. Circa 2007 I had a pipe dream to launch this exact restaurant concept in London. So I was very frustrated to see that someone else got to it first, but elated to see that the concept is obviously viable -- the place was packed to the gills when we were there and Kichi-Kichi apparently has quite a few other outlets around Hanoi.

Big props to Our Man in Vietnam Steve Jackson, through whom I found Kichi-Kichi.

 

 

While in Kyoto, Japan, our merry Solihull crew of 6 spent an evening sampling sumo-style steamboat (say it 6 times swiftly!) at Tian Shan Sumo (3, 4, Yamatooji, Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto-shi, Kyoto Hakatacho, 605-0805; +81 75-561-7378).

Be prepared to pay between £40-50 per person, but you will be stuffed silly by the end of the evening with impeccable produce and service.

 

 

While waiting for your streaky meat to scald, sip on some sake or beer and pick your object of sumo-star aspiration from the posters plastered to the walls.

Shoutout to Team Dom!

 

 

You have a choice of letting the waitstaff fuss over you, or you can get involved yourself. Our mate Chris reckons the experience is enhanced by you making "shabooooo shaboooo" sound effects as your swish around your paper-thin beef slices in the soup.

 

 

And then there are the steamboat soirees money just can't buy.

Like the one on Wednesdays at the Chinese food resto-canteen at Google HQ in Mountain View, California USA. If you don't work at Google you can't pay money to eat here, but if you've got a friend at Google who likes you enough, you eat for free!

The range of steamboat dishes here was understandably more limited and basic compared to a commercial steamboat restaurant, but because Google works hard to source canteen food ingredients from local farmers, the freshness of the meats and vegetables were top notch.

Many thanks to Gus and Basil (and Larry and Sergei) for a very special steamboat lunch, complete with a view of some hyper-geeky meeting rooms!)

 

 

Love also always trumps money at the steamboat soirees hosted by your fabulous friends and their families. So to the Hans, Foxy Foong and "Hollow Legs" Jas and her ever-patient Dom, much much much love.

 

 

So once Babs and I settled back into London town after the big gallavant, it was no stretch to believe that steamboat would be a fabulous way to get together with a few London foodbloggers and get to know our London foodie community a little better.

Little Lamb (72 Shaftesbury Avenue, London W1D 6NA; +44 20 7287 8078) in Chinatown is a humble non-descript looking outfit, but when I was homesick for Singapore this past Chinese New Year and feeling in a bit of a funk about work, this Mary had a Little Lamb, and damn it saved my life! (Kudos to reviews by Meemalee and Tamarind and Thyme, whose reviews inspired me to go.)

You can order ala carte, or you and your mates can go for the £20 pax set meal, where each person gets to pick 5 generously-sized dishes.

I was sceptical about the blue swimmer crabs on my first visit, but tried them on my second. They turned out to be surprisingly fresh and meaty, keeping some bite rather than disintigrating into powdery mush after cooking in the broth.

 

 

The varied marbling on the beef, pork and lamb slices are a work of art.

 

 

Bubble bubble, toil and trouble begone!

 

 

The meat skewers are also definitely worth a try -- lots of tantalising chili pepper and cumin spicing.

 

 

And now to close, shoutouts to the very sporting food blogger folks who ventured out for a steamy good time despite it being a ludicruously sunshiny day in London! Thank God for Gelupo afterwards.

Here's Aaron of The Grubworm and Su-Lin of Tamarind and Thyme, one a very fast-learning steamboat acolyte, the other a veteran!

 

 

My homegirls Eunice of Heaven in a Wild Flower, and Rachel of The Pleasure Monger, both looking fresh as flowers as usual despite steamboating up a storm!

 

 

And last but not least here are the very bubbly Kay of From Chopstix 2 Steaknives and Kavey of Kavey Eats, momentarily in intense concentration!

 

 

Remember folks, when life gets you in the soup, the get in the soup gooooooood, get all souped up and then get back in the game. Better yet, have a few friends along. The killer combination of broth and brethren will surely pick you right up and set you off steaming ahead again. Wherever in the world you might be.

So tell me, where's your favourite hotpot haven in the world?

Our WWOOFing Adventures in Singapore's The Straits Times

Our WWOOFing (organic farm volunteering) adventures got picked up by this past Sunday's edition of The Straits Times, the English news daily of my native Singapore.

Fwah, in the HOT section no less. I'm sure they meant the oven. But I'll take what I can get!

Read the full story here. Thanks for scanning and pdf-ing and pinging it over here to Rio, Mum!

I'm hoping the article by Rachael Boon about WWOOFing will pique the curiosity of more city-born-and-bred types like me, to venture out of the concrete jungle we know and love so well and explore and engage the places where our food comes from.

Babs and I have now WWOOFed in Spain, Kenya and Japan while on the road, and personally I look forward to more WWOOFing as part of our lifestyle even after we're (soon) done with this big fat 15-month honeymoon.

More recently, I've also been grappling with the twin proposition of growing good food WHILE living in the city. Many of my thoughts still not even half-baked on this one, but Will Allen's Growing Power Inc, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Landshare movement and Novella Carpenter's Farm City were for me inspirational starting points.

If you're curious about or have questions about WWOOFing, I'd love to help / egg on you on if I can. Get in touch!

WWOOFing in Japan: Durian Surprise

Above: This warrior ldoesn't look convinced that being now able to buy durian in his native Japan is necessarily a good thing

I've lost count of how many times our merry crew of travelers in Japan said among ourselves, "Just when you think you've figured out Japan, it throws you a curveball".

Sometimes even a durian.

Midway through our Japan WWOOFing stint near Osaka, Nana -- our farm host's 18-year-old daughter -- pipes up at dinner and asks me if I know what a durian is.

Well of course I do. Durians are from my native Southeast Asia, I told her. Olive green, roundish and thorny on the outside. Yellow, creamy and bittersweet on the inside. Unbearably stinky to the uninitiated, a heavenly aroma to the converted. In foreigner-friendly Singapore where I grew up, they're not allowed anywhere on the public transport system or in hotels because of their smell.

Why do you ask, Nana?

"I saw doo-ree-yaan at a shop near my school. I cycled past it many times. I can smell it but I don't know what it's like. I don't know how to eat it," she said.

I chuckled, wondering how on earth durians got past customs in a land where the palette is very much about subtle clean tastes.

"So you know how to eat it? You like doo-ree-yaan?" Nana ventured again.

I love it, I told her, but I can't promise the same for anyone in Japan.

We left it at that and I thought nothing more of it, besides trying to decide if the globalised food supply system had reached new heights of sophistication or just downright silliness.

Two days later -- a public holiday in Japan -- Nana shows up while we're prepping lunch, with durian in tow.

Of all the things I didn't expect to see in Japan, from to the ultimate blingbling hiphop star car, to an Obama effigy that defies description, to an army of singing mochis, a durian probably topped the list.

So durian for tea it was. Babs and I pried it open, handed sections around, and demonstrated how to nibble the creamy yellow pulp around the khaki-coloured seeds. I watched our hosts try to inhale as infrequently as possible.

And then I watched them eat durian with chopsticks.

The entire fun of being with someone when they have their first durian is watching their reactions. Shigemi, her mother and Nana, with vintage Japanese politeness, all said something to the tune of "it tastes better than it smells, but I've had enough now" -- Shigemi while offering us a third pot of tea to wash the taste out of our mouths (and her kitchen).

Yashinori -- Shigemi's 15-year-old son -- took a nibble, and then his eyes half popped out of his head. He made a loud retching sound, and then he bolted to the kitchen sink and stuck his head under the tap for a good 10 minutes.

Perhaps now was not the time to tell Yashinori that this durian was of the Thai variety -- less stinky, less bitter, and less runny than its Malaysian counterpart, and sometimes described with disdain by durian snobs as "might as well be eating sweet potato".

Later that evening, Shigemi let on that she had had a chat with Nana about the durian before Nana went and got it.

Said Shigemi to Nana: "So, you are willing to cycle all the way over the mountain and back, on a day when you don't have to go to school, and spend 1,600 yen from your supermarket part-time job pay, for something that smells funny, and that you know you might not like."

Apparently Nana's reply was "I have to find out. I have to."

A foodie after my own heart in the making.

Some photos have been removed from this post at our host's request.

Wild Boar Udon at Kurusu, Nose, Osaka, Japan

Above: Udon ala Kurusu. Shall I boar you with the details?

When we went rooting around for bamboo shoots while WWOOFing in Japan, we came home with a disappointing harvest. The local wild boars had gotten to them first -- evident in the clusters of ruts we found in the ground.

But what goes around comes around. Our disappointment quickly faded when our WWOOF host Shigemi suggested that we try Udon Kurusu on our day off. People from many towns around travel into Nose (pronounced Nose-say) to eat at Kurusu, she said. Especially those with a nose for wild boar, or shi-shi niku.

"The local hunters like going there especially in the winter months, for wild boar shabu shabu," she said.

Is there a more delicious way to pass a winter evening?

Turns out, the late spring lunch experience is not to be knocked either.

We had walked past Kurusu quite a few times during our week on the farm when we ran errands in town. From the far end of its parking lot I had always been confused about whether it was a restaurant or a taxidermist, given the slightly tired looking stuffed bear, deer and wild boar in the glass showcase at its entrance.

It all made sense when we realised that Kurusu specialied in game meats. In addition the more domestic, chicken, duck and pork, Nakamura Mitsugu -- who has owned and run Kurusu for more than 30 years -- also serves up wild boar, pheasant, deer, and yes, bear.

Here's what Kurusu looks like inside -- a quaint rustic wooden interior with shabu-shabu ready tables.

My wild boar udon came in a little lidded cauldron with beautifully fresh raw napa cabbage, leeks, bean sprouts, enoki mushrooms, soup stock, and a few gorgeous deep-red-and-white streaked sliced of wild boar, peeking out from under the lid.

Having it cook right in front of you is (a large) part of the fun.

Things start to get very hot and steamy.

This was the 2nd time in my life I've had wild boar. The first time was a wild boar ragu with pasta at Italian restaurant Oso in Singapore. As before, the wild boar tasted of pork but with much more personality -- no doubt from the hog spending its life running around at will outdoors, eating a wide variety of roots (e.g., bamboo!), flowers, fruits, acorns, mushrooms, worms etc. According to our WWOOF hosts in Spain, wild boars are crafty enough to root or wriggle their way through veg and flower bed wire fences. They're even apparently wily enough to shake the fruit of a tree, to the despair of many a farmer!

When farmers get fed up enough, they call in the local hunters, and a delicious quest begins. In Andalucia where we WWOOFed, the boar-sighter apparently gets the first choice of cuts if the hunt goes well.

Before I boar you to tears... For those who prefer rice to noodles, Kurusu also does a wild boar katsu set, with a little bowl of udon on the side. Not as fun as the cookalong-live udon, in my opinion, but no doubt just as delish.

If you're not the gun-toting type but would like to go on this little boar hunt to Kurusu as a day trip from Osaka...

• Get on the Hankyu-Takarazuka train from Umeda station in Osaka (~25 minutes)
• Change at Kawanishi-noseguchi station and get onto the Nose train line (~25 minutes)
• Get off at Yamashita, the end of the line
• Walk outside to the bus stop, and take bus 73 to Yamabeguchi (~25 minutes)
• After you alight from the bus, take the first left at the intersection. Kurusu is about a 5-minute walk up the street, on your right

Happy hunting!

Udon Kurusu
Nose-cho, Toyono-gun, Osaka 12-1
+81 72 734 0652

Tokyo: Jiro Ramen Gives Plenty to Noodle On

So there I was, thinking I that I was a bit of a ramen addict.

I had started the habit early, as photographic evidence suggests, and by the time I was at university in the US I was hand-carrying cartons of my favourite available-in-Asia-only flavours of the stuff onto the plane at the end of every term break, because offerings available on US supermarket shelves just didn't cut it.

Then last month I went to Japan. Where obsessives (of any kind) invariably meet their match, and masters.

If in Tokyo, try Jiro ramen, said my friend and Japan veteran @jimbonner. It was, and I quote Jim, "a semi-religious experience".

What the hell does that mean? And, back up, what the hell is Jiro Ramen? Why the hell haven't I ever heard of Jiro Ramen before? My own religious experience with this stuff was starting, it seemed.

I started digging. Other intriguing soundbites emerged.

"It's a marathon, not a sprint", said Ramen Tokyo's Bob, in his wonderfully detailed and endearingly earnest primer on the subject.

"It's ugly. It's mean... This is not a pretty bowl of noodles; it will taunt you, it will tease you, and after 5 minutes of eating the crap out of this thing it will somehow breed more noodles, more bean sprouts, more cabbage, more melty, fatty, juicy chunks of days-cooked pork, more chopped garlic, more soup, more..." declared the riproariously eloquent Ben et Nate: The Gaping Maw.

Quite the perversely appealing evangelical message. Clearly this warranted investigation.

So there we were, that balmy spring night in Tokyo's Ikebukero neighbourhood, with scraps of paper with scrawled directions and hand-copied maps now being stuffed into pockets as we joined in the 20-minute line outside the Jiro Ramen shop and its bumblebee-yellow lightbox signage.

Everyone else in the line is quiet. Focused. Meditative?

Meanwhile, I -- the new acolyte -- am trying to remind my dining companions Babs, Chris, Helen, Sandy, and myself how to say basic Japanese words such as big (dai) and small (shou). I'm also tiptoeing and craning my neck to peek inside the noodle bar to try and get a sense of what small or big actually mean in that hallowed space. On one successful sneak-peek, I see this monster of a bowl being handed over, and another looming in the back. But what size is that? What if that's small?

We're finally up against the vending machine where you place your orders. I uncharacteristically opt for the basic small bowl for about 700 yen. Everyone else is getting trigger happy and hitting a bunch of the extra-this and extra-that buttons. The eagerness of new dabblers. I suspect what they'll need in the end is extra help.

We hand over our order coupons, get seated, and in no time at all, the ramen cometh.

Eating the stuff is a like going on an archeological dig. Like a series of civilisations buried one on top of the other in the sand, here a mound chopped raw garlic sits on a mound of blanched bean sprouts sits on a mound of blanched chopped cabbage sits on a mountain of rough hewn wheaty noodles -- a denser, leaner, uncouth country or yakuza-foot-soldier cousin of the more refined udon. Thick terraced slabs of deeply marinated tender slow-cooked pork and the dome of an egg with the promise of a still-runny yolk inside peek out from the glistening bog of ludicrously rich salty-sweet pork stock, a colloid straddling the grey-line between broth and gravy.

A moment more to meditate on the soup, if you will indulge. What is this stuff? It's like they stuck a whole pig in a pot and simmered it until the whole animal liquified and reduced by half, and then they stuck in another one, because -- in typical Japanese obsession towards excellence -- going the whole (just one) hog is not enough.

There is no conversation around the noodle bar. Even among the young couples who are clearly on a date. Only loud slurping. Said to be the appropriate way to show appreciation to the chef, and also enhance the flavour of the noodles (though I suspect it's just to introduce airflow to cool the noodles down to a temperature where you can actually taste what's going on). And so we slurp as best we can -- amateurishly -- given our British and Singaporean table-manners breeding.

And slurp.

And slurp.

Hearing the sermon on the subject is one thing, but it finally hits home only now that the jiro ramen pilgrimage is not so much about finding your way to one of these cult-status noodle bars. It's finding the way to the bottom of your bowl.

On that note, our group finishes with mixed results. Some succeed in making it all the way to read their fortunes in the powdered pepper swirls at the bottom of their bowls (the consenus prediction being mild tummyaches). Others, who shall remain unnamed, leave noodles behind, even after they've palmed some of their bowl off to others.

We stumble out into the cool night air, rosy-cheeked and round-bellied from what just transpired. The line is just as long as when we first arrived. But the faces in the queue have taken on a slightly different air. While before they may have been competitors for a seat at the table, now they feel a little more like fellow pilgrims to be wished well.

Come judgement day of this so-called semi-religion, the tally will read: Jim, Bob, Ben and Nate and all the ramen rectors and soupy saints who have gone before: 1. This foodie who got reminded that there is always more to noodle on: a big fat jiro.

Jiro Ramen, Ikebukero East Exit
2-27-17 Minami-Ikebukuro, Toshima-ku
Tokyo, Japan

From Ikebukuro metro station, take exit 43, hang a right at the corner, walk past 2 streets and turn right at the 3rd street. The Jiro Ramen shop will be on your right, on the ground floor of the Coi Minami Building.
Map with directions here

If interested, read Tokyo Ramen's detailed write up on the shop

WWOOFING in Japan -- Making Yomogi Mochi the Old School Way

Above: Toasting your mochi before you eat them produces a golden crispy surface and a lovely warm gooey centre. But watch out -- toast them too long and they could erupt!

You might be familiar with mochi. The Japanese chewy gooey rice cakes usually filled with a sweet red bean paste, and in more recent times popping up in many more fahionable flavours (e.g. coffee) and fillings (e.g. fruit-flavoured jellies or ice-cream). Traditionally they were eaten by farmers in the winter to mend both body and soul, and are a treat eaten during the Japanese New Year.

What I wasn't familiar with, however, was just how mochi work hand-made mochi takes!

As Babs, Chris and I learnt how to make this delicious traditional treat while WWOOFING on a rice farm near Osaka, we wondered "can anyone we know actually make this at home?"

Possibly. If we can't tempt you with the great mochi workout (great exercise for the biceps and triceps, as the guys will attest!) check your Asian grocery stores for mochi sheets or mochi powder. As for yomogi (Japanese mugwort), it's long been regarded a North-Asian cureall for blood purification and inflammation reduction, so dried versions of the leaves have known to be sold in Asian markets and medical halls, to be used as a soup or tea or even spa ingredient!

But if you want try to make mochi the old school way, here's how. The effort might just make you love your mochi that mochi more.

Ingredients

800g Japanese sticky rice (note that this is a specific strain of rice different from regular Japanese rice, which is already stickier than say Basmati or Thai rice)
300g azuki (sweet red beans)
3 tablespoons white sugar
1 tablespoon unrefined sugar
200g yomogi (Japanese mugwort)

Directions

Preparing the Sticky Rice

• Soak the sticky rice overnight
• Drain the sticky rice and set aside

Preparing the Yomogi (Japanese Mugwort)

Collect a big plastic bag of young yomogi leaves. They grow wild in the Japanese and Korean countryside, in parks and even just next to roads. Foraging best done between March and May when the leaves are sufficiently sized, but still tender. Given we were on the farm in April, Shigemi sent us out to forage for the year's harvest. The surplus can be sun-dried or frozen.

• Remove leaves with brown bits
• Place yomogi in a large basin
• Put a couple of scoops of charcoal ash in a towel bag, and place the bag on top of the yomogi
• Pour boiling water on the ashbag until the basin is full of water. Leave a weight (e.g. a cooking pan filled with water) on the ash bag to keep the yomogi underwater

• The above process removes the bitterness from the yomogi leaves
• Drain the basin and squeeze the water out of the yomogi

Preparing the Azuki (Sweet Red Beans)

• Wash and drain 300g of azuki
• Bring the beans to a boil, boil for 5 minutes, then drain the water. This removes the bitterness from the beans
• Refill the pot with water and bring the beans to a boil again, then lower the flame as much as possible and let the beans continue to simmer until their skins have cracked
• Drain the beans
• Mix 3 tablespoons of white sugar and 1 tablespoon of unrefined sugar into the beans
• Shape the bean paste into little balls (about 2cm in diameter)

Making the Mochi

• Steam the soaked sticky rice for about 20 minutes
• Add a thick layer of yomogi on top of the rice and steam for about a couple of minutes
• Transfer the steamed yomogi to a mortar and use a mochi hammer (or pestle) to pound the yomogi (use short sharp quick movements of the hammer)
• Remove the yomogi from the mortar and set aside
• Transfer the sticky rice to the mortar
• Use a mochi hammer to pound the sticky rice into a smooth sticky dough (short sharp quick movements of the hammer)

Shigemi says she's never seen WWOOFERS make mochi with such...such... what's the word, Chris?

I osso say! A very respectable effort, when compared with these veterans.

• Add the pounded yomogi into the rice dough, and pound with long strokes of the hammer (swing the hammer from directly overhead) to mix the yomogi into the dough. Pound as quickly a possible – the rice dough is malleable only when it's still warm

• When the dough and yomogi is smoothly mixed, cut / pull out balls of dough (about 4 cm in diameter)
• Wet both your hands, and flatten out the dough ball in your palm. Make the edges of the patty thinner than the middle
• Place an azuki ball in the middle of the patty
• Fold in the corners of the patty (and the resulting smaller corners
• Turn the mochi upside down, wet your hand again, and use both your hands to make quick circular movements in opposite directions. Use your thumb to smooth out the shape of the mochi

(Pardon the light. We were all working at night in the backyard kitchen!)

• Sprinkle rice powder on a tray
• Roll the mochi on the rice powder and lay out in rows in the tray. This way they won't stick to each other

Serving the Mochi

• Toast It! Place the stuffed mochi on a charcoal grill or in a toaster oven, and warm for a few minutes, until the mochi develops a light golden crust. Watch out! The mochi will expand, and if left alone the azuki will erupt from the mochi. Shigemi says this will produce a heavenly smell, but quite a sticky mess!
• Soup It Up! Use some of the dough to roll into plain mochi balls to eat with boiled sweetened azuki soup (right). To make the soup, add boiling water to the cooked azuki and sweeten to taste. Shigemi's mother enjoyed this so much she had 3 mochi balls in her soup for dinner, while the boys and I could only manage 1 each!

Old school mochi, made this way without preservatives, keeps for only 2 to 3 days at most. So if you've made more than you can eat, be sure to spread the love around.

WWOOFING in Japan -- Homebrewed Amazake

While WWOOFING on a rice farm near Osaka, Japan, our host Shigemi taught us how to make Amazake, a sweet fermented rice drink which was apparently used as a remedy for summer fatigue as early as in the Edo period. The boost provided by the drink has been compared to an IV drip. And, because the sweetness of the drink is entirely from the fermentation process itself rather than due to any added sweeteners, it can be used as a sugar substitute. (See Grainnaisance and Bittersweetblog for a few recipes using Amazake as a sweetener)

How to Make Koji Rice

At the heart of Amazake is koji -- the essence of Japanese food at large because it is the same rice-based fermenting agent used to make sake, soy sauce, and miso.

Making your own koji rice is a highly involved 2-day process. For the committed, check if your local Japanese specialty store sells koji spores (picture of a packet on the right) or else order them online at GEM Cultures. Then follow these step-by-step instructions on how to make your own koji rice on Everything 2. Alternatively, Vision Brewing sells koji-seeded rice and instructions how to use it to "koji-fy" a larger batch of rice for use.

How to Make Amazake

Use 2 portions of Japanese short-grain rice for every 1 portion of koji. Also, have a thermometer handy.

• Use 5-7 cups of water for every cup of regular rice
• Cook the regular rice until it becomes porridge (40-60 minutes)
• Cool the porridge until it reaches between 50 deg C and 60 deg C
• Mix koji into the porridge thoroughly
• Keep the mixture between 50 deg C and 60 deg C for 10 hours (If using a rice cooker, use the “keep warm” function, and keep the rice cooker lid open if the mixture needs cooling)
• NOTE: If mixture spend an extended period at more than 60 deg C, it won't become sweet. If below 50 deg C, the mixture becomes sour
• During the 10 hours, stir the mixture thoroughly every 2-3 hours. Wash mixing spoon with boiling hot water before stirring the mixture. This kills off any germs
• After 10 hours, the mixture is sweet

To Serve Amazake as a hot drink...

• Mix a 1 portion of water for every 1 portion of fermented ice mixture
• Bring the mixture to a boil, and let boil for 5 minutes
• Add a pinch of salt and grated fresh ginger to the mixture to taste

Refrigerate the boiled mixture above to serve as a refreshing cold drink, or freeze it to serve as a sherbet-like dessert!

 

Other Amazake homebrewers: In the Mood for Food, Homegrown Evolution and Prairie View

WWOOFING in Japan -- We Got A Nose Job

 

We just completed an exhilarating week WWOOFing on a family-run rice farm about 90 minutes outside of Osaka, Japan, in a town called Nose (pronounced No-say). (Find out more about WWOOFing in general and WWOOFing in Japan in particular.)

Babs's old friend from school, Chris, joined us for the week. What a great debut WWOOFING gig!

It's spring spring spring, smack in time for the busy rice-planting season. There's plenty-and-a-half to keep us all out of mischief.

I help our host Shigemi to sow the year's crop. Shigemi grows about 450kg of rice a year, sells two thirds of it to a network of direct customers, and feeds her family with the rest.

The rice seedlings are nursed very carefully -- after a stint in an incubator, the seedlings bask on the front lawn of the house, periodically covered with tarp to keep out the chilly spring wind and rain. Their growth progress is closely monitored to determine when they are ready for transplanting in the fields.

Rural Japan, if not the whole country, still assigns many roles by gender. So while everyone pitches in for weeding all around the farm, the boys get assigned a lot more outdoor work while I compile a comprehensive (digital) farm instruction manual for Shigemi's future WWOOFers.

Babs and Chris help to prepare the rice fields for flooding and planting -- clearing weeds and stones, leveling the ground, and unchoking the water channel. Here's a before-and-after shot. Great work guys!

They also spend the week assembling a giant weed raker, which -- once the seedlings are snugly in the ground -- will be pulled through the fields once every three days to up-end new weeds. Shigemi's very excited about this rake because her farm is transiting towards being fully organic. She's steadily reduced her use of weedkiller over the last few years, and she says with this rake, she'll be able to stop using weedkiller completely this year. Huzzah!

We also learn a great deal about foraging and living off the land. Besides garnishing soups and making salad with wild herbs growing around the farm, tis the season for bamboo shoots, and we get a hands-on lesson on spotting and unearthing them. Unfortunately, wild boars in the area have beaten us to quite a number of the delicious shoots, but we still manage a sackful, including Chris's whopper!

Last but certainly not least, we learn 2 traditional rice product recipes whose hand-made-from-scratch renditions have largely disappeared from modern industrial Japan -- Amazake, a fermented rice drink, and a very muscle-intensive Yomogi mochi.

Stay tuned!

Postcard from Tsukiji Fish Market, Tokyo

Dear fellow seafood obsessives,

I've seen some impressive seafood markets while on the road, but boy, Tusikiji Fish Market in Tokyo takes the fishcake! Remember when I said I'd died and gone to heaven when I stepped into La Boqueria in Barcelona? Well, take that, add the floor space of all of Barcelona's 39 other municipal food markets, fill it all with just seafood, and there you have Tsukiji's inner-core wholesale market. (Tsukiji market's outer ring sells other food and kitchen products). If I died here due to the stray swing of a tuna hook or axe (below), it wouldn't be a half bad way to go.

I mentioned earlier that I spent a couple of hours the other morning prowling around the early morning tuna auction. I also trailed the tuna for a bit after they got sold.

The tuna torpedos are transported to their buyers' stalls and trucks on carts of all shapes and sizes; hand-pulled if it's just one, motored around if more.

Sometimes just the one is pre-power-sawed before it gets carted off. Possible beginnings of a Damien Hirst piece?

Just imagine the fish stock you could make with this monster.

The route to breakfast at Daiwa Sushi was the ultimate edible aquarium. Here's an angry looking snow crab.

And here's some cracked open sea urchin. At Daiwa, we were served the largest sea urchin nigiri I'd ever seen. This stuff still freaks me out, admittedly, so it was quite the I-can't-fit-it-in-one-bite-but-don't-want-to-make-it-last-two dilemma.

Did you know that the seafood sold at Tsukiji comes from some 60 countries? Yes indeedy. Tsukiji's tentacles of influence spread far and wide, though in recent years seafood sales have shifted towards direct channels due to improved global telecommunication.

Pop quiz! If you combined all the squid, cuttlefish and octopus sold at Tsukiji in a day, how many tentacles in total would that be? Bonus question: If today represents a 3% drop in volume from last year, how many tentacles were sold in total last year?

Answer: I don't know, but I sure wish I got taught Math in school this way.

I also saw shellfish that must have come from Brobdingnag. Each of those mussels(?) clams(?) alien pods(?) (I have no idea, but the 2nd word of the sign reads "mountain") on the left is larger than my hand. And check out the size of those blood cockles! Almost the size of my fluttering heart.

Ugly pugly, I know, but it's just the abalone and sea snail's attempt at presuading predators that "oh no no no, I'm not delightfully sweet and crunchy and chewy at all". If you're grimacing "eeeeew gross", then their ruse has worked, and I'm as pleased as they -- more for me!

All in all, I'm happy as a clam. Wish you were here!

Wen

Sushi Breakfast at Tsukiji Fish Market: No Better Way to End The Day in Tokyo

Prologue: Babs and Dave, one of Babs's best mates from school, are both turning 30 this April. About a year ago I pitched to the gang of 'em that Tokyo would be quite the place for the boys to turn 30. The utter fabulousness of the city worked its magic and convinced a group of 6 from the UK, Netherlands and Hong Kong to come join us for various bits of fun in Japan. Wahey!

Above: Pieces of sushi are hand-made and placed one by one on a wooden board between the diner and the elevated sushi chef, with short intervals in between. This was about as many pieces as I could stand to leave for a sushi group photo before my photographic resolve dissolved

If there is anything better than starting your day in Tokyo with a sushi breakfast at Tsukiji fish market, the big Daddy of all fish markets, it is, as I found out, ending your day there.

7.30am: Breakfast of Champions

My face is pressed up against Daiwa Sushi's window, to gauge our waiting time. The sushi chef closest to the window half-smiles with pity but gently beckons me to back away from the glass. I do. I pace. I babble semi-deliriously to Babs, Chris and Helen, my breakfast companions. I've looked at a lot of tuna through glass today.

A few diners make their way out, but there is the eternity of the next 2 minutes while their spots are cleared and wiped down. I'm hopping on one foot then the other. I wonder if this is how and why so many Japanese people pursue Zen Buddism.

And we're in! We're sat as 2 separate pairs at the extreme ends of the L-shaped counter, but no one minds. We didn't come here for the conversation.

An empty wooden block is placed between each of us and the elevated sushi chef.

"Mix?" he says. We nod.

And so he does, throwing a series of shapes and layers and textures more sublime than the best of my favourite DJs. Maguro (tuna) and ikura (salmon eggs) maki. A fat raw prawn. Ika (squid). And -- as my eyebrows jump and my heart stops -- toro (already fatty tuna belly) and chu toro (even more fatty tuna belly). This was going to be financial hari-kiri. But what a worthy death.

Babs and I make semi-obscene little noises of profound enjoyment as we chomp down on each piece of sushi. I don't understand how the 2 American women next to us are managing to carry on a full conversation about something that is not about sushi. Or any kind of conversation at all. No one else is talking. Not the Japanese businessmen, not the other tourists. Only one bald gaijin with his Japanese friend, but at least he's talking to the chef about the fish, in fluent Japanese. (I don't know what about, I just hear the key fish words).

6.30am: Gawking At The Goods

We wander through the labyrinth of some 1,700 stalls selling some 450 species of seafood, dodging handpulled and auto carts and forklifts as we go. Separate post to come on this section. Too many photos!

5.30am: Tiptoeing Around Tuna

We're prowling about the perimeters of Tsukiji's famed tuna auction warehouse at the back end of the complex, right on the water. Reports in our group's array of guide books had been mixed about whether visitors were still banned from the auction room or allowed back in, so we peered through whatever open doors and glass panels we could to try and gauge the situation.

In quieter sections I would nip in for a few minutes to get a closer look at the proceedings. It's nowhere near as loud or as boisterous as I thought it would be. I watch buyers peruse rows upon rows of iced-over tuna torpedos, throwing their scythe-like hooks into shortlisted tails, and hacking out a pinch of raw meat to chew on for the all-important taste-test. Pretty pink pieces of tuna on slabs of rice is one thing. But a warehouse full of tuna carcasses does, I admit, conjure images of casualties of war or some other disaster, laid out for identification and burial.

Inevitably a security guard shows up and nudges me back out the door, apologising all the way. I sure am glad this is Japan rather than Germany, where I've seen bouncers super-efficiently pitch over-rowdy Oktoberfesters out of beer tents...

Later I find out that unless you're in a prebooked school group, visitors these days are not allowed into the tuna auction room. Doh!

We finally stumble into the little area where visitors are shepherded into to observe the auction proceedings from a distance. This is just one of many ongoing auctions all along the length of the warehouse (I suspect grouped into tuna-size batches).

3.30am: Singing in Shinjuku

The group decided that the only way to stay awake for the last hour until it was time to pile into a cab and head east to Tsukiji was to sing at the top of our lungs. Babs scored points for decoding the huge Japanese remote control. Then lost them again as he deliberately experimented with changing the key to a song midway. Three times.

By this time I'm having a splitting headache so right after taking these photos I take a very strategic 30 minute disco nap on the far end of our karaoke room. It made all the difference.

As we leave, Babs and I marvel at all the establishments still open: pachinko bars, karaoke bars, girlie bars, noodle bars, sushi bars, donburi bars, and 24hr internet + magazine + DVD cafes that are a cheap option (compared to taking a taxi home to the suburbs) for partygoers to hang out and nap until the metro system wakes up again. Like New York, this city never sleeps. And as much as I love New York, it's hard to deny that there's a lot less trash on the streets and less stress about potentially getting mugged while walking around at night here. I kinda like it that both the police and the yakuza see to that.

11pm: Boys Just Havana Have Fun

Dave and Colin decide they're in the mood for cuban cigars, so we take shelter from the cold at Havana Bar somewhere in Shinjuku.

Before that we stumble down into a basement bar called God Bar Jazz, where we're the only people in there and drinks are horrendously overpriced. The jazz comes from a CD rather than a band (I don't see any space for any kind of band to perform at the best of times). The bar's saving grace: chocolate covered potato crisps.

8.30pm: Shinjuku Shabu-Shabu

The group was in the mood for shabu shabu for dinner. I didn't have any leads on where to go for this in Shinjuku, so we had to employ our usual "stare at the menu and stick your head in the doorway" method. This wasn't our luckiest of discoveries. The hotpot was sufficiently tasty but clearly priced for punters more interested in the pretty waitresses in midriffs and miniskirts rather than the food.

3.30pm: Checking Out Cherry Blossoms

We're in the thick of cherry blossom season, and one of Tokyo's favourite viewing sites in Ueno Park. There are a couple of fun ways to engage in this breathtakingly beautiful activity (if simply walking under the canopy of a boulevard of cherry trees isn't thrilling enough for you).

1) Rent a boat at the pond on the south side of the park. The pink swan boats match the cherry blossoms perfectly.

2) Pack a picnic lunch and mat and spend the afternoon under the blossoms making up haikus.

1.30pm: Ravishing Ramen

By pure luck we stumble into Kyushu Jangara Ramen right in front of Harajuku metro station for lunch. I find out later that this is one of Tokyo's most popular ramen purveyors.

The pork bone broth (the first thing I always test with any bowl of ramen, I've realised) is beautifully rich, and the slabs of lean pork belly have their marinade seeped right through. The hard boiled egg has a lovely just slightly runny yolk (think egg fondant), a magic trick all chefs I've crossed chopsticks with in Tokyo so far seem to have mastered.

10.30am: Meetup at the Meiji Shrine

We start the day by walking around the Meiji Shrine gardens.

Some 3 million people worship at this Shinto spiritual centre of Tokyo during the major holidays. Many buy these 500-yen wooden blocks below to record their wishes and prayers.

I like this one below.

And on that fitting note, I bid you and this 22-hour day good morning, and good night. I need a nap.

Daiwa Sushi
Tsukiji Market Building 6
5-2-1 Tsukiji, Chuo-ku, Tokyo
+81 3 3547 6807
(5.30am -1:30pm; closed Sunday)

Kyushu Jangara Ramen
Meiji Jingumae "Harajuku" metro station
Come out of Exit 3, and it's on the left