Category: food

Takoyaki, or octopus balls, are probably the most widely spread form of Japanese fast food (yes, it does exist). Their origin lies allegedly in Osaka in 193r, but by now you can find them all over Japan; mainly sold by street vendors at all sorts of matsuri, but there are some restaurants specializing on takoyaki as well. 

Takoyaki are made from a wheat based batter similar to the one pancakes are made from (but with dashi, a kind of fish soup, instead of milk). The most important part of making takoyaki is the right type of pan: it has half sphere shaped moulds and is often made of cast iron to allow the takoyaki to cook evenly. It is fun watching street vendors prepare the food, and, as they are very popular and take quite a long time for fast food, you will have ample opportunity while you’re waiting in line… Essentially it goes like this: First, the pan is filled with the batter, then, the other ingredients are spread on top: pieces of boiled octopus and finely chopped green onions and a little bit of red, pickled ginger. More batter can be added on top now, but you’ll have to wait until they are cooked a little, before they are turned over (thus forming a ball) with a little pick.

Once the takoyaki are finished, they are taken out of the pan with a pick and put on a plate (or into a plastic box if it’s takeaway). They are then coated with takoyaki sauce (or worchester sauce) and liberally sprinkled with dried bonito flakes and green seaweed powder. On top of all this goes mayonnaise – if so desired.

I like takoyaki very much, and I have them often at a matsuri, mainly because they are so easy to eat – with toothpicks. After several scalding incidents I have now finally learnt to tear each takoyaki open just a little bit and let them cool off before eating them – the inside can be very hot indeed and has probably burnt many a palate…

This complete Japanese menu has five dishes plus dessert, and except for the dessert which comes last, there is no strict order to the food. Japanese people take a nibble from here and there, according to their own tastes and preferences. The bitter gourd recipe is the only one that is not standard Japanese food, it’s from Okinawa and thus tastes different, well, bitter. Many Japanese enjoy Okinawan food, though, so it’s worth trying.

Main Ingredients
(4 people)

Chestnut Rice (kuri gohan)

– 80 g chestnuts
Peel the chestnuts and soak them in a bowl of slightly salted water.

– 200 g Japanese white rice
– 60 g sticky rice
– 1/2 teaspoon salt
– twice as much water as rice (by volume)

Mix and wash the rice and put it into a rice cooker. Drain the chestnuts and put them on top of the rice. Do not mix them under yet. Add the water and salt, then cook the rice as usual
When the rice is cooked, mix the chestnuts into the rice.

Grilled Chicken Skewers with Vegetables (Yakitori)

– 400 g chicken thighs
– 2 spring onions
Cut the chicken into small cubes (3 cm side length) and the spring onions into 3 cm pieces.

– salt and pepper

Soy-based Sauce:
– 2 tablespoons of whole soybean sauce
– 3 tablespoons of sugar
Mix the soy sauce with the sugar.

Coat 300 g of the chicken with the soy-based sauce.
Thread the chicken and spring onions alternately onto bamboo skewers, thread the remaining chicken onto skewers and sprinkle with salt and pepper.
Grill the skewers on a grill or open fire.

– 1 paprika
– 8 green peppers
– 8 shiitake mushrooms
Trill the vegetables (or fry them in a pan with oil) and garnish the skewers of meat.

Boiled Chrysanthemums With Radish (daikon no hana no oroshiae)

– 200 g daikon radish
Grate finely and drain from the resulting water.

– 2 blossoms edible chrysanthemums
Take the petals and boil them quickly, then put them in cold water and drain.

– 150 g cucumber
Slice thinly.

– 2 tablespoons baby sardines
Pour boiled water over them, then drain and let them cool.

Sweetened Vinegar as Dressing:
– 2 tablespoons of vinegar
– 2 tablespoons of sugar
– 1 teaspoon salt
Mix together.

Mix all the above ingredients together and dress with the sweetened vinegar.

Stir-fried Okinawan Gourd and Tofu

– 1 bitter gourd
Cut in half lengthwise, remove the seeds and slice in 5 mm pieces.

– 1/2 pack deep-fried tofu
Cut into slices of about 8 mm.

– 1/2 tablespoon oil
– 1 tablespoon sugar
– 1 tablespoon miso

Fry the bitter gourds in oil. When they are softened, add the sugar and the miso. Towards the end, put in the tofu and fry for another minute or so.

Japanese Clear Soup (Dashi)

Dashi:
– 1 litre water
– 20 g dashi konbu (dried seaweed)
– 20 g katsuo bushi (dried bonito)
Put the konbu into the water and heat up. Just before the water starts boiling, remove the konbu and add the katsuo. Boil for one minute, reduce the heat and wait until the katsuo sinks. Strain the dashi through a wet cloth.

– 1/2 pack tofu
– 1/2 pack nameko mushrooms
– 1/2 pack daikon radish sprouts
– 1 tablespoon light colored soy sauce
– 1 tablespoon salt
– fragrant garnish (suikuchi)

Prepare the dashi, add salt and soy sauce. Place the tofu into the hot dashi and boil it. To serve, put the tofu, nameko, daikon, and suikuchi into a soup bowl and pour the dashi over it.

Potato Rice Cakes (Imo Mochi)

– 100 g sweet potatoes
– 1 rice cake
– 80 g red bean jam (anko)
– some kinako (soybean flour)

Peel the potatoes, cut them in 1 cm slices and put them in water to eliminate the bitter taste. Put the potatoes on a dish and cook them in the microwave for 5 minutes.
Water the rice cake and heat it in the microwave for 1 min.
Crush the boiled potatoes in a bowl and mix with the heated rice cake. Put the mixture into a bowl covered with kinako, and make four pieces.

Divide the anko into four pieces and wrap it with the potato mixture. Lightly sprinkle the finished rice cakes with kinako.

Okonomiyaki are savoury Japanese pancakes, and there are probably as many recipes out there as there are people who cook them. Essentially, there are two styles: Osaka style – put all ingredients into the batter and fry them – and Hiroshima style – the ingredients are carefully cooked layer by layer. As I live in Kyoto, I will probably end up with more Osaka style recipes, but in the end, both are delicious anyway!

Okonomiyaki  à laTokumura Sensei
(for 15 pieces)

– 250 g flour (ideally one half wheat flour and one half okonomiyaki flour)
– 250 ml water
– 3 eggs
– 2 teaspoons of salt
Mix together to a batter with a somewhat liquid consistency.

– 1/2 cabbage
Cut into pieces of roughly 1×1 cm; omit the hardest part of the stem.

– 150 g of sliced raw pork (some fat is good, think bacon)
Cut into pieces of roughly 3×3 cm and fry them in olive oil with salt and pepper.

– 150 g of raw shrimp
Wash and clean the shrimp, remove shells, heads, and guts.

Add the cabbage, fried pork and shrimp to the batter and mix thoroughly.
Grease a pan with olive oil and let it get hot- put a ladle full of okonomiyaki mixture into the pan, flatten it a little and fry it like a pancake from both sides until it is done. It takes about 10 minutes for one piece that is 1 cm thick and 10 cm in diameter.
Serve with special okonomiyaki sauce and dried tuna flakes (traditional) and/or mayonnaise and parsley (optional).

Japanese cuisine as a whole has just been assigned as a UNESCO “Intangible Cultural Heritage“. The definition of such is as follows (see the wikipedia article):

Intangible Cultural Heritage means the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills – as well as the instruments, objects, artifacts and cultural spaces associated therewith – that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage. This intangible cultural heritage, transmitted from generation to generation, is constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to their environment, their interaction with nature and their history, and provides them with a sense of identity and continuity, thus promoting respect for cultural diversity and human creativity.

Japan was the first country in the 1950s to protect cultural heritages like this by law, and it is among the countries that has the most intangible cultural heritage items on the UNESCO list, for example Noh theatre and gagaku court music, of which I have written before. Theatre, music, and handicraft are common cultural heritage, but Japanese cuisine is only the fifth one to be included, the others are French, Mediterranean, Turkish, and Mexican cuisine.

It surprises me a little that the whole of Japanese cuisine is designated as intangible cultural heritage, from Kyoto’s palace-derived haute cuisine kaiseki (see the breakfast above for an idea) to Portuguese-introduced or invented (?) tempura; from the quickly prepared ramen and udon noodles to the painstakingly slow process of making the various types of yuba; from raw sushi and sashimi to deliciously cooked unagi; and I am sure it even includes natto, the harmless English translation “fermented soybeans” not quite capturing the atrocity of its taste…

Over time I will have lots of occasion to eat and try much of Japan’s culinary art, maybe even learn how to prepare one or two of those dishes. I shall report accordingly, promised!

In my attempt to explore Japanese food – especially sweets – I have come across one of the most famous sweets of Kyoto: Yatsuhashi. Yatsuhashi fall into the category “mochi”, but only barely so. They consist of very thin (maybe two millimetres) mochi dough at the outside, have about a teaspoonful of filling inside, and come in characteristic triangular shape.

I like them very much because they come in so many different flavours. The standard “green tea outside, anko read beans inside” is available everywhere and at all times, but Japanese also like the seasonal flavours like ringo (apple), momo (peach), ichigo (strawberry), or, right now kuri (chestnut). Black sesame is also a year round favourite, as is imo (sweet potato); and yatsuhashi are often bought as souvenir. The mochi dough outside, flavoured with a tiny bit of sugar and cinnamon – which you can buy fresh without filling or even dried  –  is not overly sweet, but the filling (not really marmalade, but some type of smooth paste) always hits you with the extra amount of sugar…

Last week, a friend of mine from Hokkaido (that’s the northernmost of the four main islands of Japan) sent me a little present. It is quite common in Japan to give consumable presents of sake, green tea, even fruit; and when people go on vacation or business trips they often return with local specialities as omiyage – souvenirs. Hence, I received what is considered as the classic present from Hokkaido – a large box of Shiroi Koibito.

Those are very thin cookies – cat tongues the French call them I believe – with a layer of white chocolate in between. The name translates as White Lover and the cookies are delicious!

Interestingly, except for the name which is written in Kanji, all other text on the box is in French – not that I speak that language any better than Japanese. Only when you open the box, does the writing indicate the provenance of the gift… I’m so glad my chocolate-free month is over 😉

Time to write about food again! One of the things I love about Japan is the great variety of cheap takeout. Many small restaurants provide takeout dishes if you don’t want to eat there, there are a number of sushi places that mostly cater to the takeout crowd – one in my neighbourhood has only a single table with two chairs so you can wait if you want anything extraordinary – and, of course, all the convenience stores have takeout dishes and a microwave for free use if you are extremely hurried.

My personal favourite takeout meal from the convenience store around the corner consists of various types of onigiri. They are nothing special, just rice balls with or without stuffing, about the size of a fist, mostly in triangular or oval shape, and often covered in seaweed. They are available in many flavours. The plain ones without stuffing can be only salted, or they are cooked with some red beans or other flavour and sprinkled with seaweed crumbs or black or white sesame. Sometimes they have a piece of fish on top, then they resemble an oversized piece of sushi (which is called nigiri sushi, by the way). Alternatively, onigiri can be stuffed with all sorts of things, from fish with or without mayonnaise, cooked beef or chicken, vegetables or different types of seaweed, to salty, pickled ume plums. The last type of filling is very interesting, for me it falls under “acquired taste”.

It is very easy to make onigiri at home, as they are only rice cooked with seasoning (different kinds are readily available) which is shaped and then cooled. Some people like to carefully fry the finished onigiri in oil, this is often done after a day or two when the rice has dried out too much to be tasty.

The convenience store bought onigiri are mostly triangular and wrapped in nori seaweed. They have a very ingenious packaging, because if the nori is in contact with the rice for too long, it becomes soggy and unpleasant to eat. So, the packaging consists of two layers of plastic, one on the outside and one that lies between the rice and the nori, separating the two until the onigiri is eaten, so that the nori always tastes fresh and crispy. Unfortunately this does not show in the picture above. There is of course a special way of unwrapping those onigiri: First you tear the package from the top corner, all the way from front to back, and then you gently pull on the left and right corner of the package to remove it from the outside and underneath the nori. How to do this is conveniently described on the package with 1 – 2 – 3 steps, I find this quite funny.