Soya sauce chicken gizzards with shiitake

Weekend effort: Chicken gizzards and shiitake in soya sauce, with udon and choy sum.

Izakaya Chiri--

Chiri--, an izakaya off the Kawaramachi-Shijo junction and a popular student hangout. And you get student's portions too: pictured here is the house special, the party-sized udon. Wash down with umeshusoda (you guessed! sparkly plum wine!) and a roll-call of oily finger foods: deep-fried octopus legs, agedashi tofu, soft egg roll, stewed beef tendons. Going back there again tonight - what the gut needs after an evening of throwing clay.

Rolling!

This was a lot of fun - my sensei Akiko was a real darling and she was taking the opportunity to speak English while teaching me how to beat, fold and bake the sponge, and roll it all up. Throughout the lesson I was hastily annotating my Japanese notes - she looked at it and went, "Can you read your handwriting?" The jam syrup spread was a syrup-cassis liquer-raspberry jam concoction, and the filling cream a complicated (ok, more complicated than yours truly has ever a-rolled up!) working together of Philly cream cheese, yoghurt, honey, fresh cream. Now this is cream!

This was definitely one heck of a good cake - the cream cheese filling gave such an burst of flavour and innovation in a Swiss Roll. The kind of cream that stuck to your guts and sent you off to pretty dreams post-dinner.

The cooking studio, like our pottery place, was like a bubble of sorts where women (men aren't allowed to join) come to cook together and in groups, forming an air of sweet acquiescent solidarity that can only happen in Japan. Little signs stuck to walls, refrigerators, gently instructed you do wash like this, put like that. The studio had three little colonies - bread, cake and cooking. The cooks were whipping up steaming pots of coconut curry, the smell of which wafted through the studio and into my hair and out into the lanes of the department store (Loft) that our studio was attached to. On your way out you can take a pleasurable ramble outside in the kitchen shopping lanes, where you'll find imported and Japanese fine and funky cooking ware - spatulas, cookware, mandolines, garlic peelers, teapots for all kinds of tea, sake sets, funky salad spoons.

Next up - an intriguing cafe au lait bread, and then the sample lessons are over - I've got a quick decision whether to take up the bread-making course at half price - sadly without Akiko's tutelage, as bread isn't her speciality.

I *heart * breakfast

One breakfast I nearly couldn't finish: Takashimaya 'NY' poppyseed bagel, egg scrambled with bacon and tangy parsley. C. made the plate that it was on.

Pesto Breadsticks

Equinoctal comfort

Since coming into possession of my new cookbook - The Enlightened Kitchen by Mari Fujii - I have been waiting for an opportunity to try cooking one of those delicate meals with all sorts of fancy side-dishes. I was very pleased with how this one turned out. Although I didn't go vegetarian as Fujii recommends in her gorgeous rhapsodizing of shojin ryori (Japanese temple cooking), her luscious pictures of unexpected vegetarian combinations perched on beautiful artisanal plateware zinged me into action.

So today I gave myself over to an hour of blissful indecision and happy preparation, and produced things out of ingredients I had on hand: fried eggplant drizzled with tomato sauce; lean pork sauteed with persimmon, and ginger rice. The latter came strictly out of Fujii's book - it was chockfull of flavor, good enough on its own with a heady aroma of ginger juice. The eggplant dish was also inspired by the book - but the sauce was my time-saving substitute for the more elaborate dengaku and miso flavorings featured. I didn't know what to expect from the pork and persimmon combination, but it went really well; the cubed persimmon thrown in had just enough time to render its sweetness to the pork but still retain some bite.

It was a good meal - ginger-tangy, persimmon-sweet, eggplant-savoury. And after the cooking was done I realized how autumny it was - the eggplants and persimmons in season, while ginger rice makes for a warming change-of-season comfort dish. This was one meal in which I enjoyed the cooking and anticipation as much as I did the eating.

Blue Boy Bakery, Uji

There is a little gem of a bakery right here in Obaku, Uji, which happens to be one of the best bakeries in the world. Its existence was conducted to us over lunch at the canteen, and knowing what kind of effect that always has on me, I make it my first stop leaving the university. 'The Blue Boy bakery,' whispers A., 'that's what I call it because it has a little boy on the sign - a blue sign'. 'It's right on the road just after where you would turn in to go to the JR station. It's good'.

'Does it have bread, baguette? European bread?' I ask because it has been so difficult to find non-sweet breakfast bread of the non-toast variety.

'It's good,' A. only repeats. Her boyfriend J. concurs with a nod. They say no more.

They needn't, because that evening, I find out where it is, and I find out via a carefully-planned stratified sampling scheme that they did good sweet as well as savoury breads, a tough balance to maintain. There is a good-looking crusty bread bowl made of potato flour filled with bacon and grilled cheese. That night, C. fights with me over the last morsel of foccacia but manages to finish the bacon bowl. Luckily, I'd already finished the sweet delicate apple crisp on the train.

Except for the apple crisp, I haven't bought anything twice because there's too much to try. And good thing I can't read Japanese, they must have out-of-this-world names. Today I am munching on a walnut-speckled plum-chestnut pastry with just a bit of adzuki-chocolate-tasting (but is it?) filling.

It is the kind of place people speak of in hushed tones. It is a two-person wide, four-person long store which just has enough room to conduct customers, holding on to trays, in conveyor-belt fashion, the only way to wiggle yourself to the line. No-one talks except for the smiley-friendly-efficient cashiers. In the back you can just glimpse white-cloaked angels zipping around baking tables, chopping stuff, the occasional slap of the oven door and the whiff of something good. The third time I let myself go in, failing to resist in my walks to campus, I meet R., whom I haven't seen in two months.

'Hey! How are you doing? What's up with everything?' then lowers his voice in reverence. 'Did I tell you about this place?'

'No it was somebody else. I've known it for a while'. I am saying as I eye a jam-and-cream confection and reach out to slip it on my tray.

'Careful with those,' R. laughs, seeing I have two sweet things on my tray, and it's only 10 in the morning.

Chicken livers with asparagus, onion and mash

C. worked up a sweat last weekend making his yummy butterless potato mash with tasty chicken livers, fried onions and the sort of pale asparagus you find here. A fancy change from the pizza we've been so inordinately fond of on our stovetop gas grille.

Nishiki Market

I hesitate about posting about the Nishiki because oh my god, my experience with this awesome food-only market has only just begun, and threatens to evolve with every trip. Each time I walk down its long and narrow thoroughfare I am bombarded by different scenes, smells and sounds. If it isn't the pickle seller going Irrashayimasse! it's the samurai-looking young men pounding the mochi at the sweets stall.

My first trip was a sleepy afternoon when sporadic tourist groups roamed; the second was a bustling Saturday noontime frenzy, where it was a jostle through and through, but when I also felt much less shy about trying the different-flavoured mochi or pickles in their little boxes or bowls (above).

If I don't know what to do with 10,000 varieties of pickles, at least I know I'll be visiting Nishiki again (and again) if only for its flowers at wholesale prices, or the purple firmness of a basket of eggplants. Or the odd cuts of meat, the strangest flat fish to be seen this side of Kansai. Or really just for the heck of being there.

Cantonese dinner at B.'s

Good friends and good food: B. made sweet and sour chicken, beef and broccoli in oyster sauce, char-fried rice (with peas! scallions! egg! fried in a stockpot but with that amazing charcoal-stove crust!). The five of us, from four continents, sitting in a warm hearth of a kitchen in a Kyoto suburb, drinking all kinds of good things, talking till late.

Saturday morning, or the cooking class that wasn't

The plan was summer sweets, which got me all excited about dessert, but instead we were told to come round a table with two takoyaki stoves, which you can buy in electronic stores here. The sensei was a shy young man who represented a yakisoba sauce company (C. would have had a field day).

The class was mostly in Japanese, but since takoyaki and yakisoba were no mysteries even for foreigners like myself, I bumbled my way through the class quite easily, helped by three lovely young ladies.
After the lunch and a little bowl of shaved ice dessert, we worked it all off with an hour of Bon dancing, commonly danced in village festivals in August to celebrate Obon, the month of the dead. You repeat a series of coordinated arm and leg movements while moving in a circle in tune to some trance-like chanting with basic instruments.

The eclectic plan aside, this was more of a fun social gathering than a cooking class. For next month they're promising to teach us what to do with okura, the stuff left over from making beancurd, but who knows? Maybe a spot of fan painting instead!

After all that effort for a sweltering Saturday morning I cooled down by walking through the famed Nishiki Market and buying a basket of eggplants and some fleurs du jour, before heading to Takashimaya to splurge on European bread. Our regular bread was out, so I got a cumin-flavoured half-loaf, which went well with an impromptu French onion soup the next day.

And what unbelievable luck! The already culinary Saturday ended in a superb Cantonese dinner made by a professor friend and chef extraordinaire!

Grand Marnier French Toast

Sounds like something I'd love to try soon:

Grand Marnier French Toast
4 servings

6 large eggs
1/2 cup fresh orange juice
1/3 cup milk
1/4 cup Grand Marnier or other orange-flavored liqueur
1 and 1/2 tablespoon of brown sugar
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
8 slices whole-wheat bread -- best if slightly stale
3 tablespoons of butter for frying
Powdered sugar for dusting Preheat oven to 200F.

In a large shallow baking dish, whisk together eggs, orange juice, milk, liqueur, brown sugar, and cinnamon. Add 4 bread slices and soak 2 minutes. Turn slices over and soak 2 minutes more. Transfer soaked bread slices to a plate and repeat procedure with remaining 4 bread slices.

In a large heavy skillet or griddle, heat 1 1/2 T. butter over medium heat until foam subsides; cook half of coated bread slices until golden, about 3 minutes on each side. Transfer to a baking sheet and keep warm in oven. Cook remaining bread slices in same manner.

Dust French toast with powdered sugar and serve with warm maple syrup.

Fine dining in Kyoto

What better opportunity to experience Japanese fine-dining than a farewell party for a couple of visiting professors! And the menu, if you please:

1. Stand outside the well-preserved machiya (merchant's house) waiting for the rest of the party to show.

2. Finally venture through the outer courtyard and into the reception area. Remove shoes and place in lockers provided, and find out you could have spent your last 15 minutes seated in comfortable waiting chairs like everyone else, or milling around and admiring the darkening view of the garden.

3. Allow yourself to be led into the inner corridors, where you are shown to an exquisite tatami room with an expansive ikebana arrangement in the center and two long tables on the sides adorned with meal implements and the first course in covered woven baskets.

4. Be the only person to order wine instead of Asahi. Open the basket when the others do, and collectively gasp at the delicate arrangements of sashimi, puddings, compote of sea urchin lying within the basket.

5. Find out that this is only the first course and indulge happily. Feel a bit woeful about the ice-cold red wine, and wonder if you should have ordered sake instead.

6. Receive plate of things to dunk in the hotpot, of soya bean milk.

7. Receive main course - an unexpectedly understated sushi plate.

8. Discover the best thing since air-con: plum wine or umeshu.

9. Arrive at an epiphany. that Japanese fine dining is less about the food than the presentation (the excesses, the impressions), and, as the evening wears on, an excuse to drink a whole lot of beer and lose inhibitions.

10. Tumble with the other inebriated folk through the restaurant's subtly-lit landscape garden in the moonlight on a tour of its mini-bridges, tricking streams, hanging willows, and imported limestone plunge pool. Try to shut out images from the Blair Witch Project. Find out this very fine machiya was built and owned by the man who engineered the canalization of the Kamogawa, the banks on which the house sits.

11. Realize that drinking on a Monday sets a really lousy precedent for the rest of the week.

Matcha made in heaven

Creations from our first pottery class together, finally painted and fired. Just the right things for my newly-acquired pack of Uji matcha!

IMBB #17: Lemon Verbena and Lavender Jelly

TasteTea is my comeback IMBB!:)

I remember my first IMBB, way back when it was in its single digits. It was one of those things that inspired me to start a food blog. Two years on, I've moved on to two more countries in different continents, seen my old blog disappear with a bad hosting company, and done nothing much with respect to food blogging except live vicariously through other people's wonderful sites. Not blogging much is also tied to the nomadism and new busy life, the stresses and non-permanence of it all leading to a mostly uninspired kitchen. But with the next 7 months in glorious Japan, I thought it was the perfect time to start it up again.

My first contribution in ages (thank you Clement for probably the most clever and inspiring themes ever) is a very simple concoction, result of the severely simplified culinary life I've been leading, as well as a pretty sparse kitchen. I just had to use verbena, my absolute number-one bedtime tea, and some dried lavender, brought over from the US in a doubled-up ziplock bag for special occasions like these. I added lavender to deepen the flavour, as verbena tends to be rather muted.

Verbena is also special because we used to live in Ascona in Ticino, Switzerland, and the Italian town just across the lake was called Verbania, named after the verbena-lined lakeshore. Verbena isn't such a popular herb but I find it a lot more soothing than camomile tea. I first drank the tea in Lausanne, where some friends were hosting us. With the strong aroma of verbena flowers, and the heady addition of fleur d'orange syrup, we almost fell asleep at the table.

The recipe

1 teabag lemon verbena, also known as vervain (mine had a bit of fleur d'orange in it)
1 teaspoon dried lavender
1 5g-sachet of agar-agar or jelly, procured with some challenge at the local Japanese supermarket
3 cups of water

Brew the lemon verbena and lavendar in the 3 cups of water, boiling gently. At the end of the brewing (according to teabag instructions), add in sachet of jelly/agar-agar and stir until it dissolves. Strain the mixture and pour into moulds as desired. Cool and refrigerate until set.

Fast food fast pay

The well-travelled visitor to Japan must have seen countless of these things, but I'm still fascinated at coin-operated anything, including this intriguing machine that swallowed C.'s payment for his dish of rice-and-curry in one of the fast food establishments in Sanjo.

Lipton Tea House, Sanjo, Kyoto

Lipton doesn't conjure up visions of splendour and dining ecstasy, but the Lipton Tea House in the arcaded maze of the Sanjo shopping district in downtown Kyoto is a pleasant well-lit coffee/tea parlour. I cannot be happier at the Japanese passion for pastries and baking. I let myself go today with Lipton's torte of the day, a matcha pudding on a sliver of cream and sitting on a rich chocolate fudge tart base. It was an unmatchable (pun intended) welding of bitter-sweet flavours.

Lunch in Kibune

We heard the thing to do in the village of Kibune, just 20 minutes by train from Kyoto, is to dine at one of the many restaurants perched precariously over the stream that runs through the town. We found this little restaurant, the cheapest of the lot (some set menus started at $60!), but almost didn't get to sit and eat over the stream because the day's only slight drizzle was starting. Luckily for us the drops faded, so we were allowed to sit under the cover of straw and have our late lunch next to a tiny waterfall. We had the gomoku (vegetable) and also the tori (chicken) kamamesi, a pot of rice steamed in the respective broths. The soup contained the strangest little bit of plant specimen, some sort of root or tiny branch that was covered in a gelatinous goo. The meal was just about enough to energize us for the walk down to the station to train it back to Kyoto, but it was quite something to dine with the soothing sound of running water.

Sailing sandwiches

Three-layer tea sandwiches of tuna mayo and cucumber and picnic ham on buttered bread, kind of inspired by the Fosters incident.

Tea at Foster's Holland Village

Smoked salmon and buttered tea sandwich, hot freshly-baked buttery scones, rich tea cake. The tea: A creamy Earl Grey.