Miso katsu

Deep-fried pork cutlets ("katsu") are a wonderful Japanese specialty, and in my opinion the rich miso-sauce-coated version that is Nagoya's local specialty is the best. I finally managed to make it at home, and it turned out pretty damn delicious, if I do say so myself. But it wasn't all fun and games. The tasty photo you see here hides behind it a legacy of terror...

Japanese Style Fried Chicken

On my first trip to Boston to visit a high school friend, her group of friends took us to a Chinese/Japanese restaurant and urged me to try the "aged dofu". Although they assumed that I would know what this was, I had no idea. My thoughts flitted to the infamous "stinky tofu" I had once heard of, a fermented soy dish rumored to meet its rather illustrious name with a vengeance. I was apprehensive, but they were getting one for the table and before I could say anything the orders were taken. Sticky, brown mystery cubes flew around in my thoughts.  I wasn't prepared for this malodorous dish to ruin my appetite for the night, but then again maybe it would be one of those things where I would get hooked. But when the dish came out, I saw (or rather smelled) that this seemed to be rather ordinary tofu, other than the fact it was deep fried. Confusion ensued. How was this tofu "aged"? Was it some kind of acquired taste that amateurs couldn't even detect?

A quick look at the menu cleared things up. This was not "aged" tofu but "age dofu", properly pronounced agé-dofu. It was a moment where I clearly saw something lost in translation in a fairly humorous manner. I tried to explain the humor of the situation to my hosts, but didn't quite succeed:
"You see, when you said 'aged', I thought you meant it was fermented and I was scared but then I realized that the word isn't 'age', it's the Japanese word 'agé' that means deep fried, so it's not actually aged at all..."

...I'd like to say that you had to be there, but unfortunately I just don't have what it takes to be funny.
However, this post isn't about age-dofu or stinky tofu or any tofu for that matter. It's about a delicious chicken salad on rice, marinated in soy sauce and ginger, and "agéd", or deep fried.

 

Valentine Truffles

Like the good little Japanese wife that I am (ahem), I made some truffles for Valentine's Day this year. No, I'm not trying to put myself down. It's just that many, if not most, Japanese girls will have experienced making chocolate at some point in their lives. Why is that, you ask. What about the men? Will I include an actual recipe this time? Find out after the jump.

Christmas in New Zealand

Some people dream of a white Christmas. I, however, dream of a bright Christmas, full of beaches and BBQs, for this is the kind of Christmas we have down under in New Zealand.

Sawa and I were lucky enough to get to go back to New Zealand for Christmas - the first time back since we arrived in Canada. Although our time there was short, we managed to fit in plenty of the special things we've been missing since we left in August 2009. Most importantly, we got to spend lots of time with my family and with Sawa's family, who also flew over from Japan. However, of more relevance to this blog is that we got to have some of the delicious food and drink that NZ does so well.

Of course, NZ wine is world famous, and deservedly so. But one of the other great things about NZ is the glorious outdoors, and people there love to take advantage of the beautiful summer to get outside and enjoy food and wine al fresco. My philosophy is that everything tastes better when it's enjoyed outside. Sawa's stuffed Siberain huskey, Shibe, seems to agree.

 

Ramen

It pains me to know that for most people in the English speaking world, ramen brings to mind three-minute snacks laced with artificial flavoring and msg. I do respect Momofuku Ando, the creator of instant noodles, as one of the most innovative and motivated businessmen of post-war Japan, but unfortunately the convenience over quality of the instant noodle fails to capture the glory that is true ramen.

Ramen, sometimes referred to as “Chinese noodles”, is one of the foods I miss the most when I’m away from Japan. Imagine slurping perfectly firm noodles out of a bowl of hot, oily soup, occasionally interrupted by slices of rich roasted pork. A complicated aroma of soy sauce, ginger, browned meat, and a fresh heaping of spring onions fills your nose, and every bite is garnished with a generous addition of freshly crushed garlic. Just thinking about it makes me drool. 

Ode to Sawa

Surgeon general's warning: This post is full of cheesiness. Cheese has recently been shown to contain calories, which have in turn been linked to death. And yet the US government encourage Domino's pizza to use cheese? What the hell kind of conspiracy is this?

Sorry. As you may be able to tell: 1) I think that the food culture in America is crazy, and 2) I am recovering from the flu and may not be in a completely rational state of mind.

Anyway, today's post is not really about cheese, it's about what an amazing and awesome wife Sawa is. Particularly when it comes to making pie. Perhaps you think that your wife is better? Perhaps you are a fool. While I've been lying around sleeping and coughing and complaining, Sawa's been making me delicious meals and snuggling with me and doing all the chores and travel preparations and figuring out and making all the Christmas presents that are ostensibly supposed to be from me.

Thanksgiving with a dash of Japanese New Year flavour

chikuzenni (vegetables boiled in a soy-based sauce)

Last week we drove out to the East coast for the second time in as many weeks for Thanksgiving with my relatives. Last year, Sawa made some delicious ratatouille, and she was thinking about doing something like that again this year until her mum suggested she try a Japanese dish to add something a little different to the mix.

We've always thought that the closest thing in Japan to Thanksgiving is New Year's. They're both arguably the best holiday of the year because they both involve:
1) All the family getting together
2) Eating till you can't stand up
3) Falling asleep watching TV
4) Waking up and repeating for a couple days

The true meaning of Amherst

One word:

WINGS!!!!!!!!

Seeing old friends, family, and fellow Lord Jeff's Table bloggers at Homecoming was OK too, I guess.

Sunday brunch: The secret to happiness

I know we posted about Sunday brunch last time, too, but I don't think I can emphasize enough what a beautiful thing it is to have a lazy Sunday brunch. Arguably even better than the sleeping late, drinking coffee, and eating a delicious brunch is the part AFTER that when you can make MORE coffee and lie down again. It's like the circle of life, but even better because Mufasa doesn't die.

Eggs Florentine

Sorry I didn't manage to post anything last week. I was busy first trying to figure out the best way to explain correlations and dissociations between musical, genetic, and linguistic similarities among aboriginal Taiwanese tribes, followed by trying to figure out the best way to teach small children to sing.

Actually, although we've made several delicious meals over the last two weeks, including a lovely Sunday brunch this morning of french toast, bacon, bananas, maple syrup and fresh whipped cream this morning, none of them looked very pretty. So, we're dipping into our pre-Lord Jeff's Table archives today for a much nicer-looking Sunday brunch from a few months back: Eggs Florentine.

Roasted Vegetable Soup and Dessert with Strawberries

Canada is getting chillier by the day, reminding me that summer is no longer with us. Pat, in serious denial, is off camping and canoeing this weekend leaving me to post this week.

A few weeks ago I made roasted vegetable soup with bacon. I always thought that making soups that weren't made by throwing stuff into boiling water would be complicated and not worth the effort. Not so. Happily I was enlightened by Helen Dujardin of Tartelette. Her blog always has such sumptuous photos, that before I know it I find myself delving into the recipe. (and I'm a sucker for beautiful photos!) Over the past year since I discovered her blog I've used vegetables I've never heard of and tried out recipes that I never would have thought to. Plus--this is the important part--everything I've made from her blog has been delicious. Not just your average "yeah that was a good meal" delicious, but the "I can't afford to leave leftovers at all" kind of delicious.

Aunt Ruthie's summer pasta with tomatoes, mozzarella and basil

This week's entry is a bit different from last week's Ribfest meat extravaganza. Three weeks ago when the summer was in its final and most pleasant stages, I (Pat) took advantage of a pot-luck picnic and the cheap bulk tomatoes bursting off the vines to make a big batch of another one of our favourite foods in the world: summer pasta with fresh tomatoes, mozzarella and basil.

This was the dish that turned me from a tomato-hater into a tomato-fiend a few years ago, thanks to my Aunt Ruthie's recipe and her fresh homegrown tomatoes. It has one of the highest deliciousness:preparation-time ratios I know of, and is the kind of vegetarian dish that has just as intense flavours and textures as any meat dish.

I've provided a sort of recipe as best I can remember, but it's more like rules of thumb to apply to your proportions. The photo shows all the ingredients I used to make a giant batch that supplied the pot-luck as well as several lunches/dinners for a couple of days (although, unfortunately, it's not quite the same as left-overs and doesn't keep more than a couple of days). 

Canada's Largest Ribfest

Last weekend was the one we've been waiting all year for: Canada's Largest Ribfest.

18 teams of ribbers from throughout Canada and the US descended on Burlington, Ontario to compete to see who could create the most heavenly combination of meat, sauce and flames. Warning to vegetarians: there is nothing remotely vegetarian about a ribfest. The closest thing we had to a vegetable there was probably this funnelcake. 

Grown-up macaroni and cheese

As promised, Sawa decided to attempt to make mac n' cheese from scratch after our mac-n'-cheese-in-a-box last week. The recipe is on p. 93 of Anne Willan's "The Good Cook", which as I've noted previously, is one of our major sources of inspiration for recipes and general cooking concepts.

Basically, the main difference between this and the boxed kind that we made last week is that you make the cheese sauce yourself, whisking together flour, butter, milk, grated cheddar cheese and nutmeg on the stove. Also, rather than just pouring it over the boiled macaroni, you bake the whole thing in a casserole dish for half an hour.

It's hard to say exactly how we feel about the finished product. True, it was very tasty, but it was almost nothing like the nostalgic mac n' cheese of our youth, either in taste or in ease of preparation. If you think of it as a completely un-related food group, it'll probably be less jarring.

Here are some action shots of the cooking process:

Amherst meets reality

In our first post, we stated our aim to continue posting three different gourmet meals every week, in a fit of over-achieving ambition worthy of our Amherst days. Now, we present a post more fitting for life in the real world where you have to get up before 10am and life isn’t a magical fairyland designed explicitly to nurture and pamper you. This post features boxed macaroni and cheese.

East, West and Rest

Hi all,

We're going to try this as a husband-wife team effort. We both take turns cooking, Sawa takes the photos and I (Pat) write the posts.

The basic flow of our cooking lives is that we take turns cooking two meals a week and make big ones when we do, so the left-overs usually get us through the rest of the week. We generally alternate between and Japanese and non-Japanese cooking. We try to keep Sundays as a kind of Sabbath day free of major obligations, and if we're feeling motivated after catching up on sleep, we often end up making a big brunch or treats like cookies or ice cream.

This week we'll post one Sunday treat (home-made ice cream), one Japanese meal (soba noodle salad), and one non-Japanese (Greek spanakopita). Maybe in future weeks we'll just focus on one dish... let us know what you'd prefer with your comments!