August 2, 2011
You may recall that both Yoko and Yamahomo have shown us how to make umeshu (plum liqueur) on Umamimart (here and here). The season for ume is super short, and people in Japan scramble for them at the supermarkets to make their yearly batch of umeshu. After picking our own ume from a magical backyard […]
August 1, 2011
Corn season has arrived. Every Greenmarket vendor is selling them for 50 cents an ear. [Speaking of, why do we count corn in such a way? Don’t you think it’s a bit odd to think of ears growing on trees? Imagine that.] Anyhow, I like corn, but it’s always annoying when they get stuck in […]
July 28, 2011
I visited my mom recently and she served me one of the best breakfasts I have had in a long time–tai chazuke. Chazuke is short for ochazuke, a common method of enjoying rice in Japan. A bowl of rice is topped with condiments and hot tea or dashi is poured over it. Tai chazuke is […]
July 27, 2011
This time I would like to talk about mugi (barley) shochu in more general terms. Mugi shochu might be easier to understand than any other shochu, because mugi shochu is distilled from barley–like whisky, vodka, and gin. There are two types of mugi shochus. One is clear, and the other is amber. The amber one […]
July 26, 2011
When I was but a spring chicken who had just graduated from university, I went on a backpacking trip to Italy with one of my friends. It was hot, we were young and Italy was a marvelous cacaphony of ancient ruins, art & culture and food. From Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum to Irving Stone’s biographical […]
July 25, 2011
After seeing the Ume Project on the west coast, I was intrigued. I like umeboshi (pickled plums) and every time I go home to Japan, I bring back my mother’s homemade ones. After all, I am from Wakayama, where Japan’s best umeboshi is made. I should have the umeboshi making gene in me. I’ve seen […]
July 21, 2011
Last week on Japanify, I proposed the idea of marrying two of my favorite things in life: Japanese food and Twin Peaks. A few hours after my post went up, Kayoko emailed me this post from Mental Floss, on a series of videos from 1993 that came very close to this vision. These videos were […]
July 20, 2011
This is a personal post about being lost in culinary hell and finding the path home again with a little help from my Japanese friends. In case someone out there might be in the same situation that I was in, I hope this helps and inspires. If I sound like a self-holy, born-again foodie asshole […]
July 19, 2011
After our Berkeley backyard ume foraging adventure, Yoko, Sylvan (of Peko Peko) and I met up six days later to start pickling our umeboshi (pickled plum). Hooray! Umeboshi is the rice accompaniment of choice in Japan–the image of the sour little scarlet ball, sitting on a bed of steaming rice for breakfast, is as ubiquitous […]
July 18, 2011
On a hot day in summer, when you don’t feel like cooking or baking, yet feel the need to create something yummy isn’t an easy task. That’s when I rely on agar agar to make cold dessert. I’ve made mizu yokan before using the same method, still it requires blending the mixture to make it […]