Umami Mart

I paid a quick visit to Washo Ichiba, a sizeable fish market in Kushiro near the city hall. Some of the best and freshest seafood in Japan comes from Hokkaido, and there’s plenty of it here. Many of the stalls at Washo Ichiba sell shoyu-cured ikura (salmon roe) made from locally-caught fish (duh). I desperately wanted to […]

Shopping for the freshest seafood just got easier with another fish market that opened in the People’s Republic of Berkeley. Fish is still my favorite thing to eat for dinner because it’s easy and so, so delicious. Grilled, simmered or baked, fish will let you do anything to it and it’ll adapt. But, by far, […]

In the first post of this series Chinatown, Bangkok, I covered a little family run cockle and mussel stand. I mentioned, “Two stalls hawking some of the finest seafood around,” and promised to follow up with an additional post. While it’s been nearly a year, I’d like to post my experiences now of the neighboring stall: T & K Seafood. […]

When Old Man Winter’s icy digit stops mercury from rising, I am reminded of a traveler I met in Argentina, a Canadian middle-school teacher who once ran sled dogs. It was so cold in Saskatchewan that when he and the dogs returned to their cabin after a day of skittering across the tundra, he dropped […]

INGREDIENTS 1 kampachi kama (or any other desired fish collar like yellowtail, red snapper, or salmon) make sure to clean it thoroughly for scales and grit, it is not pleasant to eat 1 bunch komatsuna (or spinich) 5 small matsutake mushrooms (or any other mushroom like enoki, maitake, shiitake, bunshimeji, etc.), sliced thin 1 Tokyo […]

Two gay men got married in the early 00’s (yes, that’s right USA, listen and learn from the Danes), spent eight years together, got divorced, and became good friends again after some time. Straight people could also earn learn a thing or two from the gays about post-marital behavior. This fall they chose to combine […]

Believe it or not, I was only in Kuala Lumpur for four days, one of which was spent with family outside KL and another stuck in traffic in KL. Did I mention how terrible the traffic is over there? We spent 1.5 hrs in what should have been a 15 min journey. Sigh. After arriving […]

The temperature readings for the past week have been falling to lows of nines and elevens (that’s Celsius, for all you Americans out there). Ladies and gentlemen, I hate to admit it, but summer has passed us by. You could still kind of pretend in September that it wasn’t so, but we’re now well and […]

INGREDIENTS 1 pound Manila clams (I used fresh ones from the Farmer’s Market) 1/4 yellow onion, diced small 2 Santa Fe peppers or jalepenos, de-seeded, diced small 2 stalks of lemongrass, cut bottom part off, diced small 1 cup white wine 1/2 stick unsalted butter 5 cloves of garlic, chopped 4 tblsps live oil 8 […]

Mytilus edulis, also known as the common mussel, is a medium-sized edible “marine bivalve mollusc” in the family Mytilidae, or simply, mussels. I sure most of you have had Moules-frites when in France, but the dish is actually from Belgium, and dates back as far as the 1700’s. Saffron is a spice derived from the flower of Crocus sativus, […]