June 07, 2015: Japanese Dinner for the Family

Story is king.

As an part-time chef and storyteller, it is not unusual for me to use food as yet another medium (to try, at least) to connect to my fellow-man, to make a bridge between thought and reality.

What experience should have taught me is that be it photography, literature, film, or food, you gotta play to the right crowd.

I have been known (sadly) to talk endlessly about how Joyce is sentence-by-sentence, the best writer of the last century…how Thoreau the most important and original. I can go on forever about my reasons for photographing the dolmens and burial tombs of Ireland…of how the interplay of light in nature may move me to almost ectasy…and how Japanese food is challenging, time-consuming and complex…and yet, at it’s very essence…simplicity and subtlety personified. I have to remind myself, that ‘tho I’m very passionate about all of these, it often means very little to your average person.

A couple of weeks ago, I got a birthday party invitation from my niece, Bryna’s 40th birthday. I haven’t cooked a big meal in a while so I offered to make a Japanese meal for the family as a gift. I knew this to be a substantial challenge as, my family would have little (if any) connection to Japanese food. However, I have been making dishes for the blog for a few years now, so I felt pretty sure of my limitations, as well as my strengths. I also had my ace-in-the-hole: Yoshio, and no one is better than bridging the East-meets-West cultures than him.

So, I dug in and created a menu that I thought would show Japanese food at its best, while catering (as best I could) to the Central New York palette.

Japanese Meal for the Family

Yoshio’s Salmon Ribbon:  a piece of salmon, wrapped around a shiso leaf (sesame leaf) a little lemon zest, fresh dill, salt and white pepper. This is all wrapped in a won-ton noodle,which is then fried and covered in a raspberry jam/lemon juice/Grand Marnier sauce and topped with fresh raspberries.

Sliced Cucumbers: Small English cucumbers sliced thin with a dressing of mirin, rice vinegar, and sesame oil.

Broccoli and Lime-Mayo: Blanched and chilled broccoli crowns in a mayo, yoghurt, mirin, and lime sauce with fresh dill weed.

Tamago Roll: an egg omelette sweetened with mirin, fried, rolled and topped with chopped scallion.

Age Dashi Dofu: Tofu, dusted in corn starch and fried, in a broth of wakame and shiitake mushroom, topped with shredded scallion, daikon, and carrot.

Kushi Katu: small pieces of salmon, shrimp, chicken, beef, sweet potato, crimini mushrooms, onion and asparagus, on a stick, covered in a batter of panko and fried.

Temaki Roll: a cone of nori wrapped around sushi rice, with matchsticked carrot, scallion, daikon, crab meat, and cucumber.

Temari Zushi: a ball of sushi rice, covered with strips of avocado. Topped with grated carrot, daikon and toasted sesame seeds.

Macha Ice Cream: vanilla ice cream, slightly melted and mixed with powdered macha green tea and re-frozen.

Yoshio’s Mikan Cocktail: Plum Wine, Champagne and Cherry+Mandarian Orange

The salmon ribbon was the appetizer, served with Yoshio’s “Mikan Cocktail” (champagne with a little plum-wine, garnished with a cherry and a slice of mikan [Mandarin orange.] ) We also had sake and green tea as well as a Japanese beer, rice crackers, and edamamae.

I had brought authentic Japanese music and my brother-in-law, Steve was kind enough to set it up on his music system. Both Steve and my sister, Mary Lou went halfsies with me on the meal, as a gift to Bryna and both did considerable prep-work for all the dishes.

A week before the meal, I met with Yoshio to concur with him on the menu. He approved and fine-tuned the dishes with good advice and a demonstration or two, to improve my technique. During my stay, he made a few dishes for me, one of which was a cold, silken tofu, garnished in shaved ginger on a bed of sauce that he made up on the spot. This dish was everything I wanted my family to experience: fresh, simple, unique and delicious.

Yet, I knew there going to be problems reconciling the Japanese diet with that of your average CNYorkers: for instance, the delicious silken tofu dish Yoshio made, would never fly with my folks. In fact, tofu was completely off the menu, until my niece told me that she loves tofu, so I included the age dashi dish (which only Bryna and I enjoyed, as the rest of the folks finding the idea of tofu repellent.)

I also knew that I had not the training for, nor would the folks find appetizing, raw fish for the sushi. I actually brought a tube of wasabi, but as soon as I started serving food, I knew that wasabi would only detract from the experience.

I had a few surprises of tastes that I now take for granted that I should have considered to be rather foreign to my family: green tea, for instance. No takers on that one (except, once again, my niece.) Sake, also was rather strange to them. A few people tried the warm rice wine and expressed surprise that it only had only the alcoholic content of wine (they all thought it was a liquor.) Any form of seaweed was right out: my sister tasted a seaweed rice cracker and pretty much retched at the taste. Anything wrapped in nori was not eaten.

A big surprise was the disappointing response I got to my macha ice cream. I have made this a few times before and have gotten a favorable reactions from those that had never had it before: it’s only slightly sweet, but balanced by the slight bitter of he pulverized green tea mixed in. I caught my sister making a face after one spoonful, then she proceeded to lather the raspberry sauce from the salmon ribbon over the ice cream. In her defense, she is used to her very rich and sweet desserts she makes every Christmas, to great effect with her guests…so it stands to reason the subtleties of a Japanese dessert (which are invariably not as sweet) are lost on her.

My own mistakes did not help at all: I have forgotten that even ‘tho I’ve made all these dishes to perfection before, these Japanese dishes take practice! Although the taste was perfect, the shape and presentation of some of the sushi rolls could have been much better. I also could have done a better job with mastering my sister’s stove top (a technology I am not used to) better. The oil temperature was way too high.

Still…bless their hearts, my family showed up and took a leap and could very much appreciate the work involved in such a meal. Perhaps I should be most surprised that some of my dishes were tasted and appreciated! Sadly, those that were appreciated were mostly the creations of others (all of Yoshio’s recipes were liked, as well as Baba’s Temari Roll.)

The world is an ocean of wonderful tastes, some from strange and foreign lands, just waiting for the stout sailor to brave the new horizons of culinary experience.

Thanks to my family for attempting this brief journey with me for an afternoon’s mini-adventure! I’ll be back with more delicious food (albeit more traditional fare) the next visit!

[One of the best things about a big meal like this is that I always end up relying on the contributions and input from others. Thanks to Steve and Mary Lou Swasey for being perfect hosts: their time, effort, remarkable prep-work skills…down to their ornamental china, which was perfect. Thanks to Steve for the photos of the day. Thanks also to Chris & Sara for their gift of the *best* sesame oil from the Saratoga Olive oil Co. and to Regan for the gift of dried shiitake mushrooms, and especially to Yoshio, for his recipes, good ideas, guidance, and for providing the rare supplies for the meal.]

January 18, 2013: Revisiting “Spirited Away”

Some really fantastic fanart of “Spirited Away” by Silver Melody

I had the pleasure of seeing “Spirited Away” in theaters back when it first came to the states in 2001. Thanks to the Hudson Public Library I was too able to revisit it (as well as eleven other Studio Ghibli animations) in a great boxed set I discovered on their shelves.

“Spirited Away” is one of the most popular animations of all film history, not only in Japan (where it has won many awards and was the first film to surpass “Titanic” in sales there) but also pretty much the rest of the world as well. Written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, much in the vein of classic “coming of age” tales such as “Alice in Wonderland” “Peter Pan” and “The Wizard of Oz,” “Spirited Away” follows the adventures of ten-year-old girl, Chihiro, as she is mystically transported to an “otherworld” to suffer the bewilderment and loneliness of a stranger in a strange land. Foreign to the “rules” of this world, she is forced to find aid from the otherworldy people and creatures she finds there to overcome adversity, learn what is important, gain strength, find acceptance, and eventually…love, only then to find a way back home again.

At the beginning of “Spirited Away” Chihiro, her mom and dad are traveling to a new town where they are moving. Close to their new house, the dad takes a wrong turn and comes to a dead-end of a standing stone in front of a tunnel. Curious, they enter the tunnel which comes out in a kind of abandoned amusement park. The parents notice that all the shops are restaurants, and eventually settle on one to begin eating. Chihiro, who is bit freaked out by the eerie surroundings to eat with them, walks on and finds a boy, Haku, who is surprised to find her there and anxiously orders her to return or else she will be trapped there if she doesn’t return before nightfall. As night descends, the park lights illuminate a town filled with specters. Chihiro runs back to the restaurant where she left her parents to find them transformed into pigs!

Chihiro is forced to return to the bath-house, which is the center of the town, where she starts to disappear, but before she can dissolve completely, she is rescued by Haku who feeds her a berry that restores her. Haku tells her that to prevent being turned into an animal herself, Chihiro’s only recourse is to find work from the witch, Yubaba, who runs the onsen (bath-house.) Chihiro strikes a bargain with Yubaba, who’s contract includes stealing Chihiro’s name. The work turns out to be a bit harder and bizarre than Chihiro expects as the onsen’s clientele are “gods” (but to Western eyes, they appear more like monsters.) One creature that Chihiro keeps running into is Nil-Face: a dark and insubstantial spirit with a blank expression and a rather innocent and benign temperament. Nil-Face helps Chihiro gain favor, aiding her to clean a “Stink-god” who then transforms into a river-god after the bath, leaving behind gold amidst the muck. Nil-Face notices the appeal the gold has on the staff and uses it to gain service for an outrageous amount of food. As Nil-Face consumes, he grows…and changes. He becomes more aggressive and eventually violent. He tries to tempt Chihiro with gold, but she resists and feeds him a charm that makes him disgorge the food, transforming him back into his benign form.

The story continues with more adventures for Chihiro, including a considerable amount of magic; a rivalry between Yubaba and her “good” twin sister Zeniba; the true nature of Haku, his prior history with Chihiro, and an assortment of odd “otherworld” characters…not the least of which is Yubaba’s 500Lb. “baby.”

“Spirited Away” is wonderful on many levels: first, the animation is just gorgeous. Not only the character animation, but even the backgrounds are stunning! The music is very well done, throughout, culminating with an especially pretty vocal piece for the credit sequence. Rich in details, I pick up something new from “Spirited Away” with each viewing. As always, story must be king and “Spirited Away” has a depth of story that draws on a plethora of mythological images, themes, and ideas from not only Japan, but from European sources as well. It’s one of those great films that prompt a good after-film-coffee discussion. There are better and more learned sources for the Japanese mythology, but either as part of the collective unconscious, or borrowed directly from the European sources I was familiar with, there were a couple of things that jumped out at me that really made the story work.

First, the structure of “transport” into the spirit or faerie realm as the tunnel guarded by a standing stone could be straight from the many of Celtic legends of “faerie hills” that have just such a construction. Once within the faerie world there are rules: humans must never eat faerie food. To do so will bind you to that world and erase your memory of the mortal world. [Persephone, daughter the harvest-goddess Demeter, was condemned to six months in Hell for eating six pomegranate seeds given by Hades, which is why we have Winter.] It is careful that you never reveal your true name, as this will allow power over you by the faerie. [The clever Odysseus goes by the moniker “Noman” so that his actions against the gods can be said to be done by “no-man.”] Also borrowed from the Odyssey is the witch, Circe, transforming Odysseus’s men into pigs. There is usually a faerie guide in these stories to aid the human caught in their world. This guide normally does not return to the mortal realm with the hero(ine.)

Miyazaki weaves his own personal beliefs and experiences among the classical themes, to good effect. His protest over human disregard for the environment is shown in the transformation of the “Stink-god” into a “River-god” through the ritual bath. He seems to say that it is up to the compassion of youth today to act in order cleanse away the ills of our pollution of nature. With the transformation of the benign Nil-Face into a monster/destroyer, Miyazaki seems to suggest that avarice/desire is the antithesis of spirit and will destroy harmony of the self. Miyazaki has been quoted saying “Everyone has a Nil-Face within themselves.”

Of course, whether it is Alice, Wendy, Dorothy, and now, Chihiro, the most important theme of these stories is that in order to overcome adversity (not to mention just plain weirdness) pass from childhood into adulthood, and to finally return safely home, you must be first find…and then be true, to yourself.

March 23, 2010: Yoshio plays the Koto

Yoshio plays the Koto in his new Lowell apartment.

The koto is a Japanese musical instrument sometimes called the “Japanese Harp”. It was introduced from China in the 7th or 8th C. and has (usually) 13 silk strings with 13 movable bridges. The strings are plucked with pics on the musicians right hand.