Asia's Sweet and Savory

I just got back from a quick trip to Japan and Korea. I had a lingering cold and I was coming from North America which meant I was stopped, questioned and had a thermometer stuck into me at every port of entry.

But once that was over I got to see my family and friends and enjoy all the food I so dearly missed. Bacon-wrapped mochi was a new one for me, but it works. Juicy, crispy, chewy.... more yakitori shops need to put it on the menu.

This honey toast was a homemade collaboration:



They charged a whopping $6 at the mall food-court, so we instead bought a 1/2 loaf at the next-door bakery, gutted and toasted it, then doused it with honey and ice cream. Results were pretty similar. It's really about how fresh of a loaf you can find.

Soy sauce-flavored Kit Kats, anyone? I've decided to start a Kit Kat collection. There's just way too many random flavors to pass up.



This is actually Cold Stone Creamery. I guess "MARVELOUS CREAM!" does sound better. I wonder what the nickname is...."Maba-kuri"?:



And now to the savory. This is a warm cup of chawan-mushi -- steamed egg-whites and dashi broth mixed with bits of chicken and vegetables. I thought it was quite pretty:



In Los Angeles, a 3-pack of natto will set you back $1.99. At this Japanese market it's 65 cents. Sigh:




Ever wanted to know where bamboo shoots come from? The GROUND!:



This was my first meal in Korea. My brother and I slipped into a random corner shop. The menu was completely in Korean, but that didn't deter me. The place was packed so I knew it either had to be good or cheap; It was both. I hand-signaled the waitress to give us of what the other guy was having. Out came a hot bowl of somen noodles in a very simple broth. I kept adding hot sauce and sweated out my cold:



Some street vendors may have fooled me with bland, meatless potstickers, but this cart was a gold mine for one of the tastiest desserts I've ever had. Hotteok is a fried pancake-donut filled with melted brown-sugar and chopped walnuts. Fluffy, golden, crispy. They can cook it upon order and it's less than a dollar:



This was in the middle of a busy shopping arcade. They're eating the same sort of somen soup I had earlier. Gotta love Asia. Down with sanitation codes! :



The sights and sounds of the Pusan's fish market:

VIDEO: Adventures with Takoyaki

I found this candy pack at Mitsuwa market the other day. It's really weird.
It's made to look like a tray of takoyaki (panfried octopus balls), but is actually a gummy candy you make yourself. There's one glitch in this video. Can you find it?


In Other News...

• Bento-ist AnnaTheRed is featured on Wired!
• I'll have what she's having!: Japan approves cloned pigs and cattle for consumption.

OMIYAGE: Hakata Torimon

This package comes from Kyushu, Japan. It's filled with chestnut paste, which is typically very dry. But this paste is blended with milk, giving it a velvety texture. I loved it.

A Sumo-style meal

Photo by Chris Steele

Readers Digest online had this picture of a sumo wrestler preparing breakfast for the rest of the stable. The dish is called Chanko Nabe. From left to right, there's sliced onions, udon noodles, enoki and shimeji mushrooms, chives and napa cabbage. I'm assuming the darker meat is sliced pork and the lighter meat is chicken. Sumo wrestlers are known for fattening up with this meal, not because it's especially fattening but because they eat several dozen bowls in one sitting.

I made this photo my desktop wallpaper. It perpetually makes my stomach rumble.

Japan 2008: Aichi, Gifu and Tokyo

Hey kids! It's that time of the year when I post pics of my recent Japan travels. I just got back yesterday and jet lag has warped my head. I couldn't sleep 'til 5 am last night so I instead took time to upload my photos. On this trip, I went to Aichi and Gifu prefecture as well as Tokyo. My goal was to stick to healthy meals...

My first dinner in Nagoya was very much that. Most everything you see is boiled. Hijiki is sauteed lightly in oil but it's high in nutrients so you can't go wrong. In my ideal world, I'd have a Japanese mom cook all these dishes for me every day along with a hot pot of rice. It's all so good.

Nagoya had a dance festival last week so all the outdoor stalls (yatai) were set up to feed the tens of thousands of tourists. On the left, it's grilled squid and other squid parts basted in sweet soy sauce.


While in the sticks of Gifu prefecture I happened upon a stand offering fresh vegetables at $1 a bag. Here you see (from left) red potatoes, pumpkins, eggplants, bitter melon, cucumbers, shiso and peppers. If only I had a kitchen at the time.


Beef is a regional specialty in central Japan (Hida). So when in Hida, eat like the Hidans:

Peppered beef skewer...

sliced beef cooked in a leaf...

...and a tender slab of steak. Good lord. Diet postponed.

Grilled mochi on a stick makes for an excellent post-lunch snack.

Now off to Tokyo...

I found this cake shop in the basement of Takashimaya in Shinjuku:


The glass display case wraps all the way around and what you do is grab a clip board (on the left) and check off each item you want. There must have been over 100 cakes all priced at around $5 each. I was jealous of the ladies buying for their family cause at least they'd have the opportunity to sample each one.

We have Qoo here in Los Angeles, but I'd never seen mango-orange flavor. Very tasty.

Whenever I'm in Tokyo, I can never seem to evade the luring scent of Jangara Ramen. Truthfully, the place inside stinks like something nasty because they spend hours (if not days) simmering their special pork-bone broth. I'm hardly a ramen fan, but with that said Jangara Ramen is an amazing bowl of noodles. The broth is rich, flavorful and topped with so many ingredients -- boiled egg, thick cuts of stewed pork, bamboo shoots, red ginger, scallions, spicy cod roe -- that you couldn't possibly get bored. Though, healthy it is not.

If you're a Japanese candy fiend like me, you'll know that most candy from Japan is now stocked at your Los Angeles Asian market. I double dare you to find something in Japan that you can't find here.

KitKat is the rare exception. If you look hard you can find unique flavors like this one, Matcha Tea. Sadly, I only had enough money to buy two. It was the last purchase of my trip, so I made sure I took a picture of it before passing it along to friends.

Already looking forward to 2009...

OMIYAGE: Monaka

This is a mini version of a classic Japanese sweet filled with red bean paste and sandwiched between thin mochi wafers. This particular one hails from Sendai City, but you can find them most anywhere in Japan.





Check out a Japanese sesame egg HERE.

Hunting for Bamboo Shoot

I usually don't post other people's videos on my site, but heck 1) it's food related and 2) it's very informative. I didn't know this was how you gather bamboo shoot. I kinda assumed they were born into tin cans. I also envy Joi Ito's huge backyard. Few in Japan are lucky to even have a separate kitchen and living room.

Hello Kitty Ramen in a Can

I'm gonna let you in on something: I'm broke. Not the kind of broke where I'll be gurneyed to Skid Row, but the kind of broke where I force myself to eat Wonder Bread and Carl Buddig lunch meat every day just to afford weekend dinner with friends. (Since when did $20 become the new $10?)

It's not all that bad though. It compels me to look through my food pantry more often. Tonight I found a can of Hello Kitty ramen, something I bought in Tokyo last year. The beauty of it is that it requires no heating. You eat it as-is, in room temperature. I haven't checked the facts but I bet you can take this can with you into the next millennium. The noodles are made of konnyaku -- also known as konjak, devil's tongue, voodoo lily, snake palm, elephant yam, according to Wikipedia -- which has a firm, jelly texture so they never get soggy. There's also a few slices of bamboo shoot which probably stay "fresh" because the soup broth is thick with oil. (Think Exxon Valdese.) Yeah, sounds pretty gnarly, but it started selling in Japan to meet the demand of all those people too busy for real food. Just imagine those fanatic online gamers too caught up to leave their rooms, not even for a bathroom break. (I knew someone who ended up peeing in a jar, but I'll save that story for another time.)

So yeah, I've had better ramen. I slurped up a few noodles and then put it back in the fridge. I'll check up on it in a few weeks but I'm guessing it'll look the same as when I first opened it. What I probably should've done is put it in my earthquake emergency kit. Aside from being a great alternative to powdered mashed potatoes I bet it'd make an excellent cold-compress.

JAPAN: Bigger Boob Tea?!

Back to Japan. One of the products I picked up during my visit was a powdered tea promising to increase your bust size to a whopping F-cup (woohoo~!). I first read about it on Tokyo Mango and since this year has been all about trying new things (ex., Lactagen, colon cleanse) I had to get it. It contains an herb called pueraria mirifica which is supposed to aid in the miraculous effort. I mean, I've accepted my god-given bosom which, while not ample enough to form peaks and valleys, is enough to keep strapless gowns from succumbing to gravity. The 10-pack of tea costs under $10 bucks -- chump change in yen.

So this is how it went:

Day One: 10 a.m. Following instructions I emptied a pack into a cup of hot water and mixed. It tasted similar to a European tea, like Earl Grey, only very, very sweet.

11 a.m. Stomach grumbles. I make a mad dash to the restroom.

The End.

---

Sadly, I decided to end the experiment at Day One. It felt more like a colon cleanse than a natural boob job. So much for F-cup.

Autumn Bento box

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One of my favorite meals in Japan is the kind you can buy at the train station. This bento box is a seasonal selection. Notice the big yellow nut on top of the middle plot of rice. Chestnuts are the seasonal ingredients right now and so you'll find a lot of kuri-gohan (chestnut rice) being sold in stores. There's also 'sekihan' on the right, which is red bean rice. From top-left to right is karaage (a chicken nugget), a nub of salmon, and shrimp. The rest are strange pickled things mothers force-feed their children.

JAPAN: Dead Blowfish Lives!

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While in Tokyo I dined on a rare delicacy called fugu, or blowfish, which if prepared incorrectly can kill you with its poison. Most people eat it raw but since I'm not a true Samurai I chose to have it simmer in a hot pot with leafy vegetables. Kinda tasted like a fish/chicken hybrid. Very springy, too. I love how the fish twitches even though its been sliced and diced into a dozen pieces. Maybe he's trying to escape.

JAPAN: Tea fields

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I don't know about you but when I think tea fields the first thing that comes to mind is that Snapple radio commercial where some dude flies to China just to ask an old man about the properties of white tea. "You could've just looked it up on the internet," the old man quips.

Well, internet info is great but it certainly doesn't replace a first-hand view. No smog here! Just amazingly fresh air atop a quiet hill in the middle of nowhere. The bushes hold your typical green leaves; what you'd find dogs peeing on at the local park. So it's the process that's important in turning foliage into a fat-free infusion.


I shot this video in Yame City, Fukuoka Prefecture in Japan. They're known for their tea and create all kinds of other products like green tea cookies, matcha tea latte--even green tea soap. I'm sure some of the local bath houses even fill their tubs with hot, sudsy tea water. Supposedly, Japanese tea carries powerful anti-oxidants. Personally, I think it's just an excuse to dye yourself green.

JAPAN: Rice cake toss

Japan is a country where people throw rice cakes from a roof. An unfinished roof. Rice cakes, or mochi, symbolize longevity which is what you'd want in a home. Collapsing homes suck after all. This is why the construction workers of this particular project are throwing mochi at the neighborhood kids below. It's a blessing for the happy family that will soon take residence. "Please don't collapse!" they pray. Just for good measure, money is also thrown overboard. That's why you see little old ladies and grown men getting in on the action. Like me, they're saving up for an iPhone.

After I took this video I dove into the mosh pit, too. Though I only ended up with one measly mochi. Oh yeah, I'm currently in southern Japan right now, visiting relatives and friends. Just like in Los Angeles, I've been going around devouring tasty treats and discovering wondrous oddities.

This rice cake tossing tradition is something that, in all my years of traveling to Japan, I discovered just yesterday after a kindly neighbor came by to tell us about it. "Come! They're about to toss food and money off a roof!" Who'd think that generosity still existed in this world. In Los Angeles it'd be more like, "Run! There's a gunman spraying bullets from the roof!" Sigh... I'm gonna miss Japan.