We are now settled very comfortably into our beautiful traditional room and lunch in on the table and waiting for us. Out of our cool air-condition room and into the humid heat of the corridor and then back into the cool of the main centre of the house through a very very narrow and very very low door, with my hight and my broad shoulders and my little slip-on scuffs clinging to my toes and stooping and bowing not to knock any bark of my head it doesn't take long before I look very humble indeed bowing and shuffling around, I am walking, well shuffling like a ... true ... Japanese ...
The lunch table just looked amazing, all the food is laid out in the traditional family way in the centre of the large table, a western style table and with several little bowls of various shapes and sizes all in Japanese patterns and colours and carefully arranged on a blue fabric placemat on front of each of the five of us. Hmmmm which bowl is to go with hmmmm which food ... now that a question !! At least with western cutlery one works from the outside and in, but with several bowls and only 1 pair of chopsticks ... tricky ... Kens mum who speaks no english is now 89 and still being the head of the family starts first ... I sit back, watch and follower her lead. She is so fit and looks a good 20 to 30 years younger than she is, come to think of it they all do Japanese people are quite ageless and smooth skinned so sometimes very hard to pick an age.
Mum is concerned that she and I don't have a beer poured as yet and grabs a can of Ashi from the centre of the table and pours it into both of the cut crystal tumbler sitting in front of her and I .
This is the start of a beautiful relationship, she smiles and bows her head at me and hand gestures to drink up, so with me bowing my head back at her we both drink up ...
With in seconds and after the first couple of sips of our beers she is again pouring more beer more she smiles and bows her head again, then again gestures to drink up so who am I to disappoint.
With much Japanese talking to and at her 65 year old son and looking back at me I recon she said to him something along the words like " well we don't want the man to dehydrate do we" ...
So with glasses up and a " Camp-pie " ... yep yep more of my bad spelling but you get the gist, then we all clasped our hands and its a " I ta daki ma su " which is sort of a thank you to the chef, the people who have grown the food and the creator of the food.
The food on the table was like a big buffet, with miso but instead of tofu it was made with little clams in their shells, rice and several different pickled radish, cucumber and greens. A Yumo pumpkin dish like I have never tasted before, so how do you make that Hiroko?
Its from a small dark green skined hard pumpkin ebesu type, about the size of a small rockmelon.
Cut into bit sized bits and semi skin so leave about 50% of the green skin on for looks and texture. ( The shin was soft and added to the texture perfectly ) Put in a pot and just cover with water some sake, sugar, mirin and bonito
( fish ) flakes, cook all together no lid for 3 mins then add salt and soy sauce, turn down heat and pop on lid cook another 8 mins. Serve hot or cold. Today it was served cold and the flavour was devine, so different and the fish and the sweet of the soy really came through. A real winner for me so will try that when I get home but will have to experiment with quantities as it was a bit hard to get that from her.
We also had several different types of raw fishes, squid and prawns ... hmmm love the tuna and salmon but as for the squid and some of the white fish ... well a bit to sticky, firm on the tooth and in your mouth a bit to long.
Mind you I will give anything a try but I think I'm still a cooked prawn on the barbie sort of a guy.
The table was full of so many different foods, the fresh pickle young ginger, amazing and the ginger had a bite but was sort of sweet too. Sandy loved this so it was her turn to ask ... so how do we do this Hiriko.
Well it looks like you two after lunch and for the next week need to help with lunch and dinner so you can learn some traditional Japanese cooking, yes please ...
So the ginger is easy ... Need fresh ginger with green stems ( hmmmm not something that we have seen in our green grocers back home ) leave about 100 mm of the green top on for a handle as you only eat the bulb bit, scape clean and slice down if to thick. Blanch for 1 min and make a mix of soy sauce and rice wine vinegar. Sit in soy mix and leave to marinate for a few hours. Simple but oh so tasty.
Another simple one, Beans with Sesame just cook the green beans and toss in soy sauce and a bit of sugar then toss in crushed and toasted sesame seeds.
Pickled plums ... now these suckers are salty and sour, but a great side dish for Japanese food.
Get some Red plum not to ripe. Put in glass bottle with salt. This will draw the water out of plums.
Then remove the plums and dry in the sun for a few days. Put back in the jar with salt and the drawn juice, get some Shiso leaves ( the one Pete loves ) which I have now learnt is a type of Japanese mint, but this time it is a red one, add these to the jar and a very little vinegar, store for a month or so to mature the flavour, but beware they are salty and sour.
Japanese food is all about many different little dishes of many different flavours to mix and match I'm in food heaven ...
The food at lunch was all so fresh, light and good for you ... great this week may help loose a couple of the Italian pasta KG's !!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment