Yup. Another food post. Though this one is 100% dedicated to food. Not expensive food. Not overly unique food. Just…food. For some of you, this is new. For some it’s old news. But hey, it might be interesting to some :)
Oh, and see? It’s not just faw fish and sea weed in Japan! I know most of you readers don’t think that way but…well…some of you might…
Most pictures are behind the link below. And as usual, I will be rambling on and on and on in my typical fashion. Feel free to skip my text if you want.
So. On with the pics!
We start off this post with a shot of a typical Tonkatsu Teishoku!
A “teishoku” is basically a “set” like a dinner set or lunch set. You typically get the one main dish (okazu) and a bowl of rice. 9 times out of 10, you also get miso soup and some other small dish. In this case, above the miso soup you see some Japanese style pickled veggies and above that a small bow of grated daikon radish. It’s a nice meal and at least at this place, you can ask for more rice and the grated cabbage is also an all you can eat.
Tonkatsu, as you may have guessed from looking at the pic, is deep fried pork. Think Japanese style weiner schnitzel but with pork instead of veal and with Japanese style breadcrumbs typically called “panko” in the US. Much more coarse and crunchy. The pork is also pretty fatty compared to the lean pork you get in the US. Of course, this means the meat comes out juicy and very flavorful since, after all, pork fat IS tasty. You eat it with tonkatsu sauce which is like a a thicker slightly tangier worcestershire sauce. You can also put some Asian mustard on it too which is hot, but not like chili pepper hot but like wasabi hot. Yummy stuff.
Switching to a more mundane everyday meal, we have a typical, found everywhere, bento box.
Most Americans first see the word “bento” at a Japanese restaurant. But there, it just means a bunch of little things in a box. Like a Japanese dinner sampler. But in reality, “bento” means a box lunch or a box meal. This is our form of take out. When it’s time for lunch, outside of all the major office buildings, little carts show up with home made bento boxes. They all have a few things in common. Most of the box is rice. The good ones are packed pretty tight with rice. Can’t skimp on that! On top of the rice is typically, like in this shot, an umeboshi or preserved plum. This is why a lunch of just rice and an umeboshi is called a “hinomaru bento” or “Sun bento”. Basically it looks like our flag :) Along with the rice are some veggies usually cooked in a broth and some meat, either fried chicken or grilled fish and the like. This one has a small grilled mackerel and 2 pieces of chinese pork. Yum. This was bought for dinner at a “depachika” or “basement of a department store” which always has a pretty good sized prepared food section.
Along with a bento, you can also find other dishes like these.
Mmmm…gyoza and shumai. Yum. The shumai had some really good pork in it too.
The beer helped it go down. All 500ml of it. Mmmmmmm….
Of course, there is always great stuff at the convenience store. I’ve been a fan of this one for a while. Great for lunch.
It’s a Japanese style pasta salad with grilled chicken. Basically it’s spaghetti with a half of a hard boiled egg, slices of grilled chicken and some veggies. It also comes with a ginger dressing. So you put everything together, pour the ginger dressing over it, and enjoy. It’s really good. Fresh and filling and great for lunch. So simple too and it only costs like $2.95. :) The bottle next to it is “namacha”. One of the many many brands of cold green tea. Love this stuff. Wish you could buy it all in the US. BUT, for anyone interested, Target is starting carry, in some select stores, pure unsweetened Japanese green tea! It’s even by Ito-En which started the bottled green tea industry in Japan. In the US it’s called “Tea’s Tea” and you can find it (if they have it) in the beverage section. Awesome. It’s in 2 liter bottles. I buy 4 at a time. :D
If you want a quick…no…make that VERY quick lunch if you find an “ochazuke” place, you can’t go wrong.
“Ochazuke” is basically a bowl of rice with tea poured over it in the most simplest form. Of course, this place being a “ochazuke” only place, they jazz it up a bit. They have about 12 types of ochazuke. Some with veggies. Some with different types of fish. Some with seaweed with and without fish. So on. I ordered (via a vending machine that spits out a ticket that you take to the counter” an “aburi tarako ochazuke”. Basically a seared cod roe ochazuke. Mmmmmmmm.
You give them the ticket, sit down, and in less than a minute this is what you get. Obviously the bowl of rice with 2 seared pieces of cod roe along with veggies and the rice is sprinkled with little balls of puffed rice and flakes of seaweed. You see the tea pot as well that contains plain green tea. Up top is cold tofu with a thicker soy based dressing and to the right is a small bowl of spinach and okra. Okra is typically only seen in the US as an ingredient for gumbo since it’s very slimy and most Americans don’t really like the texture. But in Japan, we like the slimy stringy stuff as much as anything else. Sooo here you go. It’s actualy really good. But yes. It’s slimy as hell. Anyway, to finish, in the middle you see a small plate of Japanese style pickled veggies.
All you really do is pour the tea on the rice and you have yourself a nice lunch of ochazuke.
You mix it around a bit. You also smoosh the cod roe to mix it into the tea and either use the spoon or use the spoon AND slurp it up. Yum. :D
Ochazuke was originally done so people won’t have to waste any rice. Day old rice can get clumpy and starchy and honestly not really good. But people realized that by pouring hot tea over it, it will rehydrate AND add some flavor as well. Over time, what was a dish for the poor became a standard Japanese dish. Actually most good food starts off like that. But I digress. Now, you can buy seasoning specially made so all you have to do is put it on rice, pour normal hot water over it, and you get ochazuke. You get the slightly more gormet ochazuke like this one. And at Japanese bars called “izakaya”, after drinking and eating fried and fatty stuff over the course of a few hours, many people will order an ochazuke as a “shime” or a closer. Something nice and starchy to help with all the alcohol you might have drank AND it seems to help you feel better if you’ve eaten too much oily stuff. Mmmmmmm.
Of course, sometimes, you just want something junky… This past Sunday during my shopping in Akihabara, I, once again, stopped at the kebob place for some good turkish kebobs. Mmmmmmmm.
I took a bite before I took the picture. Couldn’t help it. You can read more about the kebob place here: http://www.timarai.com/blog/2007/09/02/weekend-update-with-pictures/
Let’s move on to dessert!
First off, something more normal…well…relatively speaking.
What we have here is a “Hokkaido Cheesecake Style Steamed Cake”. Mmmmmm. You see an image of the northern island of Hokkaido on the cake. Hokkaido is known for their pastures and pure air and grass and cows and milk. Lots fo milk. And so, what we have here is a steamed cake with a very nice flavor of cheesecake. But like all things Japanese, it’s sweet but not sickly sweet. Great as a dessert, snack, or even breakfast. Love it. Unfortunately it comes and goes throughout the year. Like just today? No more… Boooo…
Now we’ll move on to something much more Japanese.
Taiyaki!
Some of you who have been to Japan with me and have gone to the Asakusa Temple may notice that this is very similar to the “ningyo yaki” that they make there. Basically a fluffy pancake-ish batter is cooked on a steel plate with, traditionally, “anko” or sweet red bean paste filling. A very traditional snack / dessert. Still made the old fashioned way, even at a mall. But this place had a twist where, not only did they have the red bean version but they also had a custard version and an “okonomiyaki” version which is much more savory with sauce, cabbage, ham, tenpura pieces, and such.
I got the traditional anko version of course. The cake is fluffy, the anko is not too sweet with a slightly lumpy texture where you can still feel the beans, and when you eat the two together…mmmmmm…so so so good. That with a bottle of tea and really…it’s hard to beat.
BUT, I have another favorite dessert which, alas, is typically not available in stores and I recently remembered that the mall right by the hotel has a small stand that makes these. What we have here is what is called an “ohagi”.
On the left is black sasame ohagi while the one of the right is the traditional anko version.
What are they? Ohagi is basically a ball of sticky sweet rice that is then coated with a sweet topping. It is traditionally served during festivals and during the summer months but these days? Screw it. It’s ohagi day every day. Wooo.
The black sasame version is actually my favorite. Slightly bitter. Strong sasame flavor. But with sugar as well so there’s this initial sweetness. Then you get the chewy sweet rice. Mmmmmmm.
Of course, the anko version is good too. And this place does NOT skimp on the anko. They pile this on. But again, not too sweet and it’s lumpy so you can actually feel the skin of the beans as well as the slightly firm texture too. Yum.
So there you go. Some of the more common foods here. Nothing special. But I’ve realized that most people who have never been to Japan wouldn’t know half of these things. Hope you enjoyed the trip (^_^)
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