Meals in Asia
You would think that after a trip to Asia I would be able to post lots of exciting food thoughts, but this visit wasn't a particularly inspiring one from the food perspective. In Japan I tried unsuccessfully to distort my itinerary to allow a visit to my favorite sushi restaurant in Osaka. When I got to Kyoto my host was obviously not sure if the gaijin was up for Japanese food because I was given teppanyaki for lunch, which is the Japanese food everyone eats, followed by a visit to an Italian restaurant for dinner. (This was in fact very good, but not what I was hoping for). I dropped heavy hints about how I much I enjoyed Japanese cuisine in case there is a return visit.
In Korea earlier in the week I ate bimbimbap for lunch out of a traditional dolsot or stone pot. This comes to the table at a temperature of around four million degrees Kelvin. Everything continues to cook as you stir the raw egg in, and the rice at the bottom of the pot has developed a satisfying crunchy texture by the time you get to it. Long after I was finished, the pot was still too hot to touch. As with all meals in Korea, this came with kimchee, a kind of fermented cabbage dish that many people have difficulty with. The first taste, slimy cabbage with a definite gasoline afterburn, is pretty horrifying. "Can people really enjoy this?" you think. After a week of it at every meal you begin vaguely to enjoy it and feel a slight sense of betrayal if it doesn't appear.
My wife was spending a week in Korea a few years ago and I bought a big jar of kimchee beforehand. She religiously tried it every day the week before she left and acquired the taste quite quickly. The beauty about buying a huge jar of kimchee is that it can't really go off. Maybe that would be a good project - making your own kimchee.
Meanwhile since I returned I have been posting my pictures from Kyoto – the results of my photography have improved thanks to Picasa – terrific and free photo handling software from Google. The image editing tools are excellently intuitive and allow for a huge range of effective adjustments.
This week I was again running around, a dinner in a restaurant in New Jersey that I will not name, on the grounds that one visit isn’t really a fair evaluation. Truthfully a second visit is not very inviting - flock wallpaper, red lighting and a caricature Italian-Jersey maitre d’. A sashimi appetizer (my own fault, of course, why order sashimi in a place like this?) consisted of four huge rolls of thawed tuna – completely tasteless – wrapped around cooked tuna under a very balsamic salad. Lobster on ribbon pasta – which I had thought would be small chunks, arrived in the shell. The meat was tough and the sauce was rich and gooey. Not what I wanted to tackle when jet-lagged. Excellent bread, though, which always cheers me up.
Yesterday I had hanger steak for lunch – which is a splendid cut of meat that you find only occasionally. It is somewhat the shape of a small tenderloin, but much more texture and taste, a bit like a large and tender flank steak. This cut seems impossible to find at the butchery counter anywhere. I will try the market – as I have a strong ambition to cook this next weekend – perhaps with authentic frites and a sauce with veal demi-glace I have in the freezer. This on reflection is a much more appealing prospect than tackling kimchee.
In Korea earlier in the week I ate bimbimbap for lunch out of a traditional dolsot or stone pot. This comes to the table at a temperature of around four million degrees Kelvin. Everything continues to cook as you stir the raw egg in, and the rice at the bottom of the pot has developed a satisfying crunchy texture by the time you get to it. Long after I was finished, the pot was still too hot to touch. As with all meals in Korea, this came with kimchee, a kind of fermented cabbage dish that many people have difficulty with. The first taste, slimy cabbage with a definite gasoline afterburn, is pretty horrifying. "Can people really enjoy this?" you think. After a week of it at every meal you begin vaguely to enjoy it and feel a slight sense of betrayal if it doesn't appear.
My wife was spending a week in Korea a few years ago and I bought a big jar of kimchee beforehand. She religiously tried it every day the week before she left and acquired the taste quite quickly. The beauty about buying a huge jar of kimchee is that it can't really go off. Maybe that would be a good project - making your own kimchee.
Meanwhile since I returned I have been posting my pictures from Kyoto – the results of my photography have improved thanks to Picasa – terrific and free photo handling software from Google. The image editing tools are excellently intuitive and allow for a huge range of effective adjustments.
This week I was again running around, a dinner in a restaurant in New Jersey that I will not name, on the grounds that one visit isn’t really a fair evaluation. Truthfully a second visit is not very inviting - flock wallpaper, red lighting and a caricature Italian-Jersey maitre d’. A sashimi appetizer (my own fault, of course, why order sashimi in a place like this?) consisted of four huge rolls of thawed tuna – completely tasteless – wrapped around cooked tuna under a very balsamic salad. Lobster on ribbon pasta – which I had thought would be small chunks, arrived in the shell. The meat was tough and the sauce was rich and gooey. Not what I wanted to tackle when jet-lagged. Excellent bread, though, which always cheers me up.
Yesterday I had hanger steak for lunch – which is a splendid cut of meat that you find only occasionally. It is somewhat the shape of a small tenderloin, but much more texture and taste, a bit like a large and tender flank steak. This cut seems impossible to find at the butchery counter anywhere. I will try the market – as I have a strong ambition to cook this next weekend – perhaps with authentic frites and a sauce with veal demi-glace I have in the freezer. This on reflection is a much more appealing prospect than tackling kimchee.
posted by William @ 11:07 PM
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