Glorious food in Japan

I visited Tokyo, Japan for the first time last month and I absolutely loved it! The people were so nice, the sights amazing, and the food, oh the food almost made me cry with joy. It was a short visit but I managed to try a variety of foods. The most wonderful part about my trip was that I had the opportunity to meet up with old friends. They were all wonderful hosts and introduced me to wonderful foods. Having good friends to share meals with make the dining experiences more memorable. Thank you very much to Juita, Tomomi and Juntaro, and Noriko (FES '01).

Here is my food diary for the 2.5 days in Japan:

Sushi dinner in Yanaka with Juita who impressed me with her Japanese. The sushi looks almost like plastic in this picture, don't they? They are so perfectly shaped. Well, they definitely did not taste plastic; so amazingly delicious!

Traditional rice set at the Bamboo Restaurant near Ueno Park. Lovely lunch with Tomomi, her husband, Juntaro and their adorable children, Koreto and Miyu. So many different dishes that were all sooooo good. My favorite was the mackerel stewed in miso (at 2 o'clock in picture).


Dessert that came with the meal. A tea infused milk pudding with a thick honey/caramel topping. Smooth and creamy.

A pit stop for some homemade crunchy rice cracker snacks while exploring Yanaka (old part of Tokyo)


Late night dinner in Shibuya. It was raining outside and a hot bowl of udon was just perfect. Udon with mix tempura (vegetables and shrimp).


Some green tea and giant fruits for dessert back at the ryokan (inn). Local grapes, pear and orange from the friendly local grocer.


Early morning steaming bowls of matcha with sugar-coated rice crackers in Kamakura with Nori. We sat by a ridge overlooking a beautiful view of fall colors while sipping our strong matcha.


Giant rice cracker snack while walking through Kamakura.

Did I mention the rice crackers were freshly grilled and then dipped into a tub of sweet sticky soy sauce? Very addictive. Though I have to say, they were so huge that I had to save half of mine for later.

Mushroom soba for lunch in Kamakura. There must have been at least 6 different types of mushrooms in this dish. This one is for you, Jo (the mushroom hunter) :)


Tea time with Nori in Ginza Shopping district. Very elaborate tea service at the Shiseido cafe. We sat amongst lovely ladies wearing silk kimonos and pearls.


Matcha cake to have along with tea. A medley of light white cake layered with matcha with fresh cream and chocolate ganache. Heavenly.


For dinner my last night in Tokyo, Nori took me too this super cool, jazz, sake bar/ cafe near Shinjuku. We had a medley of "small bites" that were all so good. Above is a salad with tofu and lots of shaved bonito. I have to try making this soon. So refreshing and tasty.


Shishamo "pregnant" fish. I know that sounds awful, but they were very tasty. The fish all had roe inside their bellies.


Konyaku and eggy tofu. Interesting textures. Nice and comforting.


Fish cakes. I do not usually like fish cakes but this was delicious. It actually taste of fish rather than stodgy dough (the ones I usual encounter here).


Eggs! I love omelets but this was exceptional. Who knew eggs can be so deliciously savory, moist and fluffy. Looking forward to buying one of those square pans (not pants) to make these. Nori gave me pointers how to make them fluffy.


And finally-- sashimi: octopus, sea urchin and tuna (I think). Yes, folks, the last 6 pictures were all part of one meal!

Aahh, Japan.... I wish I had more days and more meals. I can't wait to go back!

Sunday afternoon dessert

The warm chocolate cake on the Lure menu was accompanied by salted caramel ice cream, popcorn brittle, and chocolate pudding. Lure is known for its fish and seafood offerings (hence the name - Lure.)

We ordered this dessert after our Sunday brunch and were not disappointed. It made for a festive Sunday meal. In order, we liked the cake, ice cream, and pudding. The cake was moist and the interior nicely warm. The ice cream was a perfect blend of cream, salt, and caramel. The pudding was not outstanding but it would be great if store-bought puddings tasted like this one.

After brunch we enjoyed a long walk through the Soho neighborhood of New York City. A long walk is a great non-alcoholic digestif and it was pretty cool to trump through the snow.

Banana walnut muffins

Banana walnut muffins

Based on the banana nut muffins recipe at Simply Recipes. Definitely add the tablespoon of espresso and you can reduce the amount of sugar from 3/4 to 1/2 cup.

Opera Cake

Thanksgiving is a worthy event to attempt an epic project. So I thought I should make an Opera cake to bring to a Thanksgiving dinner our friends hosted.

This was my first ever Opera cake, and I was nervous. The recipe I found at the Splendid Table looked intimidating. Four pages of directions! Adapted from Dorrie Greenspan's book, this recipe dominates the culinary blogdom: numerous google returns on "opera cake recipe" refers back to this master recipe. Wanting to bake enough for a crowd, I resort to it (other recipes cater for 8 people). I had to read it thoroughly several times before the direction sinked in.

Essentially, classic Opera cake consists of layers of almond sponge cake (joconde/gioconda) drizzled with coffee syrup and slathered alternatively with french-style coffee butter cream and chocolate ganache. Although seemingly complicated, there are only two elements of the cake that one has to pay close attention to: the sponge cake and the french style butter cream. The other are simply chocolate ganache and sugared espresso (chocolate ganache is simply chocolate chips and cream melted in your humble microwave, and espresso... well... how can one simplify espresso?). Aside of coffee-chocolate classic, I've found many other variations online, such as the enticing Green Tea Opeara cake!

My patience in scouring the internet for better direction was rewarded with joepastry.com, a no-fuss, non-pretentious blog that guides me with step-by-step photograph on opera cake assembling (there are other baking techniques, too). Joe also gives me direction on how to make the french style butter cream, cake syrup, and joconde cake (and believe me you, he ALSO uses the Splendid Table recipe!). I followed his 4 layer instead of Greenspan's 3 layer cake. Thanks to Joe (whoever you are!), for a novice, I managed to pull a respectable Opera cake.




















Some lesson learned:
1. For the cake, I cut down the sugar from 2 to 1.5 cups, because there would be coffee syrup to moist the cake.
2. At 425F, my oven was to hot and almost burned the bottom of my cake. I still need to calibrate the temperature and baking time to make the cake.
3. I should try to make thinner sponge cake to create more dramatic layers.
4. I would use more espresso and less sugar for the coffee syrup, and drench the cake more in the espresso next time.
5. After putting the butter cream on the cake, I put the cake in the fridge for 10 minutes to let the butter cream harden, enough to withstand the weight of the next layer. But...
6. I should not do so for the ganache layer, because it hardened and the next cake layer did not stick to the ganache. I only found out when I sliced the cake.
7. I put the chocolate glaze topping after I let the cake chill overnight in the fridge. This help the cake to stabilize.
8. My glace was not liquid enough to be poured, I ended up spreading it with a knife. So my topping was not smooth. It requires equal weight of chocolate chip and cream to make liquid glaze.
9. I let the glaze solidified before slicing the cake, and I used knife heated with hot tap water to make a clean slice.
10. I need to buy a decent kitchen scale.

The cake was a hit. I am encouraged to make it again, now that the steps have been demystified. (Thanks, Joe!)

Galette for Brunch

I had posted the link to the Tomato, Corn and Cheese Galette in an earlier posting. Here are some pictures of my attempt last Sunday. I was rushing to get this done to take to a friend's house for brunch that I forgot to pictures after taking it out from the oven. But I did remember to take a picture of the leftover slice.

Before putting it in the oven

I do like the combo of the corn, caramelized onions and tomatoes, though next time I think I will try other combination for the filling. Perhaps spinach and feta, mushrooms and thyme, or roasted squash, caramelized onion and ricotta.

Nom, nom, nom!

Lemon-yoghurt custard topped with walnuts

A tip via @yougrowgirl led me to Mercer Street Books where I purchased a hardcover copy of Moro, The Cookbook for less than $10. Moro was written by Sam and Sam Clark. After looking at all the recipes, I marked several soups, vegetable starters, and most of the desserts, including the Yoghurt Cake with Pistachios. The custard I baked is a modified version of the yoghurt cake. The Clarks described the cake's consistency as "a light sponge on top with a wet custard below."

It's really important to read the directions, carefully! Instead of separating 3 eggs, I whisked 3 eggs - yolks and whites. Other substitutions: 1/4 cup dark brown sugar for 70g caster sugar; 1T vanilla extract for 2 vanilla pods; almost 160z of Greek yoghurt for 350g yoghurt; and a generous handful of walnuts for 30g pistachios.

Despite not incorporating softly whipped, sugared whites, the resulting custard was light. The dominant taste was lemon with a nice back note of vanilla and tangy yoghurt. Read the L.A. Times review of the cookbook. Read yougrowgirl's review of Moro East.

Tomato, Corn and Cheddar Pizza

Hello, people! I am excited! I now have an oven! Not just a toaster oven (though I love my toaster oven too), but a real oven. Well, it is a mini-table-top oven but it is a great oven! Even has a rotisserie function (which comes with something that looks like a devil's pitchfork--a little scary!). But yay! I am now baking-empowered. I can now bake, roast, toast and grill to my hearts content. That over-ripe banana will now make its way to becoming a muffin, instead of being thrown in the freezer for future smoothies (also a great use of over -ripe banana, by the way). I can now finally bake that sour cream chocolate cake that I have been dreaming about. I can bake my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe. I can bake bread. I can roast chicken....ahh...the possibilities. Stay tuned, my friends....

Today for lunch, in honor of my new oven ( I may have to give oven a name soon), I decided that I just have to bake something. I decided a quick pizza will satisfy my sense of urgency in testing out the oven, while fast enough to make that I can actually have lunch, at lunch time. While I hope to bake homemade pizza soon enough with my new oven, today, I opted to use wholemeal pita bread as the base for my quick pizza.

So basically, slice pita open into two. Top with available toppings (rumage through fridge). Drizzle with olive oil. Salt. pepper. Bake in hot oven (260 C) for 10 minutes. Today, my pizza topping is inspired by this galette recipe from Alexandra's Kitchen, a food blog that I just discovered. It is a beautiful blog. So inspiring! Do check it out. The original recipe typed out generously here by Alexandra (I am so lazy about these things and am always delighted to be able to provide a link instead) is from Fine Cooking Magazine (August 2000).

I plan to make the galette tomorrow for a brunch get-together. Will report back on that. As for this pizza, I absolutely loved the combination of fresh corn, onions, cheddar chesse and ripe tomatoes. I used cheddar cheese bc that was what I had in the fridge. The original recipe uses gruyere.

Before

After

Ready to eat. Chomp!