浅蜊パスタ

　まずは浅蜊を剥きました。道具は愛用の竹ハンドルの浅蜊剥き。

　剥き浅蜊とシメジのソースを作ってfettucineのパスタにかけました。

浅蜊をもらいました

ご近所にけっこうなものをけっこうな量いただきました。いつもありがとうね。こんな殻の色の浅蜊はなかなか市販にない。今晩はあさりパスター。

Japanese “kusamochi”

The coming of spring in Japan means the sprouting of so-called sansai, or ‘mountain greens’. This is a generic term referring to edible wild plants that grow in the mountainous countryside, that locals pick and prepare in a variety of traditional dishes such as tenpura, boiled, grilled, wind-dried or in this case, made into confectionery.  Collecting and eating sansai is not for everyone; this year a man in Hokkaido was mauled and partly eaten by a bear, many people get lost in the thickly forested mountains and probably worst, not all varieties are edible, with some being fiercely poisonous or containing carcinogenic compounds.  One variety of sansai that is both palateable and easy to gather is called yomogi (Artemisia princeps). When the young leaves are crushed between the fingertips, they release a wonderful sweet menthol-type aroma. It just so happens one day in the grounds of my workplace, in Saitama Prefecture, I came across a huge patch of these plants growing, with nobody seeming to notice.  I picked a bunch and decided to make the traditional spring confectionery known as kusamochi. 

Japanese Conger Eel

I went out night-fishing for Japanese conger eel – called anago – last night.  Despite the fearsome name, these eels do not grow larger than about 50cm, and are quite delicious.  They are commonly eaten as sushi, but fishermen can enjoy a wide variety of ways of cooking them, including tenpura, broiled or stewed in sake and soy sauce.  In particular, the anago taken from Tokyo Bay are prized as the tastiest and fattest in Japan, with sushi chefs gladly paying thousands of yen at market for just one (they can easily recoup their investment, charging 1000 or more yen per piece of sushi in their restaurant).  When you get back to harbour, the boathouse owners fillet your eels for you – an unusual service for boats here in Japan – whilst not as fiddly as freshwater eel, it’s still pretty difficult, and you get a bag with the fillets and the bones (which can be eaten, or used to make stock) to take home.  Being a complete beginner, my catch was not so good, but the deckhand rather kindly supplemented my bag with some of his own. 

  

One of the slight annoyances of night fishing is the ever-present red jellyfish, who have a tendency to snag on your bait and line.  Whilst not lethally dangerous like some of its relatives, its tentacles are poisonous; in the old days ninja would dry them and grind them into a powder, to blow into their foes’ faces as a primitive tear-gas.  The tentacles can’t envenomate the thick skin of your hands and fingers, but the danger is if the fine strands dry on your hands without your noticing and then touching one’s face – lips or eyes – or going to the toilet afterwards, where the skin is more delicate.  I managed to sting myself in the lower eyelid of my right eye.  It’s kind of like getting soap in your eye, but it also causes a curious spastic twitch in the muscles; it lasted for about half an hour, and was not very pleasant.

Some ‘Old’ Tokyo Photos

of residential homes and restaurants in the Kagurazaka area. For those used to the grey concrete jungle that basically carpets the entire Kanto Plain, it is hard to believe that these photos were all taken in a neighbourhood in central Tokyo, within the Yamanote Line circle.  Even whilst I was taking these photos, there were a number of hideous high-rise apartment blocks under construction in amongst the ever-dwindling traditional houses (you can see a completed example in the background of the sixth photograph). It is sad to think that views and streets like these will soon be completely lost; doubly so when one considers that as Japan’s population shrinks the need for new dwellings is decreasing, not increasing, and that overall in Tokyo, occupancy of living quarters is less than 66%; neither of these facts seems to dissuade the construction companies.           

金沢八景へ釣りに

行ってきました。春を告げる魚を釣りました。船宿はいつも優しくしてくれる弁天屋さんでした。普通は自分で調理しますが、今回は大切な人と一緒にいたので近所のお店へ行って煮付けてもらいました。やっぱりプロの味は違うね〜

Today I caught some mebaru. In Tokyo Bay, this fish is caught using live shrimp as bait; the fish start feeding inshore once the water temperature rises with the end of winter. The kanji characters used to write mebaru comes out as the rather poetic “Fish that Announces Spring”. True to form, the weather today was wonderful, warm with a slight breeze all day, almost perfect spring fishing conditions. For the first time this year, I was able to ditch my thermal waterproofs and got by with standard wellies and trouser bottoms, a T-shirt over a long-sleeved shirt and my Tilley hat (more on this later). Whilst the catch was not abundant, it should be remembered that black mebaru are a rarity at market, and command a high price as ryohtei and luxury restaurants like to use them as symbols of Spring; one of middling size will put back the seasonally minded chef 800 to 1000 yen.

Today’s Tiffin

Tarka dahl and basmati rice cooked with chana dahl (yawn) and a special dish…shahi korma, made with real Kashmiri saffron. In fact the korma is so rich, containing yoghurt, thick cream, brown sugar, ground almonds and saffron, that even a man of such digestive powers as myself can only manage a rather small portion each time. With such luxurious food, it is no wonder that the Moghals basically over-indulged themselves to extinction; I can think of worse ways to go (Jehangir basically drank himself to death, with lashings of opium on the side). It was said that a cook who knew how to make shahi korma could cook for the court; a cook with two dozen (or twenty, depending on the source) korma recipes could cook for the Emperor himself. I myself have three kormas: one where the lamb (always young, tender lamb off the bone with the skin and fat removed) is browned at extremely high heat then boiled slowly in cream, one where the lamb is marinated for two days in yoghurt and whole spices and is so tender it only requires to be heated through, and an infamous dish called mirchwangan korma which is made with thirty red chillies and is not for the faint-hearted. This particular dish was the second variety.

New Category: Indian Cooking

As in, cooking Indian food, not people.  Other than fishing one of my passions is cooking, as should be obvious from the general theme of this blog, and my ever-expanding waistline.  Apart from the Japanese cookery that uses all the fish I catch, I also make traditional English, Thai, Italian and Chinese dishes, but the food I probably enjoy the most – both preparing and eating – is Indian. 

Of course, when I say “Indian” I guess I should really say ‘Indian Subcontinent’ as I also like to prepare the splendid food of Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.  Whenever I go back to London, eating bhel poori and a paneer dosa at Diwana’s, or charcoal-grilled kebabs and straight-out-the-oven hot naan – with the crumbled almonds and pistachio literally falling off the bread – at Raavi’s Halal Tandoori Restaurant, or a feast at the Bengal Lancer are just as important fixtures in my itinerary as a trip to Paxton & Whitfields, Milroys, Fortnums or the Davidoff shop. 

As much as I sound like a boorish wag, the best Indian food I’ve ever had was, rather unsurprisingly, in India.  No matter how I try, I can never get the same taste, of the mutton biryani – served in a little handi with roti wrapped in greaseproof paper folded on top to keep warm - at the hotel in Mumbai, or the tikka and boti kebabs served in the street in the city’s most famous kebab stall whose name escapes me (advancing age is a terrible thing), or the sumptuously rich makhani paneer at the ‘Durbar’ restaurant, or anything from the tandoor at ‘Khyber’, so good I ate there two nights running.  However, I do my best to recreate something similar and look forward to my next trip to that part of the world.

My first post in this category is today’s tiffin: qeema matar and tarka dahl, with basmati rice made interesting with a little chana dahl.