シンコ

食べました。満足しました。

Lahoree Nihari

I finally got round to attempting to make nihari.  Sadly I was lacking some of the main ingredients to make it truly authentic; I used cheap cuts of boned leg rather than shank, I had no mace, no chunks of bone with delicious marrow in it, and no brain.  I looked forward to making some hot naan or other bread to go with it, only to find that whilst I was in Okinawa, my bag of atta had become infested most thoroughly with weevils of some variety and I threw the whole thing out and had my nihari with rice.  It was however, blazing hot and the meat very tender and delicious; it made a quite excellent breakfast that also removed the requirement for eating lunch.  I have now found a halal butchers here that will sell me shank on the bone and sheep brain, and a short trip to Ojima will provide me with mace, so the next time I make it it will be even better (and probably, hotter).

As the basis of my nihari, I used a recipe from one of Madhur Jaffrey’s excellent cookbooks.  The first Indian cookbook I ever read – “borrowed” from my mother who never used it – was by her, and she is by far my favourite.  In addition to the wide variety of recipes she describes, many of them come with a short introduction about the origins of the dish or how she first encountered it.  Her knowledge of Indian history, culinary and colonial, is great and her anecdotes relating her early life in a well-to-do Delhi family (she makes no attempt to hide her privileged upbringing) are wonderful reading.

Hopefully next year I will be able to eat real nihari for myself.  I definitely want to fish the Arabian Sea and by starting or ending my trip in Lahore, I can have the real thing (in addition to trying a host of other local specialties).  In the meantime, I can continue experimenting here in Tokyo.

More lightning over Tokyo

We’ve had electric storms on consecutive nights here, I think this bolt must have hit somewhere around my old neighbourhood Asakusa (this is looking north-west from my place).

Electrical Storm over east Tokyo

Yesterday afternoon I was entertained by the most spectacular electric storm, from my balcony.  Most of it was too far away to actually see the strikes as the whole area was shrouded in thick cloud, but there were a lot of cloud-to-cloud flashes and curiously little rain.  I managed to snap this shot with my cheapo digital camera.

Also, as the storm progressed it became sunset, so the lightning flashes were curiously offset by the surrounding buildings being painted in the orange glow of dusk.  The effect was quite odd as the lightning flashes and bolts were almost non-stop for about an hour.

I am rather glad the storm passed by a good distance from my neighbourhood.

タチウオ料理

　昆布〆。梅肉をつけて食べます。

　ハラミの山椒焼き。

　塩味の炙り握り鮨。太刀魚なら私が一番好きな食べ方。

とりあえず

タチウオ天ぷら。味は島塩＋かぼす。

自分はLTジギング太刀がなかなか上達しない釣りです。きょうおいしそうな湾内サバを水面ばらしでバイバイしたし。まぁ自分のおかずの分釣れたからいいじゃない。深川吉野屋さんありがとうございました。

Some Miyakojima Specialties

Some examples of the food I ate while in Miyakojima.  Whilst some of the dishes such as chanploo are fairly ubiquitous and can be found anywhere in the Ryukyu archipelago, others were peculiar to Miyako, such as the soup noodle soba and various beef dishes.  In fact Miyakojima has its own breed of cow, one fine specimen of which we spotted on Kurima Island.  Click on the Miyako cow for more…

 

 

 

 

 

 

宮古ガーラ

Miyakojima Folk Song

Live traditional music in the restaurant “Goya”, Hirara City, Miyakojima (Okinawa Prefecture).

There is no rice wine

as good as one with a Okinawan pit viper in it. Specialty of Okinawa known as habushu or habusake.