Pav Bhaji

Terrible weather all week meant no fishing, polishing my fishing gear at home and Indian cooking.  Actually in the west of Japan people have died in the flooding and here in Tokyo, the rain has been torrential with lots of lightning to top it all off.  I finally got round to making the Mumbai (the City Formerly Known As Bombay) specialty pav bhaji.  I can’t believe I didn’t try this when I was in Mumbai two years ago (I also regret not getting a champi tel malish on Chowpatty beach) but I was distracted by the streetside kebabs, paneer and tandoori dishes (at Delhi Durbar, Khyber and the wonderfully Victorian-named Gaylord) and of course, Bombay duck, an amazing taste I don’t think I will ever be able to reproduce or encounter elsewhere. 

Nihari Revisited

With no fishing these last two weeks due to the poor weather, I had another bash at making nihari (transliteration of South Asian languages into Roman script is always difficult; you may also see it written as nehari or neyari).  Thanks to the really nice folk at Kobe Halal Foods I obtained some beef shank, this time with no bone so the nihari would have to be without nilla.  I don’t think I have ever seen this dish on offer in restaurants back home in the UK, despite the profusion of north-west Indian dishes (or at least, inspired or bastardised derivatives of them) and the fact I am sure it would be very popular.  Curiously enough, the cut of meat is rather similar to what the Japanese butcher would refer to as suji or ‘lines’.  Like nihari it is often considered a poor man’s dish (usually served up in cheap izakaya bars) and the meat is braised for eight hours or blasted in a pressure cooker, seasoned with soy sauce and mixed with potatoes, onions and konnyaku. 

Stroke of Luck

Since moving out of Asakusa over two years ago the one thing I have always missed is a good local Indian restaurant (the closest to me being in Toyocho or Kinshicho).  So I was quite pleased to be greeted, as I left the station on the way home from work last night, by a sari-clad lady handing out flyers for a new Indian restaurant, right on Kiyosumi-dori.  I stopped by tonight and had a mutton-spinach curry and what they called a カンダーリナン (I’m assuming that’s katakana-ese for Qandahari naan), helped down with a Kingfisher.  The staff were really nice and friendly and the food quite excellent; the naan in particular was delicious.  I look forward to going again.

Exactly one year has passed

since I started this blog; how time flies. Thank you to all the people who have visited and posted comments, especially repeat visitors. I really did not expect so many people to visit – if you Google ‘Punjabi food’ Compleat Tsuribito comes out second of all teh internets, and two of the first three pictures in Google Image search are mine (somewhat embarrassingly, poorly cooked lachar parathas and a rather unauthentic karhai chicken dish). Even though my blog covers quite a wide range of topics, some of the search terms people have used to find my blog are quite unexpected. The more esoteric include “fishing and beer”, “sunrise”, “tasty fish” although the most cryptic must surely be “dew texture”. In Japanese, my favourite recorded search request must be “伊豆温泉　彼女　夜” which translates, quite literally, as “Izu hot spring, girlfriend, night-time”. The things people think of.

Thanks again,

Adam Guy

船上刺身

走水沖のアジとゴマサバを刺身にして食べました。

　まず走水名産のアジを釣らんと…こいつでよいか

　真剣に魚を切る。普段こんな顔してない。

　醤油かけたら出来上がり。

走水港松栄丸さんありがとうございました。

Make sure you have a good helmsman

when you are fishing for tachiuo on Tokyo Bay; it’s quite crowded.

Punjabi Maghaz Masala

Or, brain cooked with spices. A classic Punjabi dish, it was quite good. Served with a mountain of my home-made chapatties on the side. The brain is very creamy and rich (brain is generally about 1/3 lipid), and it is not possible to eat large amounts in one sitting. Curiously enough, the brain is very similar in texture and taste to the milt of Pacific cod, a delicacy known here in Japan as shirako.

久しぶりに鰻食べました

１年ぶり？にウナギを食べました。近所のお店割烹藤吉さんに行ってきました。はじめてだったけど色々親切にしてくれました。

お店のウナギは蒸さずに焼く。香ばしくてとてもうまかった。

久しぶりに日本酒を飲みました、おいしかった。

鰻のほかに鱧・すっぽん・河豚料理も色々ありました。また行きたいお店です。

Kyushu Trip 3

The final part of my Kyushu adventure…the eating of the catch.  I must thank Nigel for letting me use his kitchen and for doing all the washing up. 

  Itoyori (rear) and madai (front) sashimi.  It is very unusual to be able to eat itoyori as sashimi (I have never once seen it on offer at a restaurant here) so it is a fisherman’s luxury.  The madai was of course, quite excellent; incomparable to the slimey farmed rubbish that you get in supermarkets and most restaurants.

Kyushu Trip 2

We set off from my hotel at 4:45am towards Imari.  Sadly a sudden weather front meant we couldn’t head out far offshore to our original destination (Iki) so instead the plan was to head to Hirado Island, which is actually part of Nagasaki Prefecture.  The port we headed to was Nabegushi, on Fukushima Island.  Visitors to Fukushima Island are greeted by a giant kuruma prawn (a local specialty).  Not to be confused with Fukushima Prefecture in the north of Japan.