Season’s Greetings

To those celebrating Christmas! Here in pagan Japan, it’s a normal working day for us dogsbodies…I am officially off work from the 27th, hopefully I will be able to get in my last fishing trip of the year before the New Year’s festivities start.
Tight lines &c.

Things one sees at sea

Little sub outside Yokosuka Base.  If you look carefully you can see a snow-whitened Mt.Fuji just above her tailplane; this is just after sunrise so it has a slight orange hue.

アジ料理

やっぱり東京湾の鯵はうまい、脂ののりかたは違うんだもん。

　刺身

　アジのフリッターみたいなやつ

　混ぜご飯（混ぜる前）

Enough for the neighbours too

鯵

釣りました。

いつも優しい弁天屋さんありがとうございます。

2008年 ハゼの甘露煮

ができました。今年は大川で網でとったものじゃなくて沖で釣ったハゼを使いました。残念ですが今年はハゼがあんまりよくなくて今回の甘露煮は少なめ。でも近所の江戸前鮨屋さんに少しお土産にしたら評判がよかった（自慢話）。作っている途中などいい写真が色々あったけどPCの不調でカメラのメモリーカードの中身がいっきに全部削除されてしまいました、とりあえずこれをとり直した。

私のハゼの甘露煮のレシピ・作り方は秘密。ネットで探してみたらすぐにいくつものHPに甘露煮レシピが出てきますのでうちのやつは大したもんじゃない。しかし自分で色々研究してきたものなので材料の量は明確に計っていないし干す・煮る時間も適当にやっていてレシピを他人に説明するのが難しい。

Some Frontier-Style Dishes

just to let you know I am still alive. Still no internets at home, hopefully this will be sorted out this weekend; I have a long post about my recent trip to the hot spring at Heda coming up, but for the time being here are pictures of some of the dishes at a meal I made recently for guests.

Chappli kabab – reshmi kabab – burani - lamb biryani

These were suitably accompanied by walnut-mint chutney (a superb dish, with extra flavour from crushed anardana seeds and hot raw green chillies) and a stack of flatbreads. The biryani was an unusual one, made from uncooked meat layered with parboiled rice (usually the meat is cooked first separately) and flavoured with milk, apricots, almonds, saffron and rosewater: a real Mughal treat. I didn’t have a suitable le Creuset-style crockpot to bake it in, but my trusty Japanese stone donabe did the job admirably and it came out fairly well, considering this was my first attempt at this recipe.

No internets

at home for me, as I kicked over my YahooBB modem whilst cleaning over the weekend and just like the story of the collision between the fat man and the boy with the werry large head as told by Samuel Weller, its inner workings have never been the same since. Might take a few days to sort out so it may be some time before I can update again from home.