浅草寺

混んでいました。

Today’s Tiffin

Malaidar andai (boiled eggs in a cream sauce) and rasedar khumbi aloo (stewed mushrooms and spuds with garlic).  Usually I try to go for a balance of colours and textures for my two dishes but today was all-out hot red chilli and garlic (the mushroom dish is made with a whole bulb).  The hearty stewed potatoes and mushrooms and the blazing hot chilli attack of the egg sauce were the perfect antidote to the very cold weather today.  All I needed was some lime pickle, a poori or two and a nice salted lassi to make things perfect.  And maybe a nautch and some Kashmiri opium.  Anyway, with the amount of garlic I consumed for tiffin I felt a little sorry for those of my colleagues who were obliged to speak to me in the afternoon, but the feeling passed.

Bamboo Rod Building: Lacquering

Well I am at the lacquering stage of building my bamboo rod.  This is an essential technique which strengthens the joints of the rod and also makes them waterproof (raw bamboo will of course swell if wetted, and deform the rod).  Japanese lacquering is a difficult technique and not made any easier by the fact that the main ingredient, a plant derivative, is actually poisonous and allergenic.  Luckily I turned out not to have an allergy to the lacquer – called urushi in Japanese – although I did not expect to be as I have no other allergies at all.  Straight out the tin the lacquer also smells utterly foul, almost exactly like vomit; it is applied with a special brush made from human hair.  Anyway, the lacquering is an ongoing process.

Traditional Rod Making

All the bad weather we have been having this month – I haven’t been out to sea once in March – has allowed me to concentrate on my rod making, which is difficult but rewarding.  I am lucky I have a good sensei, who is patient, if stern, and a good teacher.  The shirogisu (whiting) rod I started last year should be ready in a month or so, just in time for the Tokyo Bay whiting season.  At the moment the rod is in the lacquering stage, using traditional Japanese urushi (wood lacquer).

 

Left: my teacher displaying some of the different types of Japanese bamboo, and explaining their various uses.  Fibreglass or baleen is also sometimes used for the rod tip.  Right: straightening the bamboo, by heating it over a fire and bending it into place.

Koi Sashimi

One shouldn’t really eat freshwater fish raw but I make an exception for this splendid dish, known as koi arai (lit. ‘washed carp’).  Slices of koi carp sashimi are placed in hand-warm water for a few moments, then chilled in ice water.  The flesh firms up and curls slightly, and is served on a bed of ice cubes and taken not with soy sauce, but with vinegared white miso (seen to the left).  I ate this dish at a local restaurant called Iseki.

Today’s Tiffin

Hot, hot South Indian chicken xacuti and wholesome mung daal.

Gyotaku: Remember Your Catch

Forever, without exaggeration.  Sport fishing in Japan has existed long before cameras were available to record those special catches, so the peculiar artform known as gyotaku developed.  As we all know, certain anglers like to exaggerate their achievements but a gyotaku provides irrefutable evidence of the size of each fish, as it is direct 1:1 impression of the fish.  My friends from back home jokingly referred to gyotaku as ‘fish Turin shrouds’, which is only partly correct I guess as gyotaku are a print of the real thing!  Anyway, the nice sole I took last month was over 40cm, which is the size over which the boathouse will make a gyotaku for you, for free (they actually take two prints, one for you to take home and one to put up on display in the window of their office).  I then took mine to be framed, which not only preserves it and makes it look nice, but also the framers will flatten out the ruffles in the washi Japanese paper it is printed onto.

One nice thing is that the gyotaku lists not only the size of the fish and who caught it, but also the date, place and name of the boat it was taken on.  Mine comes with the official seal of the boathouse, although it is more common to name the skipper or third party who confirmed the details of the catch at the time (this is known as gennin in Japanese).  Also, the ink used to make the print is natural sumi calligraphy ink, so it washes off the fish with water and of course the fish can be consumed afterwards as normal.

Being made from traditional Japanese paper and printed with sumi ink, a gyotaku will last for years.  I have seen several pre-War gyotaku, in various places, and even one from the Edo Period.  I hope mine will last as long!

Today’s Tiffin

Delhi Hindu-style potatoes – so simple yet delicious and made nutritious with fresh tomatoes, a pile of coriander leaf and yoghurt – and a first for me: Maharashtran green beans, which are cooked with curry leaves and mung dal, very slowly under a pot of boiling water placed on top of the saucepan in lieu of a lid.  The veg and bean mix cooks in its own steam so very little oil is needed, and when it comes straight out the pan, even speaking as a devoted fish (and to a lesser extent, meat) eater, this dish is incredibly tasty. Also, I think it took in all maybe forty minutes to prepare both dishes, using very cheap (but fresh) ingredients and nothing more complex than stir-frying and boiling; despite the lame excuses one hears it is neither difficult nor expensive to make healthy and tasty food at home.

カラスミのパスタ

作りました。うまかった。

English names of Japanese Fish

I often wonder how many species I have caught in my time fishing here in Japan; after nearly five years now I think I can name almost any fish pulled out of Tokyo Bay, and identify fish caught in most other parts of Japan too (although Okinawan fish remain a mystery to me). Anyway, over the last few months I finally got round to listing all the fish, and looking up their English names.