The Elegant Sufficiency

Memories of a Japanese Breakfast

Porridge with soy milk and honey for breakfast this morning and smh.com is telling me it’s 6 degrees outside. My (microwave) porridge-making technique leaves a lot to be desired (any tips?) and, as I dipped into my bowl of glug my thoughts turned to a better breakfast. The best breakfast in fact, that I’ve ever had. It’s a year since I was in Japan and the memory isn’t fading: staying at the Claska Hotel in Meguro I discovered the joys of a Japanese breakfast.

Each morning, a black laquer tray of six-plus bowls were brought to us. My inadequate notes are perhaps a reflection of morning grogginess, enthusiasm for the eating task at hand, and communication difficulties between us and the utterly divine waiter, who could answer few of our questions. Nonetheless, there’s enough in my scrawls to make me wish that an entrepreneurial Japanese chef would start a Japanese breakfast café here.

The stalwarts on the tray were always a tremblingly good poached egg (served at room temperature). A little square glass jug of dashi broth was at the side and, poured over the egg, a miraculous combination emerged. There was always a brown rice (genmai) porridge with slivers of ginger and a pool of dashi broth, miso soup, pickles, and one other changing dish, perhaps grated potato with seaweed, cucumber and sesame seeds. But it was the tofu dish that had me in raptures each morning: a neat cube of tofu, crowned with perfectly julienned ginger, a sprinkling of chopped chives, a paste that I believe was yuzu zest and green chilli, all served with warmed rice and soy milk. The waiter brought out the brand of milk for us to see: a tetra pack of “EdenBlend” rice and soy milk — “combines amazake, a very sweet traditional porridge made of koji fermented organic brown rice with organic soybeans”. It was a luscious, heavenly combination but one all but impossible to recreate with any authenticity at home here I reckon.
At Macro I found the EdenBlend brand, but they seemed not to have the particular blend we were served at the Claska. And where I’d find tofu to equal what they served us is anyone’s guess. But in Tokyo Mart in Northbridge, I did find genmai rice — one remaining pack of Sukoyaka Genmai “easy cooking whole grain brown rice”. As with EdenBlend, it’s a Californian product, so not exactly local food, but I’m prepared to ignore that fact. And, coming upon this article in Saveur recently, I'm starting to think it's time to start plotting my next trip to Japan.

Soba Noodles with Ocean Trout

Since the trip last month I’ve had Japanese food on my mind, tofu has become a staple, I’ve massacred my hands on my lethal new knife (from the centuries-old Aritsugu knife shop in Kyoto’s Nishiki market, engraved with my initials), I’m making Japanese tea (probably poorly) several times a day and I’ve travelled over the bridge twice to Tokyo Mart (Shop 27 Northbridge Plaza, 79 -113 Sailors Bay Rd, Northbridge, 9958 6860) for essentials.

I picked up what looked like their last bag of Sukoyaka Genmai (Easy Cooking Wholegrain Brown Rice, product of the USA), which has overcome all my previous antipathy towards brown rice. (To follow this post, soon I hope, an exposition on our Tokyo hotel breakfasts, which every day featured a bowl of porridge made with genmai; and also a brilliant, simple suggestion for an immaculately healthy one-pot genmai rice dinner). I’m alarmed at how fast the packet is disappearing and praying that Tokyo Mart has stocked up for me.
Meanwhile, my bedtime reading has been a book that I stumbled on accidentally at the Aoyama Book Centre in Roppongi on my first day in Tokyo — Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art, by Shizuo Tsuji. Even though the weight it added to my baggage was crippling, it goes straight to the top of my Favourite Cookbooks of All Time list.

I’ve collected a few Japanese cookbooks over the years and all have failed me in one way or another. Mr Tsuji is my hero (How could I have missed the existence of his life’s work?) MFK Fisher provides the introduction and Ruth Reichl the foreword in a book devoid of photographs (but for one section of unnecessary pics of dishes) but rich with detail, cultural information, instructions, diagrams. The fine typography captures the purity, elegance and serenity of good Japanese food.
So far, I’ve reverently followed Mr Tsuji’s instructions for a primary dashi stock, but I’m preparing to follow his word on many other dishes with the religious fervour of a hundred thousand or more World Youth Day pilgrims. (Nothing like a bit of mass hysteria in your neighborhood…) Sea bream and rice (Tai Meshi), Chicken-‘n-Egg on Rice (Oyako Donburi), Potatoes Simmered in Miso (Jaga-imo Miso-ni), Spicy Eggplant (Nasu Itame-ni), Grilled Mushrooms with Ponzu Sauce (Yaki-Shiitake Ponzu-Ae) and Noodles with Chicken and Green Onions (Tori Nanba Udon) will, I hope, all grace my table in the weeks to come.
In the meantime, a soba noodle dish with ocean trout is something that has become a staple: I cooked it for my brother and his family a couple of weeks back and he called me today from the supermarket to ask for an ingredients list. (He hasn’t called back to ask for the method: hate to think what’s happening in that Bondi kitchen right now … My hunch is, it was hijacked by a two-and-a-half-year-old.)

Soba Noodles with Terikyaki Ocean Trout
Serves 4
(Adapted from a recipe in Old Food, by Jill Dupleix, Allen & Unwin, 1998; and with the dashi broth recipe from Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art, by Shizuo Tsuji, 25th Anniversary Edition, 2006, Kodansha International)

400g soba noodles
2cm knob of fresh ginger, peeled and grated finely
4 small fillets of ocean trout, skinned (or salmon)
1 bunch of spinach, washed and stemmed
4 green onions sliced diagonally
Teriyaki sauce:
2tbsp dark soy sauce
1 tbsp sake
1 tbsp mirin
1 tsp sugar
1 tbsp peanut oil
Dashi broth:
1 litre cold water
30g giant kelp (konbu)
30g dried bonito flakes (hana-katsuo)

To make teriyaki sauce: Combine soy, sake, mirin, sugar and oil in a microwave-safe dish and heat for short bursts until sugar has dissolved. (30-40 seconds.) Set aside.
To make dashi: Fill a pot with 1 litre of water and put in the kelp. Heat, uncovered, so as to reach boiling point in about 10 minutes. (Kelp emits a strong odour if it is boiled, so remove konbu just before water reaches the boil.) Insert your thumbnail into the fleshiest part of the kelp. If it is soft, sufficient flavour has been obtained. If tough, return it to the pot for one or two minutes. Keep from boiling by adding about ¼ cup cold water.
After removing the konbu, bring the stock to the boil. Add ¼ cup cold water to bring the temperature down quickly and add the bonito flakes. Don’t stir. Bring to a full boil and remove from the heat at once. (If bonito flakes boil more than a few seconds, the stock becomes too strong, a bit bitter and is not suitable for use in clear soups.) Allow the flakes to start to settle to the bottom of the pot (30 seconds to one minute). Remove foam, then filter through a sieve. Stir ginger through the broth.
To prepare fish: Brush ocean trout with teriyaki sauce and grill quickly on an oiled grill, leaving the inside slightly pink. Meanwhile cook noodles in boiling salted water until al dente (follow the instructions on the packet). Drain and rinse in cold water.
To assemble: Bring broth to just below the boil. Add noodles for 30 seconds to heat through, then divide noodles between four warmed bowls. Dip spinach leaves briefly into the broth to wilt them, and divide among bowls.
Ladle hot broth into each bowl and top noodles with grilled ocean trout. Scatter green onions on top.

Deep-fried Fabulousness

Deadlines largely past for now, Japan stories... they'll come, sporadically:
Two tempura meals during our Tokyo-Kyoto trip — one more than I might have chosen, but travelling companion mother is a fan, and far less interested in the eel and uni and sashimi that I would have pursued single-mindedly — and she's a woman better kept happy. First tempura supper was at the very luxe Yamanoue restaurant in the year-old temple of consumption, that shopping-mall-from heaven, Tokyo Midtown, in the Roppongi district. (At Midtown, get, at all costs, to Nagae porcelain, where you'll find the divinest, finest porcelain, and to Sfera for design finery. And, can I just say, it nearly killed me parting with the Sfera maple-wood board and knife I bought for my gorgeous sister-in-law.)
Oh... Yamanoue ... it could be that my mother is a philistine, because she didn't at all appreciate the chilled sake. While I gushed over the rather lovely sake jug and glass, she was imagining, I imagine, a glass of single malt whisky. (A whisky drinker since the womb, she is.)

She warmed up a bit as the food started to arrive. Pinkly supine prawn heads, three of them, swathed, delicately, in exquisite sesame oil (that, apparently, is what differentiates Yamanoue from other tempura operators), and Japanese ginger.

 
Extraordinary how intense and disciplined Japanese chefs are ... perhaps it's the open kitchen that does it, but there's none of the ribbing or ribaldry of an Australian kitchen.

I'm SO relaxed by now. I can't find anything about this meal in my notebook. I guess that must mean I was relaxed? There were more bits of deliciousness: a vegetable that a drunk might have mistaken for asparagus, but I wasn't fooled. Pity I can't remember what the waiter told me it was. And then, finally, a miso soup with the most delicate clams. (The camera angle on the miso soup might suggest inebriation, but I swear, I wasn't.) Divine miso, just divine.

And then, tea. You've got to love that teacup. (This was a blackish tea, but I've been drinking sencha ever since my return, in obsessive volumes.)

Half an hour into our taxi journey back to hotel in Tokyo's Meguro district (the Claska — one of my favourite hotels ever) after dinner, we discovered we had no business card for our hotel and the taxi driver spoke no English, and we had no idea where exactly in Meguro the Claska was and, well, if you know Tokyo, you know that's a challenging situation. But that's a story for another day. We're on a tempura flight right now. Be patient.
Next tempura restaurant was on the recommendation of the lovely Matthew Crabbe, executive chef of the Hyatt Regency Kyoto (my second favourite hotel on the trip). Matthew suggested we try his favourite Kyoto tempura place, Tenyu Tempura Restaurant (tel: 075-212-7778).

No doubt, Tenyu was superior to Yamanoue, at a considerably more affordable price — about AUD$110 for the two of us to twice that at Yamanoue. First, an appetiser: a little white scalloped bowl holding seared green chillies layered with pepper leaves and julienned tofu skin. The waitress, and the tempura chef, smilingly directed us: to accompany the tempura you get a bowl of soy, another of minced daikon (white radish) and a third of white salt, aromatic sansho salt and a lemon segment. You swish the daikon through the soy and then choose to dip your tempura in either the soy-daikon OR the salts and lemon. Not both. More prawn heads start things.

Lots of friendliness here in this lovely intimate restaurant. Plus tempura of asparagus, white fish (with, I think a tempura-d fish backbone), sections of onion, lotus root, the chef frequently changing the white paper on the plate in front of us where he places the tempura. And, finally, when my mother is in a food-induced stupor, he passes us a tempura corn fritter with a bowl of rice, plus some pickles and miso soup with clams. Oh. I forgot to tell you about the grapefruit segments and grape slices in a fragrant jelly. Brilliant.

Kyoto Colours and Textures

Fiddling around with some of my photos from the trip, feeling wistful and wishing I was back there.

Beef to the Ankles

"Beef to the ankles," my mother/travelling companion laments, looking at her body in a mirror in our rather fancy-schmancy Tokyo hotel room/suite. (Am only here thanks to work...I can't afford five-star!...) I suggested she not look in the mirror, which is what I have been attempting to do for some days now. Oh how we have eaten. Oh the kilos. (It's OK, isn't it, to eat like a glutton when you're on holidays? ... If you could have seen the multi-course breakfast I had at the buffet this morning.) Haven't shared the food stuff yet cos I need to spend more time than I've had available explaining, describing etc. But this was the intense young man who helped to prepare our tempura lunch this week:

Kyoto Welcome

The Hyatt Regency Kyoto's swish welcome for us. Grapes like plums, size and flavour-wise. A silver dish I'd like to steal like the soap. (But of course I wouldn't.)

The Streets of Tokyo

Azabu Juban, Tokyo, June 2008. Women in kimonos. A political rally, a politican in white gloves. Clipped poodles. A perfect little shop, Blue and White — blue and white textiles, fabrics, clothing, ceramics, cards, jewellery. Food posts to follow.