tokyo food file

the good things in life

Good wine, good food, good people.

 

Coming up tomorrow in my Japan Times column...

And now it's out... and up here.

Afuri's beni-shoyu-men: ramen with refinement gets added heft and heat

Crude concrete walls; bare light bulbs; exposed ceiling ducts; flickering video monitor; kitchen crew in black... Yes indeed, I'm back at Afuri — the Ebisu branch, my favourite — first time in a while.

 

 

But instead of ordering my usual — the excellent, fragrant yuzu-shio-men — this time I go for the beni-shoyu-men. It's still light and refined, but there's enough rayu in the soup not just to give it that beni (scarlet) colour, but to bring a proper bead of sweat to the brow. Sometimes you don't want delicacy and aroma: you want a bit of heft and heat.

Perfect for keeping out the winter chill.

 

The only gripe: they don't offer kaedama (extra servings of noodles) to mop up all that excellent spicy soup. You can order a small side bowl of rice, though.

I've posted about Afuri several times already. That's because it's always good, especially at that time of the evening just before you head to the station to get the late train home.

Burns Night in Japan

We've got the whisky all sorted. And the haggis (naturally grown, of course)…

  

 

Actually, haggis is not unobtainable in Tokyo — as I mentioned in a column several years back... 

More about the cult of Burns here…  And why Stateside folks will never get it...

[and congrats to Andy Murray for his timely win this evening Japan Time]

Dashi alchemy: taking it to the next level

I've been preparing dashi at home for quite a while now, gradually refining the variables of the way I make it and the ingredients I use — basically kombu and katsuobushi, but adjusting the quantities and timing — all with the aim of obtaining the optimum depth of flavour. 

And after 30 years or so, I think I'm starting to get the hang of it. So it's time to take it one step further. Enter the new kezuri-ki...

 

Up to now, I've been using pre-shaved katsuobushi flakes, often buying them from vendors in the Tsukiji outer market (and freezing what I don't need immediately to preserve their goodness). But preparing your own is a whole different ballgame. Not perhaps as radically different as, say, grating your parmesan instead of pouring powdered cheese out of a packet. But still, to use whole katsuobushi is to take the freshness and flavour to the next level.

The equipment itself is a work of modest but perfect craftsmanship: the box is made of kiri (paulownia), which is good at keeping the moisture out, so I can store the katsuobushi inside the drawer at the bottom.

And the blade was forged by a local knife-maker, who is actually descended from a line of samurai sword makers. Apparently they are happy to tune it up and keep it razor sharp for as long as they/I are/am still around.

 

With a blade this sharp, just the basic action of "planing" the hard, wood-like fillets is a pleasure. Besides the incomparable aroma of the fresh shavings (which are properly called kezuribushi), the interior of the katsuobushi is an amazing dark-ruby red colour.

This one comes from Yaizu in Shizuoka, which along with Kochi, is a major centre for landing skipjack and processing them into katsuobushi.  

 

I actually had a kezuri-ki that I used for a while — this was a couple of decades back — but I got out of the habit of using it for a number of reasons. Mainly because a) it was an entry-level model and hard to adjust, whereas this one is hand-crafted; and b) I was not that committed to using it and, after the blade dulled, I let it rust and then reverted to using pre-shaved. Not this time!

In Japanese, the whole katsuobushi are known colloquially as kame (literally "turtles") or kame-bushi. As for me, I just like to call them "umami logs."

 

 

A couple of incidental thoughts:

1)  This was the very best present I got last Christmas. A big big thank-you to @hanabidreaming xxx !!

2) I came across a nice concise explanation of the way a kezuri-ki works on this site...

3) And about shaving katsuobushi on this site...

4) While I'm preparing katsuobushi, I always (well, quite a lot) think of this album. It's thanks to John — and Yoko of course — that I first discovered Japanese food. Listen here...

 

atsukan and yakitori: winter, do your worst