tokyo food file

Camellias and kappo: Chef Hisao Nakahigashi delivers on the plate and on TV

Looking back to last month, the camellias were coming into gorgeous bloom in our garden...

 

They were in full bloom throughout Kyoto too when I made a quick foray down there in mid-February. And also on the plate, when we dined at Sojiki Nakahigashi, the wonderful little ryoriya near Ginkakuji. This was the opening plate of seasonal appetizers, featuring a "camellia" of aka-kabu turnip, with stamens of ground yuzu peel on a base of dried persimmon...

 

As for the rest of the plate, here is short run-down of what we were served.

The grilled fish (right of the #flower") was grilled masu trout, served with a black bean. The nanohana greens were simply seared over charcoal. Under them was a single simmered oyster. The small dried fish at the front were just lightly seared. Under the shiny camellia leaf were ink-black wild mushrooms that had been foraged in the fall and preserved. And at the front right, buri yellowtail aged in koji (kojizuke) layered with kabura turnip pickled in shio-koji.

Symbolically, this dish marked the path from winter into spring. Beautiful poetry on a plate, by Chef Hisao Nakahigashi.

 

At the time we were there (mid-February), Chef Nakahigashi had just finished a long session of shooting with an NHK camera team in his compact kitchen. The results will be aired tomorrow (Monday 31st March) as part of its prestigious "Professionals" series.

There's a trailer here: http://www.nhk.or.jp/professional/schedule/index.html#20140331  (just click on the word "movie" under the top photo on the NHK page)

For those in Japan, the program will air on NHK's General Channel at 10 pm local time.

 

Uni at Ajisen: it doesn't get a whole lot better

 

That was the culmination of the mori-awase mixed sashimi platter at Ajisen in Tsukishima.

Premium seafood. Great sake. So downhome-shitamachi local. And so excellent. Especially in such good company!

Here are a few more images. Starting with another take on that wonderful uni…

 

A mound of nama-shirasu (fresh-caught sardine fry) simply served with ginger and fine-chopped negi scallions. In the back, the otoshi (obligatory opening nibble): home-made shiokara, so rich with umami on the tastebuds it propelled us straight to ordering lots of good sake.

 

Anago no shirayaki – a filleted conger eel, grilled without being basted with sauce. Served with sudachi citron and wasabi to go in a shoyu dip. Simple and excellent.

 

It's not all seafood at Ajisen: the tempura is always worth ordering, especially if it features morokko-ingen ("Moroccan" green beans) and maitake mushrooms.

 

Ebi-imo (a kind of taro yam) korokke (aka deep-fried breaded croquettes) 

 

Here's a map link to Ajisen.

UPDATE (March 19, 2014): I featured Ajisen in my Japan Times column today, here…. 

 

And some more uni goodness to drool over here…

 

Kome: The Art of Straw

Part 3 of a three-part post on the "Kome: The Art of Rice" exhibition.

 

In a traditional farming society, no part of the rice would go to waste. The chaff from the hulls was mixed with mud and used as a building material for walls, or burned to make a nutrient-rich charcoal which was made a traditional fertilizer. And the bran polished off the grain (to produce white rice) would go – and still does – into the nuka-zuke bran-pickle crock.

As for the rice straw, that was/is woven in a remarkable range of designs, some visible in the photo above. Many have purely ritual uses, such as the braided straw ropes hung over the entrances of Shinto shrines. Others are more decorative, though they have always been made in celebration of the harvest. 

And then there are the items for daily use: rainwear (known as mino); footwear (waraji sandals or fukagutsu boots); backpacks; carrying cases for charcoal and fireworks; and even the bales (kome-dawara) in which the rice was stored and transported. Apparently (according to the sign), this single bale below contains 2,608,695 grains of rice:

Rice straw was (and still is, here and there) plaited and twisted into twine that found myriad uses, especially as food packaging:

Above (L-R): shimi-dofu (aka koya-dofu: freeze-dried tofu); eggs; persimmons. Below (L-R): dried salmon; shishamo (small dried fish).

 

 

Shizengo (below left) has been sold this way, in a protective cover made from the straw of the organic rice it is brewed from, for decades. And the packaging for the Inaho (below right) is even more elaborate:

 

 

Rice straw is also, of course, the medium for preparing that ultimate farmhouse food, natto. Not just as the wrapping, but the original source of the microbes that convert cooked soybeans into aromatic, nutrient- and mucilage-rich fermented delicacy. 

  image on right taken from: http://pingmag.jp/2008/02/18/japanese-packaging-design-6-imitating-nature/

Two final images: an elegant woven spiral. And a wrapping for yubeshi, one of the most delectable Japanese preserves, made from yuzu stuffed either with sweet mochi as a confection or with miso as a pickle. Either way, it always tastes best when unwrapped from a rice-straw covering.

 

 

Simple but intricate, utilitarian but beautiful in their craftsmanship, these packages represent mingei folk art at its purest and most transient, since they are designed to biodegrade perfectly back into the soil. 

They make up an essential section of the excellent "Kome: The Art of Rice" show now running at 21_21 Design Sight. 

My write-up in The Japan Times is here…

Kome: the art of superior signage

Part 2 of a three-part post on the "Kome: The Art of Rice" exhibition

 

One of the aspects of "Kome: The Art of Rice" that makes it so rewarding – as a non-native speaker/reader of Japanese – is the extensive use of English in the signage for the exhibition.

This is such a profound subject, which goes to the core of Japanese agri/culture. Thankfully non-Japanese are not excluded. 

To give you an idea, here are a few of the signs I snapped while I was going round the show before writing it up (for The Japan Times here…). The quality of the photos is poor; but they do illustrate the depth and scope of the show. As I said before: it's highly recommended.

From one grain, a thousand grains:

 

Rice culture has moulded the landscape of Japan:

 

Rice is not all (or always) white:

 

Rice and sakura, a profound connection:

 

Rice culture and the agricultural environment, a symbiotic network:

 

Rice as optimal slow food; rice balls as concentration of spiritual power:

 

Needess to say, all these signs are © 21_21 Design Sight, and are only reproduced here as examples of the level of attention that has gone into producing this show. The booklet you get as you enter has lots more information that helps to enhance your appreciation of this exhibition.

Kome: The Art of Rice

Part 1 of a three-part post on the "Kome: The Art of Rice" exhibition

 

My piece on the "Kome: Art of Rice" show at 21_21 Design Sight. 

It came out in The Japan Times yesterday (March 11), but we all had weightier things on our mind, so I've left this post till today…

It's an excellent exhibition. And as well as being packed with information about rice, it really is very visual too. So here are a lot more images...

Starting with one of the exhibition posters:

 

"At New Year, round mirror-shaped kagami mochi dumplings are everywhere…"

 

"…there is not much fine art on display, apart from a reproduction of a wonderful ukiyo-e wood-block print triptych drawn in the 1840s by Utagawa Hiroshige."

"…Titled 'The Battle of Confectionery and Sake,' it depicts the forces of mochi (sticky rice cake) and rice-based confectionery taking on an army of sake and related rice brewing, in the style of the Genji-Heike samurai wars." 

 

"…the 3,000 grains contained in a typical bowl of cooked rice are the yield of three bundles of stalks that have emerged from just three grains of paddy rice."

 

"Rice is also grown to be drunk, as we are reminded by the extensive display of sake label art — in itself a graphic illustration of how Japan’s traditional tipple is evolving a contemporary sensibility."

Lots of my favourite sake labels are on show. Here are just four of them (clockwise from top right): Shichihonyari; Tedorigawa; Izumibashi; and Kiyoizumi.

 

 

 

I visited and wrote about this show from the viewpoint of someone who lives here and for whom rice has been part of my (almost) daily diet for the past 40 years. You could say I have a bias. 

For a more scholarly assessment of this exhibition in more "arty" terms – and for a totally different visual take on the galleries – take a look at this review in Domus.