tokyo food file

spring meets summer on the plate

This really is my favourite season, when spring segues into early summer, with clear skies, warm sunshine, fresh green foliage on the hillsides -- and still no humidity (or bugs) to spoil the great outdoors.

 

It's a favourite on the plate too, the last tastes of spring overlapping with the early flavours of summer.

Like this dish: tempura of takenoko and chi-ayu. The bamboo shoot came from Ishikawa, where spring is still in the air. The young ayu sweetfish were shipped up from Lake Biwa, in Shiga. 

 

And what better to go with it than a drop of Kaze-no-mori — "wind in the forest".

 

Another confluence of the seasons: takikomi-gohan made with bamboo shoot and sora-mame beans.

The arrival of broad beans in the local markets is one of the supreme pleasures of this time of year. Cooked in with the savoury rice in a heavy ceramic pot, it's a beautiful melding of colours, textures and flavours.

 

With plenty of kinome (sansho leaf) added at the end to give it extra zing…

a wintry pleasure — the first broad beans of the year

The deep of winter is never the best time of year for vegetables. That is why the arrival of the first produce from the far south of Kyushu is such an outstanding pleasure — especially when the crop in question is ten-mame, a.k.a. sora-mame.

I use the Japanese names — rather than plain old "broad beans" — because I have never anywhere else tasted such exquisitely tender, sweet-bitter, jade green young beans as here in Japan. Most especially when they've been slowly grilled over charcoal.

 

Great with a craft beer (even Coedo, Kawaguchi's best — though not by a long streak Japan's)... 

The dish at the back was a take on pot au feu that actually tasted pretty good, despite those wieners. 

Consider this post as a teaser for a fine little place I'm introducing in my column this coming Friday. More details after it's out in print...