Food, Glorious Food
For many months now, I have wanted to write about Japanese food. As it has been many months since I first thought of what I wanted to say in such a post, I have gathered plenty of buroggu fodder.
The short of it: Japanese food is healthy, delicious, and centered around fish and rice.
The long of it:
Japanese food, for the most part, is very light and healthy. Take the typical Japanese breakfast: a bowl of rice, a small cut of fish and a bowl of miso soup. I've started eating this breakfast regularly, and it is a great way to start the day. Instead of the heaviness brought on by the typical American breakfast, I generally feel pretty light and yet still pleasantly satiated as I leave the house. Sure, I still enjoy my scrambled eggs, sausage, pancakes and home fries for breakfast every now and again (usually on weekends), but I am a huge fan of the Japanese breakfast.
The most well-known Japanese food is, of course, sushi. Quite naturally, it is quite popular and readily available here. Equally as obvious, the quality of the sushi is incredible. The fish is very fresh. The wasabi, too, is fresher than anything I've ever had in the States. One interesting thing about the sushi here is how it is served. Almost all sushi is nigiri. Rarely do you see rolls stuffed with 8 different kinds of fish and vegetables. I have seen that here on occasion; here it is called "American sushi."
Sushi is also quite cheap here from the American point of view. I can stuff myself silly on US$10. Many sushi restaurants have conveyor belts which cart the freshly cut fish moving right past your eyes. Pick up what you like right off the belt and dig in. Each plate will have, as I mentioned, nigiri, 2 pieces of fish draped over balls of rice. And each plate will cost anywhere from 100-140 yen (roughly $1). If you don't see what you want on the conveyor belt, at each of these places you can ask the chef (who stands just a few feet from you) to make something specifically for you. That is always done very promptly.
Sushi is really wonderful, and I eat it several times a week. Usually from the supermarket (I don't go to sushi restaurants all that frequently), but the quality of supermarkets' prepared foods is very good.
But of course, limiting a report on Japanese food to just sushi would not do justice to this fantastic cuisine.
Yakitori (literally, grilled chicken) is another fantastic meal. Basically, it's grilled skewered meat and vegetables. Ordered by the skewer, it works both as a full meal or as a quick snack (there is a yakitori stand right outside my local supermarket).
Yakiniku (literally, grilled meat) is quite a meal. At a yakiniku restaurant, there is a small grill in the center of every table. Raw meat is ordered (All sorts - chicken, pork, beef, fish. Vegetables are available too, if you like that sort of thing) and you grill it yourself. The meat can come pre-spiced or pre-sauced, and there are always sauces on the table for your dipping pleasure.
In addition to all this, there's also donburi, tempura, okonomiyaki, udon, ramen, and soba. Not much of this has made its way across the Pacific, but I'm a fan of it all. Ramen is something most college students have feasted on for 99 cents, but certainly the quality you get in a Cup O Noodles is vastly different from what you get at a ramen restaurant.
Speaking of ramen (udon too), the how when it comes to eating food is quite different from what we do in the West.
Naturally, chopsticks are prevalent. But everything is eaten with chopsticks. Imagine my surprise when I ordered my first bowl of miso soup in Japan and it was served only with a pair of chopsticks. Uhh... "Marge, where's that metal doobie you use to...dig.....food..?" "You mean a spoon?" "Yeah yeah yeah..."
Glancing around the restaurant, I quickly learned how to consume soup in Japan. One uses the chopsticks to pick up any meat, veggies and random giblets in the broth, and lifts the bowl to one's lips to drink the broth. Even when you get a large bowl of ramen or udon, which will come with a spoon, the spoon is not used for eating what's in the bowl; it's for supporting the noodles before you shlurp them into your mouth. One doesn't eat these noodles as you would spaghetti. Instead, you must shlurp up the noodles. The louder the better. Frankly, shlurping makes it taste better.
In any case, after these many months, I am quite used to chopsticks. So much so that I eat (and have eaten) just about everything under the sun with them. Soups. Rice. Scrambled eggs. Cuts of fish. Salad. Mashed potatoes. French fries.
So I've come to realize something interesting about eating with chopsticks instead of the fork. With each bite, clearly you can shovel more food into your mouth with a fork than you can with chopsticks. It is also known that once the body is full, it takes some time for that "I'm full" message to reach the brain, so people frequently eat more than what their bodies need.
Eating with chopsticks, hence less with each bite, ends up being a much healthier way to consume food. Much less overeating, which, combined with the quality of the food itself, leads to a slim and slender body type for most people in this country. Compare that with the States; watch people shovel food into their mouths with little regard for what their bodies are telling them. Add to that the layers of fat rolled into each and every crevice of a meal, and voila! the American body type. (of course lack of exercise has a fair bit to do with it too...)
Receiving a bowl of soup and having to figure out how to eat it with only chopsticks was odd, but the oddest how-the-hell-do-I-eat-this situation came many months ago, before I could read some basic Japanese. I was on a date and we ordered a pizza, as it was one of the few things my date could read on the menu and it had the added benefit of having a picture for us illiterate types. Sure, our eyebrows were raised a few inches when the pizza arrived with a scrambled egg pancake draped over the entire pizza. But when we were given just a spoon to serve it, and chopsticks to eat it, we broke out in wtf?! laughter.
I do most of my own cooking. That in itself has been quite an experience too, as I have attempted to make my old favorites with Japanese ingredients. For instance, breadcrumbs here are used mainly for tempura, so they have a distinctly Japanese flavor. Try to imagine a chicken parmesan with a Japanese air to it.
Loaves of bread are sliced ridiculously thick, and cucumbers and carrots are also of a mutant variety compared to what I've ever seen before:
Unlike Prague, I can easily find Kraft grated parmesan cheese. Hershey's syrup too. But cocktail sauce took a special order from the States. As did regular-size chocolate chips. There are Doritos, but no Tostitos. They have (literally) 6 or 7 kinds of mushrooms readily available, but no portabellos. The milk here, though, is incredibly thick. Most of the time the lowest fat percentage I can find in milk is about 3.5%.
For pre-packaged food, opening it takes a mountain of patience. The number of wrappers once has to go through to get to a cookie, for instance, is pretty remarkable.
And if you're walking around town, and can't find a bar, Japan has you covered with their beer vending machines.
I've come to really like Japanese sweets. When I first arrived, I was a little disappointed with the lack of sweetness found in each cake, or chocolate bar (outside of the American exports). But now I am very used to things being a lot less sweet than what is available in the States.
So much so that a few months ago a private student of mine visited Los Angeles and brought back a box of American chocolates as a gift for me. I almost couldn't eat the balls of sugar she brought back. (I persevered, though.) But it got me thinking as to how unnecessarily sweet American foods are. Add that to the long list of reasons why Americans are so rotund.
So that's the long and short of Japanese food. It's been a wonderful culinary experience. Something I hope to take some of back to the States with me (T minus one month and counting...)
Lastly, in case you were wondering (and I'm sure you were), Tommy Lee Jones is the Boss (Apologies to my fellow New Jersian Bruce Springstein).
The short of it: Japanese food is healthy, delicious, and centered around fish and rice.
The long of it:
Japanese food, for the most part, is very light and healthy. Take the typical Japanese breakfast: a bowl of rice, a small cut of fish and a bowl of miso soup. I've started eating this breakfast regularly, and it is a great way to start the day. Instead of the heaviness brought on by the typical American breakfast, I generally feel pretty light and yet still pleasantly satiated as I leave the house. Sure, I still enjoy my scrambled eggs, sausage, pancakes and home fries for breakfast every now and again (usually on weekends), but I am a huge fan of the Japanese breakfast.
The most well-known Japanese food is, of course, sushi. Quite naturally, it is quite popular and readily available here. Equally as obvious, the quality of the sushi is incredible. The fish is very fresh. The wasabi, too, is fresher than anything I've ever had in the States. One interesting thing about the sushi here is how it is served. Almost all sushi is nigiri. Rarely do you see rolls stuffed with 8 different kinds of fish and vegetables. I have seen that here on occasion; here it is called "American sushi."
Sushi is also quite cheap here from the American point of view. I can stuff myself silly on US$10. Many sushi restaurants have conveyor belts which cart the freshly cut fish moving right past your eyes. Pick up what you like right off the belt and dig in. Each plate will have, as I mentioned, nigiri, 2 pieces of fish draped over balls of rice. And each plate will cost anywhere from 100-140 yen (roughly $1). If you don't see what you want on the conveyor belt, at each of these places you can ask the chef (who stands just a few feet from you) to make something specifically for you. That is always done very promptly.
Sushi is really wonderful, and I eat it several times a week. Usually from the supermarket (I don't go to sushi restaurants all that frequently), but the quality of supermarkets' prepared foods is very good.
But of course, limiting a report on Japanese food to just sushi would not do justice to this fantastic cuisine.
Yakitori (literally, grilled chicken) is another fantastic meal. Basically, it's grilled skewered meat and vegetables. Ordered by the skewer, it works both as a full meal or as a quick snack (there is a yakitori stand right outside my local supermarket).
Yakiniku (literally, grilled meat) is quite a meal. At a yakiniku restaurant, there is a small grill in the center of every table. Raw meat is ordered (All sorts - chicken, pork, beef, fish. Vegetables are available too, if you like that sort of thing) and you grill it yourself. The meat can come pre-spiced or pre-sauced, and there are always sauces on the table for your dipping pleasure.
In addition to all this, there's also donburi, tempura, okonomiyaki, udon, ramen, and soba. Not much of this has made its way across the Pacific, but I'm a fan of it all. Ramen is something most college students have feasted on for 99 cents, but certainly the quality you get in a Cup O Noodles is vastly different from what you get at a ramen restaurant.
Speaking of ramen (udon too), the how when it comes to eating food is quite different from what we do in the West.
Naturally, chopsticks are prevalent. But everything is eaten with chopsticks. Imagine my surprise when I ordered my first bowl of miso soup in Japan and it was served only with a pair of chopsticks. Uhh... "Marge, where's that metal doobie you use to...dig.....food..?" "You mean a spoon?" "Yeah yeah yeah..."
Glancing around the restaurant, I quickly learned how to consume soup in Japan. One uses the chopsticks to pick up any meat, veggies and random giblets in the broth, and lifts the bowl to one's lips to drink the broth. Even when you get a large bowl of ramen or udon, which will come with a spoon, the spoon is not used for eating what's in the bowl; it's for supporting the noodles before you shlurp them into your mouth. One doesn't eat these noodles as you would spaghetti. Instead, you must shlurp up the noodles. The louder the better. Frankly, shlurping makes it taste better.
In any case, after these many months, I am quite used to chopsticks. So much so that I eat (and have eaten) just about everything under the sun with them. Soups. Rice. Scrambled eggs. Cuts of fish. Salad. Mashed potatoes. French fries.
So I've come to realize something interesting about eating with chopsticks instead of the fork. With each bite, clearly you can shovel more food into your mouth with a fork than you can with chopsticks. It is also known that once the body is full, it takes some time for that "I'm full" message to reach the brain, so people frequently eat more than what their bodies need.
Eating with chopsticks, hence less with each bite, ends up being a much healthier way to consume food. Much less overeating, which, combined with the quality of the food itself, leads to a slim and slender body type for most people in this country. Compare that with the States; watch people shovel food into their mouths with little regard for what their bodies are telling them. Add to that the layers of fat rolled into each and every crevice of a meal, and voila! the American body type. (of course lack of exercise has a fair bit to do with it too...)
Receiving a bowl of soup and having to figure out how to eat it with only chopsticks was odd, but the oddest how-the-hell-do-I-eat-this situation came many months ago, before I could read some basic Japanese. I was on a date and we ordered a pizza, as it was one of the few things my date could read on the menu and it had the added benefit of having a picture for us illiterate types. Sure, our eyebrows were raised a few inches when the pizza arrived with a scrambled egg pancake draped over the entire pizza. But when we were given just a spoon to serve it, and chopsticks to eat it, we broke out in wtf?! laughter.
I do most of my own cooking. That in itself has been quite an experience too, as I have attempted to make my old favorites with Japanese ingredients. For instance, breadcrumbs here are used mainly for tempura, so they have a distinctly Japanese flavor. Try to imagine a chicken parmesan with a Japanese air to it.
Loaves of bread are sliced ridiculously thick, and cucumbers and carrots are also of a mutant variety compared to what I've ever seen before:
Unlike Prague, I can easily find Kraft grated parmesan cheese. Hershey's syrup too. But cocktail sauce took a special order from the States. As did regular-size chocolate chips. There are Doritos, but no Tostitos. They have (literally) 6 or 7 kinds of mushrooms readily available, but no portabellos. The milk here, though, is incredibly thick. Most of the time the lowest fat percentage I can find in milk is about 3.5%.
For pre-packaged food, opening it takes a mountain of patience. The number of wrappers once has to go through to get to a cookie, for instance, is pretty remarkable.
And if you're walking around town, and can't find a bar, Japan has you covered with their beer vending machines.
I've come to really like Japanese sweets. When I first arrived, I was a little disappointed with the lack of sweetness found in each cake, or chocolate bar (outside of the American exports). But now I am very used to things being a lot less sweet than what is available in the States.
So much so that a few months ago a private student of mine visited Los Angeles and brought back a box of American chocolates as a gift for me. I almost couldn't eat the balls of sugar she brought back. (I persevered, though.) But it got me thinking as to how unnecessarily sweet American foods are. Add that to the long list of reasons why Americans are so rotund.
So that's the long and short of Japanese food. It's been a wonderful culinary experience. Something I hope to take some of back to the States with me (T minus one month and counting...)
Lastly, in case you were wondering (and I'm sure you were), Tommy Lee Jones is the Boss (Apologies to my fellow New Jersian Bruce Springstein).
posted by David at 10:08 PM
1 Comments:
me so jealous...
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