Author Archive: jason toner

Firefly squid (Hotaru ika)

Firefly squid (Hotaru ika)

Regular squid (ika) are embraced with mild enthusiasm and the giants elicit fear but from March to June, these beautiful creatures flash their mesmerizing neon shimmer along the shoreline of Toyama bay and gourmands get very excited . These bioluminescent cephalopods are a marvel of nature if the conditions are right and you are lucky […]

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  April 14, 2018   No comments
What’s in season…?

What’s in season…?

Seasonality is embraced wholeheartedly in Japan and vegetable lockers are a great place to get your healthy, delicious fix whilst supporting your local farmer. The unmanned open shelves are the best as you get to inspect up close before choosing and it’s also nice to be reminded that you are living in a fairly honest society […]

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  April 1, 2018   No comments
Tsukiji market

Tsukiji market

In the preface to his tour de force, Tsukiji-the fish market at the center of the world, Theodore C Bestor writes “It is a modern market with an enormous volume of trade and venerable history dating from the early seventeenth century. Tsukiji is closely attuned to the subtleties of Japanese food culture and to the […]

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  March 18, 2018   No comments
Buying flour (ko mugi ko) in Japan

Buying flour (ko mugi ko) in Japan

  You can see clearly in the photo above that this is indeed bread flour but at the supermarket you won’t always have nice easy pictures to know the difference between bread and all purpose flours but the Katakana in large white letters should keep you right       Hopefully you aren’t faced with […]

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  January 10, 2018   No comments
Umami

Umami

Bucketloads of umami…   In 1908 Kikunae Ikeda, a chemist, discovered large amounts of glutamate in the white crystals that form on kombu and realized that the taste was neither bitter, sweet, sour nor salty and named it umami -“deliciousness” Almost 100 years later scientists in America identified a taste receptor for glutamate on the […]

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  January 1, 2018   No comments
Taki Komi Gohan

Taki Komi Gohan

In my house taki komi gohan usually consists of burdock(gobo) and mushrooms(kinoko) sliced, diced and added raw to the rice cooker with perhaps some carrots and anything from the garden depending on the season. I’ll eat it straight from the rice cooker with some chilli powder (togarashi) and occasionally I’ll get some nori out and […]

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  December 30, 2017   No comments
Japanese sea bass(Suzuki )

Japanese sea bass(Suzuki )

Wild sea bass in all of its splendor … Thought mainly as a summer fish, the Japanese sea bass is also caught in winter time in various waters including Shizuoka with a different flavor and fat content. The specimen I have here is line caught and they have also been available farmed for about 25 […]

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  November 30, 2017   No comments
Smelt (shishamo)

Smelt (shishamo)

Shishamo are delicious little smelts which are usually grilled or fried and eaten whole. The taste and texture range is dynamic with the crunchy peaks of joyous bones precipitously giving way to the deep buttery delights of roe with addictive twists in between . Wikipedia claims the name is derived from the Ainu name for […]

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  November 15, 2017   No comments
Oyster mushroom(Hiratake)

Oyster mushroom(Hiratake)

These mushrooms had me mesmerized the moment I opened the pack, which I don’t believe should have been a sealed airtight affair allowing for sweating and general degradation but perhaps this storage choice added to the aromas of the woods with sharp pine citrus highs and weighty juniper mid notes consummating the arrangement with fermented […]

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  October 14, 2017   No comments
Pacific saury (sanma)

Pacific saury (sanma)

It’s amusing that these beauties are often exported to the U.K. Where they are used as fishing bait. They are revered in Japan as a delicious entry into autumn and have many festivals celebrating the start of the season such as this one in Tokyo I visited.http://www.gotokyo.org/en/kanko/meguro/event/meguro_sunma.html Thousands visited the Meguro sanma matsuri with eager […]

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  September 28, 2017   No comments