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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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