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Learn Japanese Food Culture
Do you know about Mutual Trading, the premier Japanese food importer and distributer in the US? You might not have heard of them unless you’re involved with the Japanese food/restaurant business. However, with nearly 100 years of history in LA, Mutual Trading has been a trendsetter for many Japanese foods currently popular in the US including sushi and edamame.
Last Saturday, I was thrilled to be at their annual Japanese food & restaurant show. Below are some of the photos to highlight the show.
Read more on Japanese Restaurant Trend 2011…
Sun-dried mushrooms with Tofu Shirataki pasta: ‘What’s that?!’…keep on readingI got some small nice-looking fresh shiitake last weekend as well as shimeji and enoki mushrooms. Since the weather was beautiful and I was just sitting around the house, I decided to sun-dry the mushrooms to increase the amount of vitamin D in them. My grandfather used to do this at his home. He would lay newspaper on the floor where the sunlight would hit for a long time and then laid out the mushrooms on top. He did this over many days until the mushrooms got dry. The truth is that I actually don’t really like house-dried mushrooms because they don’t make good soup stock.
After 2 hours of sunbathing, mushroom gets little dry. It doesn’t look good? But I like them this way!However, I like slightly dried mushrooms and I have done this quite a few times already. It’s not because I can taste the increased vitamin D, but because I like the texture of mushrooms when they are a little dry. Mushrooms can get soggy and slimy, especially shiitake. Because of that reason, I didn’t like shiitake when I was a kid.
This time, I only let them sun bathe for 2 hours. Even in this short amount of time, under the Southern California blue sky, mushrooms lose water and you can see them become a little dry. If I had kept them under the sun longer, they would have dried to the point where I would have to soak them in water to eat them. If you add dried shiitake to water, the shiitake flavor gets lost in that water.
Tofu Shirataki Fettuccine is after all just another konnyaku noodle. But I like this fettuccine shape.
Like other konnyaku products, it’s better to boil it first.I wanted to lightly stir-fry the shiitake to add to my spaghetti peperoncino so 2 hours of sun-drying was just enough to add more body and texture to the shiitake without having to soak them in water. I wanted to be a little experimental, so instead of using spaghetti, I bought tofu shirataki which is konnyaku noodle with tofu. It looks a lot like spaghetti, but the texture and the taste is nowhere close to it. It’s totally konnyaku noodle!! Using this will cut down on many calories. After many nights of eating out, I wanted to eat healthy at home and thought it was a good choice.
Stir fry garlic, red pepper first. Then add mushrooms prior to add noodles.
Read more on Tofu-Shirataki Pasta with Mushrooms…
[okonomiyaki being served with sauce only]The chef probably wants to give Americans more choices of toppings so that they can suit their tastes. I actually forgot how it’s usually done and ended up putting mayo on at the end which should have been added at the beginning!! I wish this restaurant also gave me the option of getting everything done by a chef. I could never make them like this myself so I always like a shop person to prepare the okonomiyaki because they know what they are doing.My friend, on the other hand, was a little disappointed since she wanted to cook them by herself. She likes sitting in front of the teppan yaki table and watching the okonomiyaki sizzle. Even though I don’t like making my own, I also like sitting in front of the table where the chef makes them. In this sense, the space design of the restaurant doesn’t work well. You enter their kitchen space and walk into the next room where you don’t get to see what’s happening in the kitchen. We asked why the restaurant doesn’t have teppan at each table like gajya, another okonomiyaki place in South Bay. The owner said it was too pricey. Just installing an individual exhaust would cost $10k. In this economy, no one wants to put up a large investment upfront. We totally understand…
Read more on Okonomiyaki in LA…
I finally got a chance to try one of Maison Akira’s signature dishes – Grilled Miso Chilean Sea Bass. I had been so curious to find out how this traditional Kyoto dish was transformed into a French dish by someone who was raised in Kyoto. In a previous blog post I wrote about the history of this Kyoto dish and included a recipe. Needless to say, I had high expectations for this dish and was hoping Akira would surprise me somehow.
Read more on Grilled Miso Chilean Sea Bass at Maison Akira…
Adventurous participants tasting an array of old forms of Sushi.
First generation Sushi-Nare Sushi
Second generation Sushi – Sugata Sushi
My favorite Japanese vegetarian dishes are 野菜の白和え&茄子の煮浸し, Tofu and sesame paste smoothie mixed with cooked vegetable and Simmered eggplants in dashi soup. Pictured above on the left plate.
I like to serve foods from big plates. At tea ceremonies, you pick your portion and then pass the dish to the person sitting next to you. In a formal banquette, a waiter will serve the dishes.
Read more on Travel with Sushi at Nibei Foundation in West LA…
Sen Rikyu was a celebrity tea master in 16th century Japan, and is largely responsible for elevating Japanese tea ceremonies to the comprehensive art form practiced today. Before serving tea at his ceremonies, he would offer a light meal complete with hand-carved chopsticks for his guests. The aroma and texture from these freshly shaved Japanese cedar chopsticks added another level of complexity to the occasion.
The shape of Rikyu chopsticks is quite unique, as both ends are tapered. You might assume you can use both ends – one end to eat with and the other end to pick from shared plates. Wrong!
Read more on Rikyu Bashi : One-of-a-Kind Chopsticks for a Special Occasion…
Have you ever eaten at a Japanese curry restaurant? My father is a big fan of curry, and his long-time favorite curry restaurant is CoCo Ichibanya. Known as CoCo-Ichi, it is the biggest franchise curry shop in Japan. I didn’t know until recently that they now have restaurants all over Asia and are opening stores in the US in Hawaii and LA. They don’t have their English website yet but have it in Chinese, Korean & Thai. Here in LA, we can find CoCo-Ichi in Torrance.
Read more on The Japanese Signature Fast Food: CoCo Ichiban Curry House…
Read more on Fig Jelly / Kanten Recipe…
Yoko Isassi
