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Umaimono Food Fair Fall 2011

Published November 20, 2011 Uncategorized 3 Comments
Tags: food, Japan, Mitsuwa, ramen

Another month has flown by, and we were back at the Edgewater Mitsuwa for the Umaimono Food Fair. The featured ramen guest was Nakamuraya, from Ebina in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. Chef Sean Nakamura is also the force behind Ramen California in Torrance and just opened Ikemen, a tsukemen (dipping ramen) shop in Los Angeles.

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As we were a bit early out of the gate, we perused the other goodies up for offer while we waited for the ramen to open for orders. Here are some sort of griddle cakes made from rice dough, with red bean filling.

Croquettes

Onigiri (rice balls)

Onigiri building station

Sweets

We tried a new tactic this time: getting in line early, before the window opens.

Good thing we did! This was the last day of the fair, and Nakamuraya posted a note saying there was only enough material left for 200 bowls.

For the fair, Nakamuraya served up an unadulterated shio (salt flavor) ramen. The broth was remarkably deep, with layers of fish and seaweed flavor riding under the chicken bones and salt. The toppings were (for a mass event like this) generous and lovingly prepared. The juicy grilled chashu and seasoned hanjuku egg were better than I’ve had at many local places!

One of my first orders of business when I traveled to Japan for the first time was to experience true (not freeze dried brick form) ramen. The neophyte I was at the time, I initially gravitated to food which more closely resembled my western expectations. In this case, shio ramen came across like an exotic version of chicken noodle soup. I’d later get more adventurous and branch out to shoyu (soy sauce) ramen (the dominant flavor in Tokyo), tonkotsu (heavy, pork bone based broth), and other, less prevalent sub-styles and niches. No matter how far afield I go, though, I still enjoy a simple shio. Decadent, heavy flavored ramen packs punches with endless combinations of fats, flavors, and aromatics. In that realm, the creativity of the chef is the only limit to what’s possible. But I also think that working within a few constraints and being able to make a great, unassuming chicken noodle soup (in Japan or elsewhere) is a sign of a chef worth his salt.

Previous Mitsuwa festivals:

Hokkaido Food Fair Fall 2011

Umaimono Food Fair Spring 2011

Umaimono Food Fair Fall 2010

Hokkaido Food Fair Fall 2010

Hokkaido Food Fair Fall 2011

Published October 13, 2011 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
Tags: food, Hokkaido, Japan, Mitsuwa, ramen

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What’s worth trekking to a grocery store an hour away from home, only to wait in a line for the better part of another hour? Not much. But ramen and other tasty offerings from Japan-based shops touring Mitsuwa Marketplace locations around the US for two weeks is one of them. Though there is much to see and eat, ramen seems to be the undisputed favorite among attendees at all of the various Mitsuwa food festivals, as evidenced by the line out the door.

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Finally, inside!

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Closer.

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Noodles ordered. Like last year’s Hokkaido Food Fair at the Edgewater, NJ location, the featured shop serves up miso ramen, a specialty of Japan’s northernmost island.

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Perusing goodies while we wait.

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Squid filled with rice.

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Fish and crabs.

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We get down to some slurping. Compared with last year’s miso ramen from Shingen, Kagetora has a similarly rich but not overwhelmingly heavy broth. Miso ramen can be hideously over-saturated with grease. Unlike Shingen, however, I felt there was less attention to the quality of the toppings. The chashu was a bit tough and not as flavorful as Shingen’s rolled and marinated pork belly. Everything seems “thrown on top” as opposed to carefully arranged, though given the immense crowd of waiting customers I can’t argue with sacrifice of aesthetics in the name of efficiency. Overall, still a very high quality bowl and a fun, infrequent experience around these parts.

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Mei was not as excited about the ramen.

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Previous Mitsuwa festivals:

Umaimono Food Fair Spring 2011

Umaimono Food Fair Fall 2010

Hokkaido Food Fair Fall 2010

Japan Reimagined

Published August 9, 2011 Uncategorized 4 Comments
Tags: business, Japan, management

Kinokuniya Bookstore at Bryant Park in New York hosted a book signing with Brian Salsberg, one of the executive editors of Reimagining Japan: The Quest for a Future That Works. The book is a trove of insights from leading figures in business, media and academia on what has led to Japan’s economic malaise of the last two decades and how it could spur a new round of renaissance. Originally compiled prior to the Tohoku earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis, the book had to be recalled from the printer literally on the day of the disaster so that essays could be amended or recast to reflect the new turn of events.

Brian is a Tokyo-based consumer products and marketing consultant at McKinsey & Company. He and his colleagues were driven to take on this project after becoming frustrated at a growing chorus of negative voices and views about Japan’s predicament and what was claimed to be a lack of positive future prospects. The individuals selected for inclusion in the book write earnestly and do not pull punches. Like Brian, they have a strong desire to see Japan once again take up the reins of innovation and recover from both the immediate crisis and address long-term, structural needs.

I will reflect in detail on the book after reading, but will finish here by saying that Brian could not have been more gracious. I had arrived early, before a crowd had amassed, and proceeded to rope him into talking to me for the better part of a half hour. From both of us being Jersey boys to our abiding love for Japan’s seamless, nationwide train transit network, there was a lot to share. Considering all that Japan has to offer the world, I hope that this book will light more than a few fires, for all of our sakes.

To learn more about the book and read selected excerpts, view: http://www.mckinsey.com/en/Features/Reimagining_Japan.aspx

Tonkotsu Ramen 3

Published August 4, 2011 Uncategorized 2 Comments
Tags: food, Japan, ramen, tonkotsu

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So here we are at tonkotsu ramen attempt three. It’s been a fun journey thus far. Though I still haven’t produced a result I consider comparable to that found at my favorite slurping grounds, I’m learning much about making stock in the process. In this post I’ll skip over some of the intermediate steps to keep things compact, but you can see them all in the full photo set, as well as the previous tonkotsu posts Tonkotsu Ramen and Tonkotsu Ramen 2.

The first photo is our pork shoulder that has been seared and is about to go into the oven to braise.

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Finished chashu.

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One thing I did differently this time was to reduce the leftover braising liquid to a syrup consistency, creating tare (concentrated soup flavor) to later add to the stock.

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I also was able to get an early start and simmer the pork bones for several more hours, releasing more of the collagen and marrow.

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I used less liquid, particularly the soy sauce, to make the menma (seasoned bamboo shoots).

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Soaked and rinsed kikurage (wood ear mushroom).

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A big pile of green onion, fresh from the garden. Hope no one is going on a date later.

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Yes, that is a mound of chopped up back fat, and it’s all getting whisked into the stock for the final soup. Don’t judge.

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Staging of the toppings. This time I dropped the benishoga (pickled red ginger) and added nori (dried seaweed sheets).

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The soup after being strained and combined with final components and flavors.

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Finished bowl.

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Many thanks to my ~~lab rats~~ taste testers.

McKinsey in My Manga

Published July 23, 2011 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
Tags: anime, conflict, environment, Japan, manga, pollution

Any lingering doubts I may have had about whether popular graphic media such as anime and manga (comics) could be accepted alongside more “serious” means of delivering socio-economic analysis were dispelled when this landed in my inbox: I am a digital cat: A Japanese future. It is a short message about the challenges facing Japanese society by economist and novelist Peter Tasker, rendered as a manga by artist Toshio Ban. What’s impressive is that it appears alongside essays from a large list of global leaders on Japan’s economy, business, and cultural opportunities and challenges in a new book, Reimaging Japan: The Quest for a Future That Works (my copy just arrived). It was compiled and edited by leading international management consulting firm McKinsey & Company. The project had started long before the earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan, but the crisis has made the consideration of a new plan and action all the more imperative.

*UPDATE (8/8/2011): I am a digital cat is not actually included in the final version of the book, having been submitted too close to the publishing deadline, but does appear on the web at the link above and is considered part of the broader body of work comprising the Reimagining Japan project. Many thanks to executive editor Brian Salsberg for providing the clarification.

The idea that these rich media could be good ways to carry environmental messages and depict efficient lifestyles is one of the primary reasons that I am diving deep into Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. The other is that I was just looking for an excuse to read comic books. As I’ve only recently started, I won’t go into much detail now. I’ve read the first two of the seven volume manga and am about to re-watch the film version. The film is based on some of the content of these first two and, while certain plot lines differ significantly, the central idea is similar. In a nutshell: relentless pursuit of industrial growth has polluted the world (seemingly) beyond remediation, which leads to conflict between the surviving inhabitants for scarce resources like clean water and air.

The morning after finishing volume two, in what seemed to be either a hallucination or a timely case of life imitating art, I came across this item as I was scanning the news:

“A special meeting of the United Nations security council is due to consider whether to expand its mission to keep the peace in an era of climate change. Small island states, which could disappear beneath rising seas, are pushing the security council to intervene to combat the threat to their existence. There has been talk, meanwhile, of a new environmental peacekeeping force – green helmets – which could step into conflicts caused by shrinking resources.” (full article at the Guardian)

I’m hoping this is the universe telling me I might be onto something.

Tonkotsu Ramen 2

Published July 11, 2011 Uncategorized 2 Comments
Tags: food, Japan, ramen, tonkotsu

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I came back for a second round in my quest to find out if it is possible to make restaurant level tonkotsu (pork bone broth) ramen at home. Now that I had been through the process once, my objective this time was to correct some of the mistakes I had made, as well try to start streamlining the operation somewhat. This is what happens when former operations strategy consultants are left unsupervised in the kitchen.

This time, I decided to forgo the hanjuku (half-cooked) egg and mayu (black garlic oil) toppings. While I like both, they add a bit of time and labor to the schedule and their removal does not dramatically affect the composition of the finished bowl.

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This time, I used a pork shoulder (picnic) slab that had a bit more fat than the previous. (In case anyone wasn’t clear, despite its deliciousness ramen is not the healthiest thing you could choose to eat.) But what made an even greater impact was switching from stove top simmering to placing the covered pot into the oven after searing the meat and adding the braising liquid. This resulted in a far more tender and juicy chashu topping.

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I didn’t have time to go to Mitsuwa Marketplace to pickup menma, seasoned bamboo shoots. I made my own, instead.

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After sauteing in sesame oil, simmer bamboo in soy sauce, mirin and cooking sake.

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Finished menma. This turned out a bit more salty than I had wanted. Next time, I’ll use less soy sauce and drain the residual liquid off once the cooking is done.

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Cleaned pork leg bones and feet.

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The simmer begins.

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Added the same stock flavorings as last time, but wanted to do better on the execution.

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This time, the ginger slices and garlic head were actually caramelized, instead of carbonized.

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Looking for similar results with the onion.

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Success!

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A quick trip to Baba’s plot in our community garden, to pick fresh negi (green onion).

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Kikurage (wood ear mushroom) and negi make return appearances in the bowl. The two, particularly the green onion, are almost required tonkotsu ramen toppings.

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The toppings stage. Again, I will use the ground sesame seeds and benishoga (pickled ginger).

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The soup this time was a golden color, as opposed to the cappuccino hue of the first batch. I’m chalking this up to having not charred the flavorings beyond recognition.

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I wasn’t impressed by the Sun Noodle strands I used last time. This time I experimented with noodles from the Yamachan label. Yamachan’s noodles in the US are made by Nippon Trends Food Service in San Jose, CA. Nippon also happens to be the supplier to many top-level ramenya in the US, including Minca and Kambi, my goto ramen joints in New York. I’m sure all of those shops have their noodles made to custom order, the specifications of which are as heavily guarded as the Colonel’s secret recipe, but I was hoping some of the pedigree of those shops might rub off onto the store packaged variety.

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Similar soup additions as before. The only difference was that I sliced off the hard rind on the pork back fat before spinning in a food processor. The result was that the bits of fat actually emulsified with the soup, instead of floating on top.

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The final soup definitely had a different flavor this time. It was also creamier, thanks to the back fat, though still not to the level of high-test tonkotsu. I’ll have to block out the thoughts of how bad this stuff is for my cholesterol level and just go for the gusto in the future.

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The finished bowl. This time, I finished off the chashu with a bit of blowtorch administered char, as some restaurants do.

Overall, I was happy with the improvements, but I still have a way to go. I’d like the soup to have a richer flavor and texture. I’m ditching the pickled ginger. Though it is a very common tonkotsu ramen topping (often available at the counter/table to add at your own discretion), I think the sour taste is more of a distraction than anything else. The noodles were a step up, but still not the flavor and chewiness that I’m expecting when I tuck into a bowl. The quest continues…

Clearing the Way

Published July 6, 2011 Uncategorized 2 Comments
Tags: anime, Japan, manga, mass transit

I have almost worked my way through the last manga and anime that had been in my reading/watching queue, before clearing the desk to focus on a project I’ve been planning for some time. I read the manga version of Welcome to the N.H.K., originally written as a novel by Tasuhiko Takimoto, which explores hikkikomori, a phenomenon in Japan of acute social withdrawal. I first discovered the anime adapted from the earlier works and found the story so interesting I wanted to go back to the detailed sources. I then completely switched gears, watching the anime versions of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and Lucky Star, rather silly but required viewing for any Japanese pop culture student. Though each has moments that border on annoying, there is a deeper layer of cultural norms embedded in each that I would not have picked up had I watched these shows many years ago, when I had just discovered anime.

I had originally thought that these choices would be great as sorbet before I dive into analysis of Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, a story laden with environmentalism and an unambiguously negative assessment of modern consumerism. What I hadn’t anticipated was that thinking about this project has heightened my awareness of depictions of the resource-efficient lifestyles that impressed me so much while living in Japan. For instance, in Lucky Star, a good number of scenes from each episode take place while the characters are utilizing mass transportation (as in the screen capture above). High school students Konata, Kagami, Tsukasa and Miyuki use commuter rail, subways and buses to explore the greater Tokyo metropolitan area – the kind of mobility I could only have dreamed about growing up in rural New Jersey. Environmental considerations of not relying on cars aside, the freedom of being able to move around at will, aided by well-designed infrastructure, is a joy appreciated by erstwhile chaperone-dependent children and world travelers alike.

Farewell Donald Keene

Published June 14, 2011 Uncategorized 2 Comments
Tags: culture, Donald Keene, Japan, literature

It is generally not an everyday event that one comes across an individual who has attained global expert status in a field of study, not because of a desire for achievement or notoriety, but because the work itself provides so much joy he or she could not imagine doing anything else. When this happens, I make note of the facial expressions, tone of humbleness and inability to conceal excitement, and commit these to memory. When I start to look and sound like that, I’ll know I’ve found the thing I was meant to do.

Donald Keene is one of those people. It is said that there is no one else in the West who knows as much about Japanese literature as the professor, and Japanese are not convinced that there is anyone of his caliber amongst themselves, either. He ascribes finding his path to a combination of curiosity, accidental opportunities and the guidance of mentors. When asked about his close professional and personal relationships he never fails to mention, “This person was always kind to me.”

After spending many decades splitting his time between Japan and the US, where he continued to teach Japanese literature at Columbia University long after his formal retirement, Keene has decided to permanently move to Japan, convert his citizenship and spend the remainder of his life pursuing projects of his own making and on his own time. He felt that acquiring a Japanese passport was the only way he could appropriately express his gratitude to a country whose culture and literature had nourished him for so many years.

During the question and answer portion of his farewell address given at the Japan Society, some wanted to know if Keene had any thoughts on what drove the ethic of cooperation, community and resilience that has been on international display since the March 11 Tohoku earthquake. He thought that Confucian roots was a too common and insufficient answer, and that not knowing where the truth lies despite his many years of study, he graciously declined to answer. Since that element of Japanese culture is one important piece of the puzzle I am trying to put together around disposition toward sustainable lifestyles, I was disappointed that Keene didn’t have more to say, but also relieved that there is still plenty of space for us non-experts to have a crack at the nut.

In the meantime, here is wishing Professor Keene the best of luck. Though he has just given the last class of his long tenure at Columbia, I hope that this will not be the last time we hear from him.

Umaimono Food Fair Spring 2011

Published June 12, 2011 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
Tags: Japan, Mitsuwa, ramen, takoyaki, tonkotsu

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Mitsuwa Marketplace is a small chain of Japanese grocery stores in the US. Most of its locations are in California, but there are also satellites in Chicago and one (near us) in Edgewater, NJ. With my recent ramen making escapades, we have been making the trek over on an increasingly frequent basis. What I like most about Mitsuwa are the periodic food themed festivals the store hosts. Some are focused on specific activities, such as tuna cutting competitions and rice pounding, others feature vendors and chefs on tour from specific regions of Japan (such as Hokkaido), while the recurring umaimono (yummy things) events are catchalls for whoever and whatever happens to be available.

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Last week’s Umaimono Food Fair featured ramen from Chef Kajiwara Ryuta of Tatsunoya, based out of Kurume in Japan’s Kyushu Region. Kyushu is the home of tonkotsu (cloudy pork bone based ramen). Kajiwara-san allegedly uses only pork bones and water for the soup base, without any additional flavorings like ginger or garlic.

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Noodles were super chewy and tasty, as is par for the course with tonkotsu.

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Though Kajiwara-san stepped out of the steamy kitchen for a momentary break, he was too quick for me to catch a photo. I settled for this banner instead.

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Takoyaki, grilled balls of batter filled with octopus and green onions. This is a specialty of Osaka and a favorite street food throughout Japan.

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Golden brown.

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Our finished takoyaki, topped with mayo, takoyaki sauce, and katsuobushi (dried fish flakes).

Tonkotsu Ramen

Published June 5, 2011 Uncategorized 1 Comment
Tags: Japan, ramen, tonkotsu

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Most people wouldn’t dare bother to make ramen at home, from scratch. It’s extremely labor intensive (this batch took me two days), requires years of practice just to get good at it, and at 500-800 yen (about $6-$10) for an average bowl around Tokyo it wouldn’t make much sense to take matters into one’s own hands. I’m not sure if it was the relatively low availability of ramen shops in the US, or just my general lack of common sense, but I decided to give it a shot. While not quite up to par with some of my favorite restaurants, the end result was pretty good for a first try. Here’s the story, in photos.

First photo above contains raw materials for chashu (simmered pork topping): pork shoulder, ginger, garlic, green onion, white peppercorns, cooking sake (rice wine), soy sauce, mirin (sweet rice wine).

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Seared pork shoulder.

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Pork in braising liquid.

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Finished chashu.

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Raw materials for mayu (black garlic oil): sesame oil, garlic.

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Grated garlic ready.

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Garlic definitely black now.

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Finished mayu.

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Soaking kikurage (wood ear mushrooms).

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Kikurage boiled, sliced and ready for eating.

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Pig leg bones and feet for making tonkotsu stock.

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Bones after quick boil for cleaning.

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Ready for the long simmer.

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Stock flavorings: onion, ginger, garlic. All to be caramelized and simmered with the bones.

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Cracked white pepper also for stock flavor.

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We have caramelization.

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Finished base stock after 6 hours. Will be strained and mixed with tare.

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Tare (concentrated broth flavoring): tahini, grated garlic, ground white pepper, salt, mirin, leftover braising liquid.

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Minced fat back and sesame seeds to add to finished broth. Pork fat rules.

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Topping all in rows: Kikurage, green onion, menma (seasoned bamboo), chashu, green onion sprouts, mayu for drizzling, sesame seeds for grinding, benishoga (pickled ginger).

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Not brave enough to make my own noodles yet, but these from Sun Noodle weren’t bad.

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Boiled noodles, added hanjuku (partially cooked) egg and combined all for the finished bowl. Phew!

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