Sushi Battle!

Before I ever came to Japan, and as I was just beginning to learn about good food and good cooking, I started watching Iron Chef on Food Network.*

"Iron Chef" is a loose adaptation of the actual name of the show. In Japanese, it's called 虜利の鉄人 (ryori no tetsujin), or "Iron Men of Cooking" ("ryori" is "cooking" or "cuisine," "tetsu" = "iron" and "jin" = "men" or "people"). There's a lot to be learned from watching this show, but now that I've been in Japan, I get even more out of the show. I almost wish, though, that it was only subtitled and not dubbed. I do like that even with the dubbing, you can hear the Japanese sometimes. I haven't ever seen this on DVD, so I'm wondering if there's a sub-only version.

I love sushi. I remember being squeamish about Chinese food and tofu, but after I got to grad school and started exploring food more, I learned to really love sushi. Now that I live in Japan, I can eat it every day if I want to... In fact, I might go have some as soon as I finish this post! I learned to make sushi and I've sampled many kinds and styles, and I've eaten some things (raw and otherwise) that I never thought I'd like.

On YouTube, I found the very first SUSHI BATTLE! on Iron Chef. Here are the links. WOO! Morimoto is a badass, but the challenger is pretty impressive, too, and there's a lot of cool stuff about the history of sushi in the episode.



Part 2
Part 3
Presentation
Judgment

*I think it's important to note, too, that my increase in disposable income and standard of living helped A LOT in this effort. In some ways, now, I look back on the time after grad school as a very "nouveaux riche" time in my life. I don't regret any of it, but it's not cheap to learn to love wine, whiskey, sushi, and other good food. Sometimes it's easy to forget that.

Taberu

"To eat"

So... I've had my share of interesting things in Japan for meals, snacks, etc. First on the list -- raw Kobe beef. This was really good. It tasted sweet and sort of melted in my mouth. It was wrapped around something... some vegetable thing... maybe some kind of ginger? I forget. Whatever the case, it was excellent. I had this at the okonomiyaki shop.

Next... tan. Which is "tongue" in English. I had beef tongue (gyutan) at the yaki niku (fried meat) restaurant, a Korean style where you get a plate of raw meat and use a little grill on the table to cook it. Tongue was really really freakin' good. I loved the stuff. I've had pork tongue, too (buta tan) and it was pretty good.

Also at the yaki niku place, I had horomon nabe, which is intestine soup. The pieces of intestine were cut into pieces about 1" x 1", and they tasted sort of like boiled chicken. I liked it a lot. So far, so good. In fact, the only things I can think of that I really haven't liked have been pickled vegetables. The Japanese word for "pickles" is "tsukemono." Pickling happens differently here, too... sometimes it's done with brine or vinegar like in America, but often it happens in barley or other grain meal. It's hard to explain, but strange things happen when the juices are sucked out of the vegetables by the grain meal. Also, sometimes miso paste is used (fermented soybean, smooshed, makes good soup) and other things, as well.

Another interesting meal -- octopus and squid. Now, squid -- lots of people eat and love calamari. But ika (in Japanese) is served here raw, on sushi, in okonomiyaki, stained with squid ink, etc. I've not had the inky kind, but I have eaten the others, and aside from being chewy as hell, it's pretty good stuff, especially with shrimp (ebi) and pork in okonomiyaki. Actully, good ika isn't all that chewy, but it's more expensive.

Okonomiyaki is pretty interesting, in and of itself. It's often called "Japanese pizza" but that's a surface comparison at best. It sorta LOOKS like a pizza, and you can pick toppings, but it's really like a cross between an omelet and a pancake. More like the pancake. Made of cabbage, egg, flour, maybe bean sprouts, maybe green onions (negi), it's poured out on a grill or hotplate or frying pan into a circle and fried on one side. Meats like I listed and pickled ginger are pressed into the dough as it fries, then the whole thing is flipped over. After it is finished, flakes of seaweed (ao nori) are sprinkled on, along with a sweet brown sauce and shaved katsuo bushi (bonito fish). The heat makes the fish shavings dance. Sometimes Japanese mayo is crisscrossed on top of all this. At a counter, you often eat it with a metal spatula. Women tend to use the spatula to cut and serve, then use hashi (chopsticks) to eat.

Finally... the other day I had something I never thought I would ever eat. And it was fantastic.

Basashi, 馬刺し

These small, purple slices of nearly frozen raw meat were served with a thin soy-based sauce and grated ginger. It was fantastic, though actually got a little less appealing and more chewy as it thawed. I just got over the fact that it was HORSE when I took the first bite, and from there, I was convinced. Mmm, mmm, good.

Run for the Border

In case you were wondering...

There are two Taco Bells in Japan. Both on American military bases. One is in Okinawa, and that's a plane ride for ANYONE since it's so freakin' far out in the ocean. It's sort of like the Hawaii of Japan.

The other one is in Aomori.



That's about $150 $200, 2 hours in a train to Kyoto, and 4 hours in a bullet train (plus probably some other train thing for Aomori) for a soft taco supreme. ONE WAY. C'est la vie.