Comfort Foods

#5 and #6: Matsutake Mushrooms and Zenzai Mochi

Recently, we embarked on a mission to find Matsutake mushrooms. These mushrooms are usually really hard to find, making them an expensive fall food in Japan. Despite the price, many Japanese seek out these mushrooms for their wonderful aroma.


This is a Matsutake mushroom stand in Shiga. I was really surprised to learn that most Japanese think the taste of the mushrooms is just futsu, or ordinary, but that the smell is so good they're willing to pay upwards of $50.00 (or more!) for only a few. Contrarily, everyone seems to agree that Shiitake Mushrooms taste great, but the mushrooms sell for a much more reasonable, futsu price!

Yeah, I'm not joking. On the right hand side, you can see the four mushrooms available for purchase at over the equivalent of $65.00 USD.

So, are they worth the big bucks? We tried them in Matsutakegohan, or mushroom rice, and also in some soup and they were pretty delicious. Both of the dishes were prepared for us by some of our very generous friends, so we can't say we'd necessarily go out on our own and buy them. But hey, gotta' try everything once!

After we secured the mushrooms on our trip, we stopped at a traditional Japanese sweets shop to try just that--traditional Japanese sweets. The sweet we tried is called zenzai mochi, which is basically a sweet red bean soup with rice cake inside.

Yum! This sweet can be served both hot and cold, depending on the season. We had ours hot, and it was a very happy way to warm up in the fall weather.

Merry-Go-Round Cafe

I am in love with a little children's bookstore near our apartment called the Merry-Go-Round. There are three sections in the store: In one small area, they sell imported goods from the Netherlands, in another, larger area they sell children's books, and --best of all!-- another area serves as a coffee and tea room!

Doesn't it look inviting?

This Christmas tree is so simple and adorable.

Here is a glimpse of the book area, as well as the opening to the coffee and tea room.

On the archway we saw this cute sign:

And to the left of where we sat we saw this:

To the right we saw this:

We were given this menu:

And we saw these cute signs, drank Chai tea, and got a cute yellow bill, stamped with a little bus!

To this day, I still feel joy when looking at children's books. There is just something so exciting about opening the covers and discovering the colorful adventures on each page. Combining that pleasure with specialty imports and a simple, comfortable cafe makes for a lovely little shop.

Ikebana

I've heard that ikebana is a very precise, difficult art, but I thought it was important to get a peek into one of the most well-known aspects of traditional Japanese culture. Yesterday I got the chance to give Japanese flower arranging a try, and I made the basic upright structure.


First, my teacher taught me where to put the kenzan, or needlepoint holder, in the vase. The placement of the kenzan depends on the arrangement, and for this style it went on the left hand side, closest to me. Then she guided me through the placement of the flowers. Every angle for the main flowers is predetermined! I really came to understand the elegance of ikebana.

Once I finally finished my arrangement, I had to sketch it in my notebook, and then take a picture. Then, my teacher told me to take apart the arrangement and do it all over again. Yeah, that's right! One more time! After I finished again, she gave me a few suggestions, had me take it apart again, and told me to reassemble it as soon as possible when I got home.

It sure took a long time! However, I thought the flowers looked beautiful. This was a Christmas arrangement, bringing aspects of a relatively new holiday into a traditional art form. I'm not sure if I'll try Japanese flower arranging again, but we're definitely enjoying this little burst of festivity in our apartment while looking forward to the holidays in Michigan!

Walking Along I Saw...

...a Thomas the Tank Engine-shaped kindergarten bus!

Kyoto Birthday Celebration

The day before my birthday is a national holiday in Japan--a perfect excuse to go out and celebrate! Yasu and Tomo joined us for a trip to Kyoto. First on the agenda upon arriving was visiting a Japanese sweet shop to learn how to make otabe.

When we arrived at the shop, everything we needed was laid out for us:


To begin, we mixed a special rice flour with sugar and water. Then we poured the mix into a little wooden steamer and let it thicken into dough. While waiting, we watched a short video on how otabe is made on a larger scale to sell as one of Kyoto's most famous souvenirs.

Once the dough was ready, we split it into three equal-sized balls. In each ball we poked a small hole with our fingers, and put a tiny spoon of matcha (green tea) powder or cinnamon in the middle. After mixing it in, we rolled out the dough:

So far, so easy!

All that was left to do was make the flattened balls of dough into squares and add filling. We could choose from anko (sweet bean paste), kuri (chestnut), or goma (sesame).

Below you can see Tomo and Yasu finishing up their otabe, as well as the instructions we were given to keep. Yasu decided to bring his own style to the otabe, forming them into what looked like Christmas presents instead of the traditional triangle shape (whether he did that on purpose or not is questionable ^^).

Tah-dah!

Having successfully completed our otabe training, it was time to head off to see Kyoto's famous autumn leaves.

We walked along the Philosopher's Path, and then around a few temples. In the fall at night, Kyoto has really lovely night lights to show off the changing leaves. So beautiful!

To end the night, we headed to a yakiniku restaurant to try Kobe beef!

I've wanted to try the famous beef for a while, and it was definitely delicious (the bill wasn't so delicious, but hey, it was a birthday celebration!). Don't know if we'll ever indulge in Kobe beef again, but I'm glad we tried it.

Yum!

Our day in Kyoto made for a very memorable 25th birthday. What is one of your most memorable birthdays?

Hope you had a Happy Thanksgiving!

We sure did! We had to work on Thanksgiving Day, so we celebrated on Sunday. I tried to work with what was available to me for our little feast, yet get some of the traditional tastes at the same time. What ended up on our table was Maple Syrup & Cayenne Pepper Grilled Sweet Potatoes, Bacon Braised Green Beans, corn, chicken, homemade chicken gravy, rolls and mashed potatoes. (What couldn't fit on our table: our kabocha pie!)


I couldn't find any canned pumpkin puree, so I mashed Japanese pumpkin, kabocha. Japanese pumpkins are much smaller and sweeter than American ones, and they're also green on the outside. I used the same recipe for pumpkin pie that I did last year, and Chad said it was the best dish of the night!

Add a little whipped cream and it's delicious!

I was really happy to keep the holiday spirit alive this year. It's a little difficult to make the same food for Thanksgiving here, but it's no challenge to be thankful. Can't wait to visit our Michigan friends in 3 weeks!

Comfort Foods

#3 and #4: Nagano no Ringo to Ichijiku

I was lucky enough to get these beautiful apples from a friend. She picked them in Nagano!


The apples were huge! Perfect for an apple-loving girl--especially when they tasted so delicious!

I was also given some figs that very same week from someone else!

As with chestnuts, until recently I had mostly only heard about figs from Christmas songs (though I had tried Fig Newtons--does that count?). It's really too bad I missed out on them all those years! Figs are wonderful fruit.

After gently rinsing our little ichijiku, we decided to try them first as they were:

The flavor was lovely! It kind of reminded us of the texture and taste of plums.

Next, I threw together my own adaptation of a few recipes I saw online for figs. First, I cut each fig into quarters, leaving the quarters attached at the bottom. Then, I added a small tab of butter to the centers, drizzled them with honey and added a few almonds before toasting them in our oven. After warming, I served them with a bit of Greek yogurt. Divine!

(Yes, that's butter oozing out.)

Might not compare to the great dishes you created for Thanksgiving, but we sure found it a yummy treat! Have you tried making any new recipes lately?

Mori no Kichin

I may have mentioned before that I love visiting little cafes, particularly locally owned ones with character. One cafe I've been longing to try out for a long time is Mori no Kichin, or Forest Kitchen.

The cafe sign alone looked cute, simple and inviting, and the atmosphere inside held up to be the same. Despite walking into a strong smoky smell, I was determined to give the cafe a chance. I hadn't waited this long to walk right back out (and, like I said, it was inviting).

The only customers aside from us sat right up at the bar, gossiping and laughing loudly. They even talked about us, wondering aloud where we were from and commenting on how great our Japanese was (yeah! we fooled them!). After a few minutes it was easy to conclude that they were all close friends--perhaps even family.

Chad and I ordered the lunch set of the day and hoped by the time it was served we'd be used to the smoke (and that we could taste our food!). To be honest, although it was nice enough, we were a little worried about how great of a meal we'd be getting.

Clearly, we shouldn't have wasted our energy on worrying! The lunch set was soooo yummy! Miso Katsu, or pork cutlet with miso paste, miso soup, rice, tsukemono (pickled veggies) and a sweet piece of melon. All for 780 yen each.

Will we be going back to the cafe? Maybe someday. But for now, I've got others on my list to try!

Comfort Foods

#2 Kuri

Chad and I went treasure hunting for one of Japan's popular fall foods, chestnuts.

What a beautiful find! Unfortunately, not many chestnuts were left so neatly for the taking. We spent some time searching around trees, shaking them and hoping for little chestnut gifts to fall down to us. When they did, we used our feet or gloved hands to pull away the prickly covering and retrieve the nuts.

Our hard work paid off! Check out our loot above and below.

However, the work wasn't over yet. Many students told me I should try making kurigohan, or chestnut rice, so I thought I'd give it a try. The first step would be softening the chestnuts and shelling them.

I boiled the nuts for about ten minutes before draining the water from the pot. The shells were still quite difficult to remove--after a few patient minutes, I became impatient and decided to attack the task with a spoon.


From there, I added the nuts to uncooked rice in a rice cooker with a little salt and let everything cook. Meanwhile I grilled some salmon, fixed up a couple small dinner salads, and threw together a Korean cucumber salad as well. Below is the little feast from our afternoon toils!


The chestnut rice turned out pretty nicely, although I think a little soy sauce and sake would have brought the flavors out a bit better. There are many ways to make the rice, but after taking an entire afternoon to make ours, we decided buying it from a department store (as pictured below) might be the best future option for us. The kurigohan below had sweet red beans inside and was cooked with sweet sake. Pretty yummy!

Walking Along I Saw...

Little vines and mushrooms creeping along...

Paint drippings on stones...

The biggest snail I've ever seen...

Fantastic paintings near a local temple...

A flower blooming out from the gutter...

And buds and berries.

Rainy days aren't always so bad in Yokkaichi.