Chicken Sashimi [Japan]

Salmonella anybody?

Yes, it’s raw. Very, very raw. Too raw even for salmonella. So raw that you can hear your chicken’s last clucks echoing from that not-too-distant kitchen. Cluck…cluck…cluck…

This isn’t a dish to be enjoyed anywhere. To be perfectly honest with you, I would never eat such a thing in the States—food isn’t taken seriously enough back at home. Actually, I take that back: food that costs less than forty bucks a plate isn’t taken seriously back at home. I guess I just wouldn’t trust a chef with Chicken Sashimi unless I was at some 5-star gig and dropping a hefty bundle per plate. Not that I would dish out forty for Chicken Sashimi…

Compare that to the mom and pop Tokyo Yakitori joint where I had this little masterpiece—something that was quite reasonably priced (I don’t recall the price exactly, but I do remember it being palatable). The Japanese take their products quite seriously, where each piece of whatever is not just another consumer item but a reflection of the producer’s technique and talent. You get that feeling a lot, talking to Japanese people and watching them interact. But I digress. This post is for the sashimi.

Taste:

So what you see in that saucer is quite simple: a very, very light soy sauce, thinly sliced seaweed, and horseradish wasabi. The chicken looks pretty much like what you’d find in your supermarket. Nothing remarkable there.

I expected an aroma of chicken, but I found little to nothing of anything. In fact, the piece had barely any scent at all. I expected some gaminess (a la chicken farm), but I couldn’t find a hint of bird. In fact, chicken sashimi is mostly reminiscent of salmon sashimi. Or if you can imagine it, the fattiest, oiliest piece of salmon sashimi you’ve ever tasted. Unlike salmon, a meat that can have some slight textural variations in the chew, chicken has a remarkably consistent texture throughout. I think that this may be more a reflection of the butcherer’s talent than the meat itself.

Reflections:

I bit into this morsel with a bit of fear. Salmonella sucks to have, or so I hear. I didn’t really expect to have a second. But I did. And a third and a fourth, until I sat staring at an empty bowl, looking at my sister’s for more. It must have been that oily quality, or that really wonderful texture. And maybe (or was it just my imagination?) just a hint of chicken aroma. Whatever it was, I think this may be my most favorite exotic food. Too bad I’ll probably never be able to have it again.

Mochi Cream [Japan]

I've never seen a more beautiful green ball. Mochi Cream is a Japanese chain that sells mochi balls of all sorts of flavors. The stores sell them direct from a freezer hidden someplace below the counter, and tell you pretty specifically not to eat them immediately, allowing 10 minutes for the mochi to defrost. It's quite a waiting period, staring at that delicious little ball, holding yourself back from oral satisfaction...

Taste:

I guess I forgot to explain what exactly mochi is. Traditionally, it's really anything wrapped in a congealed rice wrapper, usually formed into a ball, and almost always served as some sort of dessert. Traditional mochi has a red bean, green bean, or mashed lotus seed center. Now Mochi Cream takes the idea and puts its own spin on things, injecting a cream just inside of the rice wrapper in an attempt to pair whatever inner flavor might be hidden within. Here's the dissected version of the Green Tea flavor at Mochi Cream:

The rice wrapper is pretty much tasteless in all mochi--the taste comes from what lies within. The cream at Mochi Cream is nothing spectacular--simple cream, with slightly more substance than your Cool Whip. The green on the inside is (I think) a green tea cream of some sort. As with most things Japanese, the best part of this dessert comes in the itty bitty details: in this case, the green powder you see covering the congealed rice skin. It wasn't anything complicated either, just a simple green tea flavoring agent that spread that taste throughout the mochi ball. Yet, the slight graininess of that agent paired perfectly with the chewy, goopy texture of the mochi skin. An excellent partnership.

Reflections:

As an aside, I'll also mention that I tried two other flavors: their milk tea and cafe au lait. Both of which were quite good, but both weren't quite as good as the green tea. They were and tasted of pretty much what one would expect out of a coffee and milk tea flavored anything. That powder on the green tea ball was what made it for me.

Of course, that's not to say that the others weren't good. Au contraire, Mochi Cream was a delicious experience, one that I'd hope to chance upon again in the future.

Miso Ramen [Japan]

Ah yes. The mother of all Ramens. The real deal. Its descendents have been my breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the past 4 and will be my sole sustenance next 4 years. Ok so you can't compare the actual Japanese ramen with the instant american kind. They're different enough to be considered different foods. Both of which though, are undeniably delicious. Well I take that back. Instant ramen is only delicious because you only eat it when you're dying of hunger, and at that point, anything tastes delicious.

Taste:

Intense. Instead of the lightly flavored, watery soup stock you might find in most Japanese soup noodles, the Miso Ramen uses a robust Miso soup as stock. Meats in the soup add to the strong Miso aroma, and the vegetables offer that welcome change in texture from meat to noodle.

Speaking of noodles, the real clincher in this dish is the texture of the noodle. The only way I know how to fully describe it is the Taiwanese phrase, "Q, Q." Roughly translated, "Q, Q" refers to chewiness. These noodles have that perfect balance between hard to chew and goopy. Instant ramen noodles just can't achieve that balance. Moreover, these noodles just taste better. Plain and simple.

My only real qualm with the Miso Ramen was that its flavors were a bit too strong. As I neared the end of the bowl, I found myself really aching for a glass of water. I found out later though, that the restaurant was known to season generously, and offered stock to dilute the soup down. A stupidity on my part I suppose.

Reflections:

Think to your last bowl of ramen. Think about those flavors. Now improve everything by a magnitude of 15. Now you've got a taste of what the real deal is all about. Good stuff. Too bad it's a world away.

Sashimi [Japan]

Ok so I have to apologize for this picture. I was so eager to start eating that I forgot to snap a photo of the whole dish. What you would have seen were pieces of salmon, scallop, yellowtail, tuna, and fatty tuna sashimi artfully arranged over thinly sliced turnips and other green garnishes. Now this next picture is of a Chirashi type dish:

Unfortunately, this picture suffers the same fault as the last--I started eating before I took the photo. Clockwise from the left: tuna, yellowtail, salmon, shrimp, salmon roe, and sea cucumber. I had this Chirashi at a sushi bar just outside of Tsukiji Fish Market, the largest Fish Market in the world. And just to be thorough, here are some pictures:

From the auction block...

To the forklift...

To fish head. Rolly polly fish head. And tuna steak.


Taste:

Now I'll be honest: I <3 raw food. I <3 sushi. And not that American California roll shit, or that Dragon Kamikaze Philadelphia Roll stuff either. I like hunks of meat, untouched except by the chef's knife.

That aside, it's very difficult to describe how sashimi tastes. The best of sashimi has a very, very light odor of fish. The enjoyment comes primarily from different textures. Your classic pieces of sashimi are tuna and salmon. Tuna has a slightly fishier aroma, and a much crisper texture. It's the sort of meat that crumbles into your mouth in delectable little chunks of deliciousness. Salmon on the other hand is a bit fattier, and some would say, tastier because of that fact. There's a little bit more chew in salmon--just enough to keep the flavors flowing throughout the mouth. Yellowtail is a mixture of the two: fattier than the tuna, but slightly less than the salmon.

Now shellfish I'll adress separately. Scallop and shrimp are the two shown in the pictures above. If you like any of the two cooked, eating them raw might blow your mind away. Their flavours are magnified; their textures made perfect. There's a slick quality in shellfish that's just fantastic. The shrimp especially, though it is just lightly cooked just till there's a hint of pink. Again, what makes this sashimi perfect is that slick, shellfish quality. Dang I'm drooling as I write this.

The salmon roe (orange spheres in the second photo) normally wouldn't warrant much mention. But these are fresh roe. Completely different from the American, imported and stored variety. "Normal" roe bursts in your mouth as you crack that epidermal layer, unleashing a slightly fishy aroma embedded in a salty yolky liquid. The fresh roe at Tsukiji lacked that salty taste, but instead bore a savory and sweet quality. It went pretty well with the Japanese style rice.

Reflections:

I'm all about the shellfish. It's difficult to find raw shellfish in the states, probably because it looks so unappetizing. Now that's one of the worst things about the States--people are inexorably drawn to food that is familiar. There's not much business in marketing the novel looking or novel tasting.

Anyways, the quality of Japanese sashimi really does trump that of the States. There was also something else--something that I couldn't quite put my pallate on...an aftertaste that differed. Perhaps a bit of variation in aroma. In any case, the change was welcome, and the experience, unforgettable.

Green Pea Mousse [Japan]

Yes you read that right. Apparently this place's trademark is Pea Mousse. What the hell were they thinking?

Taste:

Terrible. Unless you really like peas. Really, really, really like peas. So from what I gather they took a whole lot of peas, blended them into pulp, and folded that mixture in with heavy cream, and beated the shit out of the whole mixture to achieve a mousse. And I'll give them credit: it felt like mousse. The texture was absolutely spot-on. The taste though...

Ack. It pains me to think about it. Imagine the voices of millions of peas crying out at once, suddenly silenced by the whirr of a blender. Then imagine you eating their mashed bodies, still feeling a shell here, a shell there. And the ubiquitous taste of pea. Oh dear God. The peas...the green, mushy, peas...

Reflections:

No.

Salted Sea Snail and Friends [Japan]

It's beautiful! It's delicious! It's snail! This was served in a long slew of little dishes in a hotel near the hot springs around Mt. Fuji. The white stuff of course is salt. The rectangular object on the right is some sort of combination of tendons, shrimp, and congealed rice. The left of course, is fish.

Taste:

I'll begin with the snail, since it's the most extravagant of the three. A sweet teriyaki sauce was lightly drizzled in to the shell, forming a savory combination with the salt bedding. The taste itself is quite pleasant as it first enters your mouth. There was no detectable "aroma of snail," though there was the tell-tale scent of the sea. Subtle though--nothing unpleasant. The texture was surprisingly consistent and homogenous throughout, unlike shellfish like mussels or somesuch. The dish was also surprisingly easy to chew, more resembling hardened dofu than the French Escargot kind of feeling that I expected.

The fish on the left side of the dish carried the same teriyaki-ish sauce as the snail, though the texture was of course dramatically different. In fact, it's difficult to describe a whole fish's texture in text--it's a complicated thing, with all those bones and meat involved. Chewy, crunchy, soft. It has it all.

The object on the right was not memorable, and my notes on it are sparse. If you've tried Chinese Dim Sum before, your imagination will probably suffice for how that one went.

Reflections:

I liked this meal. They provided us with a lot of little things to try in an idiot-proof way to try them, all packaged in a distinctly Japanese feel. There was a plate of fish later on that was pretty much a disaster, but aside from that, I have pleasant memories of this experience. Snail ain't nothing to be shying from.

Apple+Tomato / Spinach+Grapefruit / Orange+Carrot Italian Ice [Japan]

So here's an interesting treat from the Hilton Narita in Tokyo. From left to right: Apple+Tomato Ice, Spinach+Grapefruit Ice, and Orange+Carrot Ice.

This was an option in a rather eclectic breakfast buffet that tried quite hard to cater to both Japanese and Western tastes. I'm still not quite too sure who "Spinach+Grapefruit Ice" caters to, but I'm guessing it was a Japanese take on Western sorbets. Nice try guys, but please keep your vegetables out of my desserts.

Taste:

Not nearly as bad as it sounds. I tried a scoop of each flavor and was surprised at how tame the flavors were. In the Spinach+Grapefruit and Orange+Carrot, the fruit dominated the palate, leaving only a hint of vegetable as an after-aroma. The Apple-Tomato tasted primarily of apple, but with a slight citrus-y twang. Texture-wise, the dessert was identical to the melted-and-refrozen italian ice you'd find in the supermarket.

Reflections:

I was a bit disappointed by this. I wanted to be grossed out--to be bowled over by spinach-y flavor in a deceptively familiar icey medium. I got nothing. Just grapefruit ice with a weird aftertaste.

An Introduction

This cricket is hungry.

But he doesn't look that way.

He is hungry for novelty. Whatever might attract his eye. The foods appearing here aren't necessarily good foods, nor are they necessarily strange foods. These foods are stimulating: whatever attracts the eye.

I think of it this way: food is a battle. The eyes find one's adversaries, and the tongue, the nose, the stomach do engage in ligand-to-receptor combat. Equilibriums are pushed one way and another, and in the end we found ourselves victors--two satiated sides--one exiting peaceably through the nethers of human physiology and the other pushed into a quiet state of engorged contentment. Of course, some battles are more arduous than others...

The search for worthy opponents is not a simple matter of choosing the most vile. Mind you, the goal of this battle is to reach peace and satiety. Long, heart-stricken battles hardly fit the most ideal of situations.

I've had battles long before the creation of this blog. From the difficult and damnable Pig's Blood Cake to the tame and pleasantly sauteed Ox Heart, the enlightening Roasted Pigeon to the curious Soup of Snake, a listing of previous experiences would be quite difficult, given the limits of my organ-between-ears.

But let us then proceed to the present, where recency and a handy digital camera can supplicate a deficient brain for the most accurate of memories. Thus do I bid you good Noms from here to the thereafter.

And maybe I'll put away this atrocious writing style.