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Japanese Ecstasy in Edinburgh

Edinburgh is a great place.  This was my fourth time in this cosmopolitain Scottish city. The people are friendly, the history is rich, the buildings are beautiful.  There's an array of good food, with cuisines from around the world.  I love eating American Macaroni at Hamburger Heaven, or Sausage Sandwich at Pani Solinska.

This time I was here on business.  So no husband, a swanky hotel room, and a conference to attend during the day, instead of unlimited kilt shopping and tower climbing.  I made the most of my free time, visiting my favourite spots and cafes.

But during the second afternoon, my dear Japanophile American colleague friend casually mentioned one word that drove my stomach wild:  Miso.

Miso!  Had I seen a single Japanese restaurant since we arrived?  Where were the chains of Yo Sushi, Wagamama and Wasabi?  For a city that loves its chains, Edinburgh was seriously lacking in any of these run-of-the-mill Japanese standards.

No independent Japanese restaurants either!  Where were they?  We had a quick look in the phonebook to find that the Scottish like to combine Japanese and Chinese restaurants into one category in the Yellow Pages.

A quick conversation with our concierge revealed that an excellent Japanese restaurant was conveniently located just around the corner!  We made the trek down to road only to be shocked and disappointed to learn that the restaurant he had recommended was actually Thai.  Those wacky Asians all eat the same food, don't they?!

By this time, all we could think about was fresh tofu, sashimi, noodles and seaweed.  Our cravings were equivalent to those of pregnant women, and we toyed with the idea of catching a train back to London to fulfil our desires.

Then, like a shining light… a saviour from above…. angels had answered our prayers.  There before us stood a church, which showed us the path to our holy salvation.  A Japanese community group was cooking homemade food in the church hall to raise money for charity.  Hallelujah!  Praise be!

50p for tea, £1 for a dish of tempura, okonomiyaki, and all the free carrot cake we could handle.  The Japanese food gods smiled upon us that day.

Harbor Deli is a Fat Maker

 

I love this sign we found on the entrance to an American style deli in Fukuoka, Japan.  In America, a sign like this would be a travesty.  But in Japan, it's hilarious - because no one's actually fat in Japan.

Hummingbird Bakery Green Tea Cupcakes

I'm enormously addicted to Japanese matcha (green tea) flavoured desserts.  I'm not hugely into desserts (much to my chocoholic mother's astonishment), but matcha really appeals to me.  I think it's because it's sort of sweet and bitter at the same time, and tastes chalky and powdery like delicious Pepto-Bismol.  

While in Japan, we ate matcha candy, matcha rice balls, matcha cake, LOTS of matcha ice cream, and even matcha pancakes.  This crazy bright green powder actually tastes nothing like green tea - but when whipped up into a dessert, it becomes a totally bonkers taste sensation.

These cupcakes are from my new cake-porn book, The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook. They were totally moist and yummy - and the frosting on top was a matcha fueled explosion.  I took the leftovers into work, and they were a hit!  Even with the people who weren't sure about the taste of green tea in a cupcake.

My only complaint about them would be that they might have a bit too much matcha powder in them.  Matcha desserts in Japan are usually a more subtle shade of green - and these look a little like Oscar the Grouch green.   And at £7 for a tin of matcha powder to make 12 cupcakes, I'm not sure I'll be rushing to make them again any time soon.  But I think the dozens of other recipes in the Hummingbird book will keep me plenty occupied until the next time!

Step by Step guide to Hiroshima Okonomiyaki

This is a post I've really been meaning to do for a long time.  When we were honeymooning in Japan last October, we had a zillion amazing meals.  This one, however, was really cool - because we got to watch it being made! 

Okonomiyaki is a popular dish in Osaka and Hiroshima. It's essentially just pancakes with layers and layers of different ingredients.  It's cooked in front of you (apparently some places you can make it yourself at your table), on a big metal hot plate, called a teppan.  Sometimes in Hiroshima, they call it "Hiroshima-yaki".

When we were in Hiroshima, we went to a hidden little place right next door to our hotel, (the World Friendship Center - not quite as hippy-fabulous as the name would suggest.)  I'm not sure the name of it, but judging from the sign, it's 'Okonomiyaki' then 3 stars, then something else in big letters, then 'Itsuki' below it?  (Must send this photo to my Japanese teacher for translation!)

Even though it was fairly late at night, the tiny restaurant was full of Japanese men, grabbing a quick meal on their way home from a late night at the office.  (Or so they say....)  We pulled up to a couple of stools in front of the teppan (no elbows on the table here!), and ordered.  Not much choice really, you either have a vegetarian pancake, or a meat one.  We ordered one of each, and a couple of bottles of Asahi.

 

The great thing about sitting right up at the teppan is that you get to watch every step of the process.  We were mesmorised as we watched the precision that goes into each layer of the okonomiyaki!  First, the batter (made of flour and dashi soup stock) is poured out onto the hot plate in a pancake shape.

The noodles are set out on the teppan, to warm up.  The pancakes are sprinkled with kezuri-bushi (fish flakes) and kombu-ko (seaweed flakes).  No sir, no maple syrup on these pancakes!! 

Shredded cabbage (lots of it) is the next layer in the pancake.

Next up is Ikaten, or dried squid flakes to you and me, spring onions, and bean sprouts. 

Bacon goes on the non-vegetarian one...

...Then another finished pancake gets thrown on top!

 

The noodles are finally ready to be broken up and put over the pancake.

Just when we thought it was all over..... more layers!  Eggs were brought out, cracked on the teppan, and swirled around.

The pancake is carefully and skillfully lifted on top of the egg.

A lattice pattern of okonomi sauce and some aonori (seaweed flakes) completes the meal.  It's amazing how the cabbage and other ingredients have worked their way down to make something so flat and dense!  It was at this point I realised we probably didn't need to eat a whole one EACH.  But seeing as I was already halfway through my bottle of Asahi, I decided to treat it as a challenge.

 

Straight off the teppan with a little trowel-like cutting device, and on to the plate!  What a meal!  And all for around £3 each.  Our £3 also included some helpful beginner Japanese lessons from the cook:  "Itadakimasu" is a polite thing to say when you recieve your food, and "Oishi" to say that it's delicious! And delicious it was!!

Yudofu and Thousand Island Dressing - an authentic Japanese breakfast

I've blogged before about breakfast, Japanese style.   But after going through some photos tonight of our incredible, wonderful, amazing, life changing honeymoon in Japan, I found some photos of another early morning meal.  This one was on the island of Miyajima (home of the famous torii gate), in our inn, the Yamaichi Bekkan. 

I just love these photos - they bring back so many memories of trying to wrap my head around eating crazy food.... at seven in the morning. 

Yudofu (meaning hot tofu - look, I can write it in Japanese - ゆどふ) was kind of like fondue.  They brought us this very hot ceramic bowl with a lid, heated by a tea light.  Inside was water, with cubes of tofu!  After letting it boil for a few minutes, we dipped it in a sauce made of dashi.   Simple.  Tasty.  Not what we would ever consider eating here for breakfast.

 The next dish was even weirder.  Garden salad with Thousand Island Dressing?!?  And for breakfast?!?  I thought the hostess was just trying to make us Westerners feel at home or something, so I politely ate it.  (And it wasn't that bad for breakfast actually).  Turns out it's not Thousand Island, but a near clone Japanese salad dressing with totally different ingredients!  Miso, mirin, soy sauce.....   we sure couldn't taste the difference.

I loved Japanese food in Japan.  Real Japanese food.  Not the stuff that comes from Yo Sushi or Wagamammas.  I was really surprised at how different food is over there, compared to what the Japanese restaurants here sell.  I am pretty sure there are more sushi restaurants in London than in Tokyo.  Real Japanese food is so varied, and so bonkers.  We were in for a huge surprise at every meal.  (Even the night we found ourselves drunk at 2am sitting in McDonalds having a "Volume Matten"!)

Note the whole fishies in the background.  After I took the photo, I got brave and ate them - face and all.  No kidding.  One of the best breakfasts I've ever had.

Green Tea Pancakes

On our penultimate morning in Japan, we ordered room service breakfast in what is surely one of the most upmarket hotels in the world - the Tokyo Mandarin Oriental. 

After a quick glance over the menu, I immediately decided on Green Tea Pancakes.  What red blooded Canadian can turn down pancakes? And since I'd become addicted to Green Tea Powder (matcha) while in Japan, it was the obvious choice.

Of course, they were gorgeous.... I doused them with maple syrup and mopped up every last crumb.  I thought about making them when I got back home, but it turns out the recipe is just to add a tbsp of matcha powder when you are mixing your dry pancake ingredients together.  Easy!

I haven't been able to actually find matcha powder since I got home, so these are hotel photos!  I'll have to check out the Japan Centre in London so I can recreate this delicacy.  Then I just need to figure out how to recreate the enormous soft Mandarin Oriental bed, the silk bags of tea, the 36th floor view of Tokyo......  

Afternoon tea, Japanese Style

The Japanese pretty much do everything better than we do.  This even includes the classic British event of afternoon tea.  What could be better than strolling through a lush Japanese garden on a warm afternoon, surrounded by trickling waterfalls, ponds full of koi fish, little red bridges, and carefully pruned trees.... and then stopping in a little tea house, taking off your shoes, and sitting at a low table drinking tea and eating cake? 

In Japan, the tea served for special occasions like this is called Matcha.  Matcha is a high quality powdered green tea that is made individually in the cup, not in a pot.  If you've ever had green tea ice cream or a Starbucks green tea latte, you'll know the flavour of matcha.  It's very powdery tasting, in a pleasant way.  A bit like green pepto-bismol.  But nice!  The matcha powder is mixed with hot water, and whipped with a bamboo whisk into a frothy drink.  It's a very smooth, subtle flavour - you do not add milk or sugar.

Served with your cup of matcha is a small square red bean paste cake.  If someone ever suggested making a cake out of smushed up adzuki beans, I'd think they were bonkers - but this cake is fantastic!  The beans are mixed with sugar to make it a nice sweet paste, with icing sugar dusted around the outside.  Beautiful!

Then you just sit on your tatami mat, looking out on to the garden and slowly sipping tea.  It's all very zen like - very calming and soothing.

Back in the UK though, I have to admit that ultimately I'll always be a PG tips girl.

Oki-Nami Brighton, what a disappointment!

Since arriving back in the land of dreary skies and signal failures, we've been missing our daily Japanese meals... I haven't really cooked anything Japanese in the past few days.  So tonight we decided to treat ourselves to a rare dinner out in Brighton at a new-ish restaurant called Oki-Nami.  It's part owned by DJ Norman Cook, AKA Fat Boy Slim, and Japanese Chef Mike Dodd.  (Is is possible for a really good Japanese chef to be named "Mike Dodd"?)  From the outside, the restaurant looked really trendy and beautiful... the interior designers certainly got it right.  I think it went downhill from there.

Hilariously, they called Chu Hai their "signature cocktail" in the menu.  Chu Hai is basically the Japanese version of a vodka seven.  It's a Japanese distilled spirit (schochu) in lemonade.  Oki-Nami:  this cannot be your signature cocktail.  Please don't embarrass yourself like this.  And please don't charge £6 for it.

Oki-nami means "big wave" in Japanese.  Which sort of described the big waves of disappointment I felt while perusing the menu. Everything seemed really unimaginative or just plain Westernised.  Perhaps cooking interesting Japanese food is a little too challenging for our "Japanese Chef" Mike?  Or perhaps he's never actually been to Japan, so hasn't read any authentic Japanese menus before?

First things first.... we both ordered simple o-cha (normal green tea) to drink.  In Japan, you get this free when you sit down.  A few minutes later they came over to tell us they had run out.  In a Japanese restaurant.  They had run out of green tea. No problem, we'll have the roasted barley tea.

Second came the edamame.   It was clearly from a bag of frozen edamame, and had been slightly over cooked.  Very average.... I even prefer Wagamamma's edamame. 

Next was the miso soup.  It was in a very slick looking bowl, but it was incredibly salty... much more than it needed to be.  And for £3, it was a very simple miso. 

Then things started getting worse.  We'd ordered a couple of the 'specials' going that night.  The Husband ordered soba noodles in broth with vegetables and tempura.  Interesting, it sounded....  until it came, and you realised how quickly tempura'd vegetables disintegrate in soup.  Tempura needs a SAUCE not a SOUP!  It was only a few minutes before the soup turned into a soggy battered mess.  The "vegetables" were clearly shaken from a bag of Tesco crisp salad mix.  It reminded me of one of those cringy episodes of Masterchef, where the competing chef tries really hard to do something risky to get noticed, John Torode gives it one look of horror, shakes his head, and the chef goes home in tears.

My salmon terriyaki with rice pretty much did what it said on the tin...  some strips of salmon sitting on a bed of rice, with the rest of that Tesco bagged salad shaken over it.  The sauce didn't quite stretch to cover all of the rice, so it was pretty bland.   And it was so simple that I loathed paying £9 for something I could have made myself at home.  (With a lot more flavour, I might add.) 

The final chopstick in the heart was dessert.  I fell in love with green tea flavoured desserts while we were in Japan...  Matcha ice cream, Matcha cake, Matcha pancakes....   so we ordered Green Tea Cheesecake.  When I took my first bite, I started to wonder if the chef had actually tasted any of these dishes himself before inflicting them upon us.  You could barely taste the matcha powder in the very thin layer of 'cheesecake', and the base of the cake wasn't even a proper cheesecake base with graham crumbs...  in fact I can't even tell you what it WAS made of, because it had no flavour - just a sticky tasteless mess.  The most unbelievable thing was the blueberries and raspberries on top of the cake.  We might as well have been eating little sacks of water for all the taste they had.  I've never, ever, ever eaten a blueberry with absolutely no taste... but they managed to find some for us.   Probably in the back of the freezer.

If you've never tried Japanese food, please don't go here - you will incorrectly think Japanese food is disgusting.  I'd rather you keep going to Wagamammas and think it tastes like that.  If you have tried Japanese food and love it, I urge you to send a donation to Oki-Nami to raise some money to send our friends Mike Dodd and Norman Cook to Japan, so they can see what tasty creations a real Japanese chef cooks.  Then they can stay there, open up a burger joint, and leave us the hell alone.

Update:  The Guardian agrees with me...

Traditional Japanese Breakfast

In most of the places I've traveled, the breakfasts are pretty similar.   Maybe they give you slices of cheese in Germany, or lots of different meats in Prague, but it's all pretty bog standard.  Not so in Japan!!  Here is our first Japanese breakfast, in a lovely ryokan called Fujitomita, looking out onto Mount Fuji. 

All Japanese breakfasts consist of steamed rice, miso soup, and various bits of pickled vegetables.  You will get a bit of green or black tea to wash it down with.  This is the basic breakfast, but if you are being served breakfast in a nice inn (or presumably someone's home), you will get a few other dishes to go with it.

 This particular morning our extra dishes were an egg, cracked onto some lettuce - very simple but very fresh and tasty, some lightly steamed broccoli with sesame seasoning, various types of seaweed, soft and delicious, some fruit, a little bit of radish, and .... the main attraction... an entire fish!  

I've only been confronted with an entire fish body on a plate a handful of times in my life.   This was the first time I was told to eat the entire thing!  The fish is cooked for 7 hours, and so the whole body becomes soft and edible.  Horrors!   

The entire meal was prepared so beautifully, and tasted incredible, so I gave it a go.  I started with his stomach, then his back... all very sweet and sticky and soft.  I even ate his spine.  

I'm sorry to admit it, dear readers, but I did not make it as far as his face and tail.  I just couldn't do it.  I did get brave later on in the trip and eat an entire fish (minus the tail, which looked like a brush), but on that particular morning underneath Mount Fuji, I just couldn't pull it off.   

The Husband ate the entire thing though - brave soul!  I really should have done it, as it was so tasty, but the entire meal was fantastic!  I did get pretty addicted to pickles and rice and miso for breakfast, and now that we're back in the UK, musli just isn't doing it for me....

Back from Japan

After three incredible weeks on our honeymoon in Japan, the best country in the world, we're back.  I actually cried on the plane when we left.  We had the most amazing time, and of course, some amazing FOOD!  I dutifully took lot of photos of the really interesting food, and will be blogging about it over the next few days!