Had a damn nice Japanese lunch Friday.

Of course we always eat Chinmi (“rare tastes”) when we have the chance. Friday’s opportunity was 珍味 (Shutō). Wikipedia kindly describes it:

It is made by pickling the entrails of skipjack tuna (katsuo) in brine for six months, then chopping up the entrails and sometimes adding a mixture of sake, honey, mirin and onions to them. The name of the dish means “steal sake” and is derived from the fact that it is a good side dish for sake.

This dish is, in fact, quite salty. However, the sake and honey add a depth to the flavor that may take several samplings to fully appreciate. As a result of the saltiness, a favored method for savoring this dish is to take a small piece, experience the fullness of its flavor, then follow it with either a drink of alcohol or some rice.

Much tastier than it sounds. Trust me.

Another highpoint was the grilled fish. Particularly nice was that it was garnished with fresh maple leaves flown from Japan.

Ten minutes simmering a pot holding tamari sauce, chopped garlic, honey, and chili padi.

Toss a defrosted Alaskan salmon fillet (skin-side down) on my super-heated infrared grill.

Brush on the glaze/marinade

Wait longer than I think I should before I flip the skin-side up.

Brush on more glaze.

Done. Fifteen minutes max.

Including very special guests:

• Grandparents from the United States
• Grandparents from Denmark
• Family from Canada
• Local expatriates
• Three extremely expensive Heritage-specie, free-range turkeys hand-flown from Copenhagen
• Seven small children playing on Luke’s new trapeze and circus gear
• Drunk father boiling 14L of scalding peanut oil
• Bottles of Sauterne

My first trip to arguably (or not!) Japan’s best sushi restaurant, Kyubey, was great. But my second trip, last friday night was better, as a Japanese friend who’s been eating at this Ginza restaurant for the last thirty-five or so years came along with us. This was a passport to having our chef, Toyama, make up some more adventurous fare. In addition to all the standard sushi restaurant fare, highlights included

• Whale Sperm. It’s the same color, but a slightly more dry (chalky?) consistency of tofu.
• Abalone Liver. Extremely rich, extremely green abalone liver served in-shell. It was actually too rich for me. I was satisfied halfway through, and the second half became a bit of a chore
• But Toyama palate-cleansed us next with a refreshing sandwich of thin daikon slices holding a shisho leaf, sesame seeds, and plum paste (ume)
• Aji tartare



• I also could have done without Sea Cucumber, freshly killed, in brine.
• Enormously sweet rockmelon, the spilled juices and husk remnants scraped into a tumbler of ice and brandy, making a beautiful after-dinner cocktail.

If I’m lucky, Ling and I will manage a way to get back up to Tokyo in late February to celebrate our friend’s 50th birthday here. To date she’s still never been able to accompany me here.

1. Several pounds of cheap tomatoes
2. 1 small onion (whole)
3. 2 stalks celery
4. 1 beet cut into 1cm slices

Threw in a pot with a cup of water and simmered for 45+ minutes

Seasoned with salt (1tsp + pinch) and sugar (1tsp + pinch) and a long grind of black pepper

Pulled out the onion, celery, and beet chunks. Poured the tomato slurry into a food mill and squeezed out all the juice.

Made close to two quarts.

Chilled overnight in a refrigerator and had after my morning latte this morning.

Really good. Way way better than disgusting salt-bring tomato puree you get from stores or restaurants.

Four medium onions, split in half, gently roasted in an oven for forty minutes. Accompanied by a full bulb of garlic roasted until soft.

I put the entire roasting pan on the stove in order to save the caramelization that stuck to the pan. Pour in a liter of chicken stock, a handful of hot thai “birdseye” style chilis (picked from a bush in my garden) and chiffonaded lime tree leaves (picked from a lime tree in my garden) along with the squeezed-out innards of the garlic. Heat up briskly and then simmer for 20 minutes or so.

Pour in 400ml of coconut milk (sinful but beautiful) and simmer a bit more. Season with some nam pla (thai fish sauce) to taste.

I roughly pureed mine with a hand blender.

mmmm…. spicy, sour, sweet, creamy all at once. Beautiful. I enjoyed it more than tom yam, as it has a thicker consistency, and I like the sweet onion base.

Bean Tortillas

Nothing real special. Tomatoes, onions, beans. Seasoned and softened. Used some old red chile base from my mexican chilli collection. Wrapped up on some organic tortillas. mmm

Dill Pickles

Made another round of refrigerator pickles from some japanese cucumbers today. I really laid on the spices and tried to be temperate with the salt. Last time I oversalted. Hopefully they are tart and flavorful. The ikea jar holding them looks brilliant with the dill stalks floating around with lots of seeds and spices.

I have a Barolo (Italian Wine) tasting dinner tomorrow, so I’ll not be tasting the pickles till tuesday. Ling (who doesn’t drink ) is coming too. There will be many orphaned glasses of wine I guess we’ll have to take care of on her behalf. I’m really looking forward to a Tuesday-morning hangover. Bit early in the week. Maybe I’ll drink pickle brine for Tuesday breakfast. Ling and Luke fly to Sydney Tuesday evening. I follow on Friday evening. I’ll be there for a week.

In designing Matt’s Fourth Protocol, I was considering the results of Le Chacal. This led me to I spend a fair bit of the day doing measurements on Le Chacal trying to figure out why it handled squirrely on my bike tour in Taiwan. I started out thinking it was due to some fine measurements, but my working theory now is simply a matter of bad weight distribution. (I had too much weight on the back, and the front wasn’t loaded)

Then I finished assembling the Le Chacal. I was being quite anal about tuning the transmission system. Last week I screwed around for an hour perfecting the Z/L (smallest back and smallest front cogs) shift combo. The shifting is in good shape now.

Wish I could say the same thing about the brakes. The Braking system is still driving me up the wall, but that’s not the brakes’ fault. It’s the stupid wide rims I have on the bike. I need to get those replaced with narrower, lighter wheels pronto. There is barely clearance, and if I hit any mud, it jams the faces of the brake pads.

Headsets are a touch loose on both Le Chacal and my Dahon. I need to tighten them. Need to study how in my Barnett’s Guide.

I installed a set of “trekking” handlebars. This will give me more riding positions on long rides, hopefully avoiding wrist numbess and sore back. The old mountain bar was 250g, this is about 500g, but I think it’s an ok tradeoff. Plus, I’ll save more than that much when I replace those damn rims. I need to screw with the stem. Lower it a bit, or farther forward, or something. My friend is a professional Pilates instructor and bike racer. I’ll get recuit him to fix my positioning.

Ling even got in on things and started refurbishing her Paul Frank single-speed cruiser. The chroming was really, really cheap and blistered and rusted. So we took off those bits of hardware. Ling sanded things and I ran other things on the wire wheel. Next week we’ll repaint those parts with some rust-retardant, install the side-view mirrors she’s so insistent on, and then she’ll have a local errand bike.

Dropped the heavy Kenda tires and put a Schwalbe Marathon Racer on the back and a Continental Contact on the front, just for something different. I went out on a testing and calibration ride. I hit a field that was basically grass and lumpy, very wet clay. I managed to spin my way through without spilling over. So although there isn’t much tread on these things, I got the minimum traction I needed. (being able to stand up and crank w/ the trekking bars was also helpful)

I discovered the wooden workbench I dragged home yesterday was termite-ridden, so I beat it apart with a ball-peen hammer and crowbar then tossed the bits in the garbage.

Now I’m basking in my downstairs workshop, sipping a beer, and waiting for my osso bucco to heat up. It was so nice this morning having that massive Le Crusset dutch oven. I could brown all four veal pieces simultaneously, then sweat out the vegetables, plug it up with a cartouche, and let it braise for 2.5 hours. It’s nice having the right things at times. In an undersized pan, I could have never browned the meat nicely. (or at least concurrently)

A friend brought me back a small bottle of Birch Syrup (more like molasses than cloy maple syrup). I mixed a half-cup of that with some annoying white sauvignon and bay leaves. Simmered that to a glaze. I brushed(*) that onto the salmon and grilled that on my massively-hot infrared grill. Worked beautifully — skin grilled crispy and it cooked through quick, staying juicy in the center.

In the meantime, boiled sliced potatoes, tossed with fresh chopped dill (salmon’s mistress) and some diced onion sweated in butter and a tiny bit of japanese sesame oil.

Side dish was homemade scratch cranberry and orange sauce.

Devoured it quickly and now I’m done.

(*) I simmered it down to wear it was a nice hot glaze, then took it out of the pan so that it would cease cooking. It sorted of turned into a glass caramel at that point. I had to rejuvenate it with some hot wine to re-dissolve it into a nice glaze. oops.

**I also made homemade infusion-style dill pickles tonight. I’ll see how they taste in a few days. I’m keen to try my hand at making fermented pickles. In fact I also bought a head of cabbage with mind to make a batch of homemade sauerkraut. My biggest problem is that ambient temperature here is like 10-15degrees F too warm.

I marinated them with a combination of tamari sauce, english mustard, dijon mustard, red wine vinegar, garlic, and sea salt.

Side dishes were indian-style carrots, baked with mustard seed, crushed coriander, and roasted cumin seed. And a side of spinach salad, tossed with feta cheese, an old, softened onion, and some nasty quasi-bacon.

Quails were amazing. Roasted them hard (220C) in a La Cruset roasting pan for 25 minutes. Skin was puffed and crisp. Let them sit while I deglazed the copious drippings with a handful of our dinner wine and tossed in some roux I had frozen a couple months ago. Made a nice side sauce.

Quail really tasted nice. You have to eat a quail with hands.. it’s too tiny, too crispy, and too raw (lots of spines and innards left) to eat daintily with a fork. Think KFC, not Christmas turkey.

I thought Shyan Woei was eating with us. I was decanting the wine, pulled out three glasses (me, Ling’s Mom, and Woei) when Matilda said that Woei was long-gone in my car. Now I had way too much food. I bullied Ling’s mom into eat a quail and help me drain the wine. I guess she’ll sleep well tonight. What we didn’t finish with dinner we finished with a dessert of Jean-Paul Hevin chocolates.

• 2002 P. Scavino Barolo Bricco Ambrogio [x4]
• 1998 Azelia Barolo [x4]
• 2003 G Corino Barolo [x4]
• 2003 Grimaldia Barolo Sotto Castelo Di Novello [x4]
• 2004 Chateau Lauduc Prestige Bordeaux [x9]

Thankfully Tien-Lee is visiting in April, so we’ll be able to enjoy a few of these. We killed two double-magnums of Chateau Lauduc a couple months ago and I recentlly drank the Azelia Barolo, so it should be a good stack.