Zongzi

This month marks the third anniversary of our move to San Francisco. We've been living in the same place all this time, despite our best intentions to buy a house. The global economic collapse has gotten in our way just a bit.

We live in a flat above our landlords, and we love them. They're Chinese, from Guangzhou originally, and refer to us as their Caucasian children. Our landlady, Melissa, is a great cook and often knocks on our back door to deliver a couple of ripe mangoes, or Asian pears, or piping hot fried rice, or turnip cakes. By the way, if you deliver a platter of turnip cakes to my door, you'll make a friend for life. Just saying.

Over the years, I've developed a weakness for Melissa's coconut and coffee tapioca cubes. During Chinese New Year, she delivered a platter of fa gao (Prosperity Cakes), perky little rice flour cupcakes that seem to explode up out of the pan. They're fluffy, light, and not too sweet.

The Lees recently became grandparents, and a few weeks before the baby was born I noticed a couple of giant empty black vinegar jugs sitting in the garage. I asked Melissa about it, and she showed me a big earthenware pot that she had filled with the vinegar and huge chunks of ginger. She said that it's traditional for a new mother to eat pigs' feet that have been cooked in this mixture; it helps the woman regain her strength after childbirth, and makes breastfeeding easier. She offered to let me try some after the baby's arrival. A few weeks later, she handed me a big container of the feet plus a couple of dark, vinegar-steeped hard-boiled eggs, and we scarfed it all up with rice for dinner. I hope I remembered to ask about the new baby. "As long as it's not going to make ME pregnant!" I joked. So far so good.

Our latest edible gift from the Lees is zongzi, or sticky rice stuffed with lots of goodies, wrapped in a bamboo leaf and boiled. Melissa's were filled with Chinese sausage, peanuts, chestnuts, pork belly, salted egg yolk, and dried shrimp.

I loved them so much that she brought us a second batch - "made by an old lady," she said when she dropped them off. If you see any of these leaf-wrapped packages carefully bound with string, pick up a couple. They last a few weeks in the fridge, or you can freeze them for later snacking. Boil them for about 20 minutes, unwrap, and dig in. I like to drizzle a little sesame oil on top. Who knows what you'll find inside.

Oishinbo

"He sacrificed his own family to his perverse obsession with food."

How could I resist a line like that?

It's from a Japanese comic ("manga" for you cool kids) called Oishinbo.

I have zero experience with manga. But wow. The American publisher gave me a review copy (disclosure alert) and it was such fun to read. So here I am, telling you to buy it. I promise I wouldn't do that unless I thought the product was stupendous.

The volume that they sent--Japanese Cuisine--is the first edition of highlights from the series, which ran to 100+ volumes. Next up? The "Gyoza and Ramen" edition. Come ON! [Gob Bluth voice.] That one is going to be devoured as well.

The story goes like this: Yamaoka Shiro is a writer working for the Tozai News. His dad Kaibara Yuzan founded The Gourmet Club, an exclusive society that serves sophisticated meals to a select group of power brokers of Japanese society. He's also a total jerk. Yamaoka--lazy, unmotivated, slouchy--has absorbed all of his father's incredible culinary knowledge but none of his fearsome rage.

In Japanese Cuisine, Yamaoka and his co-workers begin work on an Ultimate Menu project for their paper that requires them to investigate all the most esteemed products, cooks, and craftsmen in Japan. Along the way they have several scary encounters with Yamaoka's father and participate in a series of food challenges that test the breadth of Yamaoka's knowledge.

As you follow the Tozai News crew, you learn why it takes incredible skill to make sashimi well, what temperature water is best to brew a particularly refined variety of green tea (gyokuro), how cedar chopsticks are made in Yoshino, and just what katsura muki entails. (Here's a hint.) There's even a glossary.

Reading Oishinbo made me jones for Japan. We only went a few months ago, but I already want to return. I fantasize about our incredible lunch at Tofuya Ukai in Tokyo, the scratchy song of the sweet potato truck on the streets of Kappabashi at dusk, the view of the mountains from a pavilion at the top of Okochi Sanso.

We're tentatively planning a trip to India this winter, but I keep muttering to Randy, "What if we just went back to Japan? Remember how good the katsu was? It's waiting for you ..." There is also the matter of a plate of pappardelle I ordered in Roppongi at a place called Rigoletto--tossed with Japanese leeks and ham--that unexpectedly blew my mind.* I think about it at least once a day. I suspect the sauce was made with dashi. It was so utterly good, so umami-licious. I would unhesitatingly fly 13 hours to have it again.

But if I can't have Japan, at least I have Oishinbo. And Elizabeth Andoh's Washoku, but that's for another post.


*Rigoletto describes itself as "A Factory-like Restaurant for Grown-ups". And while I was there, I could not resist the cocktail named Kitty Honey. KITTY HONEY! It was delicious.

Mysterious coconut blobs

I picked up a package of extremely cute little Thai sweets at our local grocery recently. I thought the name of them was listed on the package, but it turns out that the label only referred to the bakery in the East Bay that made them.

Each one came wrapped in a little palm leaf that was carefully stapled into a cup shape, and was comprised of a gelatinous coconut blob that had been doused with a bit of coconut cream. I couldn't stop eating them; I love the balance of sweet and salty in Thai sweets and the coconut cream had just enough salt to counter the sticky, sugary qualities of the ball.

If anybody knows what these are called, please let me know! I did some searching but couldn't find out their name.

Day Four in Kyoto: Kaiseki dinner at Kikokuso Ryokan

On Sunday night, we stayed at Kikokuso ryokan in Kyoto. Ryokans are traditional Japanese inns where dinner and breakfast are often included, and the food can be simple or extravagent. Here are some photos from our dinner, so you can decide for yourself...

Tea and a red bean sweet at check-in.

The first course - incredibly delicate fish in ponzu with grated radish.

Autumn kaiseki: green tea mousse, incredible ham, a candied chestnut, delicate fish wrapped in a transparent leaf, steamed fish wrapped in bamboo leaf, tiny potatoes with a hint of salt, candied persimmon...I think...

The teeny potatoes up close.

Sashimi course with shiso flowers, shiso sprouts, and shiso leaf.

Miso grilled fish with pickled ginger.

Soft, poofy tofu.

Eel and cucumber in a delicate creamy sauce.

Lotus root, pepper, and kabocha squash tempura.

Tsukemono - the pickle course.

Absolutely incredible woodsy, smoky matsutake mushroom soup.

Toothpick course - this seems to be a requirement in Japan.

A single, huge, perfect peeled grape and slices of juicy melon for dessert.

After dinner, we went for a walk. The futons were laid out for us while we were out.

Another form of direct deposit

My landlord just dropped off a whole roast duck in exchange for some editing work I did for him a few nights ago.

I've never been paid in duck before.

I think I could get used to this.

The Egg

Marcel from Top Chef always irked me, but that didn't stop me from poring over his biography on the Bravo website with a voyeur's delight. Initially I found his response to the "What is your go-to ingredient?" question unspeakably pretentious: "The Egg." With Its Unnecessary Capitalization and All. But it stuck in my head. Months later, I'm still thinking about it.

The Egg.

I must give the man some credit. It's true. The Egg is fascinating. The Egg is also mind-numbingly versatile. The Egg strides purposefully from breakfast to lunch to dinner and onwards to dessert with ease. The color, the flavor, the textural possibilities ...and let's not forget that shell. Eggshells are both works of art and feats of engineering. (Although I have not yet read it, Michel Roux's book apparently does great justice to this ingredient.)

Yes. The Egg.

Recently we had too many eggs rapidly approaching their expiration date. Hard-boiling is always a solid way to buy some time, of course, and Chinese tea eggs are a great twist. They are only marginally more complicated than the usual recipe, which in my family goes something like this after an unfortunate incident a few summers ago:

"Drop eggs in boiling water. Try not to forget and go out for ice cream sundaes, only to return hours later to find a scorched pot, a shrieking smoke detector, and every kitchen wall pasted with exploded egg bits."

And Chinese tea eggs produce far more striking results:

I like to eat these eggs straight up, with just a bit of salt. I think this complements the admittedly subtle flavors that are imparted by the boiling liquid. You'll miss out if you dose each egg with a tablespoon of mayonnaise and a hit of paprika. Just keep it simple.

Chinese Tea Eggs
4 eggs, previously hard-boiled
3 bags black tea (I just used PG Tips; loose tea is fine too)
2 T. soy sauce
4 star anise
1 cinnamon stick
1/2 t. Sichuan peppercorns (optional)
A little orange peel (optional)
Approx. 3 cups of water

Use the back of a spoon to lightly crack the shells of the hard-boiled eggs. This creates the marbling effect that will emerge later. Place eggs in pot and add all ingredients except water. (If you are using tea in bags, open bags and empty tea leaves directly into pot). Add water to cover. Bring to boil, then reduce heat and simmer gently, 1.5 to 2 hours. Remove from heat and let stand in liquid one more hour. Remove eggs from liquid, allow to cool, and peel. Rinse them if they are covered with tea leaves, and serve.

Simple foods that stretch

Recently I made two dinners that magically multiplied into many days' worth of hearty, satisfying meals. This came in especially handy last week when my paycheck got lost in the technological wilderness, and my rather ponderous San Franciscan rent check and car payment were due on that very same (un)payday and ...oh my goodness, is it really possible to have NEGATIVE money in your checking account? Indeed it is. Enter the jook.

1) Rice Porridge (a.k.a. Jook/Congee)

I have only passing familiarity with jook. I can count on one hand the number of times I've eaten it, but after SueAnn blessed me a delectable spoonful of her lunchtime jook--filled with succulent, juicy prawns--I became mildly obsessed. For two weeks I thought about jook. I tried to get it at a local dim sum place, but they were out. I considered paying a visit to the adorably named Jook Time restaurant near my house, but I was too lazy to walk that far. Meanwhile, I pestered SueAnn with questions: what time of day should I eat it? What can I add to it? What's the difference between congee and jook?

Finally I just decided to make it myself. One cup rice, 8 cups chicken broth, and a scattering of star anise, ginger, dried mushrooms, and tangerine peel. Bring to boil; simmer one and a half hours. Insert in mouth. If you want to glam it up, add some chicken, duck, shrimp, abalone (SueAnn's favorite), or anything else you want. Jook can take it. The recipe above makes enough for a large family, or one girl with limited funds working at home for a week. I am also told that this is the thing to eat when you're sick.

(Incidentally, I like to tease SueAnn about just how many Korean dishes seem designed with illness in mind. "Don't order that!" she warned us about a soup on the menu at lunch recently. "It's really bland, only good if you have a cold or something." "Jeepers, how many sickroom dishes does one culture need??" I asked. There's even a special word for generalized aches and pains: mumsal. A great addition to the lexicon for a whiner like me.)

2) Pasta
A few weeks ago, my friend James came to visit and returned from City Lights bookstore with a copy of the Chez Panisse Pasta and Pizza cookbook. I fell in love; I had to have it. The recipes still seem completely current and fresh, despite the fact that the book is almost as old as I am. The mark of a good cookbook indeed. Inspired, I dragged out my extremely-infrequently-used Imperia pasta machine and spent a happy afternoon cranking out black pepper fettuccine. The bandaid-sized strip of dough in the photo below should give you some idea of what a novice pasta fabricator I am.

I was amazed at the transformation: a fist-sized amount of flour and one egg became four hearty servings of pasta with mushroom cream sauce. Add a bit of tiny, tender asparagus and lemon, and dinner is served.

Love stinks

Once a week we usually get takeout from our favorite Korean restaurant, My Tofu House. Over the months, I really have come to consider it MY tofu house, despite the fact that we've never actually dined in the restaurant. It's always insanely crowded, so the alternative -- takeout and Seinfeld re-runs at home -- seems much more appealing.

Typically I order kimchi soondubu, a fiery red broth filled with mounds of soft, custardy tofu and bits of beef or pork. Randy gets the sweet, mild beef bulgogi, some of which I then steal from the container and add to my giant bowl of soup when his back is turned.

Our order always include four banchan (side dishes). My Tofu House likes to keep it simple with a selection of pickled cucumbers, kimchi, mung bean sprouts, and radishes. They also throw in one stick of melon gum per person; I have no idea why.

A few weeks ago, however, we noticed that the customers dining in the restaurant were being treated to an ENTIRE FISH as part of their tableside banchan selection. The fish had never appeared in our takeout order.

I wanted that fish.

The thing is, My Tofu House is perennially noisy and crowded. Add to this the fact that most of the staff speaks very little English. I'm not a shy person, but I just couldn't bring myself to grab the arm of our check-out girl and demand that she wrap up a fish for us in between carting around approximately 400 banchan dishes, snipping meat, cracking eggs into soups, seating customers, and running credit cards.

But I wanted that fish.

As the weeks passed, the mysterious banchan fish became an almost mystical dish, out of my grasp and thus all the more desirable. In my head, accessing that fish began to symbolize something much greater. It stood for all those delectable foods that forever remain untranslated and enigmatic on the menus of my favorite Asian restaurants, available only to those customers that can read Thai, or Mandarin, or Japanese.*

Last week Randy went to pick up our order. "Get me a fish!" I called out jokingly as he headed into the rainy night.

When he returned, I asked, "Fish?" Really, I was just teasing. The responsibility for fish procurement should have rested on my shoulders. He doesn't even like fish.

"Check the counter."

And there it was! My fish, gleaming in a fresh layer of Saran wrap, speedily filling our kitchen with the aroma of ...well, a big, smelly fish.

In our house, that's what love smells like.

*Listen to a funny NPR piece about this phenomenon.