Emerson has always been affectionate with me. That first night one year ago today, May 12, 2012, when he came home, Emerson sat near me constantly, ready to be pet, ready to be taken into our life, his soul-searching eyes asking me, “What’s in store for me lady? Got treats?”

Ready for bed that night in our bedroom, we all stared at each other, Carlos and I from the bed, Emerson from his crate. All three of us apprehensive, tired, wondering how this would go. By the next morning though, Emerson woke up, registered where he was, shook himself, and seemed to have decided the living arrangement could work just fine.

But with strangers he was pitifully nervous. I paraded him over to the neighbor’s house to show him off and he cowered at my feet, tail between his legs, terrified. Other friend-neighbors came over to meet the new dog and he cringed and growled. I got the pity-face from everyone.

I walked him up to Your Dog’s Best Friends doggie daycare several days later and he flattened himself under a chair in the “orientation” room and could not be lured out with treats. I almost started to cry thinking that if he could not go to daycare, I could not keep him. The owner, Paul Haire, came in the room, looked at Emerson shivering, immediately got on his hands and knees, dropped his head beneath Emerson’s, and stayed still. Emerson relaxed. The test dogs were brought in, Emerson perked up, greeted them appropriately, and was accepted into daycare. By the end of the day when I came to pick him up he bounded out to me grinning and perky. He quickly became a staff favorite. They remarked on how loving he is.

Our relationship proceeded.

After a very short while Emerson proved himself reliable in his household habits and the crate door was left permanently open. He began to seek the floor next to my side of the bed. We moved a dog bed there so I could reach down at night and feel him. He started to lay next to me on the couch as I read, head on my leg, silent and clearly content.

One night Carlos was tired from a tough day at work and was the first to break the “no dogs on the bed” rule. He said, “Maybe we can have Emerson on the bed tonight?” And up Emerson came, tucking himself between us, exposing his belly to be rubbed, and sighing as he closed his eyes. Over time we decided Emerson would sleep in his own bed, but he was invited up to cuddle in the morning.

And so routines established themselves. He was still nervous around strangers, but after five or six meetings with new people he started to relax around our friends. Carlos’s brother came to live next door. He was the only new person that Emerson treated as family from the first moment. We think Alvaro must smell just like Carlos.

One night I reached down from the bed to touch Emerson and he rolled over to let me rub his belly. His particular musky smell wafted up, and I was overwhelmed with feelings of both longing and protectiveness. I was in love.

I visited family for Thanksgiving, leaving Carlos and Emerson at home. In my absence, Emerson climbed under the covers on my side of the bed. The entire time I was gone I ached for him. The sensation made me laugh at myself, at what I was feeling for a dog. When I returned and climbed out of the cab in our driveway, Emerson was waiting with Carlos. Carlos was happy to see me, but Emerson’s whole body vibrated with happiness.

In November, around the six-month mark, Emerson seemed to grok he was staying forever. He began to ask for things, giving a little moan/growl when I spent too much time on the computer and placing a paw on my leg, trying to lure me to touch him. He stopped gulping down his food and took this time. He followed me around the house, flopping down noisily in whatever room I was folding clothes, checking email, cooking dinner.

I started to wonder if he was bored. We played with him, walked him, pet him, but I started to do PetFinder searches for a companion dog. I thought a female would make him happy. In January we brought home a spit-fire named Remy, half-Basenji, half-???, who immediately jumped on Emerson, chewed his ear, and stole his toys. It took a while for Emerson to adjust to sharing the couch and affection, but she has become the companion I hoped she would be for my beloved boy.

There were many people involved in bringing Emerson to us. I highlighted the story in my last post. But on this first anniversary I’d like to thank all those people again. In Nash County, North Carolina, Zach Wilford recognized that the stray dog in his neighborhood was very sweet and very scared. Zach pushed everyone to save this unpromising foundling. Without Zach vouching for Emerson, he may have been put down after three days in the very small county shelter. Others from Nash County who never even met Emerson pledged money for his eye surgery and to attract a dog rescue to take him. Carol Vierela from Nash County Animal Friends drove Emerson to Virginia.

Mutt Love Rescue (particularly Cathy Komenda and Cathy Haffner) got Emerson his eye operation, shared their homes with him, and helped him find us.

Cathy Komenda wrote last year on May 12: “His adopters were so excited. They could not take their hands off him. He is going to be spoiled rotten.”

He is spoiled rotten. And we haven’t taken our hands off him yet.

Video: Emerson and Remy show off their training.

The Story in Facebook Links

December 30, 2011 Emerson is picked up as a stray in Nash County, NC

December 31, 2011, Emerson is in the shelter and Nash County Animal Friends solicits contributions to help Emerson get rescued and to have his cherry eye fixed. In essence, they created a dowry for him.

January 4, 2012, update on Emerson

January 6, 2013, Emerson is scheduled to be transported to Virginia, rescued by Mutt Love Rescue.

March 18, 2012, Emerson’s cherry eye is fixed and he is offered for adoption by Mutt Love Rescue

May 12, 2012, we meet Emerson and take him home that night

So priketh hem Nature in hir corages –
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seeken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, couthe in soundry londes

(So Nature pricks them in each little heart),
On pilgrimage then folks desire to start.
The palmers long to travel foreign strands
To distant shrines renowned in sundry lands

–Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, (Modern English trans. Ronald L. Ecker and Eugene J. Crook)

Our Springtime baby, we had no idea how much we’d love him.

That a stray dog’s progress to his forever home can be documented is due to the dedication of his rescuers: Nash County Animal Shelter and Nash County Animal Friends in North Carolina, and Mutt Love Rescue in Fairfax, Virginia (who paid for his eye operation, boarded him, put his photo on Petfinder.com, and brought him to the adoption day to meet us).

The Stray Dog’s Tale [Facebook page link with more of the story]

December 30, 2011, Nashville, North Carolina: Zach Wilford wrote about Nash County Animal Control picking up a stray dog from his neighborhood “with double cherry eye. Brindle in color. … He was very sweet and very scared.”

He would not go near the animal control officer. I sat on the ground and talked very sweetly to him and he came up to me and laid on my lap. The female officer was there. He is extremely sweet I just think he has had bad experiences. He was licking my hand and face lol. If he doesn’t come around soon I will try to make a trip over there soon to help I believe he will remember me. I gave him food and water while he was in the trap and I gave him a blanket to keep him warm and covered the cage with a sheet to guard from the wind. I couldn’t let him sit out there like that, cold. I’m seriously praying like crazy for this one.

The House Dog’s Tale [Facebook page link with more of the story]

We don’t know who gave him such a fabulous name, but like his namesakes, the Transcendentalist philosopher and the 1970s Progressive Rock keyboardist, Emerson had a following (check out the comments at the link above). And many of those followers pledged money to go to the rescue league to help pay for his eye operation.

January 6, 2012, Emerson doesn’t know it, but he’s about to travel from North Carolina to Virginia with Mutt Love Rescue: “He will spend a couple of nights with me and on Sunday, we will meet his Rescue in Richmond. This is the most loving dog and I think he was a house dog in his past.” –Carol Vierela, founder of Nash County Animal Friends

Emerson is neutered, has his cherry eye surgically repaired, and is boarded in Virginia. About four months later, we see his photo on Petfinder.com. Something in his floppy ears and knowing eyes gets to us.

The Happy Tail

We meet him on May 12 and Cathy at Mutt Love Rescue delivers him to us that evening.

Forth, pilgrim, forth! Forth, beest, out of thy stal!
Know thy countree, looke up, thank God of al.
Hold the heigh way and lay thy gost thee lede:
Truth shal delivere, it is no drede.

–Chaucer, “Truth”

Epilogue, June 2, 2012

Listening to Ann Cole. Growing Hakurei turnips and tatsoi. Not sure where any of this is going.

In the meantime, to help the Tohoku region of Japan (or just to get some fine recipes), please go buy a copy of Elizabeth Andoh’s Kibō.

Woke up and went to the George Washington Masonic Memorial: à la Japonaise we sat on the steps overlooking Old Town Alexandria and waited for the sun to rise. But not quite ready to start in on the fish and pickles, we drank coffee and shared a pear-walnut scone. A young Korean man drove up and looked surprised to find us there. But he waited with us as the sky washed salmon-pink at the low horizon, and then, quickly a sliver of light pressed up into a yellow-orange fire.

Sushi Taro’s osechi ryouri (new year’s food) is on the menu once again for the next few days. I eat these treats thinking of Japan, my teacher, and my resolution to find a way to bring Japanese culture and sake into my life more often this year. As Suzuki Roshi reminds us, the perfect time is now and now and now…

Links:
New Year’s Day 2006 in Japan

Sushi Taro osechi from 2010

Alexandria summer: Heat, mosquitoes in the backyard, ugly new construction on our block, passive-aggressive boss, heat, ennui, heat—

spray my calves with poison to keep the bugs off and step out into life I helped along: bowls and bowls of homegrown cherry tomatoes, a few Green Zebras, and a single Brandywine that made it to ripe through the gauntlet of thirsty squirrels. Bonus: our first heirloom Stone Mountain watermelon, a few more on the vines. Summer is sweet, feels cooler in the soul.

Backyard bird feeder visitors this spring have included House Finches, House Sparrows, Blue Jays, Northern Cardinals, Common Grackles, Mourning Doves (on the ground below the feeder), a single Red-winged Blackbird, and Gray Catbirds. I’ve tried to keep the bird bath filled with clean water on these hot days (today the high is expected to be 102°F). I’m particularly motivated to monitor the water supply because I noticed a few weeks ago that two catbirds were delivering twigs and fluffy bits to one of our large Osmanthus bushes. I wanted to thank them for choosing our yard, a great compliment which meant they had identified it as rich enough in food, water, and shelter to support the family.

Lately the pair has been taking turns swooping about, grabbing insects and caterpillars in their bills. This morning I pushed gently into the bush to see what was happening. I think I was expecting a Del Ray–style nest evoking the vibe of our weekly farmers’ market crowd: couples weighed down by Swedish baby carriers (or Andean baby slings) and cotton tote bags with blue/green Earth logos. Instead, the nest looked like an episode of Hoarders with the bits of plastic and paper woven among the twig structure. If it were 1987, I might think these spoiled suburban birds with their black mohawks were building a shantytown to urge the university to divest from South Africa. No, perhaps this is indeed an emblematic Del Ray nest. My little urban homesteaders are recycling and repurposing while exploring E. F. Schumacher’s “appropriate technology” concept.

The eggs are supposed to be turquoise blue, but when I leaned in to gawp, one of the pair jumped on a branch very close to my face and gave me such a nasty look. I retreated and refilled the bird bath.

But many avoid death now as the greatest of evils but then welcome it as rest from things in life. The wise neither declines life nor fears not living; for life does not offend him nor does he believe that not being alive is bad. Just as food is not chosen only for the larger portion but for the more pleasant, so the wise enjoy the time that is not longer but happier.

—Epicurus, “Letter to Menoeceus” (trans. Sanderson Beck)

Saturday, May 21st, my Epicurean heart beats in the May sunshine. All the birds and iPods tweet, “We are alive!”

We enjoy our weekly visit to the Del Ray Farmers’ Market. Of course, we see Tom the yogurt and cheese guy, the lady with the apple cider doughnuts, and the salteña lady. After missing the Lee Brothers’ seafood truck last Saturday, we are very happy to see them again. Over the past few weeks we’ve bought and enjoyed (twice) their hyper-fresh, sweet, and delicious perch filets and once served sake with their oysters. Today we bought already dressed softshell Maryland crabs. For lunch I patted a few with just a dusting of Old Bay and cornmeal and pan fried them. I also shelled fresh peas, a brief steam, a bit of butter. Carlos had to be off on a work errand, so I was alone for my meal. I meditated, chewing happily on two of the great and most simple delicacies of this lovely planet.

Lee Brothers will reserve some softshells for you if you order the week ahead so they can plan to bring the just-molted ones to market. Look for the truck with a hanging scale and the handwritten whiteboard, “Perch, Catfish, Croaker, Oysters, Softshells.”

From all these trees,
in the salads, the soup, everywhere,
cherry blossoms fall.

—Bashō, trans. Robert Hass

This year the cherry blossoms peaked in the cold and rainy final days of March.

Two evenings, we walked the tidal pool path surprised to be almost alone with the trees.

Yet, after the single Yoshino cherry blossoms have dropped their petals, then in April’s first sunlight and warmth come the frilly double Kwanzans.

And then—

Japan Society Earthquake Relief Fund

The label on the neck of a bottle of Sharaku 冩楽 junmai ginjo says: jun ai shikomi [pure love brewing].

In Tokyo on the evening of February 15, I was sitting cross-legged in the private dining room of Takara, a modern izakaya, with John Gauntner and his students taking the 2011 Advanced Sake Professional Course. At the table with us was John’s own sake sensei, Haruo Matsuzaki. The night felt auspicious. We toasted, shouting, “kampai!” Mori-san, the maitre d’, organized the perfect service of numerous courses of food matched to the seven sakes John had chosen for the evening. After we ate and drank ourselves into a happy flushed stupor, people began crawling like babies over cushions on the wood floor to talk to others. The very long table was covered with tall 1.8 liter bottles of sake, many katakuchi (sake flasks with open tops), innumerable o-choko (small sake cups), and the plates from dinner. The conversation was animated, enthusiastic, and a bit drunken. Delight and déjà vu: back in 2005 through 2008 when I lived in Japan, Takara had been the site of nine memorable John Gauntner dinners that had solidified my interest in sake.

One of the sakes on February 15th was Sharaku 冩楽 junmai ginjo from Fukushima, a rich, tingly, and delicious pure rice sake named after the 18th-century ukiyo-e master whose identity is a mystery. The neck of the bottle had a label that read, “Pure Love Brew,” a pun on the word jun for “pure” [100%] rice sake, with a mixed meaning of something like “love of pure rice sake brewing” and “brewed with pure love.” I was so taken with the phrase that I pledged in a slurred voice that I would pursue a jun life, making it delicious and full of love.

—————————-

And that is where I stopped writing when I heard the news of the earthquake/tsunami/radiation crisis in Japan. This post was going to be about my love of sake and sake people: my sake sensei, John Gauntner, and John’s coordinator in the sake courses and sake tours (sake expert in her own right), Etsuko Nakamura. I wanted to share photos of the toji (master brewers) and owners of the breweries we visited and the two sake experts that shared their knowledge with us in the class, Shunsuke Kohiyama, and Matsuzaki-san.

(on right) Kohiyama-san, former brewer, sake industry expert

Matsuzaki-san, sake expert

After much thought I think that my impulse to highlight the lives of individuals remains the best way we can relate to tragedy. Waves crashing over entire towns can too easily be abstracted in one’s mind as a trailer for a movie about world destruction. But what is lost is moments and memories we can grasp one person, one moment at a time. This is all I can offer today: names and faces of individuals in Japan, some of whom I know are safe, some I hope are. I offer my broken heart with pure love for the the people who died, the people who will suffer, and all that will be lost.

Miyasaka-san, president of Miyasaka Shuzo in Nagano Prefecture, maker of Masumi sake.

Igarashi-san, toji of Kumazawa Shuzo in Kanagawa, maker of Tensei sake.

Aoshima-san, toji of Kumazawa Shuzo in Shizuoka, maker of Kikuyoi sake.

Sunday outing with a friend who speaks Japanese, with whom of course I rarely converse in Japanese. We have resolved to do better…sometime. First we have lunch at Mitsitam Café at the National Museum of the American Indian. I quite enjoy a cup of lamb and quinoa soup, a roasted squash side, and a Navajo fry bread. Then we’re off to a lecture by Andrew Maske at the Freer Gallery, “Tracing Tea Bowls: Elite Ceramics in Edo Period Japan,” including the development of Takatori ware. We pause on the way out to ogle the curvy 10th Century Indian bronzes.

At the entrance to the L’Enfant Plaza metro station, we see a large crowd of college-age kids, a Fox News cameraman, and a few photographers with tricked-out equipment. We have no idea why the kids are gathering, but from their voices we feel their exuberant titillation. Always a good sign. Nothing grabs my attention like young, (reasonably) good-looking people skipping along excitedly saying: “Oh my Gawd, look at all the people! When do we do it?”

Katie and I had unknowingly slipped into the Improv Everywhere No Pants! Subway Ride 2011, now in its 10th year. Capitol Improv was the local organizer.

Yellow line heading south, fairly crowded train, people with suitcases headed to the airport, a normal assortment of locals and tourists, except that as soon as the doors closed most people on the train pulled off shoes, unbuttoned and stripped off their pants. We saw lots of costume-ish flannel boxers paired with striped socks. I respected one guy whose worn, gray, cotton boxer briefs indicated he had not indulged in much self-conscious attire planning. A young woman wore a snug pair of panties printed with V-shaped text:

Turn Me
On

I was weighing my options for next year (one should heed mother’s advice to always wear presentable underwear), when it occurred to me that the pantless riders were dressed more respectably and were acting more politely than many of the “IT’S NOT THIS STOP! WE HAVE THREE MORE TO GO! GO SIT WITH YOUR FATHER!” August-sweaty tourists who ride the metro every summer.

Here’s to scenes of chaos and joy in public places. And underwear.

Crisp, clear winter blue sky. No snow, but a 30 percent chance for Christmas day. We spent the morning rearranging things, weeding our belongings, deleting the dross to accentuate the good, useful, and beautiful in our home. Carlos made me a desk, a useful and beautiful thing where I will reacquaint myself with my Japanese books after much neglect during this harried autumn. As the light turns into sunset gold, the mailman brings the January/February issue of Saveur, the Saveur 100 issue, in which Japanese culinary culture is represented by kombu, Kajitsu restaurant in NYC, Sushi Shin in Tokyo, Nehoni Nenox knives, and yuzu kosho (yuzu-flavored chili paste and salt). Almost lost among the junk mail and supermarket flyers is a handmade postcard with a bunny cartoon: a 年賀状 (nengajo, New Year’s card) from one of my old English students. Reminders of Japan always seem to find me…

My newest ochoko, a birthday gift from my father. I christened it quickly with a lovely junmai ginjo sake.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year of the Rabbit!

Remarkably genial, polite, and youthful crowd carrying irony-laden signs: a huge gathering of people I would enjoy hanging out with. And so I did for a couple of hours on Saturday.

Sign: “Never too angry to spellcheck”

Zombie Lincoln

Highlights: Continual low-level amusement reading the “protest” signs. The benediction by Don Novello as Father Guido Sarducci. Yusef (Cat Stevens) singing “Peace Train.” The O’Jays performing “Love Train.” Jon Stewart’s summation speech, which was a feel-good moment, even as a friend standing next to me said, “Jesus, I hope these people vote. They should have made everyone here sign an absentee ballot.”

One of many group waves, lead by the “Mythbusters” guys

Sign: Jesus cradling a dinosaur T. rex

Two favorite signs I couldn’t get shots of: “God Hates Nags” and a rewrite of the Gadsden flag as “Don’t Stomp Me Bro!”

RallytheCause.com has a “comprehensive” list of the signs. 

You get the idea…

Around 3 o’clock 200,000 people thought they’d grab a late lunch in Chinatown.

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.
She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do…

QUESTION: Has Madam been silenced by an evil cartel of Tea Party enthusiasts and vegetarians? –WL

ANSWER: At some point during the hot summer here in D.C. the sake ran out; things looked bleak. Time passed. After a short vacation in Maine, Madam came home to her local bar, was offered a Dogfish Head Punkin Ale, and she realized it was already autumn. She has a story or two to tell…

Despite the name of the place, forget Hong Kong, think Chengdu and Chongqing. For the past two years, Carlos and I have been eating deeply at home from Fuschia Dunlop’s cookbook, Land of Plenty: Authentic Sichuan Recipes Personally Gathered in the Chinese Province of Sichuan. The long, hot, numb buzz of Sichuan pepper and the hearty and deep flavors of Sichuan food moves me deeply: a long overdue visit to Hong Kong Palace in Falls Church was rewarded by a deeply delicious meal.

After a marriage-testing four passes on Route 7 across Seven Corners intersection, we finally called and let them guide us in: “We’re across from Sears.” We sit, I’m all blog-bling with my notebook and my dented and scratched Fuji FinePix. I open to the notes I copied from Tyler Cowen’s blog and Washingtonian.com. I ask the waitress to recommend something from the specials board.

The board is tantalizingly handwritten in Chinese characters. Being a major kanji dork, I try to read the writing anyway, thinking I might see something Japanese-ish, but I get only “[unintelligible] fish” or “[something-something] tofu.” I give up. She asks if we like spicy food, we say yes, and she tells us to order the “Stuffed Pepper Chicken.” So we do.

Menu name: “Chengdu Zhong Spring Dumpling” (boiled pork dumplings with spicy chili and sesame oil sauce)

But first we have some slippery bean-starch noodles with sauce of fermented black beans, green onion, sichuan pepper, and sesame seeds. Then some boiled pork dumplings with a chili oil sauce. I’m already grinning and moaning.

A more authoritative person appears at our tableside (perhaps the owner?) and asks, “May I ask who told you about us?” When I say, “Tyler Cowen’s blog,” she laughs and gestures to the far corner of the room, “Yesterday, he was here with a big table of guests. Just returned from a foreign country and came to eat here right away.” OMG, I’m a Tyler Cowen groupie. Just missed him.

From the specials board July 25th (not on the menu): Stuffed pepper chicken. The chilies were stuffed with sesame seed paste and then fried. Gah, awesome.

Crispy fried chicken pieces with garlic and ginger chunks, whole sichuan peppers, hot red peppers, green onions, and peanuts—like the best kung pao chicken ever, but then they add fried medium hot red peppers stuffed with whole sesame seeds and a sesame paste (the pepper and stuffing is crispy and nutty and hot). The earthy sesame nuttiness against the chicken and hot-and-numbing spices is incredible (praise the Zanthoxylum simulans). They sprinkle cilantro over the whole thing; my cilantro-impaired husband will decline the garnish next time. I thought it superfluous myself, but tasty.

I asked the waitress to show me the characters for “Stuffed Pepper Chicken” and as I wrote them down she leaned over me, cooing, “Oh, you can do Chinese.” Not exactly. The Chinese characters [口口香脆鸡] have literal meanings of something like “mouth mouth fragrant [tsuki radical and the kanji for "dangerous"] chicken” (kou kou xiang cui ji). I don’t know how they combine into units of meaning. I look later in my Japanese kanji dictionary for the full “dangerous” hanzi. No dice. I find the character only in Fuschia Dunlop’s cookbook as cui [脆], “a certain quality of crispiness, a texture that offers resistance to the teeth, but finally yields, cleanly, with a pleasant snappy feeling.” That is the texture of the fried chicken, yes, but the name of the dish doesn’t seem to mention those outrageous stuffed peppers. The Tasting Table D.C. has a post about the Stuffed Pepper Chicken, see the mention of the “Cantonese” peppers.

Menu name: “Stir-fried Shanghai Greens and Black Mushrooms” (bok choy, shiitakes, ginger, garlic slivers). The greens were perfectly cooked and this mild standard paired well against the fried chicken.

Anyone know what “mouth mouth” (kou kou) means?

Apparently my next stop is Sichuan Pavillion in Rockville…

You shouldn’t chase after the past or place expectations on the future. What is past is left behind. The future is as yet unreached. Whatever quality is present you clearly see right there, right there. Not taken in, unshaken, that’s how you develop the heart. Ardently doing what should be done today, for — who knows? — tomorrow death. There is no bargaining with Mortality & his mighty horde. Whoever lives thus ardently, relentlessly both day & night, has truly had an auspicious day: so says the Peaceful Sage.

— “Bhaddekaratta Sutta: An Auspicious Day” (MN 131), translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Just ’cause are my favorite kind of gifts. My mother sent me Grace Young’s Stir-Frying to the Sky’s Edge, not for any particular reason, but because she suspected it could be a cookbook I didn’t already own. I skimmed the book on the bus to work this morning and—remembering two homegrown cucumbers given to me by my next-door neighbor—I decided to make the recipe for stir-fried cucumber and pork with golden garlic. The cookbook features many stories from ex-pat Chinese who speak of trying to recreate “real” Chinese food in Peru, the United States, Burma, Jamaica. Some of the stories ramble a bit and could have used tightening up. And one particular story concludes with an attempt at a kind of metaphysical food writing that can fall very flat. Writing about how a simple eggplant stir-fry is delicious made either with or without ground pork, she states:

I no longer ponder how the magic works—how one meatball’s worth of pork or that tiny pinch of minced ginger can even be detected in the final dish. That is part of the mystery of a well-constructed stir-fry. It is built on layers of flavor and texture, and every ingredient, no matter how seemingly insignificant in quantity, contributes to the alchemy.

Besides the fact that this could describe almost any cooking anywhere in the world (layers of flavor and texture), I’m not sure magic and alchemy explain being able to taste ground pork in an eggplant stir-fry. It seems more like, well, logic and chemistry to me. I do love good food porn, but I like it well written. I’ll give her a pass on the poetics: the photos of Chinese women holding up woks and bowls full of Chinese food are very sweet and make me hungry.

The technical information is very clear and well-written. For example, she spends 16 pages on buying, seasoning, and caring for a wok. I was extremely surprised and smugly gratified to find a page with a photo of a carbon-steel wok that had been used for two years (and was therefore properly seasoned) that looked exactly like my well-used black beauty that I bought 17 years ago. Yes, ol’ Grace had me there. So, having convinced me with her good tips and ego stroking, I decided to get to work right away trying out the recipes.

For the pork and cucumber stir-fry, I had the cucumbers and I bought some Niman Ranch pork. I was already starting with delicious ingredients; it would be up to me to not screw them up. In this recipe you mince a large amount a garlic and pre-fry it to infuse the oil. The garlic cooks only until “light golden” and then is strained from the oil and reserved. The pork gets a marinade of soy, sugar, salt, and corn starch. Like most stir-fry recipes, you must prep everything in advance and then go for it because after you fry off the garlic, the rest of the recipe takes about 4 minutes: fry up slivers of ginger, brown pork in wok, but do not cook through, add cukes, toss, splash in some soy sauce, mix in reserved garlic, serve. I added hot chili flakes because my Bolivian husband gets nervous if his food lacks capsaicin.

Good stuff, thanks mom.

All my garden plantings have been experimental and freeform. As much as I would like to perspire through my kerchief while squinting knowingly at the sky, all I did in April was search for last frost dates for Zones 6b-7a, then push seeds in the ground and wish them well.

Although my first “crop” of tended-from-seed edamame only half filled a cereal bowl, the soybeans were of course absolutely delicious, buttery and nutty. Frozen edamame taste ok, but these took me back to Japan for the short time it took the two of us to devour them. Upcoming Crop Two will be eaten Japanese style, accompanying a frosty mug of beer.

Corn, perhaps a strange hybrid of “Sugar Pearl” and “Luscious.”

Mama’s trying not to love the tall pretty babies more than the stunted cobs. I planted Sugar Pearl and Luscious sweet corn, but I think the Luscious scrambled up first. Or the ears were a marriage of the two. A friend from the Midwest said I needed to wait a bit longer, but some of the cobs were opening at the silks and I had already lost one or two to bites from squirrels or some other Del Ray mammal (I have now seen an opossum, a rabbit, and a raccoon). The other week a storm had blown over some stalks. I righted them and tied the weak to the strong in a cat’s cradle of twine. All these challenges were making me suspect I had better take the corn that was ready now.

The corn was plump and medium sweet with a clean corn taste, which sounds obvious, but have you eaten picked-within-the-hour corn recently? Even farmers’ market corn seemed flaccid and old compared to this. In all, a “Fuck yeah!” kind of meal. Munching along, I thought about when I planted this corn 85 days ago, how I had watched it grow and watered it, that I had made the corn’s life force part of mine, and I started to feel a bit like a cannibal. Needless to say, I ate on.

The recipes in The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook have proven reliable over the past two years. Their jambalaya is great and the spiced pecans and the crab dip are on the menu tomorrow for the Fourth. I was astounded to see a recipe in the cookbook for peach sake (why? because apparently some form of “rice wine” was “a noted beverage in the Lowcountry in the nineteenth century”), and a variation suggested watermelon.

I had a bottle of Otokoyama tokubetsu junmai which is nondescript enough to mix with fruit. The recipe is barely a recipe, steep fruit in sake, wait 24 hours. As a rule, I’m not interested in sake cocktails (although a concoction at Restaurant Eve was pleasant enough). But what the hell, it’s July Fourth weekend and the strange combination of Japanese sake and American watermelon might just convert some friends who are skeptical about sake.

The watermelon has been steeping 24 hours and it’s…watermelony sake.

Happy Fourth of July!

One of the pleasures of sake, at least for me, is revisiting old friends. As much as I am in search of the new, the untasted, the learning experience, I often come back around to some sakes I know that are solid, faithful, and fit my tastes very well. Shimeharitsuru “Jun” junmai ginjo is one of those old friends.

I think I tasted it the first time in the summer of 2007 with my then drinking partner, Patricia, at Tomohiro, a tiny izakaya in Yokohama that features Niigata sakes. Patricia and I had decided to try to visit some of the izakaya that John Gauntner wrote about in his books, Nihonshu no Umai Otona no Izakaya (a guide to Tokyo-area sake pubs) and The Sake Handbook. Oh yes, it is delightful to slide open a tiny door and enter, we two American women, to sit at the bar and take in the scene of cluttered glassware and bottles, the posters of Japanese beer girls and sumo banzuke, the humming fridges full of sake, the smells of tempura and braised eggplant, and thus become completely absorbed in the evening’s tastings. My notes that night were pretty terse, “Sweet rice nose, clean.” But I put a check mark next to it, my way of telling future me to go back for more.

I tasted it again when John Gauntner featured it at the first dinner of the January 2008 Sake Professional Course. My notes expanded somewhat and I wrote of its “cotton candy nose” and “classic” profile, plus the fact that it was made of gohyakumangoku rice. I’ve since learned that I often really (really) like sake made from that rice.

I smacked my lips on it on December 31, 2009, at Sushi Taro, before picking up my osechi. That day I drank it heated, which gave it tones of caramel.

And tonight I finished a bottle I had been enjoying over the past few days. It has a clean crispness (crisp cleanness?) typical of a sake from Niigata Prefecture, but the nose is gentle and sort of coy. Tonight that cotton candy nose was there with a slight banana undertone. A delicious tartness refreshes the palate and keeps me wanting more.

Tonight I drank “Jun” with gyūniku no misozuke (“miso-marinated beef,” but we marinated veal chops). I wrapped veal chops (non-factory farmed) in cheesecloth along with some crushed garlic. I spread some inaka miso I had in the fridge mixed with mirin over the outside of the cheesecloth and let it sit a few hours. Then I removed the cheesecloth and grilled the veal. The meat was outstanding, carrying that slightly fermented salty taste that makes me think of Japan. Be careful when you grill it, miso marinades tend to make meat burn more easily. The recipe was from the May/June 1998 issue of Saveur, but a quick search shows me that the author, Hiroko Shimbo, published the same recipe in her later book, The Japanese Table. The recipe is floating around Indra’s net if you want it.

The side was a light Japanese-style stirfry with yellow squash (my addition) and cucumbers from Yasai hatake no reshipi: 106 Recipes from Vegetable Farm [sic], a homey Japanese cookbook I picked up a few years ago. At the end of the recipe is a note which (I think) says: “Cucumber is recommended for people who are difficult to get along with.” [For Japanese speakers:「苦手な人」は英語に何ですか]  Or it could mean something like “People who have a weakness should eat cucumber.”

Luckily my weakness, sake, is not cured by eating cucumbers. But I do become more easygoing when I drink it…

Tonight, mild and fresh air, the last light of a lovely June evening. I sit at our kitchen bar shelling fresh peas for dinner and sipping this lovely rosé. The color is a salmon sunset; the nose is strawberries mixed with clean wet stones. The wine sips berry fruity at first and then finishes long, dry, and citrus tart (Pamplemousse!). Delicious. I welcome a chance to drink more this summer.

The Domaine Saint André de Figuière website has a section, “La Dégustation,” or as they translate it: “Let’s Be Gourmet,” which makes me think of Japlish t-shirts and handbags, “Let’s Cooking!” In any case, some recipes to go with their wines (in French).

I saved the last tasting for the big genshu. Genshu, basically undiluted sake, is different than “normal” sake (whatever that is) in that the brewer takes the ferment as far as possible without sacrificing quality. Then, the final result is not diluted with water to bring the alcohol level back down to about 16% (for example, G Sake is 18%). Genshus can reach up to 20% or so; before I opened this bottle I knew I was dealing with something that would hit me with a respectable wave of alcohol. What I didn’t know was how the balance would be struck between that higher level of alcohol and the flavors. I gave the G several tastings over a number of days because I knew it would change over a few days.

Day 1: When I first opened the bottle there was a whiff of cedar and ripe banana, a bit of grapefruit pith (yes, pith, not zest), and a bit of creamy vanilla. The color has a tinge of warmth, which makes me think they restrained themselves with the charcoal filtering. The website says “roughly filtered for creamy finish.” Is this a true muroka? They also age it for 10 months, but that doesn’t seem an extraordinary amount of time. The genshu front wave of alcohol was of course quite noticeable, but I was struck by a lack of taste coming behind the alcohol. The end of the sip was sharp with what I must now dub the sour Momokawa finish, which I see on the website they call “lingering, tropical spice finish.”

Day 2: I was happy to find there was less cedar on the nose a day after opening the bottle. I don’t mind a bit of cedar, but it can interfere with getting at the sake itself. The nose carried more banana and the palate was creamier on the back with a better finish. Much better. Still, this is a bottle to open when you know you are eating hearty and spicy food. The following days the G mellowed out a little more, but basically retained the same qualities as on day 2.

We tried it with a few different foods. It paired amazingly well with Korean spicy anchovies, Myulchi Bokkum. I know—thanks, Madam, for the overly specific food pairing. What I mean is this sake can stand up to to some serious heat and deep umami in the food and still come through as a distinctive pairing. That is how I would drink it in the future, with Korean food, with Thai coconut curries, and with American barbeque sauces. Hey, this is not a sake to sip gently while moon viewing, but I think it has a place as a foil for food.

—————

So, that’s it, my procrastination-laden series of tastings in SakéOne’s Momokawa and Organic product lines. I didn’t taste the nigoris, but considering how hard I am on even the best Japanese nigoris, I think I’ll hold off.

Out of 5 sakes, all junmai ginjos, I found a huge variation in the brewing styles, which shows a very nice control of the process and interest in exploring the craft. Nothing I had was poor quality; if I dinged a sake, it wasn’t to my individual taste, but there was clearly something intentional being created. What would I drink again? Certainly the Momokawa Silver and Ruby were friendly drinking and were affordable enough for me to share with friends. The G is big and wouldn’t be something I’d relax with, but I can imagine enjoying it when I’m serving Sichuan, Korean, or spicy barbeque sauce.

A few notes on SakéOne:
Obviously all the sakes I tasted were junmai ginjos. I have heard that U.S. laws require brewers to only brew junmai sake (so no alcohol can be added), but where is the daiginjo? Where is a hearty non-ginjo junmai?

Thanks again to Dewey and SakéOne for the chance to taste these sakes and for responding to my posts. Dewey assures me that SakéOne continues to improve and change, so that my tastings this past spring may become obsolete. I will revisit these sakes to check in.

The SakéOne Challenge, Part 2: Momokawa Organic Ginjo and Momokawa Ruby
The SakéOne Challenge, Part 1: Momokawa Silver and Momokawa Diamond

Directly in front of me, across the driveway, was the front landscaping of my neighbor’s house, her azaleas, a butterfly bush, some catnip, rocks irregularly marking the edges of the planting bed. Just the other day my neighbor and I had stood in front of those mixed plantings discussing what she had planted herself and the plants that had accumulated over the years as different tenants and family members had passed through the 70-year-old house. She was pointing out the catnip and one of her cats appeared, as if to demonstrate the herb’s efficacy, and rolled erotically in the fresh stems and leaves.

So, last night when I noticed a slight shudder of the azaleas and a cat-sized animal emerged into the light, I assumed it was the fat Abyssinian. Instead, not five feet from me wobbled something large and non-domestic, first a white face with a long snout, then a body covered with grayish-brown fur, and, as it turned to make the rounds of the planting bed, a long, hairless tail. As Sei Shonagon would say, Holy shit!

Sipping wine on my steps, I only expect to encounter the banal semi-wild animals of Del Ray: squirrel and robin, perhaps the occasional toad. But this, no this thing was big and vaguely toothy (come no further, for death awaits you all with nasty, big, pointy teeth), and I start ransacking my dull brain for every Discovery channel show I have ever watched, every biology class I have ever taken. I know what this is! I thought, but I couldn’t remember right away what it was called. No, this was something I had never seen in a zoo or on TV. Why? Because this was a Virginia opossum (Didelphis virginiana). It’s a cool looking animal to be sure, and it is our own American marsupial, but let’s face it: bottlenose dolphins and mountain gorillas give better documentary footage.

Meanwhile, the opossum slowly circled the outside of the planting bed, paused in front of my neighbor’s steps to investigate something, turned and came out again from behind the azaleas. This time it was lumbering towards me and, I presume, the insects that had congregated under my front porch light. I awkwardly gathered my wine glass and stood up, not really knowing what to do. I was thinking What’s the etiquette for opossum encounters? For a raccoon, I would move. But my movement startled the animal and it ran back under the azaleas. I waited, but Pogo didn’t come back out.

Inside the house I consulted my illustrated Encyclopedia of Mammals (yes, I consulted a book) to confirm the species and filled in the blank slate of my knowledge about opossums:

• The Virginia opossum is one of 63 species of American opossums (including North, Central, and South America). Early American settlers never encountered opossums north of Virginia and Ohio, but now the Virginia opossum’s range is as far north as the Great Lakes.
• Diet: fruit, insects, small vertebrates, carrion, and garbage. Not sure if they like white wine, but I did leave some on the driveway as I ran inside.
• Estimated range: 31 to 96 acres, so our local opossum works perhaps 10 to 20 streets of Del Ray.
• They can nest in a variety of locations, but hollow trees are common. I’m guessing the unfinished crawlspaces beneath our old houses work well too.
• The encyclopedia says, “Despite being hunted for food and pelts, the Virginia opossum thrives both on farms and in towns and even cities.” Well, yeah.

When leave the fig tree putteth out,
When calves and lambs for mothers cry,
When toads begin to hop about,
We know of truth that summer’s nigh.

So after Pos (Easter) when hens do cluck,
When gawky goblins peep and feed,
And boys get fewer eggs to suck,
We know that Pinkster comes indeed.

—A Pinkster Ode, pamphlet from 1803, reproduced by the New York Folklore Quarterly, 1952.

Photo: Now just hanging on, my Pinkster (or Pinxster) Bloom azaleas, Rhododendron periclymenoides

The native plants in my garden are just slaying me. The pink pom poms are delightful, but with natives you get a American history lesson: Pinkster/Pinxster has nothing to do with the color pink. Pinkster is a Pentecost festival with Dutch colonial origins, that was celebrated by slaves in the late 18th century, and is continued today by historical societies near the Hudson River Valley. For example, there is a festival in Sleepy Hollow, New York on May 17th and in Milford, Pennsylvania on May 23rd. Apparantly, the flower of choice for the Pinkster celebrations was the this same azalea, but my Pinkster flowers here in Virginia won’t make it until Pentecost.

Link to Part 1 of the SakéOne Challenge

Momokawa Organic Ginjo (junmai)
A few weeks back when I tried the Momokawa Organic Ginjo the weather was still chilly here in the Washington, D.C. area. We (the tasting team here at You, Madam) were sitting outside, not so much because it was comfortable outside but more in hope of luring warm weather. I was ready to discover a summer sake.

I sat wondering about the bottle which was labeled Organic Ginjo and on the line below, junmai. Why not just junmai ginjo as on the other three Momokawa junmai ginjos I had tried so far? Perhaps to the marketing team organic ginjo sounds better than organic junmai ginjo. I would have focused on teaming junmai with its connotations of all rice, no added alcohol, with the term organic, for a double-emphasis on a natural product, made of pure rice, using no chemicals. Whatever. As long as a sake makes my mouth happy, I don’t care if the label reads:

Isaac Titsingh’s Organisch Sacki

The first moment of the first sip was promising, I was thinking, a light, delicate, warm weather sake, something for summer to serve very cold, not too demanding for a non-sake drinker, perhaps to serve to some friends, now what would I want to drink with—

And then I got the long sour aftertaste which kills this one for me. It has a faint nose with a super light palate that is refreshing, but then the finish skews bitter/sour. Strange.

I certainly think using organic rice is a worthy enterprise. I am out at my local farmer’s market every week, I try for local and if something is also organic, all the better. But sake is one of those unique products that overcomes my delicate eco sensibilities in my need to quench my thirst, so that domestic organic label really needs to represent something delicious to sway me.

I read an interesting article by Melinda Joe about Japanese organic sake in the Japan Times, but it made me wonder about the rice SakéOne normally uses to brew its sake. Is that rice normally grown with pesticides and petroleum-based fertilizers? Is it local rice?

I’ll try to get some answers and report back. If anyone has any insights on Japanese rice growers, organic sake, or Issac Titsingh, please do share.

Momokawa Ruby (junmai ginjo)
We drank a bottle of Momokawa Ruby with a dish of pasta with sardines, bread crumbs, and capers (from Mark Bittman in the New York Times). The Ruby had a great mouthfeel and paired nicely with the strong sardine and caper tastes. We drank the whole bottle…and ever since I have been trying to find the junk-mail envelope on which I wrote my notes. Let’s just say when it goes fast, we’re digging it. I remember it wasn’t as dry as the Silver and was free of the unpleasant nose of the Diamond. I’d pair this sake with grilled fish or even a steak (although I prefer to have one of my favorite yamahais with beef). Good news for me, Momokawa Ruby is another reasonably priced, reasonably good drinkin’ sake option.

Next: SakéOne’s G Sake, the big genshu…
The SakéOne Challenge, Part 3: G Sake
The SakéOne Challenge, Part 1: Momokawa Silver and Momokawa Diamond

Back in February I wrote a not-so-flattering post about a bottle of Momokawa Diamond. SakéOne’s Vice President of Marketing immediately challenged me to a rematch. Thinking I had perhaps gotten my hands on an old, tired bottle of sake, he very generously sent me fresh product.

I have held back on my comments for a while because I wanted to weigh considerations such as: Does a free bottle of sake taste better than one I buy? How do SakéOne’s American-made sakes compare to Japanese sakes and how much should I expect/desire them to be similar? Do I really want every sake I drink to be a freaking satori experience or might I want to enjoy something friendly and well made? How can I induce more toji to send me sake?

Enough shilly-shallying, thanks Dewey and kanpai!

Momokawa Diamond (junmai ginjo)
My first bottle of the Diamond indeed had been past its prime, God knows what had happened to it. The new bottle was better, fresher, brighter. Huge cantaloupe flavors come through and the palate is fat and pleasant. As I wrote the first time, it’s obviously a sake made with love, but I’m just not loving this sake. Here’s the detail that made me put off writing about this for a couple of weeks: I still think this sake has a nose reminiscent of wood glue (not Elmer’s, I checked). I can’t quite imagine what I would want to eat with it. Unlike the Silver, which made me think of many cuisines and dishes I could happily pair with it, the Diamond is crazymaking in its combination of big overripe fruit and an undertone of savory herbs.

Verdict: Seriously, what’s going on with that nose?

Momokawa Silver (tanrei junmai ginjo)
Dry, crisp, clean, with minerals and tart fruit, a huge mouthful of sake. Nice balance on the palate without the harshness of some dry sakes. I was amused to be reminded of the style difference between a complex and flinty French Chablis and those giant California chardonnays that can exhibit an unseemly assertiveness. While some Japanese sakes must unfold and blossom slowly, revealing layers of meaning, the Silver is a bit Brick-House-Mighty-Mighty, if you know what I mean. This is Lewis and Clark sake; that French Chablis–California Chardonnay style comparison gave me an inkling of what SakéOne means when they say they brew for the “American taste bud.” A few of us sake otaku bloggers had been debating that term, wondering what exactly it meant. I think I sort of get it when I have a giant mouthful of the Silver. It’s good sake, well made, but with a big presence. Kind of over the top, but that’s the appeal of it.

If you are going to pair it with food, try the bolder, meatier Japanese flavors like grilled chicken or nabe. We drank it with plate of freshly cooked David Chang/Momofuku fried chicken (recipe at Inuyaki). The back of the bottle recommends pairing it with fish and sushi, but there’s that huge palate that can stand up to more assertive food. I think some subtler Japanese dishes might be overwhelmed by this sake.

Verdict: For the price and quality, this sake is a real steal. I really liked it; I’ll drink it in the future. I don’t feel the need to sit and mull it over like I do a bottle of Kenbishi, but it drinks friendly, and what could be more American than that?

Next up: Momokawa Ruby and Momokawa Organic Junmai Ginjo
The SakéOne Challenge, Part 2: Momokawa Organic Ginjo and Momokawa Ruby
The SakéOne Challenge, Part 3: G Sake

Warming earth, blue sky, and blossoms, but not those of cherry trees. The white blossoms perfume our garden path and remind us of dusky roses. The University of Florida Environmental Horticulture fact sheet says, “The main ornamental feature is the spectacular white flowers that are larger than those of other amelanchiers. The flowers are borne in early spring and are at first tinged with pink but later fade to white.”

Last spring we had the entire yard redesigned by Paul Henderson, a local landscape designer, who showed up at our house with green Wellies and a fabulously plummy British accent. I showed him a few pictures of Japanese gardens, irregular stone paths, and such, but told him I didn’t want a Japanese theme park. I wanted something that used native Virginia species with a few exotics to hint at Japanese principles. I didn’t want cherry trees and a koi pond, as pretty as they are. I’ll leave the hardcore stuff to Hillwood Gardens. I wanted birds to visit, some fruit, and a place to plant a vegetable garden. And I wanted something that looked good all year.

We ended up with a lovely garden that features an arbor of apple serviceberry trees, and includes (among other things) a stand of dogwoods, several different kinds of azaleas, a wide variety of evergreens including a Japanese cedar, camellias, tricolor beeches, a redbud, a witch-hazel bush, highbush blueberry shrubs, clumping bamboo, and a dwarf Chinese apricot tree.

The apricot wasn’t in his original plan. Paul had a habit of showing up with new babies: “I thought this would be fabulous in this spot.” The tree was Charlie Brown—pathetic, a little stick thing that Paul said would fruit. I thought it looked a bit wan and bet it wouldn’t survive the winter. I didn’t even think about what the flowers would look like…

…until two days ago, when my little apricot tree exploded in white blossoms. I put my nose to the blossoms this morning and they smelled of very much like my favorite ume trees in Japan, the aroma of which is a combination of bubblegum and tea roses and talcum powder. This tree is a different species and, if Paul is right, will give me apricots. We’ll see about the fruit, but it has already earned its keep in eye candy.

The bus stops. Suddenly my seatmate says brightly, “Shitsureshimasu!” [Excuse me]

I stand up to let her pass and, without thinking, I say, “Hai, dōzo.” [Please go ahead]

And she’s off the bus before I can say anything else.

March 3rd at Zentan restaurant in Washington, D.C., Trevor Corson (a native of the D.C. area and author of The Secret Life of Lobsters and The Story of Sushi) gave the first in a planned series of “sushi concierge” presentations. He hopes to come down to D.C. whenever he can book enough people for his sushi talks. I, of course, was lured out by the promise of sake, hoping to score something new.

While I was waiting at the bar for the event to start, I tried some Wakatake junmai daiginjo: sweet, smooth, fruity, but I had a hankering for something a little more fleshy that evening. The Zentan sake list discombobulated me. Several of the sakes are only listed by their English translations rather than their Japanese names. Thus, Ama no To is listed as simply “Heaven’s Door.” The English translations are nice to have, but why no Japanese transliteration? I was completely unmoored by these de-Nipponized sake names with no brewery listings. I’m praying this is not the wave of the future.

Photo: Three selected sakes of the evening.

Corson’s presentation was designed to help one experience throwback sushi, that is, the more classic fish, rather than the common American style of sushi. As he put it, “Hey, I happen to like California rolls, but I think we should search out a fuller experience.” He specifically excluded salmon and bluefin tuna from the evening’s menu because they are not “traditional,” and wanted to focus on white and silvery fish and shellfish. Whether or not we need to buy into the concept of historical sushi fish versus modern fish, he makes a sound plea for diversity in sushi eating.

Nothing in his lecture was particularly earthshaking, but his focus on expanding the repertoire of sushi in America is admirable. He’s trying to get Americans to eat less appreciated fish that sushi chefs want to serve in the States but can’t get their customers to order. Thus, he emphasized that one should concentrate on texture from shellfish and the more subtle flavors of certain fish rather the “obvious” fatty and simplistic tuna belly, salmon, and unagi. Bluefin tuna should be off the menu for many obvious environmental reasons, but I like Corson’s manner of selling species diversity as evidence of diner sophistication. Will America buy it? Probably not, but it’s a worthy message.

We were served what is apparently the Zentan signature dish, Singapore slaw, which at first has some nice flavors and textures with hazelnuts and fresh radish and crispy rice noodles. Then it gets soggy and makes one think of July 4th party leftovers. The first of three sakes was Ame no To (Heaven’s Door) tokubetsu junmai. This is an old friend of mine from Japan, with that delightful crisp and ricey palate. Good stuff, and not hard to find in the States. In fact, all three sakes of the evening were Vine Connections imports. Corson declined to comment much about the sakes, saying he doesn’t have enough knowledge to do the subject justice. Disappointing, I wonder if he needs a lecture partner?

Round one of some well-made nigiri sushi: kanpachi with yuzu garnish, ocean trout with California caviar, madai with umeboshi, sweet shrimp with salmon roe and deep fried shrimp heads (particularly yummy), anago (sea eel) with the standard eel sauce.

Corson moved on to some well-known etiquette issues: Americans need to stop insulting sushi chefs by rubbing their wooden chopsticks together before eating (something I’ve always found bizarre). Later in the evening when he stopped by our table, I offered him my theory that some people feel the need to “remove splinters” because they are tightly (and incorrectly) pressing their lips against the chopsticks as they pull them out of their mouths (like a person eating chocolate cake with a fork).

He also counseled against pouring copious amounts of soy sauce, making a wasabi slurry, and sloshing away with the fish. As he put it, sushi chefs have told him when they see this they ensure that customer is “off the best fish list for the night.” Again, the choir says, Amen Brother.

He made an interesting point about how tightly sushi rice is packed for nigiri in the United States and that one way to get your sushi chef to regard you as good fish—worthy (the secret stash under the counter) is to ask for a looser pack on the rice. In this case, you’d eat the sushi with your fingers, something he encourages.

Corson confirmed a suspicion I had that sushi chefs in the States were preparing very sweet sushi rice compared with the sushi rice in Japan (even allowing for Kansai/Kanto variations). He said Japanese sushi chefs learn quickly that sweeter rice sells more sushi because it pleases the “American palate.” There’s mention of the American palate again! Someone please wash out America’s mouth with soap.

Sushi round two: sea scallop, horse mackerel with ginger and scallions, flounder with chili daikon, and ye olde bara zushi of mackerel and kelp.  Sake two: Tentaka Kuni (Hawk in the Heavens) junmai. More about that below.

Lecture concluded, Corson visited all the tables to answer questions, and miso soup was offered tragically in a lipped bowl with stainless steel spoons. I stared at the bowl on the table and held the spoon above it wondering what was wrong. Then I realized that so much of the enjoyment of miso soup is bringing the bowl up close to the face, appreciating the aromas, and sipping from a warm lacquer (ok faux-lacquer plastic) bowl. With Western-style etiquette plus a wide lip on the bowl keeping it anchored to the table and the feel of the cold, stainless steel soup spoon, the miso soup lost all its allure. I left it.

The Tozai ginjo nigori (Voices in the Mist) served with dessert was crisp and not as cloudy as many nigoris. Very nice, and I am hard on nigori sake. Dessert was an enjoyable, modern almond panna cotta with pineapple raspberry ravioli and passionfriut sauce.

Photo: Tentaka Kuni (Hawk in the Heavens) junmai.

I played nice with our waiter and he brought me a free second glass of the Tentaka Kuni. I may have to revisit this one for the interesting bitter nutty taste with a widely spreading palate. Intriguing. Has some warming potential but was served cold that evening.

See Trevor Corson’s Sushi Concierge site for more about these lectures in D.C. and New York. He admits that his standard lecture must be aimed at sushi newbies. A private lecture (you must have at least 6) might be better for people who want to delve deeper.

I first tasted sake, like most Americans, in Japanese restaurants which served standard Japanese restaurant sake. I drank it, as they served it to me, partially boiled to death and I thought it grand. After those early sake experiences in college, I lived in Japan on two separate occasions, most recently from 2005 to 2008. I had a chance to educate my palate a bit.

The great stuff, Japanese artisan-made sake, inspires a delightful awe and a reverence for craft. That frank delight in the drink is reflected in the missionary work of people like John Gauntner (see Sake World), Beau Timkin at True Sake, and in some of the blogs I list at the left of this page, Tokyofoodcast and Jumanai Djimi Django, among others. The great sakes can encompass a wide range of styles and flavors, but they all are exciting, thought-provoking, and create good cheer.

I had previously written here about how expensive sake is in the United States, compared with prices in Japan. I knew there were American-made sakes that were much less expensive. So I bought a bottle of this $12 Momokawa with a touch of hope. Would I find a delicious inexpensive sake? Can they make good sake in America?

For me, the Diamond was a startling disappointment. The nose was a bit gluey with some fruit, like funky cantaloupe. This got me excited at first because a cantaloupe nose is something that does appear in many great sakes. But then the texture on the palate was flat, with no brightness or complexity (and it didn’t improve on subsequent tastings). It disappears off the tongue with a note of sweet and sour alcohol. It has the body and underpinnings of good sake, such that one can tell it was made with love and some craft. I just don’t think it’s the best expression of what sake can be.

A comment from Greg Lorenz, the SakéOne brewer, makes me wonder if my expecting a Japanese style in American sake is skewing my tasting:

“We represent the American taste bud,” said Greg Lorenz, who is responsible for the production of the sake. He studied sake brewing with SakéOne’s Japanese business partner, Momokawa Brewing, but uses his own inventive style to produce American sake.

“I grew up on burgers and fries, not sushi and rice, so we’re going to make choices that seem appropriate based on our background,” he said.

I’m going to have to taste more. I’ll try more SakéOne products, in particular the g-sake and the Momokawa Silver. Perhaps make a trip out to Minnesota to see a friend and to try moto-i, the sake brewery-restaurant. I’ll take recommendations…

ETA: See the post on the second tasting of Momokawa Diamond and a new tasting of Momokawa Silver thanks to SakéOne.

The NPR announcer says, “Tonight’s forecast is snow and blowing snow.”

We have continuous supplies of electricity, heat, cable, and internet. There’s a supermarket a few blocks from the house. Our employers have urged us to stay home. We are content.

Neighbors now greet with heightened cheer and connection. Although some shops are closed, the Del Ray bars have stayed open to catch all the stir–crazies. People with plastic sleds walk down the middle of the street. This morning we walked to the Metro stop on partially cleared sidewalks, we paused many times to let another person pass on the narrow icy path. Ōyuki smiles. I am aware of walking, taking steps, breathing air, holding cold snow in my bare hand.

Saturday morning the branches of our new Juneberry trees (Amelanchier lamarckii) were bent under the weight of the snow. Carlos trudged around the garden through 18? 24? inches of snow to free the baby trees, shaking them until they sprang back into shape. It was a successful rescue mission and I greeted him like a hero back inside the house.

Photo: Sunday Japanese breakfast at home. Broiled aji hirakiboshi (split-open, lightly dried horse mackerel), rice, pickles, miso soup, genmai cha (green tea with roasted brown rice).

I woke up this morning craving a Japanese breakfast: miso soup, grilled fish, rice, pickles. I had been collecting all these Japanese products and we hadn’t been fully exhausting the pantry and freezer. Time to make the dashi.

Yesterday I had bought some tofu at the grocery store near my house which is cheap, close and definitely/defiantly NOT going for the Mom’s Organic Market vibe. Even as I picked up the sad little tetrapak I wasn’t expecting much, but this morning when I looked at the package I was horrified to find that it was tofu “lite.” I put it in the miso soup knowing I was making a big mistake. Disgusting. What was I thinking? I had just written on this blog that one need not have tofu in miso soup. It was white tasteless goo, with the texture of pannacotta. Too bad it wasn’t pannacotta, we could have eaten that for a snack with a nice berry sauce. Stupid girl I am. Looks like it’s time to check out Thanh Son Tofu in the Eden Center. But I digress…

Delicious breakfast, and I had enough leftover rice to make a bunch of omusubi (rice balls, perhaps more commonly called onigiri). Leftover rice tip: Rice is much like bread, it keeps much better in the freezer than in the fridge. Of course, if you are making fried rice the next day and need dried out rice, the fridge works. But when I’ve made extra Japanese-style rice—sometimes koshi-hikari from California, uonuma from Niigata when I am jonesing for the supreme stuff—I make omusubi to freeze.

When the rice is still warm, wet your hands, rub your palms with a little salt, and press the rice into thick triangles or round patties (or balls or cylinders, whatever). Wrap in plastic wrap and put in the freezer. When you want rice, you can grill/broil them. Put them in a green tea and dashi broth (to make ocha-zuke). Or eat them grilled and topped with a miso sauce, such as a walnut (kurumi) miso sauce (example at TasteofZen.com). You can also just steam them if you want plain rice.

I got a little overexcited finding this wicked cool Japanese Web site with 100 regional onigiri/omusubi styles. Even if you can’t read Japanese, click on the text around the map to pull up some photos. There are also four categories (click on the the bars at the top of the map) that show: furosato (local style) onigiri, kōraku (sightseeing, picnic) onigiri (with examples for spring, summer, fall, and “late fall”), innovative onigiri for the 21st century, and kihon (basic, fundamental) onigiri.

Oh food bloggers bring us the perfect recipe for miso soup.

Here we have a step-by-step guide to “classic” miso soup from Trevor Corson at Serious Eats.

How about theme and variation from Makiko Itoh at Just Hungry?

And the motherlode: 66 ways to make miso soup from Harris Salat at the Japanese Food Report.

Miso soup at my house is catch–as–catch–can. Making dashi (broth) is fast and delicious and completely doable even on a work night. I can have fresh dashi made in less than 15 minutes. It’s best if you let the kombu soak in cold water for a while before heating it, but in a rush you can still make a good, quick dashi from scratch. I know you’ll ignore me and use the powder packet, so I’ll shut up now on the joys of homemade dashi.

Besides the dashi, the rest of miso soup consists of using whatever ingredients you have, lightly cooking them in the dashi (usually—I’d blanch fried tofu and meats first), and adding the final addition of whatever mixture of miso you like. You can get really finicky with the blanching, and in some cases it’s worth roasting the vegetables or stir-frying the ingredients ahead, but this is nandemo miso soup, no need to prep for a Saveur photo shoot.

The nandemo part—knowing what you like and what works—takes a little tasting and experimenting, but it’s miso mixing, not nuclear fission. You know not to plop a spoonful of miso in the pot, right? It won’t dissolve, whisk it in some hot dashi first.

Woe unto he who boils the miso! (It really does deaden the flavor.)

So, after your first few goes at it, don’t stare at your laptop screen and measure out exact amounts of tofu and wakame, which you probably don’t have anyway: Get in the fridge, haul out the vegetables, and see what you have.

Tonight I had daikon, a potato, some kale, an onion. I made dashi, simmered the vegetables in it, and added a mix of two misos, hatchō, the super dark, and aka, a standard red. I steamed some leftover rice, added takuan pickles on the side, and Carlos said the house smelled like a Japanese restaurant. He’s so kawaii.

I haven’t had a proper bath in a year-and-a-half. A friend was concerned that I was missing Japan a bit too much, and I tried to express the whole body feeling of fatigue and yearning for something warm—40ºC actually—I missed onsen.

A good portion of our travel experiences in Japan revolved around bathing. Our best memories are of checking in at a ryokan (traditional inn) with natural hot-spring baths. Before dinner we’d soak for an hour or two, get into our yukata (cotton robes), and be served a fabulous kaiseki dinner in our room. We’d eat, drink the local sake we’d picked up in town, and fall into a warm, pink-cheeked slumber. In the morning, we’d soak some more and eat some more, and head out to explore the local area. Who wouldn’t miss that?

A few weeks back we were at a holiday party chatting with some Japanese people working in the Washington, D.C. area. I mentioned missing Japanese baths, and one couple smiled and leaned in close to say, “There are authentic Japanese baths in Virginia. A Japanese woman and her American husband run a B&B in the country.”

The next day Carlos made reservations at at Pembroke Springs Retreat in Star Tannery, Virginia. Only a few weeks to wait and I’d be bathing.

Photo: View from the common room.

Last Friday, as we were getting ready to take the road to the deep north of Virginia, the manager, Lisa, called us to tell us shocking news: the Japanese baths were not working. The extreme cold had first knocked out the pump and then the pipes had frozen. Did we still want to come?

She promised us a Jacuzzi tub in one of the rooms. The scenery and the Japanese dinner and breakfast were still on offer. We felt the urge to get away, bath or no bath, so we headed west on Route 66, well, not that 66, I-66, heading for the cow farms and rolling hills of the Shenandoah Valley.

The B&B is on 175 wooded private acres. One drives through the forest, past a pond which is fed by a natural spring, and up to the main building. The B&B is run by Taeko and Walter Floyd and their daughter, Lisa, who welcome you as if you are coming to their home.

Carlos marched out into the cold to try the hiking trails on the property. I sat and read a book while facing the mountain forest view from the common room. Taeko brought me warm apple cider with cranberries. I tried not to bother her too much with questions as she prepared our Japanese dinner. The conversation was warm and filled with memories of Japan and the sorry state of their ofuro below, which is fed by natural springs and then heated.

Photo: Sake with dinner, more on that in a later post.

Before dinner we had a bath in a large Jacuzzi tub in one of the guest rooms. Warm and happy, we had a lovely home cooked meal including a first course of sautéed shrimp and scallops, with a side of homemade salt pickles, followed by chicken katsu and shredded cabbage with kushiyaki (grilled vegetable skewers) and miso soup and rice. We graced our meal with a sake we brought from home: Sawanoi kimoto junmai. Dessert was ice cream topped with tsubu-an (chunky red bean jam).

Photo: Breakfast. Grilled salmon, hijiki nimono with konnyaku and carrots, tamago yaki (omelet).

Photo: Breakfast, rice, miso soup.

In the morning we were treated to a Japanese breakfast and a long discussion about John Manjiro, a Japanese man who was shipwrecked in 1841, rescued by an American whaler, and taken to Massachusetts. He returned to Japan in 1851 after receiving a high-school education, and later acted as an interpreter and cultural go-between during the first interactions between Admiral Perry’s delegation and the Japanese shogunate.

Photo: Raw eggs to crack over rice from Taeko and Walter’s Rhode Island Red and Araucana chickens.

The Floyd’s have created a personal and beautiful oasis that combines the casualness of an American country inn with flavors (and baths) of a Japanese ryokan. We were enchanted and will return when the baths are fixed and the weather is slightly warmer for hiking.

A Frankenstein of unnaturally joined parts: daiginjo nigori sparkling sake.

Man, what a party-pooper I am. I was hoping to like this. Ooh, sparkling sake! Freakalicious! I had tasted some sparkling sake in John Gauntner’s sake seminar, in the “Other Types” tasting, which included a red rice sake, a nigori, and a low-alcohol sake, among others. I just looked up my tasting note for Chikurin’s Houhoushu sparkling sake. I wrote, “Eww.” Hmm, problem here.

But I wanted to be surprised by the Dassai, have my mind opened.

I really didn’t find the taste all that compelling, but my problem was more a texture thing: I enjoy some nigori sakes for their creaminess on the palate. The effervescence in this sake fought against the nigori creaminess and didn’t really enhance the sake taste or the floral daiginjo nose. In champagne, the bubbles take the bouquet and the tartness up from your palate and into your sinuses, a deeply pleasurable feeling. With this, I felt the bubbles fighting the low-flying nigori-sensation. Not enough tart acid to fly up with the bubbles, an okay nose, but sort of lost in all the frenetic, confused activity.

Not my thing.

I’ve enjoyed some other Dassai products, but this one tasted like a marketing experiment.

The jūbako is like a Ph.D. in Japanese culture in a box, how to start? The oshinagaki (menu) lists 43 items, in Japanese, so there was some kanji dictionary work for the names. But nothing on the palate was completely unfamiliar, a lot of comforting friends in that box.

A whole baby sea bream swam in a sea of preserved vegetables and fish. A jar of kuromame (sweet cooked black beans) was nestled one one side, like grandma had sent over her blue-ribbon preserves. To fully appreciate this bounty one must study the traditional meanings of the foods, the name puns (see below), the visual appeal and arrangement, the complex recipe preparations, the history of foods that have been eaten since ancient times (black soybeans, sardines) and the modern additions (black pork, beef).

And then you just tuck in.

Photo: Top layer, 22 different items, including sea bream, ankimo tofu (monkfish liver pate), smoked salmon wrapped in many layers of thinly sliced daikon, kuri kinton (chestnuts in sweet yam paste), kinkan mitsuni (kumquat that was sweet simmered), tataki gobo (smashed burdock root with sesame sauce), house made karasumi (preserved bottarga, i.e., mullet roe), red and white kamaboko (fish paste), kararashi renkon (lotus root stuffed with mustard, ginko nuts, and more.

Arrangement of the food: The top layer of the box actually has two layers of food, laid out in a traditional format of celebratory foods on top, with a second layer of preserved foods beneath, the second box having the third and fourth layers of seafood and meats and then stewed vegetables. The visual appeal of the box is heightened by the names that are puns for good luck and success in the new year.

Photo: 田作り, tazukuri, soy-glazed baby sardines. The name is a pun for “fertility.”

Photo: Bottom layer, 21 items, which included winter Spanish mackerel yuan yaki, black pork belly miso yaki, chicken balls, house made datemaki (a fish and egg sweet omelet), sabazushi (a pressed mackerel sushi), salmon roe in a bamboo cup, and much more.


Photo: Detail, bottom layer.

We’ve been feasting for several days. It’s preserved food meant to save the women (ahem, the cooks) of the house from having to prepare food in the first days of the new year. Some standouts: the black pork miso yaki, the sweet-simmered kumquats, the house-made karasumi (mullet roe), roasted duck, the glaze-grilled Spanish mackerel. Quite an experience, maybe next year I’ll make some myself…

That wrapped box is a bit of a pink tease, hmm?

I just received an e-mail from my former Japanese teacher in Yokohama. She thanked me for my nenga jo (New Year’s greeting card) and wrote that my Japanese had gotten better. I hadn’t told her that 10 handwritten lines of Japanese took me hours to compose, as I built a wall of dictionaries and textbooks around myself. So much for my past resolutions to study hard, gambarimasu, and all that. Nevertheless, here we are at the end of 2009 and I haven’t given up on studying the language and enjoying bits of Japanese culture in the Washington, D.C. area. In 2010 there will be more sake tasting reports on this blog, more outings to Japanese restaurants, and a report on an upcoming trip to a Japanese-style B&B in rural Virginia that has a traditional Japanese bath. My heart just got a bit fluttery with happiness.

Today’s lunch: Octopus, wakame, cucumber, and salmon salad with ponzu dressing.

A few weeks back we were at Sushi Taro and we placed an order for osechi. Osechi ryōri is traditional Japanese New Year’s food. Kyoto Foodie has an excellent series of posts about it, including the symbolic meaning of the various foods. Carlos and I had taken a class in Tokyo on osechi taught by Elizabeth Andoh, so we are eager to try Sushi Taro’s version.

Today’s lunch: Katsuo (bonito) nigiri-zushi. Part of the “Sushi Tokujo” set.

Lunch at Sushi Taro today was relaxing. I watched many couples and families (99% of Japanese descent) arrive to pick up their osechi. They hoisted the pink-wrapped boxes with a slight hesitation (it’s a heavy box!), and turned to walk down the stairs. I toasted a few of them as I drank warmed Shimeharitsuru “Jun” junmai ginjo. Yes, warmed properly by putting the tokkuri in a pan of water, not boiled to death in the microwave (I asked). The nose was koji and a bit of crème caramel, the taste started with peppermint alcohol and finished with a lovely lingering tail of sweet almond nougat.

I was buzzed before I even drank the sake. New Year’s makes me crazy and full of wary hopefulness. Life is like a box of salted fish roe and dried baby sardines.

Today’s lunch: Hijiki with soy beans.

Happy New Year! We’ll undress the jubako tomorrow…

Oh those dire times, back in July 2008, when Madam, your blog mistress, with misgivings and many protestations of 寂しくなるだろうよ (I will miss you) was required to move back to the United States. Farewell, sake friends and sumo tournaments and my unbelievable Japanese teacher with her weekly regional treats and her tart ironic glance at her countrymen…

So, I embraced the moment and sought a new name for this blog. What fun, I would continue the blog in America, and Ambrose Bierce would be my standard-bearer. The blog was renamed!

A year-and-a-half goes by and I’m buying too much sake and reading back issues of Kyō no Ryōri (Today’s Cooking). I’m wondering why American bathtubs are so shallow and useless except for washing a sweater, where can a gal get a proper soak? I got nothing for a blog.

Sei Shonagon is fucking laughing at me. She’s in her layered silks and writing about how this fool arrived at court begging for scraps, singing bawdy songs. Nope, it was Sei’s bag all along. I may be located in Washington, D.C., but a piece of my 心 is still in Japan.

I want to explore sake and Japanese culture, or what scraps I can find in the Washington, D.C. area. Of course, I may meander off topic. After all, I’m eating a white pizza while drinking a lovely junmai ginjo right this moment.

Therefore, the blog goes back to its maiden name, “You, madam, are no Sei Shonagon,” and there it shall remain.

I think.

I was expecting a great deal from this sake, as I once had an almost religious experience tasting its sister sake, Tsukinokatsura “Yanagi” (Willow) junmai ginjo. The Willow junmai ginjo is also my evangelical sake: when someone at my dinner table claims they don’t like sake, I gently quiz them on what kinds of sake they have tried—ok, so I’m not so gentle, I berate them until they admit they only tried it once and it was that boiled stuff in some Benihana—and then I parade the Willow. Never fails. People sip and murmur: “What? This is sake?” and “I had no idea sake tasted like that.” Then I have a few good slugs myself.

The Willow’s ultra-refined sister, Heian-kyo (Ancient Kyoto) had a lot to live up to. Sakes from Kyoto are known for being soft on the palate, so I wasn’t surprised to find this sake light and silky, with a delicate tropical fruit nose. The silkiness slipped right over my tongue, but after a few moments of enjoyment, the sweet fruit is too insistent for my taste. This sake is so solidly made and has correct attributes for a daiginjo: lovely nose, good complexity, it sips well. But after a few short days with the bottle, I found myself wondering what else I could open.

So, I opened a bottle of the Willow and experienced the fulfillment of a rounder mouthfeel, a bolder but still gentle bite of alcohol, a stronger bamboo-y finish, and the piqued imagination asking for some sashimi or an okara salad. Gah.

Well, the Heian-kyo is a lovely, well made sake, but as I type this I’m drinking the Willow.

————————–
Data, for those who love data:
Underneath the almost useless English sticker that the importer has slapped on the back of the bottle, I can partially make out the Japanese below with all its tantalizing information. Why don’t they translate all the Japanese on the back? I can see the rice was Iwai, a rare sake rice that the brewery, Matsuda-Tokube Shoten, revived a few years ago. I can also see on the Japanese sticker a seimaibuai of 50%.

True sake reports: SMV+0.5, Acidity+1.6
Sakaya NYC has SMV+1, Acidity +1.4, and that they use yeast #9.

Et-chan and Te-chan at Tokyofoodcast were raving so much about the Shichihonyari 80% nama genshu that my fingers scrambled blindly to the Sakaya Web site to find some. I couldn’t get the nama genshu, so I bought the 60% junmai.

I had intended a multi-day tasting report, allowing the sake to change as it breathed and opened and to try it at different temperatures. Instead the “Seven Spearmen” went down oh-so-easy, tasting of clean fruit and smoky nuttiness, one of those multi-sensory sakes that make you keep sipping to see what else you can find. It was very balanced, not too much smokiness, not too much alcohol bite, a generous mouthfeel without being cloying, a clean and solid sake that is quaffable. I’d like to say more, but it disappeared too quickly.

Keep in mind that at 60% seimaibuai, the brewer could have called this a junmai ginjo. I don’t know why he didn’t, but I do know brewers sometimes reserve the “ginjo” name for a particular flagship brew, even if their junmai meets the standard for ginjo.

There’s fun insider reading in English about the brewer, Tomita Shuzo:

—Of course, our venerable Sake Daddy, John Gauntner, has a chapter about Tomita-san and the brewery in his e-book, Sake’s Hidden Stories.

—Urbansake.com writes about visiting the brewery.

—The Japanese Food Report also has some info about the rice that they use for this sake, Tamazakae.

Tamazakae is indeed a rare sake rice. I found in some notes from John Gauntner’s 2008 Sake Pro course that only about 1% of all sake rice produced is Tamazakae. I’ve read descriptions of this rice refer to qualities such as “musky and herbal” or “herbal and astringent.” The balanced astringency is exactly what I loved about this sake. I’m still looking for which yeast they use…

A recent Japanese staple supply trip required making an inventory of the pantry, renting a Zipcar for a few hours, and driving to the H-Mart Korean supermarket in Falls Church, Virginia. We loaded up on katsuobushi, saikyo miso, kombu, hot peppers for Carlos, of course some kimchi, and then decided ruefully not to buy a tabletop propane burner to make nabe this winter.

While Carlos was looking at Korean noodle soup packets, I found myself meditating in front of a few shelves of sake and shochu. A few bottles of reasonably drinkable sakes were mixed with the ubiquitous Shochikubai California-made stuff. Ah! A daiginjo, I pull the bottle down and reading the price is like a slap in the face. I put it back. But on the bottom shelf is a 1.8-liter bottle of Tsukasabotan junmai. It’s a big bottle (called a isshōbin in Japanese); a normal bottle of sake is 720 ml, which is slightly smaller than the normal wine bottle of 750 ml. Too much, I think, I can’t drink all this, but the price is good, $49.95. That’s $49.95 for more than two bottles’ worth of this very good brand of sake that I have enjoyed many times in Japan. And the bottle had the shipping date on it, which allowed me to see it was just nearing the end of one year, getting too old for being out on a shelf, but still fresh enough if (if!) it had been handled well.

I’ve written a few times in passing about how drinking sake in Japan used to be my reasonably priced hobby, but sometimes I start doubting my memory of life in Japan. All the places I see in DC that serve sake, for example, SEI, with the slick decor and the slick people drinking sake (or worse, saketinis), why does it often strike me as ludicrous even as I indulge myself? Well, one reason is price. Good sake is just too expensive here and thus it becomes a symbol of conspicuous consumption, rather than something delicious to relax with and enjoy at your local izakaya. I was thinking about this as I cradled that big bottle of Tsukasabotan in my arms.

I decided to get a price check from my friends at Tokyofoodcast. The report back: in Tokyo the same bottle costs ¥2,500 ($27). Yep, it really was reasonably priced in Japan. Not cheap, but not outrageous. Yes, I realize there are inexpensive California-made sakes out there, but I’m referring to a certain premium grade of Japanese-made sake, sake made by real craftsmen that I think is worth the effort and cost to buy. To test this, in the future I may do some sake tastings of some non-craft style sakes. Nevertheless, I had found a relative bargain in that H-Mart compared with trying to drink sake in a restaurant. Now this is where is gets ugly:

Photo: Kubota kōju tokubetsu junmai. Drank with dinner at Sushi Taro, $70.00

Sushi Taro, bottle of sake, lovely evening out, but $70 for Kubota kōju tokubetsu junmai? Makes me want to tear my hair out. What could this possibly cost in Japan? According to my friends in Tokyo, about ¥1500 ($17). Yes! That’s how I remember it, $15 to $20 gets you a good bottle of sake. In this particular case, some of this is restaurant markup, but in general once a sake has been shipped to and taxed in the United States, the same bottles of sake are at least twice and sometimes three times the price.

My big bottle of Tsukasabotan really was a good deal. I’m going to look carefully at the big isshōbin bottles from now on. But for me to buy sake in this area, I have to schlep out to various markets in Virginia and Maryland. The selection is never great and I can never know how well the sake was treated in the store (too much heat, too much time).

Feeling sort of depressed about the whole issue of sake prices, and not wanting to stop drinking the stuff, I decided to talk to Rick and Hiroko at SakayaNYC.

Photo: Box of happiness purchased from Sakaya NYC. Six bottles of fantastic sake cost $– well, Madam must have some secrets.

Hiroko cheers me up with some sake talk and tells me she’ll include one old-fashioned sake that can be slightly warmed (another whole post). OK, so this is not a cheap option, but I think their prices are similar to ones I’ve seen in the DC area (which is they probably hover around twice the price in Japan). Sakaya sells sakes that are significantly higher in quality and I was able to pick from among some of the best breweries in Japan. Six bottles of joy in a box. Six tastings to report in the future. Some budgeting to do to keep sake in my life.

By the way, the Tsukasabotan had a full mouthfeel, with a creamy start and sweet-tart aftertaste, the nose was banana with undertones of bamboo. It was getting a little old, I think, but it was delicious. It’s an all-around sake, nothing too out of balance, with enough body to go with food.

ETA: Timothy at UrbanSake.com has a video showing various sake bottle sizes.

January 2008: I’m at the John Gauntner Sake Seminar, it’s the last dinner of the week. We’re upstairs in the restaurant in the impossibly gorgeous old farmhouse and Daimon-san is giving a lecture about sake. I’m trying to focus, but the junmai daiginjo is making the table glow and I get distracted by the crispy coating on the little pink and white fried taro balls. I ask the waitress and she tells me, “mijinko.” I write it down on the menu and put it aside. I figure I’ll look it up later. I do, and I can’t find anything about it.

Photo: Fried stuffed lotus root with “Japanese rice crispie” coating at Sushi Taro, Washington, D.C.

November 2009: I’m in Washington, D.C. at Sushi Taro, and the waitress brings course 8 of 10, fried lotus root that has been stuffed with kamaboko (fishcake) and she says, offhandedly, “Coated with Japanese rice crispies.” Ah, mijinko!

All I can find about mijinko is that it is glutinous rice flour (related to or the same as kanbaiko). On some Web sites, I find info that mijinko is part of rakugan, somewhat hard Japanese sweets, but this doesn’t seem to fit the characteristics of the crispy popped rice texture of the coatings in the photos. Maybe it isn’t mijinko at all. My ongoing investigation to continue…

Photo: First appetizer, gomadōfu (sesame tofu) in dashi with garnish of uni, adzuki bean, and wasabi.

I had tried Sushi Taro last summer, during one of my ongoing, but here scantily reported, tastings at several Japanese places positively noted by the local Washington, D.C. foodie news. I was, and remain, skeptical at each new outing. Japanese food in the DC area is—how shall I say?—not always in full blossom.

I headed to Sushi Taro the first time last summer when I read that it had been transformed from a beloved neighborhood sushi bar (with a good quality, standard-in-America sushi menu) into a kaiseki ryōri joint. The Yelpsters were screaming how it was now too expensive and fancy, which I took as possibly a good sign. Tom Sietsema, in the Post, quoted the new chef (son of the former chef), Nobu Yamazaki, justifying the change, “Chicken teriyaki and spicy tuna roll are not exactly authentic Japanese food.” Not that I have anything against chicken teriyaki, but Yamazaki-san was calling to me.

On that lovely summer evening, I ordered a la carte: baby ayu (sweetfish) tempura, takigawa dōfu (homemade tofu cut into long strands and arranged like a river flow in a dashi broth), and my personal quality tester nigiri sushi: yellowtail, salmon roe, and tamagoyaki [the last one is a good way to see how much care the chef takes with the humblest ingredient, egg]. Everything was excellent, everything was served on seasonally appropriate dishes. I was transported. As I sipped my Suigei tokubetstu junmai sake, I said a little toast to the chef and intoned, Itadakimasu. I humbly receive.

Last Tuesday night I finally went back with my man. We drank:

Photo: Kubota koju tokubetsu junmai.

The Kubota had a big mouth feel with a kick on the middle of the tongue, then a long bamboo-lime finish (I know, sounds weird, tastes delicious). The bottle was chilled, but I would let a glass warm slightly on the table to taste the transition from crisp grassy start to a banana smoothness. The sake list is very nice, but the prices are a bit nutty. [But premium sake prices in the U.S. make me sick. I found a deal today at the Super H, but that's for another post...]

The food, on the other hand, I consider good value (for kaiseki). We each had a 10-course meal including 3 special courses of madai* AND 2 courses including matsutake mushrooms, for $90. The photos show most of the courses.

*Sushi Taro’s menu and various Web sites identify madai as snapper, but my Hosking Dictionary of Japanese Food has it as “sea bream.” It was written in Japanese on the menu as madai. Hosking also tells me madai is best in spring, hmm.

Photo: Second appetizer, soft cod roe tempura with a lotus root fritter dressed with thickened yuba sauce.

Photo: Third appetizer, slow braised female ayu, fishcake-stuffed ginko nuts, green beans.

[Not pictured] The soup course was matsutake mushroom dobin mushi (served in a little tea pot, good explanation at Kyoto Foodie) with anago (eel) meat, shrimp, and ginko nuts.

Photo: Sashimi course, chūtoro (tuna middle belly meat, that night of remarkably excellent quality), madai, hiramasa (yellowtail?), sea bass, and cucumber-wrapped monkfish liver (ankimo).

Photo: Hassun (“tray of tidbits”) course, madai head and collar, grilled sanma, miso-marinated egg yolk, pickled daikon-wrapped salmon, lotus root stuffed with mustard sauce, tuna kakuni, pickled myoga.

This giant fishhead on a platter struck me as kaiseki on steroids (cue the Schwarzenegger Suntory ad). I’m still wondering if the chef sent it out waving his carbon-steel, yelling, “Banzai! Take that California-roll eaters!” We picked it clean. Back at you, badass.

Photo: Same course, showing the other side of the plate: miso-marinated egg yolk, pickled daikon-wrapped salmon, lotus root stuffed with mustard sauce, tuna kakuni, and an unidentified chinmi dish (a “delicacy” that I couldn’t quite identify). I think it was ankimo mixed with something.

Photo: Sushi course, buri fatty belly meat and oyster.

[Not pictured] The next course was lotus root stuffed with fishcake, coated with Japanese “crispies” (mijinko, I think) and deep fried. This course reminded me of izakaya pub grub, but it was delicious.

Photo: Oshokuji (rice, soup, and pickles) course, matsutake mushroom and madai infused rice, served with miso soup and pickles. The miso soup was a thick country-style soup with enoki mushroom, cabbage, and scallions. The pickles were a bit disappointing. (Soup and pickles not pictured.)

Photo: First dessert, purin (Japanese custard, like a loose flan).

Photo: Second dessert, the art of fruit in kanten.

Despite the news that Sushi Taro is too “fancy,” for a kaiseki place it’s quite casual. The waitstaff are dressed in samue, which makes me think of a slumber party. Across from us a couple was absorbed separately in texting while the waitress placed dishes on the table. The pacing of the meal was a bit rushed. We gulped down the soup course when she brought the sashimi. Something ineffable about the experience of kaiseki hasn’t been translated. I wonder…next stop Makoto!

Nevertheless, for a few hours, I gazed out on 17th Street, the warmth of sake in my belly and head, my husband smiling across from me, and I was royally feasted.

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Note: Sushi Taro is offering osechi (New Year’s food). They give the link to the order form only on the Japanese-language version of the Web site. I assume they mean to weed out casual inquiries from those who don’t know osechi well (especially because even Japanese can become weary of it). I love all the different tastes. We made an order and I’ll write a post about it in January.

You’d never know it from the coffee shop/soup & sandwich decor, but Caboose Cafe in Del Ray serves Ethiopian food at dinner Monday through Saturday. We’ve been back quite a few times for this unpretentious but delicious food. They go easy on the spice for the Del Ray-eans, so we promise the waitress we can take the heat. No raw kitfo, no tej, but a decent selection of dishes from the Ethiopian owners.

I love the “harvest veggie” in the vegan platter. When I asked the waitress what the dish is called in Ethiopia, she didn’t know, but my Time-Life African Cooking from 1970 has a photo/recipe of something that seems very similar called yataklete kilkil (potatoes, carrots, beans, onions, etc.). Why not just call it that on the menu?

They also sell bread (baguettes and rustic loaves) and they serve an ok soup and sandwich for lunch. Blah blah cafe stuff. Mancini’s down the street does a better breakfast. It’s the Ethiopian food that brings us back here.

Photo: Vegan sampler, miser watt, gomen, cabbage, kik alitcha, and harvest veggie (aka yataklete kilkil?).

Hello,
I represent my family’s farm, Smith Meadows, each week at the Del Ray Farmers Market. I need an assistant every Saturday from 7:30am to 12pm year round at the corner of Mt. Vernon and Oxford. We have a farm stand here to sell free-range meats, eggs and fresh hand-made pasta. If you love good local food, enjoy being part of a community, are responsible, and can lift 40-50 lbs, please email me at nancy.pritchard1@gmail.com. The pay includes $90 per market day and a 15% discount on all our products. Visit our website at http://www.smithmeadows.com

A recent tasting of this was Smokin’! Or rather this delicious sake is intensely smoky on the palate…at first. The first taste we had was almost too smoky; I was shocked at the power of this daiginjo. We let it breathe and it loosened up slightly as it warmed. This is “tight” in the typical Akita style, but it’s so fine with such lovely bones. The next day we reopened the bottle to drink a much more relaxed and delightful beverage. Still, I think this is not so much a sipping sake, but more a drink to pair with food (and I mean that in the best way). Try it with grilled meat. Yum.

Photo: Wild boar chops. A suggestion…

More about this sake maker at Tokyofoodcast here, and at the brewery site (if only) here.

Here plops the cheese. I was deciding on what we should eat for breakfast while doing our Saturday morning routine (Del Ray farmers’ market, Steve the Butcher, Cheesetique, Planet Wine, Gold Crust Baking Company). I stood in front of the refrigerator in Cheesetique contemplating the burrata and the mozzarella and the fior di latte. The farmers’ market had piles and piles of ripe, red tomatoes, but I knew I could pick some partially ripened ones in my backyard.

Photo: Two kinds of homegrown tomatoes, an Old Virginia between two Rose de Bernes (from Switzerland). Picked not fully ripe, on purpose, see below.

Insalata caprese is one of those ubiquitous dishes that never seem to be done quite to my liking. As much as I dislike cooking doctrine, I personally stick to a few caprese rules:

1) This is a summer dish to be enjoyed only in response to heightened UV rays, heat, and pulsing alive tomatoes (see rule 3). If you serve this to me in the winter, I will eat it politely with a sad heart.

2) The cheese can be either buffalo milk mozzarella or cow’s milk fior di latte–yes it matters what you call it, but either is fine for the salad, with a caveat.

3) If using mozzarella di bufala, the tomatoes should be not fully ripe, a small amount of green in the tomato provides some texture and acidity against the creamy sweetness of the cheese. Taste the fior di latte you have because it is much more variable than cheese made from deeply fatty buffalo milk; if it is not very creamy and sweet, a very ripe tomato will bring a sweetness to the cheese. Nevertheless, I prefer the texture of slightly green tomatoes against the soft cheese. We lived in Naples for several years and I was never served an insalata caprese with very red tomatoes. Why is it that every recipe I read in various cookbooks and magazines calls for fully ripe tomatoes? I really think the texture and acidity balance requires 3/4 ripe tomatoes: good tomatoes, ones that had happy lives with roots in the dirt, ones that resisted bug attacks on their own, and perhaps (but I’m flexible on this) ones that came from seeds that remember their grandparents, seeds that have stories of the old ways in them.

4) The rest of the ingredients are fresh basil (but not much, negligently toss a few leaves in), a drizzle of good olive oil, salt, and pepper.

5) Layering slices of tomato and cheese and drizzling the oil to make a fancy presentation is fine, but a mess in a bowl sopped up with bread is optimally delicious.

Photo: Messy, delicious, sop-with-bread insalata caprese.