Japanese bento (弁当)

Before I went to Japan, I made a wish list and one of them is try the railroad bento. I made a list of specialized bentos for the cities that I might stop-by or list.

This tiny food box can have so many variations.  Each train station has specialized bentos that made from local produces. One of the train stations from Hokaido is famous for the stuffed squid. The squid is stuffed with sticky rice then cooked in soy based broth. Sendai offers its famous ox tongue bento. There are even books listing popular and famous railroad bentos. The bento containers are collectable for fans. Some of them are offered limited number everyday, seasonal or during certain time. 

Somehow everytime I arrived the train station was last minute which didn't give me much time to look for the bento selling spot. (sigh!!!)

I got my first bento in the department store in front of Sin-Osaka. It looked like it was from a well-known restaurant. The dishes were maily soy-based. I am not a big rice eater, but the rice was just sooooo....... good. Outstanding! That's the only word I can think of. The taste and texture are definitely different from the good quality Japanese rice I bought in Asian supermarket. 

These were the bentos I got from department store in Himeji. I rushed into the store and grabbed these 2 within 10 minutes in a very speedy way. The arrangement looked so appetizing. According to my cousin, the best time to get good deal on these bentos are few hours before the department stores close. These vendors have to clean the house. Everything left for the day has to go. When my cousin was an exchange student in Japan, she would take the advantage of buying bentos for her lunch and dinner for the next day. It was a very good deal. The downside was the place could get very packed. Since everyone is out hunting for the good bargain. Isetan department store is a well-know store. The one in Kyoto station is busy enough during non-weekend day time. When we went there at night for cheap bargain, the place was jam packed.  

Instead of coke, I had a very in-style drink -- green tea. It came from vending machine and was warm. Pretty cool!

During my trip, I had few other bentos, but I just forgot to take pictures. Yes I am getting my Alzheimer early.

homemade vanilla extract

I first came across this idea from a Florida lady's blog. Later I found out that this has surfed around bloggers for a while. I never bought a real vanilla extract in my life, even though I baked a lot sometimes. I just couldn't see myself spend $20 for a small bottle when I can pay $2 for an imitated one.

I happened to have some vanilla pods on hand, but not the alcohol. Fortunately, certain brand vodka was on sale in the supermarket and it was a small bottle. After I finished all the labor work I realized that the alcohol content is too high. It supposed to be in between 37.5 (??)-40%. Well, since I am such an adventurous person and I am not in the mood of digging out all the pods. Next day I got the 40% vodka and made a small bottle. Let's see how these come out. Mystery will be solved after 8 weeks. 

food I wanna eat in Japan -- Tokushima ramen in Kyoto station

Kyoto Train Station, view from top terrace

Since I didn't have much time, my cousin suggested me Ramen Alley located in Kyoto Train Station. The place should satisfy my craving because it accommodates regional ramens around Japan and the quality shouldn't be bad. With target in mind, I headed to the station not too early but early enough to avoid the crowd.

you will know you are
heading to the right place.

early hours in ramen alley

 There are other food choices in ramen alley, cafe, hambuger (not the chain one), takoyaki and (green)tea place. For green tea, I would suggest Giontsujiri (茶寮都路里) located at 6F of Isetan department store. (It has various locations.) The green tea sundae was so good. That will be another story to tell. 
 

ramen display outside the store
This one is Osaka style
(大阪上方ざんまい屋)

I walked around the alley few times. It is not a big place but with so many choices I could have. Since I am a greedy person, the Eeny, meeny, miny, moe thing still couldn't help. For someone like me who doesn't understand Japanese, all the restaurants have displays showcasing the dishes. There are vending machines outside each store. You put money in and receive a ticket back. The waiter will take the ticket once you walk into the store. 

I finally settled for this one -- Tokushima ramen (徳島 ラーメン東大) Up until now I still don't know why I chose this one. Probably because I kind know the characteristics of other regions' ramen even though I haven't tried them all yet. And I had no clue what Tokushima stands for until I got back home. It was an accident of google surfing and I came across of this region's special ramen. (It is one of the prefectures in Shikoku island. I know Kagawa Prefecture is famous for Sanuki udon (讃岐うどん) because of wheat production in the area.)

The spice rack on the table

pickled plum, it was very salty.

In case you wonder why there's a
bowl of eggs on the table. These
are free. It says on the right
bottom of the menu.
Traditionally, it adds into
the noodle soup.

   

menu

(picture taken from internet)

Ta-da, here comes the noodle I ordered, 徳島ﾗｰﾒﾝ in small size. It looked very different from the ramen soup I know because the broth was so dark and brown. The broth tasted so rich and salty. These soup for ramen all have been simmered on top of the stove for hours. But this one tasted different and it felt like the soup came from stewed meat stock. Unlike big thinly sliced meat of Sapporo or Tokyo ramen, this is thinly sliced pork strip. Eggs are added to the soup to ease the richness of the soup. Because of the richness and saltiness of the broth, the noodle soup is eaten along with rice. To me that's kind weird. I have enough carb from a bowl of soup already, no need to have more. Thank god I was not in Atkins diet.

I usually finish food I ordered if I eat out, but this one I just couldn't do it. I poured some water in my soup already, but it's still too salty for me. Still, it was very YUMY! Overall, lit was a lucky accidental choice.

basket for my jacket

People started to line up during lunch hours

Check out the place if you are ever there: ramen alley

The easy way to freeze tomatoes

If you read my previous article, then you know I have a fetish of using freezer. Somehow I never did on tomatoes until one winter I just bought way too much. I just cann't resisit the price, particularly during winter. I know I can do the canning, but I don't have that many cans on hand.

Basically, I did the whole nine yard things. Cut the corss on the bottomw of the tomatoes, put in a pot with boiling water, remove the tomatoes from the pot and immerge them into ice cold water. Then peel the skin off.

One day, I was talking to one of my customers and he said his cousin does that all the time when she has too many tomatoes coming from her garden. These tomatoes seem to ripe in the same time. She washes these tomatoes clean and put them in the freezer for later use when the tomatoes are $5 per pound during winter. Whenever needed, she put these tomatoes in hot water and peel the skin off.

just took out from the freezer

I cut crosses on the bottom of the tomatoes before I put them in the freezer. I find the tomatoes with crosses are much easier to peel the skin off than these without marks. But some luncky ones will crack themselves in the freezer without cuts. On the safe side, I prefer to spend few seconds to do the labor work.

the left one cracked itself in the freezer

cut side down in the water for easy handling

Soak the tomatoes in hot water just for few seconds. IThe skin is so eary to peel off, but the flesh is still frozen. I made tomato slushy once from the frozen tomatoes. Cutting them has to be very careful because they are hard to handle while frozen. 

Voila, mission accomplished!! These are ready for cooking.

green tea parfait in Giontsujiri (茶寮都路里) Kyoto

A trip to Kyoto cannot leave without trying the green tea. In Japan, green tea production mainly comes from Kyoto and Shizuoka prefectures. After a walk to Yasaka Shrine, we stopped by Giontsujiri located in Gion area. My cousin highly recommended this place. It is always busy here. When my aunt came to Japan to visit, they also came here. Unfortunately, that day they waited almost an hour.

Lucky for us, we didn't even wait for a minute. We thought it all contribute to the weather or not. Outside was pouring. Few minutes after we sat down, the crowd started to line up.

hoji-cha brown cake parfait

Both of them are green tea parfait. The roasting tea method is different and made the tea color different. The green tea shaved ice looked so good from the pictures, but it only offers in summer starting from mid-April.

green tea kit kat

green tea ice cream

weekend donut making

Last week my cute niece asked me if she and I can make donuts together over the weekend. We used Alex's recipe from foodtv after searching the internet. Despite the wacky appearance, the flavor was there. So we decided to make it again this weekend.

Left one is the failed churro. I spooned the dough into the hot oil. It's tasted like puff. The donut came out still good this time. I realized why it didn't work out well last time because we forgot to let the dough rise after cutting. The texture is denser than store bought airy donut, but less chewy than polish donut.

We also tried the oven method which I read from about. The donut with the hole in the middle came out better than the one without hole. The outside won't brown like deep-fried. It tasted in between bread and donut. Last week we add the cocoa powder, cinnamon powder and icing sugar topping. This week we just don't have enough leftovers for variations.

Someone just couldn't get her hand off the donuts.

My first meal in Japan -- wagu beef, yummmmmm... and other good yum yum

sunset

house

The first night I arrived in Japan, I stayed with my cousin who has worked in Japan for 2 years. Since I haven't seen her for the longest time and she had to take me in for a few days, I thought it would be a nice gesture to take her out for dinner. She doesn't eat out that much because lunch is served at work and sometimes she packs leftover from work for dinner. Since it's a small town, the selection is limited. After the discuss, we decided head to the BBQ place. It should be a nice experience for me. The BBQ originated from Korea, but changed a little to suit locals. Actually I don't think it changed that much.

We decided to order the combo meal instead of single order, since it can feed 3-4 people.

menu

Here comes the meal we ordered. I looked not too far from the picture on the menu. It has 2 different kind of stomachs, liver, and something something meat.

side dishes, potato salad and kimchi

Let's get closer look before we start grilling the meat.

Okay, let the fun begin!! BTW, the BBQ usually doens't come with rice. I remember my Korean friend took me for Bulgogi, the restaurant served with rice. Unlke the Korean BBQ comes with dipping suace. The Japanese style doesn't come with any sauces. The meat has already poured on top. I don't think the meat is marinaded, otherwise the color of the beef won't be pink.

grill pan

I never thought that cabbage can be grilled. It tasted pretty good. The stomach is chewy but not like rubber which I like. Whenever I get chance to go to Vietnamese restaurant have Pho, I like to order the one with everything in it, tripe, tendon and something something. I feel like I tried everything. The thought the liver will get hard and tough after grilling. On the contrary, it was still tender. It was the best animal liver I ever had. I know pig's liver can get hard after cooking, but I don't know if that also applies to beef's liver. The beef was soooo.............. good that just meleted in my mouth. Because we were yapping so much, we totally forgot the meat on the grill. The result was we kind burned one piece of good meat. It didn't turn out like rock as I thought, it was still go thought.

Because we had so much time on the food and conversation and I like to venture out to try something, so we ordered the beef tongue.

the lemony dipping suace for beef tongue

We didn't use the dipping suace because the beef has enough seasoning. I tried the beef tongue with dipping sauce, but I didn't like it. The beef has enough seasoning already, to me it was more flavorful to eat it alone.

After dinner, I just felt like eating another meal. My cousin suggested a udon place which is inexpensive. Something needed to be done before our second round dinner -- burned down some calories from BBQ dinner. A stroll to the supermarket also serves a purpose of getting some snakcs for later. 

In the supermarket, I discovered this good-looking beef. The marbling was so sexy and attractive. I only seen it on TV, but never in real life. Half pound meat cost 2300 yen, it's about 28 dollars as recent currency rate. Since this kind high quality meat is not available in regular supermarket, I've tried online search to find butchers or farmers that I will be able to purchase locally. I haven't got much success to find butchers, but there are farmers in BC and Vermont grow wagu beef. I am too intimidate to email and ask how much these meat cost.

wagu beef for grilling

less expensive meat for grilling

The noodle place is located in the same plaza with the supermarket we visited. This is  a chain store which has various locations around Japan. The company also produces other food-related proudcts. Noodle is made in house. 

丸龜製麵

menu

self-served condiment

self-served condiment

self-served condiment

an array of rice balls

self-served tempura

open kitchen

chef was cooking

Here came our food. The noodle was al dente, excellent and chewy. Few days later I had another udon in Kyoto. That one was on the soft side which I preferred this one.

soy-based broth udon

bonito-based broth udon

veggie tempura

fish cake tempura

Dessert came right after our excellent dinner meal. I just love these thin cigarette shaped confectioneries. They have so many flavors. The companies also make local flavors such as the yam flavor shown on the picture. Those confectioneries made outside of Japan sell cheap in the supermarket just dont' taste quite right. It's the same applies to wasabi beans sold on the market. Those made in Japan taste spicy like the real wasabi but have more subtle flavor. On the other hand, those made from outside Japan only have sharp flavor. Personally I think Glico who produces Pocky is better than others. My favorite is the dark chocolate flavor. It satisfies my sweet craving and in the same time not consuming too much sugar.

 

felt like the scene from 90's
TV drama "Tokyo Love Story"