Right now I would very much like to be eating these lovely Japanese sweets.

Last night I was hunting down some heavy cream at Fremont’s PCC, which was out of stock at Trader Joe’s. I had already bought some eggs, but then I noticed duck eggs, and decided that I ought to have some.

This morning for breakfast I poached one of the duck eggs and grilled some asparagus, inspired by dinner at Columbia City's La Medusa last Friday. I wasn’t in the mood for a fried egg, but I followed La Medusa’s lead and sprinkled the asparagus and egg a bit of truffle salt from Ritrovo. I toasted a crumpet, upon which I spread a liberal amount of butter, and ate it with a bit of fig jam.

If I had any morels I think they might have found themselves sauteed in butter and somewhere near my poached egg.

If I was more in the mood for a Japanese vibe, I might have skipped the truffle salt and used some grated daikon, mustard and soy sauce for the egg and asparagus. Then it would really be “onsen tamago”. But somehow I thought the dish would taste best in a small Karatsu-ware bowl, along with a contemporary Arita plate for the crumpet.

I have been holding on to a jar of German Morellen, or sour cherries, for far too long. I was thinking to incorporate them into or place atop a cheesecake, but the next time I make a cheesecake it will probably be a green tea version. No matter how I reimagine this it is unlikely to require cherries.

I happened to notice that I had about two-thirds of a packet of sweetened kanten (agar-agar), which I must have previously used to gel a cheesecake or torte topping. It turns out that this amount is just about right for four cups of liquid, so I simmered the liquid from my jar of tart cherries and a little extra water with the remaining agar agar and placed the cherries into four small bowls.

When the liquid had simmered suitably, I poured it into the bowls and let it set. Then I got this simple, refreshing dessert. It’s not as sweet as it looks, and it only has the sweetened agar agar, and whatever mysterious things (mostly water and glucose syrup) might have been in the jar of cherries. It sure beats artificially flavored Jello desserts.

I guess I never got around to mentioning that last week I made some godoufu (godofu). It’s been a while since I’ve last done this, but I posted recently on eGullet about it and thought it would be good to revisit it. The pictured godoufu is served after it had only minimally set; it’s in ideal condition after chilling for a few hours. But, alas, hunger won out over flawlessness. I garnished it with some shiso, dressed with some shouyu and konbu-shiitake dashi. There might be a little bit of yuzu zest in there.

This is most of the spread.

A close-up of my not-quite-fully-set godoufu. When fully set and cut, it looks a little more like a bulging block rather than an amorphous blob. It tastes good either way: creamy with a mochi-like texture.

I made misoshiru with daikon and leeks, as well as nasu-no-miso ni. Nasu-no-miso ni is made in many different ways, but it’s basically a braised eggplant dish with miso, usually some mirin, sometimes some sugar. The eggplant is salted and rinsed to remove aku. Sometimes it’s pan-grilled and sometimes it’s deep-fried before simmering with the miso-based sauce. In west Japan it tends to be sweeter; in north Japan it tends to be saltier. Since I was making Arita-style godoufu, I chose to make it a bit sweeter to match the region.

Nasu-no miso-ni is often garnished with sesame seeds (either black or white). It always tastes best on the second day.

A very basic bok choy no itamemono served with a few raw pine nuts. The sauce is shouyu, mirin and my own dashijiru. This takes less than a minute to prepare.

Some simple sunomono with konbu and Japanese-style kyuuri.

This dinner may look moderately complicated, but the only time-consuming part was the godoufu, which takes about 50 minutes, not counting the chilling time to make it set. If, for example, I had my godoufu and tsukemono ready to go, this dinner could be prepared in its entirety in the time it takes to cook rice.

Individual Japanese dishes are rarely terribly complicated, but the time it takes to prepare Japanese food increases with the number of dishes presented. Fortunately, unlike other cuisines, most Japanese foods can be served lukewarm or chilled; other than soup, usually Japanese only serve one or two hot dishes. A number of simmered foods like nimono improve with rest. Ohitashi (blanched, lightly dressed vegetable dishes) are often served cold.

I didn’t take any photos because it was a fried food and I was hungry, but a few days after I made my godoufu, I was trying to think of a way use up the remainder in a different way than I had tried before. So I cut the remaining godoufu and cut it into modestly-sized cubes, and coated with katakuriko. I deep-fried these cubes at about 375F. I served them in a bowl with some Japanese soy sauce, cold Japanese tea and daikon oroshi, much like agedashi-doufu. I was lazy that day and didn’t have any soup stock handy, but I did have some iced Japanese tea on hand, so I improvised. It worked fairly well.

I hate to compare something that most people have likely never tried with something else that most people have never tried, but it reminded me of tamago no tempura. This is one of the few kinds of food which I find a mystery, but basically tamago no tempura is like a poached egg that has been deep fried with a tempura coating. When I had it in a restaurant in Japan, it still seemed to have a relatively soft yolk, and the basic texture was “fuwa-fuwa” (umm… fluffy?) but with a nice crisp coating. My agegoufu was similar except it had a creamier texture.

Lacking sufficient motivation to cook and lacking sufficient inspiration on where to eat a simple, inexpensive dinner, I somehow found myself conspiring with Jennifer to come up with something entertaining for the evening, already well into the dinner hour.

Suddenly I had the idea to find something in Columbia City, a frequently neglected possibility for dining in Seattle. I noticed a little Ethiopian place that sounded inexpensive and tasty, and made my way southward, picking up my friend along the way.

We arrived slightly circuitously, but something caught my eye which had previously sounded less exciting in the particular set of restaurant summaries I had been perusing. It was La Medusa, a cute little Italian restaurant with an appealing menu. I mentioned something about how much I had been enjoying making roasted cauliflower at home recently, and we made our way across the street to sneak a peek at the Ethiopian place. It looked like a good Tuesday night place, but was a little noisy due to their Friday night musicial guest and wasn’t exactly what either Jennifer or I needed, so we trusted our impulse and returned to La Medusa.

We wandered around for a few minutes while waiting for a table to open up, but we settled on some chickpea fritters, roasted cauliflower with pine nuts, and some grilled asparagus with a fried egg and some hint of truffle salt. I ordered a glass of a Sangiovese and Jennifer got some Pinot Grigio. Somehow, in spite of eating too much pizza recently, I was still drawn to a fig, fennel and ricotta pizza. We skipped any other mains or pastas since it was already late and no longer particularly needed, but found ourselves more than satiated… still, we felt the need to indulge in a little chocolate espresso torte.

Everything was spot-on. Simple preparations, good ingredients, humble but reverential staff, and very attentive service made the whole experience very pleasant. The interior is spare yet attractive. Prices were commensurate with the quality of ingredients, but still a little less extravagant than less impressive options downtown or Capitol Hill. This is exactly the kind of Italian dining Seattle needs.

I have frequently ranted to anyone who will listen that Seattle attempts at Italian restaurants tend to miss the mark: oversized portions of boring pasta that make it hard to order a taste of anything else on the menu, spectacular prices, overly complex dishes that obscure rather than highlight the ingredients used… It’s refreshing to see that there are other alternatives to this approach.

La Medusa is no budget dining experience… I think the total bill, before tip, was about $55 for two, about $15 of which was from wine. I had originally been seeking out something more modest, thus the inclination to come for the inexpensive Ethiopian place. But it is a beautiful little space, and does an excellent job bringing out the best in simple things. The lower rents in the area probably contributed to a roughly 10–20% lower cost than an equivalent meal, if such a thing were available, in Queen Anne, downtown, or Fremont.

The space is actually fairly friendly to the young families that seem to be populating Columbia City, and we saw several (non-disruptive) children around the dining room. It’s an excellent little neighborhood place, but it’s definitely a place with enough appeal to draw me out of my Woodland Park/Fremont environs.

It’s been a productive week, but I have been behind schedule on absolutely everything. Most of what I’ve been doing has involved a lot of context switches, but I guess that’s no more unusual than any other week. The intensity has sure been pretty high.

Monday I helped Masa and Lisa load up furniture from their now-sold tea shop, and then took care of some other tasks that must have seemed important at the time but this much time later I can’t remember a thing. I filled a ton of internet orders on Tuesday at the same time I was trying to handle a wholesale ceramics order and a matcha sales call with a little tea shop downtown. Yesterday I got lost in Kent running an errand on my way down to Portland to follow up with another customer; once in Portland, I spent some time looking at furniture shops to see what the market down there is like, since I have to start making a dent on new accounts for Enlighten… I wasn’t trying to be a salesman so much as gather information, but I probably annoyed at least two shopkeepers, nearly talking their ears off.

Internet orders seem to be picking up recently, so I took care of more of them today. The rest of the day I spent doing mundane tasks like invoicing and paperwork, and I made a little delivery to a tea shop in Bellevue. Maybe I’ll catch up on some internet code tonight.

Everything that I’ve been doing this week was running at least two hours and sometimes a couple of days behind my original plan… I haven’t been procrastinating but I’m having a hard time keeping up. I wish that weeks like this translated into enough revenue to live on… But it’s getting closer.

I went to a farewell party for Masalisa, the little tea shop in Ballard that I’ve been going to occasionally for maybe a year and a half. They will turn over the tea shop to another couple in a few days and then focus full-time on the new business, which, of course, I’m participating in as their sales broker. Actually I came straight from an abbreviated matcha latte demo at Uwajimaya to Ballard.

I always liked that space and I hope the new owners retain some of the character.

At the party I ran into a former MSN colleague and his wife, who runs Pare*Umbrella, a company that imports contemporary Japanese-designed umbrellas. I also met an employee of a sake distributor who knows some of the other importers I do, which just goes to show the circle of Asian importers makes up a very small world.

Masa and Lisa’s son charmed the crowd by performing renditions of Queen songs on a children’s amp and guitar setup, and a 5–piece ensemble of attendees played Okinawan shamisen and sang folk songs. It was the last chance to eat Masa’s Matcha Roll Cake, though I think he changed it a bit on this last occasion. A few people brought snacks, and I felt like a slacker because I didn’t bring anything except some dragon beard candy samples… I would usually cook something for an occasion such as this.

Today the heat of the last few days finally subsided… on Friday I was stuck in a car most of the day in 90 degree (Fahrenheit) weather, and Saturday I served a tremendous amount of iced matcha latte samples (soy and regular) at Uwajimaya. Today I only made it hot… It cooled quite considerably.

The day started off with a blast of heat and never quite cooled down.

I hit most of my planned tasks today, most of which were mundane: phone calls, a quick check on a customer of mine who had been out sick for a few days, packing internet orders, and making an Eastside delivery and a couple of follow-ups, and by the end of the day I handled a couple of less pressing things.

After everything I met up with Jennifer at Lake Union and went kayaking from Portage Bay to Gasworks park, then made a stop at Agua Verde for a margarita and something to nibble on. Service staff was a little distracted but the food was about the same level of quality that I remember from the last visit, a notch above standard Seattle-area Mexican restaurant fare but not dreamy. Oddly enough, both Jennifer and I had independently found ourselves eating tacos for lunch, so there was an element of redux to the whole event, but there’s not much that compares to paddling up some place for dinner.

It’s still a little too hot, even after 11 pm. I hope I can get some decent sleep tonight.

I’m not feeling much better today, but I met a couple of customers for two different purposes today… one a dragon beard candy customer and the other is a customer for Japanese ceramics. I was a little behind schedule on everything I did today and I didn’t do any other sales calls.

I was hoping my mood would be improved by jogging around Greenlake in good weather. I haven’t slept enough recently and over the last few nights for various personal reasons I was sleeping even less. But it wasn’t a particularly successful distraction… My mind kept on dwelling on my little frustrations and I left the lake as moody as I started.

Anyway, I still have a bit of a unpleasant disposition but maybe I’ll be ok tomorrow. I guess on Friday I’ll go to Portland for a little while and tomorrow I must take care of some Eastside errands.

I need to get some better sleep tonight.

Most of today I was feeling a little blue and didn’t get much done today except filling an internet order and making a couple of phone calls.

As customary with a small number of internet orders, I drop off packages at a location in Ballard, so I had forgotten that Tall Grass Bakery in Ballard doesn’t open the retail part of its shop on Mondays, so I went there when they were busy baking breads for wholesale orders. They keep the front door open because it would probably otherwise be too hot, but the shelves were bare. Someone outside the shop confided that he had learned a new batch of bread would be ready in a few minutes, so I waited and took the first available loaves, which happened to be fat baguettes.

I stopped at Ballard Market and picked up butter, cheese, and greens, and took advantage of the bounty to make a hurried sandwich from a fresh-from-the-oven still warm-to-the-touch baguette. I’m not sure I’m feeling a whole lot better, but this sure didn’t hurt.